Page 2 of 2
RE: Imperial Guards are No-shows?!
Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 6:47 pm
by solops
Please everyone by making battle size limits a user-definable option (with a wide variety of limits) during the set-up for each game.
RE: Imperial Guards are No-shows?!
Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 9:31 pm
by Russian Guard
Oh and by the by, the Corps are huge in the game, far larger than were historically. In the game, 6 (or 7 or 8 depending on Nation and upgrades) divisions of 10,000 each means Corps in the 60,000 to 80,000 troop range. only France, to my knowledge, ever had a Corps with that many soldiers assigned it, and that was Davouts' 1st Corps. And it wasn't always that large. Most Russian Infantry Corps were half that (or less).
So unless you self-limit the number of divisions per Corps, to allow for more Corps to participate in a battle, you can't really have the Borodino-style 8 Russian Corps against the same in French Corps, although the actual count in troops is attainable.
Gee, I'm on a historicity roll [;)]
RE: Imperial Guards are No-shows?!
Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 8:08 pm
by Napi
ORIGINAL: Russian Guard
Gentlemen, not quite sure what you are talking about. Each little green cube in an army represents 10,000 soldiers. I have seen French and even Turkish Armies running around with solid perfect squares of little green cubes, something like 500,000 men.
Two Armies like that collide, without limits, and you have a million men battling it out in one battle. Ludicrous, given the period.
Here's the battle limits:
Base 22 divisions (already at 11x10,000 = 110,000 men per side), plus or minus:
+1 per 2 levels of road development
+0 to 3 Random bonus
-3 in winter
-2 bad weather in province
+1 defender bonus
+1 per difficulty level -1 for AI controlled teams
-5 any team crossed a river
Plus the worst of terrain crossed while entering province or central terrain if any:
-10 mountains
-5 forest
-8 marsh
The base 110,000 covers Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, Quatre Bras, Aeurstadt, and most other Napoleonic battles, including any Spanish campaign battle and Waterloo.
With a higher difficulty level, a little random bonus luck, and in the right (more roads) province the minimum can rise to 160,000 or more, per side, easily covering Borodino, Wagram, and the rare larger battles. While that doesn't cover Leipzig, remember that Leipzig was actually several smaller engagements over several days, rolled into one.
Now if you are arguing that the game battles shouldn't be limited to "historical" sizes, that's another issue, but these rules, while stringent, do keep battles within reasonable historical limits.
I think if anything in this game does not need to be historical it is the size of the forces involved in a battle. It's not because there was never a million men sized battle in the era that, should the troops have been available, the generals would not have used them. There was no set "rule" on how many participants could join in the fun. And you can bet good money that if Napoleon would have had more troops at his disposal at Leizig they would have been committed. I'm not advocating that we should drive tanks around in 1805 mind you but unless you play a simulation of a specific battle then I, as a player, like to decide myself how many troops I commit.
I'm also wondering why if you have 30 divs in the area with a limit of, say, 15 which are available at the start, why the other 15 do not participate as reinforcements. I've seen a few enter later on (fatigued!) but never the manjority of them. To compound my bewilderment, reinforcing corps can enter the battlefield... It also drives me into dispair that arty, as reinforcement, is always taggled. Why? I mean they can obviously get to the battlefield without being taggled, so why? The position the reinfocements enter is also strange. I've seen them enter between streams so entaggled in terrain it takes ages to get them anywhere remotely useful. Wouldn't it make more sense to let them enter somewhere on a road? Say to the North if they come from that direction on the strategic map?
I'm puzzled!
RE: Imperial Guards are No-shows?!
Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 5:06 pm
by ptan54
I totally agree. Desaix didn't arrived all tangled and about to collapse at Marengo.....
RE: Imperial Guards are No-shows?!
Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 3:38 pm
by Russian Guard
Well...gentlemen can agree to disagree honorably [;)]
I do not believe it was possible in the early 1800's to have a meaningful single engagement between 500,000 soldiers on each side. The logistical issues alone - supply, road networks, command and control - were too primitive.
Battles of that size would have almost certainly devolved into several related battles - ala Leipzig.
As a last aside - recently finished a book on Nappy that makes an interesting point. All of Nappy's greatest victories were when he commanded less than 100,000 soldiers. Austerlitz, 1806 in Prussia, and indeed his 1814 campaigns to forestall the Allies invading France. When he commanded more - Wagram, Aspern-Essling, Borodino, etc - he wasn't at his best.
RE: Imperial Guards are No-shows?!
Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 9:05 pm
by ktotwf
Wagram is an underrated victory. It was quite decisive, and decisive enough only because he had such an advantage of soldiers. 1809 was one of Napoleon's clumsiest campaigns.
RE: Imperial Guards are No-shows?!
Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2005 11:14 pm
by thufir
Well, the workaround didn't work. [:(] I've opened up a new thread (
here) under support, since I do believe this is a significant bug, that really ought to be fixed.