My impression

[Périgord]

I want to offer my congratulations to the developers – I have played a couple of really enjoyable games, first as the Austrians and then as the French.

I think the fog of war is especially well done, with the need to use cavalry screens and small detachments to find information on enemy numbers and to block the path of their formations. There is a real feeling of uncertainty and danger if you don’t discover a large enemy army in time! The stances work very well, and I think the ability to retreat from a superior enemy without major penalty is very realistic and adds a lot to the strategic challenge – you have to be able to pin the enemy down and cut off their retreat, which is not easy, particularly for the French when they are heavily outnumbered.

I have the following observations, which some others have made too I think:

- I have been using the ‘realistic’ rule setting but I won’t in my next game. Despite what the manual says, detachments do not automatically join battle from the attacking hex, and it doesn’t make sense to initiate a battle where you think you have a numerical advantage only for one third of your army not to turn up. (The detachments are on attack stance and they have sufficient MPs). It’s hard enough trying to create strategic advantage without losing it all on the roll of a dice! I know, Grouchy missed Waterloo, but he was chasing the Prussians and was not part of the OOB… Would Napoleon have attacked at Austerlitz if there was a good chance Davout would not have turned up…?

- It is almost impossible to have a decisive battle victory, as the enemy will always retreat, and usually without too heavy losses or penalties. I’m not so sure this is a bad thing, but I have discovered you need to be quite artful to really destroy an enemy army. You need to block its path of retreat with small detachments on defend or retreat stance so they don’t join the battle and give up their blocking hex. And you then need to chase the army away from any sources of supply, as units only seem to surrender in quantity once their supply is low. I think this all makes for a very entertaining strategic challenge, but I’m not sure how historical it is! And I don’t understand how supply works…some units seen to survive a long time on 100 supply with no friendly cities around, and I for one would appreciate a bit more clarity on how the supply algorithms work.

- A “match stance” hotkey would be nice for multiple stacks in the same hex, similar to “match facing” hotkey

The tactical battles are also really fun, and I have found the AI to be very smart in them and quite aggressive. They can take a lot of time, and don’t always give you a decisive margin in kills when you win them, so you must choose which ones to fight.

I also have a question as what counts as “fair” play with leader replacement? It doesn’t seem right just to cherrypick all the best ones, but also it is not fun to be stuck with a load of duds…what do people do here…?

Anyway, a long post, but a great game!

[Hidde]

Hi and welcome.
Spot on, I agree with all you wrote.
Supply is tricky. I played FL a lot and I still find it hard to understand. For example; why does cavalry suffer heavier losses in supply than infantry?
Happens all the time and I can't figure out why.

[Venator]

Because horses suffer far worse than men do if food is short, they don't do well on poor quality fodder and they eat a hell of a lot of it.
 
 I agree about the decisive battles thing. I think losing armies should rout more easily and recovery from rout should take a lot of time (massive penalties to cohesion and readiness). Also units of a losing side that rout of the map should lose a percentage of their unit (men running and simply not returning to the colours.
 
 Surrender needs to happen more readily also I think.

[Agrippa]

Good to hear it has a fog of war element.  That is important and missing in most games.

[Grell]

I own this game but I haven't played it yet.

Regards,

Grell