Issue with adding guards in Skyrim

[therockr]

I'm having an issue getting guards to work correctly in Skyrim. First of all, I'm under the impression that any NPC can be set up to be a guard. I don't know why that wouldn't be true, but please correct me if I'm wrong on any and every thing. So I've been using the mod Helgen Reborn which, for those that don't know, adds a bunch of quests and storyline eventually leading up to the city of Helgen being rebuilt and used as a proper city again. The mod is great and I would definitely recommend it to anyone that's interested. I also have permission from the mod author to edit the mod for personal use as long as I don't release anything. The mod adds roughly 7 NPC's that appear about midway through the questline and can be Stormcloaks, Imperials (depending on which faction you chose for the civil war quest), or another basic faction (that wear basic fur/studded armor). Anyways, since I am aligned with the Stormcloaks, I have guards that wear the stormcloak gear. The issue is that the guards are all unique, essential, and have names. I found this to take away from the game's overall cohesion, so I decided to use the creation kit to change the names. That was fairly easy as I changed all the guards from having unique names to having the general name of "Stormcloak Soldier" to match those found in Whiterun, Solitude, etc. after completing the Civil War quest. After doing this and hopping back in game, I noticed that the guards didn't act like guards at all. They didn't notice any crimes and I never got a bounty for anything I did wrong, no matter who in the city saw me. Upon investigation in the Creation Kit, I found that none of the added NPC's were assigned a crime faction and the guards were not assigned any of the guard factions. I found a tutorial on the internet that told me I needed to add a crime faction, the isguard faction, and the guarddialogue faction for them to function as guards. After doing this and unchecking the boxes for unique and essential, I went back in game to test the changes. Upon slicing the guards, they would not react to me until maybe the 4th swing of the sword which is also when I finally got a bounty of 40 for assault upon which the guards (nor other NPC's that I added to the crime faction) would still not attack or arrest me, which is what they're supposed to do since they have the isguard and guarddialogue factions. I changed a value in the Creation Kit that had been said to them ignoring any crime to them not ignoring any crimes and, while that made them attack me after I had finally received a bounty, they still would not arrest me. It's also worth noting that I had to make a new crime faction for this called HelgenCrimeFaction and set it to all the guards and citizens and also made that their set crime faction in the drop down box. Also, I set up a prison in the Helgen keep by following a tutorial and I assume that works fine even though I haven't been able to test it since guards won't arrest me. Also, in that crime faction, there are boxes for "Attack on Sight" and "Arrest" which I have the box for "Arrest" checked and the other one not checked. I'm not entirely sure what I've done wrong here and why they won't go into the arrest dialogue or even fight back until I've hit them four times. Could it be that they have a relationship value set with the player to be friendly or allied to me?

Also, another side issue -- even though I unchecked the box for essential when I was editing their bases in the Creation Kit, all the guards remained essential and get on a knee when they're supposed to die.

Any help is definitely appreciated!