Diplomacy Scenario - Napoleonic Wars.

[alaric318]

just to notice that my napoleonic scenario is uploaded but not aproved yet but can be downloaded for test, i think is bug free, however disable the "allow making peace" or you can be unable to reach the decision screen for playing with action cards, aside this in at start test it works free of bugs, hope you people enjoy the scenario, i think it have potential for multiplayer with 3/4 sides, so the weaker nations can have more wining chances that playing alone,

with best regards,

alaric.

scenario available on scenario bank of advanced tactics community site.

http://www.advancedtactics.org./

[tweber]

Good first scenario.  I had some thoughts and suggestions:
 
- You may want to change / add some locations to be more in line with the times.  I didn't see Ulm for instance.
- If you want to take off a variant - go to editor - settings - scenario variants sheet.  I would take out the ones you do not use.
- I wrote the diplomacy scenario earlier and have gotten a bit better with events.  If you do a turn check when the action card is implemented, you do not have to have a separate action card for each player (e.g., give each player an infantry card, when it is played, check the turn, then give the infantry to the player whose turn it is since they played the card).  This way, you only do 1 card for each type of unit (vs 9).

[alaric318]

greetings, glad you like it, i was wanting to have it ready at most fast as possible, one detailed game map with the cities and regions from the napoleonic european epoch have will taken much time, i think the scenario have potential for human players and with diplomacy between them if like the scenario, next i will try to model a world war scenario, an european map with pacific united states units and japan can have fun, thanks you very much for the advice about events, for be truth i do not understand still how to modify events and put them to work,

with best regards,

alarick.

[tweber]

I would not try to rush out scenarios.  Someone is already the first to post on the scenario bank.  The next contest should be the first to get a 10 or the most downloads. 
 
It is worthwhile to try to learn the event editor.  It takes a bit to get use to.  But, it does give you a lot more flexibility.  I would start with simple, basic events and build from there.  It will make your scenarios richer.  The War in Europe uses about 50 game variables and 100 events.  But, I had been working on the editor for about 6 months getting up to speed. 
 
I might continue to stay in the Napoleonic era and try to expand what you have.  I might think about:
 
- Spanish partisans and Russian Cossacks
- Road system in Europe in 1800
- How regimes joined or left various coallitions
- Impact of supply
- Impact of wx, especially in Russia
- To what extent does concentric bonuses make sense
- Impact of disease
- British naval dominance
 
 
 

[SMK-at-work]

cossacks are simple - a PP even that gives you a bunch of Cavalry I that can't be upgraded
 
Spanish partisans shuold be a mechanism similar to Russian ones in WW2.....but the main thing about Spain is somehow keeping Spanish armies in play even when Spain is essentially conquered.......the British were invariably in a minority when compared to tehir Spanish allies, and the spanish usually had 2-3 armies in the field at any point in time IIRC....which gets little "press" compared to Wellington.
 
I think technology would need to be seriously limited/tailored for a Nappy campaign.  Eg there's essentially no technology change at all for the war...but there are some tactical changes - eg the Prussians, Austrians and Russians changing from linear infantry tactics of Frederick the Great's time to Napoleonic style columnar/skirmish tactics.  Cavalry essentially remains teh same.
 
For the French you get the option of recruiting a Guard....but it shoudl be at het expense of having lower quality "line" troops - the guard takes out the very best of the soldiers from the "line", thus lowering the experience of hte units it is taken from - perhaps reflected by lowering the experience of new units raised for the French.  there should be a strictly limited number of Guards units available for the French too.  Other guard units were not recruited in this manner - instead normally taking the best of new recruits rathe than veterans.
 
So probably a lot of PP events - for the countries listed to change their infantry tactics for example, and to increase the size of the French guard when their army grows.
 
A lot of dedicated troop types - eg Cossacks as a seperate type, perhaps heavy cavalry too (cuirassiers) depending upon what scale you want it to be at.
 
British naval superiority can start with them having ships with considerable experience, vs French (and rench allied) fleets having 0 - French ship building should probably be by PP event too, rather than by "normal" unit building, to reflect the disinterest they had in it after Trafalger and the cost of getting the whole naval industry up to sped to support a fleet again.
 
there should be some limit on cavalry recruitment......the French for example were seriously short on cavalry in 1813 due to losses in Russia, and the quality of their cavalry was low......although that is probably accurately simulated by them having to make brand new units of new troops with no experience rather than putting those troops into existing units that do have some experience.
 
Concentric attack still makes sense.....but supply ranges for HQ's shuold probably be really, really low, so that armies have to march closer to their HQ instead of being able to do so along broad fronts.
 
there are plenty of maps of major road networks in Europe available - eg see http://tinyurl.com/2ag32o (some of the maps at larger scales show roads - eg that for the Iberians peninsular or Northern italy)

[alaric318]

regards, i will like a more strategic aproach, cossacks can be model as an action card only available to russian or decrease the cost for russian cavalry, what i will like the most will be a "overall strategic will to fight" and the ability to make alliances and some peace system after a war, the various coalitions surrender to france and then onwards again go to war france, the overall strategic will, or can be called, strategic morale will make surrenders, limited, not without conditions, but then you do not need to conquer the entire nation to make them surrender, although it will be much, very much work, also i like to give more freedom to players on supply, as the army will be reinforced trough the game and with a very straigth-historical supply system the players for sure can "field" much lesser and few troops, for model the supply and his decreased costs i do mind that each turn, some conscript trough the political points and some regular troops will come, on a long game will be a pain, it is historical of course but decreased the freedom to make what army want, with time i will go trough the event system and try to look at it, all game have very much potential, so the event system, and must to say that maybe it do not increase much the complexity, it is only matters to make and introduction with explain about the events, as you usually do with your scenarios and explain when a country will enter the war, and so on,

best regards,

alarick.

[alaric318]

regards, about the guard units maybe there can be a system that not need to drain morale or experience from regulars troops, in example give each year of play a fixed number of guard units for each nations based it on what quality have each nation overall but keeping the game balance, at most it in my oppinion must be 1-2 against france, something as Tom do in his civil war scenario that north and south receive troops fixed each turn, but this time the troops are guard units, of course not 1-1 with turns, maybe each group of 10/15 turns, experience 60/70 allies/france for example, strategically theater not all nations have guard units at this scale but this can be lifted for play balance, maybe each year of scenario or each 6 months give 6 units to france, 4 to britain, 3 for russia, prussia and austria, in example, spanish and turkish "guard" units are not better than regulars of the major nations, maybe sweden have a good army and can be given some guard unit, it maybe will not be much work, of course thanks to Tom Weber as we can review the events that give troops on the civil war scenario and make use of them for napoleonic, it is interesting an right balanced will be an good added feature,

regards,

alarick.

(better based on events fixed than political points, as computer opponents do not use political points)

[SMK-at-work]

some good ideas there - the French in particular raised troops by "class" - ie all the men who came of age in a given year - but htey didn't conscipt everybody in a class, and in 1813, for example, they also conscripted men from teh 1812 and 1811 classes - eg see http://tinyurl.com/yqmutd for some data on how many were conscripted each year.
 
the russians used a similar system but because they had such a massive population they had no great problems simply stripping peasants out of villages whenever they needed to - however their crapy supply arrangements meant they were never able to keep troops numbers up to strength when campaigning in Germany or further west.
 
the British used "volunteers" of course, & i'm not sure about austria & Prussia...I suspect Prussia used some sort of conscription because they rotated men through their regular army after 1806 to build a trained reserve 7 landwher that was quickly mobilisable in 1813 and onwards.....so again some sort of PP-driven to allow them to quickly call up their trained reserves?

[PDiFolco]

SMK
You have some misconceptions : Russia wasn't very populated at that time... Only equivalent to France, off the top of my head figures are like 35 M for France and Russia each, others (major powers) being only in the 10-20M range !
Total european population was stg like 200M Russia included.

This raises a game question : how could "manpower" limitations be simulated ? Is it possible to define some variable per country and get a programmed unit count to estimate "manpower" used ?
(I mean "programmed" because I don't want to count pp or whatever, but set a value grid such as inf=5, Cav=2, Art=1, as the costlier units were in fact less manpower-intensive)

[tweber]

You could define a manpower variable and decrease it if certain types of units are built.  Look at checkregimeproduction is the manual.

[PDiFolco]

Thanks tweber, it'll do the trick perfectly !
I would also like to see how to implement other "resource production" system . This would be more tricky, even w/only 1 generic resource, because here production would have to be localized in certain hexes. CheckLocationType seems ok for this, it requires special loctypes considered as being "producer" .

Note that if we have manpower and resources, the game will then boast a real complete production system [:'(] (currently production is generated out of nothing, which is not realistic)...The editor is really fantastic ! [:)]

What I'm not sure is if those kind of script-driven management is working using masterfile, or if it has to be done for each scenario (in which case it'll be a pain). Can you confirm that ?

[tweber]

Never tried this.  But, look at the regime slots on the itemtype.  I think you can set requirements to product something.  You could 0 this regime slot at the start of a turn and then populate it based on the number of resource hexes owned by the regime.  This might work.

[PDiFolco]

Thanks tweber, that would make my idea more workable.
I feel we need some more doc about the handling of variables, I was just thinking of creating "on the fly" variables to handle that, certainly suboptimal.

[SMK-at-work]

PD how is this going?
 
BTW the best figures I could come up with were 29million for France (but only that withi 2004 boundaries - ie not including Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland & other areas incorporated at various times before 1815), and 37 million for Russia.