Guerilla surprise

[Erik2]

Napoleon is trying to keep some order in occupied Spain.
He wanted to get rid of 4 units of zero-value, but they threw him a surprise-party.
Suddenly all of them were 6-level units. Hell of a night-school they went to.
Is this by design?
They changed back to zero the next round,- I'm not sure quite what the surprise was other than the numbers changing.

BTW, I don't think 0-1 level units should even be thinking about forming a square.
Takes some serious unit-training to do that.

[mercenarius]

Guerrillas get a one-round "surprise attack" in any minor battle. After that first round they go back to a zero combat rating.

[gdrover]

We added this 'surprise' to simulate ambushes, which is what the guerillas were actually good at. As with several other aspects of the game, this is an abstracted mechanic that represents the reality, but is not meant to be literal.

The guerillas rarely fought in pitched battles (as they are represented in the game). Rather, they fought the 'small war' of ambush and then melted back into the mountains. We needed to figure out a way to represent this in the game and hit upon this first turn for small battles bonus. It creates a challenge for the French. They need to defeat the insurrection by attempting to come to grips with the guerillas, but the guerillas refuse to fight them on their terms.

We do allow the possibility of 'squaring' for rebels, but again, this is an abstracted representation of rebels rallying in terrain or a village when threatened by cavalry. But since they are rated as '0', they are not very effective at it, and cavalry can still 'break the square' quite often.

Think of these things as 'representing' what is going on with the guerillas rather than a literal battle.

[Erik2]

How about giving the guerillas a two-strike capability on the first turn only, similar to horse artillery.
I think that is more in line with the surprise party.