Retreating inland after amphibious assault

[Mardonius]

I'll have to do some reading on the Cartegena op. Thanks for the reference. Don't know it.

Toulon was handed over by the Roylists to the invaders (Naples/ Sapin/UK and Sardinia?).

Egypt is, I reckon, a case by itself in that the object of the invasion was not at war and was markedly suprised, not to mention the Eastern versus Western ways of war.

[ndrose]

Walcheren was about 40,000--but they just sat in the swamp for a year or two and died of malaria; I don't think the French even bothered to attack them. Still, it was a sizable landing of forces despite the anticlimactic result.

There was also a substantial English force sent to Portugal in 1808. Not sure that could be called a "landing" since they had allies on the ground; but it was moving a lot of troops by sea into a war zone, with the usual problems of timing and supply and unfamiliar territory.

[Mardonius]

Yes, that is the trick Nathan. If it is an unopposed or friendly shore, then the operation is not that tricky... OK it is but not as tricky as a hostile shore by any means. I was pushing for some sort of penalty option for landings/battles during the same month where the defender counter attacks on hostile shores.

[ndrose]

Yes, that's true: in neither case was the landing of troops interfered with by the enemy, so far as I know. But if the question is simply, did they ever land large numbers of troops by sea with the expectation of engaging the enemy, the answer must be yes--at least up to 40,000.

In the case of Portugal, I'm a bit fuzzy on the geography, but it wouldn't be surprising if a French army was somewhere in the same EiA "area". I know they were fighting the French the same month. In Walcheren, Bernadotte was there, but adopted a defensive position, and the British operation more or less sputtered out.

There's an inevitable vagueness in the EiA scale--it can't be a tactical simulation. A corps in the same area where forces land triggers a battle--somewhere in 1,000 square miles over the period of a month. That could represent a lot of very different scenarios. The defender could be many miles inland.

There is one place where the EiA system does sort of reflect the range of possibility: a cordon defense against a landing is treated the same as with a river. There's a certain amount of nonsense here perhaps: I don't think a tactical cordon for battle could possibly stretch the length of a river or a coastline of an EiA area, but I guess we can take it that this is meant to represent a deployment of troops guarding the coast in that area and able to interfere immediately with disembarking troops. In this case, I think it might be reasonable that an invader who loses against "cordon" is captured.

[Mardonius]

Hi Nathan: From a game design perspective, I'd be careful about associating the amphib penalty with a particular chit choice. Cordon is easy to overcome with an assualt/escalated assault, something tricky to do without masssing troops, which is impossible to do in the initial stages of an amphib landing. I would rather associate the bonuis/penalty with something like terrain. Maybe make all amphib landings have to deal with the same penalty as mountainous terrain, but give the bonus to either the defender or a counterattacker against an anphib landing for the first month after the landing.

best
Mardonius

[Jimmer]

There are a lot of arguments on this one. The original rules are of little help. The original retreat rules would imply surrender in the case above (because the nearest depot is in London or thereabouts). Unless GB happened to have a depot Gibraltar, which brings up an issue:
 
When a nation retreats, it is supposed to retreat towards it's nearest depot. But, what if that depot is in Gibraltar? This presents an even more absurd situation: A retreat overland to a depot hundreds or thousands of miles away. A Spanish player once suggested that he could retreat east out of Morocco's capital after losing, because, after all, there's a land route to Cadiz -- via Armenia!
 
In my opinion, the retreat rules were broken in the original and they're still broken (only more so). I think we really need to work on a sensible retreat rule.
 
LOTS of possibilities exist. Obviously, as mentioned above, there are occasions where the army got captured. But, there are others where the army was decimated, but managed to leave (by land, sea or whatever). I would imagine there were even cases that illustrate historically the current implementation. Perhaps we need other choices. See the ones listed above, to which I add:
 
1)  Retreat can be in the direction of a depot or a potential depot site (any place where a depot could be placed at this moment, as if the user were doing land movement). Said supply chain cannot pass through enemy territory unless the depots are already in place. Retreating force must be able to make it from the proposed retreat location to within supply range of this hypothetical or real location in one move, or else the location is not valid. (NOTE: This would apply to more than just amphibious landings, but amphibious landings and the strikebacks to amphibious landings would be the most common use of it.)
 
2)  Corps can retreat as per the current implementation, but only after losing some of its strength to capture and/or death/desertion. Perhaps we could use the forage rules once for desertion and once for capture. Or, perhaps retreating forces would always "forage" on a certain table (perhaps assume the forage value, for this purpose only, is "1".) So, a few factors get captured, a few more get killed, and the rest manage to find a safe haven in a nearby territory ("safe" for one turn, anyhow).
 
NOTE: Any retreat rule change we might make needs to be balanced. As such, it should be an option, at least until massive play-testing is done.

[AresMars]

I like the direction of Jimmers ideas...

to them I add;

1) what if they could retreat to the nearest depot within their movement allowance; otherwise
2) I would reduce the listed FORAGE VALUE by (lets say) "-3" to a min of "0"

Agree with the play testing comment - Support this is a BIG BIG way...

[Marshall Ellis]

I think the current method works fine since a retreat inland would mostly put a corps (army) easily cut off from its supply line (IMO).
 

[Ashtar]

I completely agree with Marshall. Regarding general retreat rules please remember that:

1) After loosing a battle there is already pursuit taking place.
2) Forage happens before battle for attacker and either before or after - according to land movement order - for the defender. So what is the rationale of
forage modifier?
3) Corps should not be surrender if unable to stay in supply. Simply, they are going to suffer heavy losses due to the lack of supply as per rules, as Marshall
correctly pointed out.

Concerning landings, I may agree that amphibious landing are way far too easy for GB, becoming more akin to teleportation that the messy thing should be to shipping 50.000 men to some enemy coastline in Napoleonic era. Mardonius proposal of a -1 to morale could be a reasonable one, as much as an increased supply cost for invasion supply (2 instead of 1). However, this should be tested since they would obviously damage GB.
However, I strongly disagree with automatic capture of the landing and loosing side: as it has been pointed out, EIA is not WWII, there is no radio communications, massive shelling of landing troops and a complete control of the coast by the defending force. Moreover, remember that land areas in EIA are tens of km wide, so you should not necessary picture a fight on the beaches against an encircling force, but rather a corp disembarking in a quit place and hastily preparing for a battle with a force marching from a few km away...

[Mardonius]

Per the landings, I'd go with your suggestions Ashtar... plus limiting the penalty to multi corps insertions, perhaps as this might allow GB to make those quick snatch and grabs...

After some thought, I'd not penalize the morale of the landing force. I would give them a die roll penalty instead. If anything, troops -- disciplined troops at least -- are likely to fight harder if they know there is no retreat and are therefore harder to break. Forwards or death tends to make this happen.

Your points on the fire support issues are valid, though I woudl emphasize that any landing in any era involving many troops is inherently complicated

best
Mardonius

[Jimmer]

I think you guys are missing the point:
 
An army that crosses water starts at the edge of that water (the "beach", if you will). It is then forced to fight an entrenched army (assuming one is present), at or near the place where they landed.
 
Then, they lose that combat.
 
Finally, according to the current implementation, they retreat THROUGH that entrenched army (to which they just lost), and take up a position BEHIND their lines. I don't care if you have radios or not, no army that LOSES is going to retreat THROUGH the enemy it just lost to.
 
I'm not really happy with the "win or surrender" idea either, but there is simply no way they're going to magically appear behind their enemy's entrenched lines. I would rather they retreated back to their boats (possibly with some losses) than retreat inland.
 
Can anybody cite an occurrence from this era where an amphibious force lost the battle (broke and ran), and ended up as a cohesive unit behind their opponents lines?

[Mardonius]

Hi Jimmer:

Your logic is clearly sound. So sound that I think that it encapsulates why this sort of operation never even took place in our era. (If I am wrong, please correct me... the closest I can think of are riverine crossings)

I can not think of an instance where anyone attempted an amphibious operation in the direct face of hostile guns until WW2 (note: Galipoli and the Peninsula Campaign of Virginia were initially unopposed). I do know that a few farmers from NY/NJ did hold up the whole British Army near Throg's Neck from being able to come ashore in force.

There were plenty of amphibious operations, true, but always involving landing troops away from enemy positions so that by the time the fights happened the troops were well past any port landing or beach (in small raids only) landing area. I think the best way to capture the landing penalty is a -1 to all combat die rolls/pursuits by the landing force during the first month of landing. What are your thoughts?

best
Mardonius

[ndrose]

I think the phrase "assuming one is present" is the heart of the question. A force that is in an EiA area is not necessarily present in an entrenched position on the beach. It is probably nowhere near. An invasion force that found such a defense waiting for them would probably look for somewhere else to land. Are there examples from this period of fighting on the beach?

There seem to be plenty of examples of forces large and small landing and *not* fighting immediately. An army in that situation has a supply problem, but that is reflected in the game. By the time it fights, a day, a week, two weeks later, there is no reason to assume it has its back to the water.

When the French landed in Ireland in 1798, the first battle was at Castlebar, 10 miles from any coast and more like 30 from where they actually landed. Indeed, the later proliferation of the Martello Towers was an attempt to address the fundamental problem that if you didn't catch them at sea there was no way to know about and respond quickly to a landing.

[Ashtar]

Jimmer, my point is that a land area in EIA is typically 100~200 km wide, and a turn a month long, so you do not necessarily have an army landing on the beach trying to go past an entrenched army.
Maybe you have an army landing unopposed and meeting the "defending ones" a couple of days later.

First of all, the minimum scale of a grand strategy game is such that a lot of small scale details got loss, this is unavoidable. Secondly, this is Napoleonic warfare, not WWI or II. Typical battles were fought on open ground, forget the trenches (a notably exception could be the fortified lines built by Wellington to defend Lisbon, but maybe that could still be considered as an enhancement of Lisbon fortification). Moreover, I doubt armies could have been capable of defending a 100 long km coastline in a WWII battle Normandy style.

[Mardonius]

Spot on Nathan.

ORIGINAL: ndrose

I think the phrase "assuming one is present" is the heart of the question. A force that is in an EiA area is not necessarily present in an entrenched position on the beach. It is probably nowhere near. An invasion force that found such a defense waiting for them would probably look for somewhere else to land. Are there examples from this period of fighting on the beach?

There seem to be plenty of examples of forces large and small landing and *not* fighting immediately. An army in that situation has a supply problem, but that is reflected in the game. By the time it fights, a day, a week, two weeks later, there is no reason to assume it has its back to the water.

When the French landed in Ireland in 1798, the first battle was at Castlebar, 10 miles from any coast and more like 30 from where they actually landed. Indeed, the later proliferation of the Martello Towers was an attempt to address the fundamental problem that if you didn't catch them at sea there was no way to know about and respond quickly to a landing.

[Mardonius]

Building on your Portugal example of the Lines of Torres Vedras, this is a good example of not attacking entrenched positions via waterborne operations. Massena (or was it Soult?) could not consider building up enough force by crossing the Tagus (Tajo) from the south in the face of an opposed landing even though most of the fortifications faced north and NE and were way from the Tagus.

[NeverMan]

ORIGINAL: Jimmer

I think you guys are missing the point:

An army that crosses water starts at the edge of that water (the "beach", if you will). It is then forced to fight an entrenched army (assuming one is present), at or near the place where they landed.

I think the other point is this:

The areas in the EiANW maps represent a wide space, why is the army automatically entrenched in the beaches?

I'm just saying, the area is REALLY big. I mean if you want to get technical do you think that a 1 factor corps can encompass the entire shore of that area and STILL be able to defend itself? How far apart would the men have to be? Answer: too far apart to be effective.. probably a lot more than 5m.

EDIT: Sorry, I just read others' posts and noticed they covered this one.

[Jimmer]

ORIGINAL: Mardonius

Hi Jimmer:

Your logic is clearly sound. So sound that I think that it encapsulates why this sort of operation never even took place in our era. (If I am wrong, please correct me... the closest I can think of are riverine crossings)

I can not think of an instance where anyone attempted an amphibious operation in the direct face of hostile guns until WW2 (note: Galipoli and the Peninsula Campaign of Virginia were initially unopposed). I do know that a few farmers from NY/NJ did hold up the whole British Army near Throg's Neck from being able to come ashore in force.

There were plenty of amphibious operations, true, but always involving landing troops away from enemy positions so that by the time the fights happened the troops were well past any port landing or beach (in small raids only) landing area. I think the best way to capture the landing penalty is a -1 to all combat die rolls/pursuits by the landing force during the first month of landing. What are your thoughts?

best
Mardonius

Agreed.

But, your post brings up a point (on the other side from my argument, actually, but I like to be honest):

In EIA or EIANW, "further away" could be interpretted as still being in the same area. So, can one argue that on, say, a 100 mile coastline (roughly the size of an area), perhaps the enemy is only entrenched on half of that length, thus allowing one to land unopposed, but still end up fighting later that "month" (game month).

By this logic, let's say the army loses, then he's not retreating forwards, but backwards (from his initial landing point some number of game days earlier).

I have to think about this, but I may have just damaged my own argument.

[Jimmer]

ORIGINAL: Ashtar

Jimmer, my point is that a land area in EIA is typically 100~200 km wide, and a turn a month long, so you do not necessarily have an army landing on the beach trying to go past an entrenched army.
Maybe you have an army landing unopposed and meeting the "defending ones" a couple of days later.

First of all, the minimum scale of a grand strategy game is such that a lot of small scale details got loss, this is unavoidable. Secondly, this is Napoleonic warfare, not WWI or II. Typical battles were fought on open ground, forget the trenches (a notably exception could be the fortified lines built by Wellington to defend Lisbon, but maybe that could still be considered as an enhancement of Lisbon fortification). Moreover, I doubt armies could have been capable of defending a 100 long km coastline in a WWII battle Normandy style.

I see that logic.

Do you (or anybody else) know what "cordon" or "defend" (or other defensive chit selections) really meant? Is "defend" a square 100 yards on a side? Or, is it 100 miles? Not likely the latter.

I'm getting close to conceding this argument, although I still have some points to make.

[Jimmer]

ORIGINAL: NeverMan
I think the other point is this:

The areas in the EiANW maps represent a wide space, why is the army automatically entrenched in the beaches?

I'm just saying, the area is REALLY big. I mean if you want to get technical do you think that a 1 factor corps can encompass the entire shore of that area and STILL be able to defend itself? How far apart would the men have to be? Answer: too far apart to be effective.. probably a lot more than 5m.

EDIT: Sorry, I just read others' posts and noticed they covered this one.

Yes, I did the same thing. But, I wanted to preserve my posts for posterity, just to prove that I CAN be wrong.

How far did a typical soldier's gun fire? It was still black powder, so it couldn't have been much over 100 yards, and then it would only be anything near accurate in the hands of a marksman, not a common soldier. And, a few thousand boys can't possibly watch 100 miles of coastline effectively.