As it stands right now the 2ACW is in a rough spot. In an effort to make the war more engaging and fun to play, any pretense to realism has been tossed out the window with hundreds of thousands of people immediately taking up arms on well defined borders, with hundreds of airplanes immediately being available, and hundreds of syndie heavy tanks miraculously being left by the tank fairy, on top of the balancing not being so much wonky as it is non-existent.

However, I'm less concerned with all of this, because these issues are all rather symptoms of the bigger issue, that being, the 2ACW makes no sense. Not in a ubiquitous, "well the USA could never descend into Civil War again" way however. The events leading up to the actual war are well done and thought out, and the thought and planning going into event chains like the coalition ticket is to be lauded. However it all falls apart after this.

For some reason it has been decreed and inscribed upon stone "Thou shalt have at least a three way civil war" and this quite simply doesn't need to be the case. The devs have already started catching onto this, the PSA and its conditions for appearing are a good example of what I am looking for, and there is no reason not to expand this to the other participants of the civil war as well. Why for example, after having had a successful negotiation between Reed and Olson in Chicago, will the CSA still rise up in rebellion after Huey Long survives an assassination attempt? Why should there not be an event chain around trying to get Long to the negotiating table? Sure he was an intractable stubborn man, but even if the event chain has to end in failure, it could still be used to further justify why he's willing to overthrow the government in its entirety rather than just being a rabble rouser which is really all he's portrayed as thus far.

Now, the issue that might crop up then is "well what about balance?" To which I say, "Well what about it?". Paradox games thrive off of imbalanced starts, Byzantium doesn't get to start on par with the Ottomans in EU4, Harold Godwinson is almost certain to be fucked over by William and Harald. The 2ACW doesn't need to be any different. There is no divine commandment decreeing that the AUS, USA, PSA, and CSA must all be roughly on par, not that they are right now and that's ok, so long as it remains internally consistent and plausible.

As it stands right now, the 2ACW is neither plausible nor balanced. Efforts to make it more balanced will inevitably strain credulity so long as hundreds of planes, tanks, and hundreds of thousands of men under arms are involved. Instead, the devs should focus on making it plausible and not really give to much credence to balance.