John Corbin wrote:
Since the idea of playing test games is on the table, I was wondering how the success of your changes would be measured?
I spent many years testing applications and always had a a concrete list of objectives/criteria that had to be met before I could say the test was sucessfull.
It’s a good question. The main criteria were:
1. More historical behaviour on a tactical level: less melee > more skirmishing, more artillery and musket firing and more positioning in depth.
We certainly achieved this with fewer melees and a lot more skirmishing, musket and artillery firing and more historical deployments.
2. Casualties and intensity Both casualties and intensity were reduced massively but still there is a room for improvement. Just to give you an idea - the demo scenario involves 35K French assaulting 29K Austrians along the 3 km front. There are 30 turns (5 hours). In terms of size this battle is comparable to Marengo where the French held for 5 hours before starting to retreat. In our tests, the Austrians mostly had to abandon their positions after 3.5 to 4 hours (20-25 turns) of fighting and each time the casualties from both sides were close to 20-22%.
This is still too bloody and too fast but this is a big step from what you would have seen in the original game but there is still room for improvement. The problem is that it’s not just the game mechanics which effects players behaviour but also the lack of strategic perspective. In the demo the French player does not care how many losses he suffers as long as he pushes the Austrians away > in reality the general in charge would be more prudent with regards to his troop’s losses. So adding a strategic component should slow down the pace of engagements further. How do you do this? This is a different question which hopefully Bill is working on through “Napoleonic Campaign Site”.
3. More manoeuvring on the battlefield. Manoeuvring on the battlefield is a very important Napoleonic concept as the effect did often come not entirely from the destructive power, real and effective as it may be. It came, above all, from its presumed, threatening power which may force the enemy to abandon the position or to redeploy to a vulnerable formation (square). The massive reduction of senior leaders’ command radius is supposed to penalise armies operating along the whole front.
The manoeuvring on the battlefield concept was not really tested in the demo scenario as there are 35K French operating on only 3 km front. The scenario only assumes a frontal assult. The French CinC (Napoleon) can easily cover all three Corps Commanders (Ney, Lannes and Murat). The idea of demo scenario is only to demonstrate the basic changes like troops density, melee, formations etc. and the demo is not really designed to demonstrate the changes on a grand-tactical level.
But once you get to try the larger battles like Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo – that’s where players will have to slow down as senior leaders will not be able to pass thier bonus to every division [ it will also decrease casualty levels and the intensity] and that’s where it should be a completely different experience.
NWC
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We feel free to chose any solution for a problem mentioned - from unconditionally accepting it to complete ignore. The only reason would be whether it improves IN OUR OPINION Historicity and Realism or not.
