Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Bill,

No misunderstanding on our side. You try to disprove several our points. I shall try to answer in such a way that no misunderstanding could be left.

1. You call our set of sources poor, because on pages given there is no evidence of the kind. That's quite possible. We could simply use different editions of the same work with pages shifted rather far. The mistake we made is in specifying only the book name, author and pages with no info of the edition etc. Than must and will be corrected. Thank you for revealing that!

2. You say that 28th and 30th regimentswere not poor in quality and batallions of 6th Grenadiers regiment were disbanded not because of their poor quality. No one said the opposite. Even more, discussing Oudinot's division we never mentioned these regiments. And frankly speaking I don't care why were they disbanded. As long as the regiment does not take part in campaign in game terms it does not exist at all.

3. It appears that You, the Author and us agree that those "grenadiers" regiments were composed not only of elite=flank companies, but also from line=central ones. And hence their "grenadiers" status is somewhat a rounding and a beautiful name, but not their real status. That's it!

4. You disagree with our ranking these units as INFERIOR in quality to general mass. That is MISUNDERSTANDING on YOUR side. Because we rated in fact every batallion of this division independantly and taking into account half of these men are grenadiers. As a result they are ON THE AVERAGE SUPERIOR in quality compared to general mass. Alexey already provided the figures. But IN PARTICULAR some of the batallions are still rated D. That is they are just the average. To repeat in our terms D is the average value, not C as you are used to.

5. One of the examples of batallions with D is 15 Lйgere. You asked Scott about their quality and perfomance. His answer is devided in two parts:

5a. "Was the 15th Legere as good a unit in 1805 as, say, the 13th Legere?"
The answer was "No way."
Hence we agree with the Author that in that matter. We rated 13th as Good and 15th as Average.

5b. Did they perform well in 1805?
Yes, on par with the rest of their very good corps. BUT! You would not get the comments as were made by the senior officers praising the young soldiers of the 15th for their conduct if they had been on par with the other regiments of the 3rd Corps that had many more veterans in the ranks. And our evaluation DOES account for that fact. For this particular batallion marks are 1 of 4 for previous perfomance (remember 1800 incident), 2 of 4 for number of veterans (i.e. average) and 3 of 4 for perfomance in this campaign (i.e. VERY GOOD). The batallion as whole gets 2 mark and is rated D. That's it!

6. Finally you try to disprove our ranking of this very batallion as substandard. As you may see from 5b there is nothing to disprove. They are RATED STANDARD. And word "substandard" was never used. It's your.

Thanks for your effort and suspicion towards the system. Posing it at question is the best way to improve it. But so far there more questions mosed there more I like it. My wife would become jealous soon

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Some French Grenadier battalions from Oudinot division (1st Division, V Corps) are given “D” morale. These regiments were composed of soldiers from 58th, 81st Line and 31st, 15th Légère. The first two regiments saw only limited counter-insurgency action in 1793-1795 as they were operating against Chouans and Royalists and were not involved in any serious actions since 1795.

Hmm, then I guess that you have no clue what you are typing.

This is wrong guys. Dead wrong. And you know it. But its your little project. Enjoy. Just take the Historical title off of it and call it "Our Settings Project" or something like that.

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

There is something appealing in being thoroughly wicked, isn't it?

I wish any scenario designers decision could be discussed in such detail and with such a zeal!

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Jeez you guys are using a lot of energy debating this. Who cares if a btn is a little this way or that and in the end no one can really know historians are just historians. It's a game and it's for fun.

Besides we all know all French units should be A grade and all coalition armies E grade. That would be historical.

_________________
Marechal Knox

Prince d'Austerlitz et Comte d'Argentan
Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur

"What is history but a fable agreed upon"

Colin how can't you understand?! Casualties among principles are off-scaling beyond 80%. We have being going to the triarii for quite some time already.

It's much more deliberate than deciding why still-Ms. Spoonge is wearing white - becuase that's normal in her army or because due to shortage she has to use uniforms stored since royalist times.

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In greater or lessons proportions, as a point of fact, the long and short term ramifications may have an adverse effect on the status quo.

Is that a no Humphrey?

Yes Minister

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Marechal Knox

Prince d'Austerlitz et Comte d'Argentan
Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur

"What is history but a fable agreed upon"

Damn Funny show Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister

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"Hmm, then I guess that you have no clue what you are typing."

Bill, if you disagree then ignore the thread, but please stop the insulting posts. It's beneath you, seriously.

The guys aren't downing your work, they are tweaking a very mod-able game to thier liking. There's no sin in that.

Heaven knows I like to build scenarios, in all JTs titles, almost entirely differently than the original designer. Back in the day, I even handbuilt maps to suit my tastes.

So let them be, or stick to objective statements to back your arguments.

al

I agree Colonel Amos!

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Marechal Knox

Prince d'Austerlitz et Comte d'Argentan
Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur

"What is history but a fable agreed upon"

The statement from Scott Bowden says it all. It is very objective and truthful. The paragraph was taken to mean something else by the person who quoted it. I simply corrected them on it. It is not what they think it means. The units were not disbanded due to their quality. Nothing of the sort.

Here is another tidbit out of the H&R settings: counter count in a hex. It is set at 2 counters. Now what this means is that you cannot stack more than two battalions in a hex even if they are 100 men each. But the real reason why it was added in was this: not only was the space limited but hey the cavalry no longer get disordered by routing infantry that run through their hex.

Hmm, that was terribly "historical" to do that. Again, that was a call that says "it never happened in history." As the British say, poppycock.

I can easily make a case that cavalry would stiffen the resolve of infantry to their front as they were used to help keep shirkers and "cowards" in the ranks. If anything with cavalry behind a unit it's morale should go up.

But to say that with a magic tough of the type you can suddenly have it to where cavalry no longer will be disordered by routing infantry?

Is the game engine historical? Yes and no. We have debated here where it is not.

I applaud the folks that called their group "The Settings Project." Here here! Good show and all that. Their GOAL was to be historical but they did not use the very word in their title.

In the end some of history as written is in error but we have enough to go by to know how most of it played out where it regards Napoleonics. New things surface all the time (like John Gill's excellent map of Landshut which I adopted in my last update of Eckmuhl).

But to put in a change to a PDT file such that your nice tidy cavalry do not get ruffled by a routing 500 man battalion is putting things off kilter.

Add to it that now you do not have to round up both halves of the battalion to get it working again. Hey, that was nifty too.

We had company level - interesting to play but the engine is NOT made for it and comes up short. We saw the Settings Project. Interesting concepts. I remember the ACW BG mod that did the same thing - split up the battalions. It didn't work. Folks have yet to take to it.

The same thing will happen here.

The best thing to do is find a player that does not take advantage of massive stacks and play him. Find someone that doesn't do gamey things.

You can tweak a setting or two now and then but if you decide to make massive changes you will end up with a freak. I am not saying that this is what H&R has done. But I will say that having morale grades that vary so much in one brigade you are going to give some of us problems as we like a level of consistency in the brigade. Yes, the ACW has some geniune oddities with brigades having B, C, D and even E rated units in the same brigade. But it is more the exception than the rule.

I also would say that not all French or Russian LINE regiments were not the same and if Anton or someone else wants to send me a list of "elite" line Russian regiments then please do so. Very little in English on that account. But plenty of accounts for 1805 that showed that the 15th Legere fought very well and should not be rated as a "D" unit and route 2/3s of the time (ok, 1/2 if you stack a leader with it).

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

I have been lurking on this thread for a while and have not chimed in becuase I am not a historian on this period and cannot nitpick whether the 504th French Light infantry demi-brigade had sgts. with more service time than the corporals of the Saint Maria Theresa Leopold Kronstadt Pavolov Hussar #1 Regiment (but I am funny!).

That said, I have been playing these games for 10 years and now, finally, consider myself to be about an average player.

I think before we get all caught up in debates over which pdt is more historical and accurate etc. more playtesting needs to happen with this mod. To really find out if the pace of play (compared to teh real time of actions) and the losses stack up with history, you need to have a wide variety of people playing your scenarios tons of times. The title is H and R, and the stated goal was to make the outcomes better mimic history, with the largest issue being number of casualties, and I think you need to see if people can "game" your system too.

Other thoughts: My take on losses has always been similar to the melee debate. To me, the numbers work out if it is considered an abstraction (melee representing the close approach and not actually hand to hand combat). In reading about battles in this period, the chaos behind the lines and the number of healthy soldiers helping their fallen comrades was quite high. With this in mind, with the number of troops in a unit representing those under arms at any given time, I am not sure if our losses are that inaccurate.

At least I think this is true in Austerlitz, which is the model for time (10 minutes), unit morale ratings and pdt settings that future games are modeled on. Jena will, I think be similar once the morale ratings are lowered as Bill has said he will do eventually. His 1809 games will be a different story because they are, afaik, still built around 15 minute turns, so even with morale reductions the movement rates will still be different. Waterloo and NRC are somewhat orphaned these days.

I know that I have already changed how I play in repsonse to the C ratings in Austerlitz and in a future game I am testing. I am more cautious, place my reserves a little further back, and rely more on my artillery. In the game I am testing, with both sides being mostly C quality for infantry, I am finding myself and my opponents moving slower. The level of uncertainty is much higher than in the past and it is harder to push home an attack. I keep more reserves because more of my defensive line routs etc.

With D rated units, I think of my experiences playing the Prussians in Waterloo (which, I know is skewed a bit as a point of comparison here because they are D and E and their opponents are not). With them, I actually play more aggressive because I know that if I do not use weight of numbers and large battalions quickly, they will melt away, which is the opposite of what you guys intend with D ratings. With D ratings, in my experience, it can be like herding cats.

To that end, I hope that the H&R team considers revisiting their firepower numbers and then playtests it a ton more. It is my understanding that the melee routine is hardcoded so the losses from that are harder to change, correct.

Finally, I will put my amatuer historian hat on for a minute and ponder the relationship of battlefield losses and strategic outcomes. Many, if not most of the battles in this period were not decisive on the battlefield. Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena-Auersted, Friedland, Kulm, Katzbach, Leipzig and Waterloo, stand as exceptions. So, in this regard, the slow down that Bill's changes (10 minute turns, C ratings) and the H&R team (D ratings) force on players better mimic history. However, I think you guys need to be careful not to remove the dynamism from the game. Exploitation did happen. A whole army wing was wiped out at Dresden. Erlon's Corps was rendered useless in less than half an hour at Waterloo. A whoel army disintegrated at the Katzbach. Human errors by players should still lead to severe disaster as your opponent has the opportunity to exploit the mistake (right Colin?).

The main reasons we attack all in when in history they took it slow is not pdt settings, but our eye in the sky and our knowledge of the past. The French attack all in at Waterloo because they know how many Prussians are coming and when. There is no tomorrow. Our dynasty is not in peril at Wagram so we do not take that into account.

I like playing with people who play are a more historic pace-computer processor machines like Colin and Tomasz who seem to my mind barely human in their tactical efficiency yet are not all out blitzkriegers and people like Cliff and Bill who are not as tactically adept but still very soundly manage their armies. So I see how you guys are trying to enforce a structure to limit this but I hope that your settings do not end up eliminating some of the excitement of the period.

I would be willing to test H&R against someone, so just send me a message.

thanks for the time and effort you have put in. I find this discussion fascinating. I like the increased cav fatigue as a way to make them not fight to the last man, as an example...

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Jim,

Thanks for your response! Drop me a line to anton_kosyanenko[at]yahoo[dot]com

Which side would you like to take?

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Bill,
I become more and more convinced that you spend hours criticising H&R for the sake of arguing but without actually reading our replies or without actually reading H&R document properly.



Where did you see us saying that these regiments were disbanded due to thier quality? You picked the least relevant sentence, where we mentioned the quality of the original regiments, twisted it out of context and chewed it to the death.

The reason for morale reduction is due to the fact that not ALL but only half (or slightly above) of these companies were elite. Full stop. Forget about everything else.




WRONG! Attention to details Bill!
H&R infantry stacking limit is 4, NOT 2. The rest of your rant on this matter is now redundant.




I already mentioned a few times and I will repeat myself. You CANNOT blame players for the faults of the PDT, SCN and OOB settings. Most players act rationally from settings perspective – however in the original game rationality does not go together with historical accuracy while irrationality which you suggest does not work well with game settings. What you suggest is an artificial behaviour which should be driven by artificial goodwill rather than game mechanics.

To me this is not a historical simulation and this is where you “end up with a freak” (by using your words). A really questionable call for players to act irrationally to justify the original settings.



At no point H&R brigades have massive variations in units morale. It is mostly either “C” or “D” with only a few units being one morale point up or down. There might be a one or two isolated exceptions with Russian grenadiers at Austerlitz. But this is not how you are trying to portrait. But as you say "more exception to the rule".



This is out of context comment.

Firstly, “D” is a regular unit in H&R.
You say "should not be routed" - Routed after what casualties and in what situation? This statement of yours means nothing until you provide more specific details with casualty rates, modifiers etc.

“Fought well” should not make this unit immune from routing if the unit is cut down by cavalry charge or defeated in melee. Historically they would be routed in 99.999%. Not the case in the original game and not even in H&R, but at least the latter is closer to reality.

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General-Leytenant Alexey Tartyshev
Leib-Guard Preobrazhensky Regiment (Grenadier Drum)
1st Brigade
Guard Infantry Division
5th Guard Corps


(I don't play with with ZOC kills and Rout limiting ON)

That’s absolutely right - More playtesting needs to be done. There are only four of us and hence there is only limited testing we can do. That’s why we decided to release it now rather than spent another zillion month trying to achieve perfection.
That’s why we actively seek feedback from others and NWC discussion already proved to be useful. E.g it was noted that artillery effectiveness should not be all the same due to different training standards and human factor. So we corrected this in 1.02.

Yes, this mod might not be everyone’s piece of cake. Some people believe that rout limiting OFF is not historical even in the original game - obviously our vision of history is quite different to theirs and this is mod is not something they will like.

I personally prefer the actual simulation within the game rather than abstraction within the game justified by pretending that some “casualties” are in fact are not “casualties”. Same goes for melee. But indeed it is a matter of preference and of course no matter what PDT, OOB, SCN settings are used it will never be perfect due to engine limitations.
So it has to be decided what’s more important to simulate and what’s to be left out for abstraction. We felt that representing melee as “melee” is more important than anything else since blitzkrieging is something that NWC members have been bothered about since HPS Napoleonics first came out.


That’s exactly what we tried to achieve and all the factors you mentioned are much more expressed in H&R. The game plays differently and it takes time to adjust.



In H&R it becomes rather hard to be too aggressive no matter what units you use as ability to melee undisordered enemy units is reduced drastically. Firepower and combined arms focus are the answers. Once the enemy is disordered the bayonet can be used with success – otherwise the aggressiveness may be very risky.



Yes – we cannot do much about melee losses apart from indirect measures – e.g. reducing the number if melees and reducing the number of participants – exactly what we done and we believe overall is a much more historical approach. And yes we are certainly looking forward to continue improving it based on feedback and data we gather from the testing. But the changes have to be justified both historically and from game perspective also considering the impact on other aspects of the gameplay.



I actually think H&R creates much more opportunities for sudden dramatic changes on the field due to reduced morale and more fragile command and control system. One turn you think you have a very certain defence but in the next 20 minutes it appears that half of your corps is ether routed or disordered. This is largely determined by your own mistakes in deployment and the opponent’s ability to spot the weaknesses and to exploit the situation (right Alexander Zaitsev? ).

It is much more costly in H&R to make a mistake as units and structure is more fragile. On the other hand this does not mean that your force will be virtually annihilated. You may be kicked out of position in disorder with many units routed. But as long as there is a reserve near by the defeated formation can rally and reorganize behind the friendly lines and return back to action.

We are planning to start H&R Austerlitz historical this month and to test the hypothesis to the full extend at the scale of such large battle.


Totally agree and we actually mentioned that at the beginning of the H&R document. However on top of that we are convinced that putting some constrains on players via morale, ability to melee control will slow down the pace and make the battle flow more realistic. But yes the final blow is to be delivered only by the introduction of Campaign factor which is not present.

Overall, very relevant points Jim and looking forward for your feedback.

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General-Leytenant Alexey Tartyshev
Leib-Guard Preobrazhensky Regiment (Grenadier Drum)
1st Brigade
Guard Infantry Division
5th Guard Corps


(I don't play with with ZOC kills and Rout limiting ON)