Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Guys - I need to hear back from you on the Eckmuhl and Wagram scenarios.

If you know of one that is totally unbalanced please email me the name of the scenario (filename please) and which side you think has NO chance to win.

I was reviewing the 1758 Campaign for the F&IW game over on the CCC forum and I remembered that some of my scenarios may be way off the scale.

Please send me any comments on campaign dialog as well. Do you feel that in some cases you dont know the entire picture? Sins of ommission.

I have made quite a few OB file changes for the 1809 games.

One point: you will find 3lb Austrian guns for the French in some cases.

Example: IV Corps - 3rd Division - artillery. Horse battery is captured Austrian 3lb guns. Rather than give them a new code letter in the Weapons.dat file I just reused the "G" code.

These guns were pressed into service after Aspern-Essling.

Fire away. If you want to reply here that is fine. Just make sure you use a filename or campaign branch name so I know where you are referring to in your comments.

Bill Peters
Former NWC President, Club Founder, Prussian and Austrian Army Founder, Stefan Reuter's hunting buddy. HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]

Well I work on the assumption that any scenario I don't win must be unbalanced[;)]

Without taking away John's glory, Piave is rather one sided. But I guess it was included for historical completeness.

Eckmuhl giant map - only one bridge over the river at Ratisbon which means half the Austrian Army can be stopped there and never be able to get into the campaign.

Eckmuhl giant single game - a fair few of Davout's men are Ligne yet show as Light.

Wagram map. Whilst I like big maps so I can maneuver that map has a lot of more or less wasted space. I've just played a game against Neville Worland where Davout is supposed to attack from the south, the rest of the army is in the west - yet Davout has to march miles with millions of units to get to the starting point. Movement is painful and given the flat terrain sneaking up on him wasn't possible so I was met with a good pelting from the Russbach. I let a student do my moves in the end and she got carried away in one spot then lost interest in moving anything else.

Generally I feel the French Army is too high a quality for 1809.

Only small criticisms of what are essentially good games.

Generalissimo
Opolchenie Korpus
Russian Army

Andy - I will answer your points in order:

Piave - yes, its a two part battle - and John didnt have a chance. I think I add in a new scenario that adds in the corps that fought in Poland to even things up.

I should look at the victory levels again for this one.

Eckmuhl giant map - Rich put out a scenario that adds in the Pioneers and I have one ready to go for the patch as well. Add in that the engine will have the bridge strength ability by the time the patch comes out and the Landshut scenario also will be a bit more interesting. Perhaps the Bavarians CAN stop the Austrians in the new version.

Davout's corps was able to deploy into Light infantry. The way I handled this was to allow the 4th Division of St. Hilaire go completely into light order. Historically the entire corps should have V type infantry (V is for Light infantry in the OB file just in case you didnt know).

Wagram map - you may have a point but trying to downsize a set of sceanrios that size would be bit much. Guys like the space on the whole. I havent had any complaints on this point. Lets see what the rest of the guys think. I will also ask my playtest team about it.

French army 1809 - yes, you may be right. Perhaps the 4th bn infantry should be D rated? On the other hand how do you get the French to hold at Aspern-Essling if you dont keep the current morales? They break eventually in that one anyway if properly coerced to do so.

The entire issue of morale, units dying to the last man, and so on is under review by myself. One thought is to encourage the Rout Limiting rule to be turned OFF but leave the Flank Morale Modifier rule ON.

Another thought is to drop back to NIR style morales - French ligne is 4 (C) for the majority, 2nd line is 3 (D), Davout's corps 5 (B).

I must admit - the French just dont rout that much.

I would want to experiment a bit with decreased morale before I make it a go mate.

Bill Peters
Former NWC President, Club Founder, Prussian and Austrian Army Founder, Stefan Reuter's hunting buddy. HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]

Points taken. It's a difficult one unit quality - sometimes they have to be artificially high in order to make a balanced scenario. But still, units fighting to the last man is just not sensible. In a recent company level scenario a single man put himself in line, hit one of my men, I failed to hit him then lost 2 men killing him whilst the other 90 disordered. I'd say a unit with greater than 25% loss was combat ineffective.



Generalissimo
Opolchenie Korpus
Russian Army

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by andy Moss</i>
<br />Points taken. It's a difficult one unit quality - sometimes they have to be artificially high in order to make a balanced scenario. But still, units fighting to the last man is just not sensible. In a recent company level scenario a single man put himself in line, hit one of my men, I failed to hit him then lost 2 men killing him whilst the other 90 disordered. I'd say a unit with greater than 25% loss was combat ineffective.



Generalissimo
Opolchenie Korpus
Russian Army
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Reminds me of a recent shot in the French and Indian War game (EAW series). I had a 2 man unit (!!!) fire at 3 hexes and hit for 1 man!

Then I fired with 48 B rated infantry and missed.

C'est la guerre!

The best one was when I tried to form square in a recent playtest game against Dean Beecham.

The unit had 4 men. I pushed the form square button, Dean's troops fired and hit them and they dissappeared!

A 4 man square is rather pathetic I must admit.

Bill Peters
Former NWC President, Club Founder, Prussian and Austrian Army Founder, Stefan Reuter's hunting buddy. HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]

Hehehe. We all have stories like that I guess, it's one of the peculiarities of the HPS games. I had a lone cuirassier overrun several limbered artillery units, generals and their staff, took part in a zoc kill then spent 2 hours reordering himself.

My problem though is that to get game balance some units are artificially inflated in quality. Nirproject had that philosophy but went too far. At Abensberg Davout's men rarely even disorder and are running around hitting one Austrian corps after another. They may well be outnumbered but boy are they standing their ground.

The French superman is a myth. He was better led, sometimes better motivated and was able to live off the land. Otherwise he was no different to any other soldier. Bonaparte's early battles were won by superior strategy and tactics; as soon as the other nations copied his style the later battles ended as very bloody affairs. It was not the quality of the soldier therefore that won the day.

Generalissimo
Opolchenie Korpus
Russian Army

I think there is a mistake in Italian.oob and Raab.oob of HPS Wagram - in the second brigade of the Italian guard division the Guard chasseurs must be an infantry unit, not cavalry.

Major V. Komissarenko
Vincent (La Tour) Chevaulegers
KUK Osterreichische armee

Bill,
I'm playing "eck5i1.scn" - "C05 second day at Eckmuhl" - HPS Eckmuhl and I noticed a bug in the oob of scenario.

french reinforcements. At 0800 they'll receive the 2d Heavy cav division of the III Corps (St Sulpice, Clemont, Guiton + 1,5,10,11 cuirassiers). These are still on the battlefield at 55:117 !!!

I think there is a confusion between the two 2d Heavy cav divisions. One is good and the other is false.
As I haven't the oob, I can't point it out.
It should be easy to correct and include ithe new scn in the patch.



<font color="orange">1e Luitenant Valère Bernard </font id="orange">
<font color="red">Anglo-Allied Administrative Adjutant</font id="red">
<font color="orange">Divisie Nederlandsche Kavallerie
I Corps
Anglo-Allied Army
</font id="orange">

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by andy Moss</i>
<br />Hehehe. We all have stories like that I guess, it's one of the peculiarities of the HPS games. I had a lone cuirassier overrun several limbered artillery units, generals and their staff, took part in a zoc kill then spent 2 hours reordering himself.

My problem though is that to get game balance some units are artificially inflated in quality. Nirproject had that philosophy but went too far. At Abensberg Davout's men rarely even disorder and are running around hitting one Austrian corps after another. They may well be outnumbered but boy are they standing their ground.

The French superman is a myth. He was better led, sometimes better motivated and was able to live off the land. Otherwise he was no different to any other soldier. Bonaparte's early battles were won by superior strategy and tactics; as soon as the other nations copied his style the later battles ended as very bloody affairs. It was not the quality of the soldier therefore that won the day.

Generalissimo
Opolchenie Korpus
Russian Army
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I have to admit that even with a few good Austrian tactical commanders that the biggest problem with the Austrians at Eckmuhl is command rated and not in the fact that the French were really THAT much better. There were a few good tactical commanders for the Austrians but for the most part Charles was hesitant in this phase of the campaign and his corps commanders vary from average to downright pathetic when compared to their French counterparts. Massena was not that brilliant in this campaign but Lannes, Davout and even Lefebvre showed their stuff.

Bill Peters
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by valere5</i>
<br />Bill,
I'm playing "eck5i1.scn" - "C05 second day at Eckmuhl" - HPS Eckmuhl and I noticed a bug in the oob of scenario.

french reinforcements. At 0800 they'll receive the 2d Heavy cav division of the III Corps (St Sulpice, Clemont, Guiton + 1,5,10,11 cuirassiers). These are still on the battlefield at 55:117 !!!

I think there is a confusion between the two 2d Heavy cav divisions. One is good and the other is false.
As I haven't the oob, I can't point it out.
It should be easy to correct and include ithe new scn in the patch.



<font color="orange">1e Luitenant Valère Bernard </font id="orange">
<font color="red">Anglo-Allied Administrative Adjutant</font id="red">
<font color="orange">Divisie Nederlandsche Kavallerie
I Corps
Anglo-Allied Army
</font id="orange">

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Thanks - I know what happened here. Look at Davout's corps and then look at Lannes Wing. They both have this formation. I must have put it in twice.

It was midway through production that I found out that Lannes took troops from Davout on the 20th. Thus I used an ORG file to filter through the losses but I still had this duplicate unit situation in the OB. At one point I thought of having all of Lannes and Davout's units in one Wing/Corps. But that lead to other problems.

Then one idea was to have another OB that had the units moved from Davout's corps to Lannes Wing. THe problem with that is by then I had put together some 80 scenarios. GOing back over all of them to fix the coding would have been incredibly taxing.

So I will just have to go in and try and find as many of these as possible. I know that it doesnt happen in scenarios where Lannes and Davout are not on the map at the same time so the number of scenarios is maybe 20-21 where it happens.

Thanks - I will add this one to my set of files for the patch.

Bill Peters
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]

In all the scenarios where either army has bridge building capabilities there should be several "0" strength bridges placed along the rivers.

These would represent places where pontoon bridges could be built. Since bridges can only be repaired within the game engine this is the only way a 'new' bridge can ever show up.

Historically, sites for pontoon bridges would be few, and easy to find. Both banks of the rever need to be of the same elevation, and clear, and there should be a road of type within a few hundred metres at the most. These limitations are due to construction constraints and the limited "off road" capabilities of the wheeled transportation of the era.

With these "crossing sites" included many of the large scenarios, especially the multi-day ones, will open up immensely.

Colonel Al Amos
1erè Brigade Commandant
2ème Division de Dragons

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Al Amos</i>
<br />In all the scenarios where either army has bridge building capabilities there should be several "0" strength bridges placed along the rivers.

These would represent places where pontoon bridges could be built. Since bridges can only be repaired within the game engine this is the only way a 'new' bridge can ever show up.

Historically, sites for pontoon bridges would be few, and easy to find. Both banks of the rever need to be of the same elevation, and clear, and there should be a road of type within a few hundred metres at the most. These limitations are due to construction constraints and the limited "off road" capabilities of the wheeled transportation of the era.

With these "crossing sites" included many of the large scenarios, especially the multi-day ones, will open up immensely.

Colonel Al Amos
1erè Brigade Commandant
2ème Division de Dragons


<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Napoleon in 1809 - Eckmuhl - did NOT have a boat train with him nor the engineers neccessary to build pontoon bridges. Especially at the Danube which in April is a higher and wider due to Spring thaw.

Thus I didnt add in the crossing sites.

Now anyone is able to make their own version where they add in the crossing sites - its in the Scenario editor as you know but my comment is just for those that DIDNT know.

In fact if Davout had reinforced the infantry at Ratisbon the Austrians would have had a devil of a time getting across. They didnt have pontoons either.

As you also know the Austrians had a bridge train that was later captured. If anyone should have the ability to BUILD bridges it would be the Austrians. Thus if I were to eliminate all French pioneers and then add in a few crossing sites this would be more historically accurate.

I have added in the Austrian pioneers. Should I remove the French pioneers and then add in some crossing sites for the Austrians to use?

It would be nice if the crossing sites were hidden from both players view and only Pioneers, engineer officers (not a type in the game but ...) or officers of a corps rank and up could find them.

Then I would really be interested in doing this.

Its something I have thought alot about. That bridge at Ratisbon shouldnt be able to be destroyed.

Which leads to:

Bridge types:

Stone - min strength is 1000 - max strength is 2000 - cannot be destroyed by any means - can be removed only by Pioneer units. Not sure of the values that the Pioneers would take from the bridge each turn. Once taken down only pontoon bridges could be built in its place.
Wood - max strength is 500 - can be destroyed by random bridge damage, melee and artillery
Pontoon - max strength is 200 - can be destroyed by random bridge damage, melee and artillery.

Thanks for the comments Al - one of the things that I would have loved to have had for Eckmuhl was pioneers when it first came out.

Bill Peters
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]