AAR - Poland 1792 Scenario - Simple Economy

[Hard Sarge]

your Arty held up well, most times it is fire and run

fight the Russian in HW, and see how you fair ?

[Joram]

I thought I was doomed. I could tell one of the opposing units I was facing was the Russian Guard and I was running out of forces. I'd given a good fight but his training, numbers and good morale were wearing me down. But then, amazingly, Pontiatowski went back to inspire the troops and a couple divisions responded by getting back into the fight. It pays to have an inspirational leader!

[Joram]

And victory! The Polish troops grabbed victory from the edge of defeat and there was much rejoicing. Sadly, since my cavalry were pinned down in Krakow, I didn't have them there and was unable to follow this victory up. In the end (by looking at the event report), the casualties were almost even at around 3500 apiece. Low no doubt due to the rain but the win was important as you shall see.

[Joram]

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

your Arty held up well, most times it is fire and run

fight the Russian in HW, and see how you fair ?

Indeed it did. It also helped I had smashed the Russian artillery in the previous battle. If they had that as well I don't think this battle would have turned out nearly as fortunate.


And as an aside to readers unfamiliar with CoG's quick combat. This all happens relatively quick, once you do the setup and decide on reinforcements and then hit 'done'. The battle goes and it is then beyond your control. I used FRAPs on 1 sec intervals to capture this. The whole battle was slightly under a minute so I had nearly 60 shots I had to sift through.

Anyway, QC is very useful though for people who don't want to spend the time on detailed battle but also like to see more interaction than just 'instant' combat. It's all about the options!

[Joram]

But all was not done! There was also the battle in Krakow I now had to contend with. Here I chose to do divisional combat and I'm not going to go into the detail I went before, I will describe certain points.

First, all I had were my four cavalry divisions against about 25k Prussians in an unknown number of divisions. I outnumbered them but since I was purely cav which are often blown for long periods of time if I charge, this wasn't going to be easy.

Thankfully, the key to this battle was that since the 2nd Battle of Galicia was over, I was able to call in that army for reinforcements. So my whole plan was to delay and harass until they arrived.

[Joram]

I've moved up slightly and now see what I'm facing. Two full strength Infantry divisions and an artillery division. That could spell trouble if I am not careful. First thing I do is put one of my cav units into screening mode. This will slow the enemy down. All I'm trying to do is buy time.

[Joram]

My screen collapses and I'm rather uncomfortably close to the artillery. The Prussians also decided to split their divisions in two which is rather a shrewd move in my opinion. Gives them more maneuver elements without seriously degrading their fighting ability. I've been march my cav around trying to distract them but simultaneously doing my best to stay out of fire range, or not terribly close at least. Also note a heavy cav division appeared for the Prussians. These are slow troops, for cav, but even though depleted essentially can tie up one of my divisions. So I find myself outnumbered even though I have more troops!

[Joram]

However night came since the battle started rather late on the first day, and my reinforcements were arriving. In the night I had duped the Prussian infantry fairly badly and in the morning they were sorely out of position. By lunchtime on the second day I had my infantry arriving and was able to nullify the Prussian artillery with minimal losses. Though one of my cav divisions was blown and was out for most of the rest of the battle.

[Joram]

By late on the second day (by the way, time scale is longer than in brigade combat so it goes fast), I had all my reinforcements and even had managed to get my artillery piece up next to the Prussian Cav. My cav had repeatedly charged the Prussian infantry which kept pinning them in place. Unlike the austrian battle, these Prussians knew how to form a square. Things were looking bad at the moment for the Prussians.

[Joram]

Err, very bad!!

[Joram]

Night came soon after giving the Prussians a respite and then in the morning it was foggy. I was briefly worried that I wouldn't be able to inflict more casualties but it lifted rather early and soon after they fled the field.

[Joram]

So maybe not quite Jena/Auerstedt but the Polish version of it. My pre-emptive strike against the Russians in the First battle of Galicia seemed to have saved the day for me. The combined Russian/Prussian forces were defeated in detail and after a year, I am actually feeling rather safe even though half the countries in Europe are still at war with me. My army has lost a lot of it's initial elan but on the other hand has grown. I've captured several artillery pieces too which are expensive to build. You haven't seen them because I've been leaving them in a fortress to build their strength back up and reduce upkeep costs.

I've shown you briefly, brigade level combat, division level combat, and quick combat and probably won't show much more about those as you can see it takes a lot of time and space. I haven't spent a whole lot of time on some of the new features like the reaction move, screens, and individual unit upgrades because part of the fun is figuring that out for yourself. But there are a couple dozen of the upgrades to show too so that wouldn't be easy. One tip, Bulldogs are great for defending your flanks and flankers are great for attacking flanks. I love the 'fast' upgrade myself as I believe speed is very important so that's why you saw a lot of my units having it.

I will try to continue the strategic side of it but I am going in to minor surgery Monday and don't know when I can get back to this. Maybe a little later today but it might be Tuesday or Wednesday.

With that I'm going to lunch and run some errands! Please feel free to ask questions about anything you've seen or suggest things you'd like to see.

[dogancan]

Thanks for the AAR. For me, it really made the purchase of this title certain. Got a Q by the way:

It's not out of the game of course but it is now governed by the minor nation rules.

Can you please give some more details about minor nation rules? For instance, is it not possible to be an ally with these "minor nations"? or Do they necessarily have minor armies?

[Joram]

ORIGINAL: dogancan

Thanks for the AAR. For me, it really made the purchase of this title certain. Got a Q by the way:

It's not out of the game of course but it is now governed by the minor nation rules.

Can you please give some more details about minor nation rules? For instance, is it not possible to be an ally with these "minor nations"? or Do they necessarily have minor armies?

Minor nations is simply a term for any nation that isn't a 'Major' one which are Great Britain, France, Spain, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Turkey, and Sweden (unless one of the special scenario's like the one I'm playing).

Minor nations do not perform any aggressive actions on their own. You can conquer or form protectorates with them through war or diplomacy. Conquering gives you benefits very similar to simply owning the province while forming a protectorate gives you only about a third (or half in advanced econ I think) of the income but you don't need to pay for troops it raises which is sometimes quite signficant.

If you are able to form a protectorate with a minor nation, you also get any armies or fleets that it already owns. Denmark for instance has a decent army and fleet. Saxony has a decent army as well and the Dutch have a bit of both as well. Most minors don't have Army's per se but just individual divisions.

That's it in a nutshell. Hope that's clear.

[dogancan]

thanks for the fast reply. Looking 4 to see the fate of the Poles! [:)]

[Joram]

Ok, so I'll try to get a few more turns in tonight.

Catching up from the victories last month. Another event happened as a result of the battle and the Polish get a new leader!
That's good as I needed one to replace, err whathisname, that I lost in Vienna. I'm still mourning, really.

[Joram]

As a result of those two battles, I also now have a ton of PoWs. In fact, I think I captured every Prussian that has come after me so far. I don't expect to see them again for awhile. The question is, am I now strong enough to go on the offensive?

Berlin isn't that far away but Moscow sure is. If I go after one, will the other come after me? I think my plan is going to buy a couple troops to defend my capital and then start advancing on the Prussians. I have to save some money first so until I can do that, I'm going to knock the remaining Russians out of my territory.

I also meant to mention that Austria never did declare war on Russia. The reason being is because I forgot they were allies with Russia and you can't declare war on an ally. Oh well, my fault for wasting that clause. But at least they are out of the war, for now.

[Joram]

July 93 act - Aug 93 Planning.

In July, the third battle of Galicia happened between me and a still surprisingly strong Russia but since I have the home field advantage and I crucially killed off their artillery a few months before, they weren't able to stand up to my combined arms.

Another interesting note is that my bribe to Turkey worked! They actually accepted my mutual protection pact and declared war on Russia, Prussia and Great Britain. So that's a big win not because I expect them to do much but it will give those powers another distraction.

I've gone from the brink of disaster to a very strong position. I just need to clear out these pesky Russians so I can go after Prussia before they rebuild and the Third Battle of Galicia was a good start. I started building a new Army in Krakow and will put infantry in it when I get a chance.

I've also advance on Russia some more in Lublin.

[Joram]

More success. I am starting to whip Russia around but Prussia has already started moving a new army back into Poland. Not a large one but it is going to keep me unsettled. However, the real success is that I now bribed France into a mutual protection pact and they immediately declared war on Russia and Great Britain. They can't declare war on Prussia which is a shame because of the enforced peace from the first war, however, that's got to be ending soon and since my mutual protection pact is for a year, they are bound to do so soon!

One other thing I didn't count on though is that I actually promised France more money than I had. This means all my spare money is going to go to them until they are paid off and I am taking a glory hit. In fact, almost enough glory to make me start going backwards! Hope it's worth it. Luckily I'm far enough ahead it shouldn't be significant but we'll see.

[terje439]

At the "buy units" screen, there is a coloumn for "national limit",
-is this the max # of that unit you can buy, or do the units just get more expensive if you go over this number?
-is there anyway you can increase this number?

Terje