AAR - Poland 1792 Scenario - Simple Economy

[Franck]

You know I just keep hitting refresh waiting for the end of this battle???

[:@]DON'T MAKE ME WAIT ANYMORE [:@]

Seirously enjoying this... Until I can start playing myself that is!

[Joram]

12:00 pm. Lunchtime and my reinforcements have finally arrived. In the meantime I routed the lone brigade on my center left and am advancing my left flank to contact.

[Franck]

[8D]I'm watching [8D]

[Joram]

Hehe, sorry Franck, I got distracted. Plus it's slow since I'm playing in the middle of posting. Here's the situation at 12:20 on my left flank. You can see there is quite a concentration of Austrians there. So much for my initial plan! Notice the unit ability on that southern most unit of mine. It is good if there were lots of woods around and am not sure if it applies to the orchard ahead of me. But if it does, that will be a great anchor point. I'm not worried about the garrison troop as they won't leave the city.

[Franck]

In a situtation like this, would the AI just come at you if you would be sitting on your side of the battlefield or will it waits for you since it knows you have to dislodge him?

[Joram]

Here's the situation on my right (northern) flank. The Austrians have given me a golden opportunity here as they have a disordered unit move very close to a unit of mine and worse still, it is on the frozen lake. A note on the disordering. Combat can do it as well as failed formation changes.

But unlike CoG, if you are in a safe zone, you won't disorder. If you are 'threatened', which you see a note on the unit saying so and also indicated by the red arrows, it is dangerous to change formation and fail. High morale units, such as mine could pull it off. Low morale units like the Austrians, can't do it very well. Obviously the Austrians thought it was important enough to try but since they failed, this brigade is in trouble.

[Joram]

ORIGINAL: Franck

In a situtation like this, would the AI just come at you if you would be sitting on your side of the battlefield or will it waits for you since it knows you have to dislodge him?

Since the Austrians are on the defensive and our will-to-flight is so close, it would be very foolish for him to force the issue. If I don't attack, my WTF drops every day until I route so the attacker has to attack.

[Joram]

Here's the results of the charge. Note the bonus I got for my Bayonet training. Also note the weather. All in all, this would have been somewhat unimpressive until you notice the terrain factor. And this my friends is why you never ever ever cross over frozen lakes if you can avoid it. It is quite possible that the Austrian didn't mean to move there but misinterpreted it's orders and just wound up there. Who knows. The result is that I killed a whole lot of Austrians.

Note the perfect die-roll they had and the still relatively low casualties I received. Largely because he was disordered. If he wasn't disordered, I could have taken a lot of casualties in return.

I failed to displace him (because of his perfect roll) but that's really a blessing in disguise as I wouldn't want to put myself on that ice. He has a cavalry nearby and could decimate me. Something I didn't really consider till after the charge. Luck is on my side this battle.

Well, maybe not, I just realized I was pretty unlucky not to actually kill the leader attached to the Austrian unit!

[Joram]

Not everything is going in my favor though. The unit I have circled in the top of the map is really taking a beating and is in danger of routing. And the unit I circled on the lower part of the map is disordered because I foolishly tried to change formation right after I lectured the Austrians for doing the same foolish thing! I got greedy and can only hope the snow will stop the Austrian cav from reaching me before I recover.

[Joram]

And here are my reinforcements. I highlighted one of this units attributes. Bloodthirsty is nice for attackig already disordered units. Also note the leader with him gives a decent cav charge bonus too. I'm already drooling in anticipation of using this unit but he's pretty far away still. Not sure how quickly I can get him engaged.

[Joram]

12:40.

Sure enough, the Austrians exploited my error and routed my disordered unit. In fact, they caused more casualties than I did on that unit on the ice! On top of that, they routed the other brigade that was in danger of routing last turn. My cav is pretty close now though which is a plus. I think I will win this flank but mainly because of my reinforcements.
So the Austrians are showing some fight and this isn't going to be quite as easy as I had hoped. Remember that I can't afford casualties as I don't have near the economy Austria does.

[Joram]

The situation is rapidly declining. I thought I had his northern flank (his left, my right) crushed but the fact that I had two units rout gave his units new heart. They are still fragile and I am going to use those two brigades which originally were just watching the flank to now circle around behind those Austrian brigades.

Also, I am now stretched pretty thin on the southern flank and am now in a holding mode. It wouldn't be too bad except I failed to keep my supply wagons with them so one unit has already run out and others may soon. Their morale is going to fall rapidly if they are involved in combat. The austrians are slowly advancing too.

[Joram]

13:20

Good news and bad news. I was able to rally my two routed units. One is still pretty weak due to all the casualties it took but all things considered, I'm glad it's back. Unfortunately, the Austrians also rallied a unit and that Austrian artillery piece I thought I had routed has made a re-appearance. Thankfully now that my cavalry is about all here, I have many more options to beat them than before.

New plan. My left flank in the south will maintain a holding pattern while I commit my last infantry reserves and a couple cav brigades to clean up and flank the northern flank.

I will re-use those previously routed units as reserves if I can disengage them.

[Joram]

13:40

Oh bad luck! In an out of the way corner of the battle I decided to charge a blown cav brigade and apparently my leader broke his neck trying to get on the horse as there certainly weren't many casualties otherwise.

Though the messenger doesn't look too distraught if you ask me! It's tough for Poland because they don't have too many leaders.

[Joram]

13:40-14:00

So on 13:40 you saw that I lost a leader but what I didn't show were all the successful attacks including a surprisingly successful cavalry charge against an infantry brigade. Most of the time, the infantry would go to square but perhaps because of the low morale plus the fact i charged it directly from the rear, it failed to do so and I was able to decimate it pretty well.

The problem with using you cavalry for charges though is that it is difficult to get your unit back into good order. Here, it's 14:00 and you see I have two disordered cavalry brigades. If I'm lucky I can get them in good order before the day is out but it is very possible they are done for the day too.

But it was worth it. Notice the complete lack of Austrian brigades. That one successful attack routed that Austrian brigades and the two near it ran with it. Because I had gotten to their rear, they even surrendered outright and are now being forcefed pierogis back in Krakow. That's a turning point on the northern flank.

[Joram]

It's still 14:00 and here I'm showing a brand new feature which is reaction movement. I thought I'd get cute and line my cav up on that infantry's flank but the Austrian cav saw me and quickly rushed to cut me off. Not a disaster but certainly blocked my plans!

[Joram]

14:40

I still haven't ordered those two cavalry brigades which is no surprise. I have however started condensing the Austrian line. This is a double-edged sword for them. They won't be flanked quite as easily but once a unit is routed, it can easily start a big chain reaction. Indeed, I have routed a couple individual brigades in the south thanks to my artillery and suspect that even though their WTF remains reasonably high, they are on their last legs. If I can just route a couple more, I suspect that the whole group will run.

[Joram]

14:40 still
On the extreme right (north) flank, I am trying to prevent one of their cav brigades from flanking me. I decide to form a 'screen' with my cav unit. The effects of this is several fold. First, it screens the view of troops behind it which in this case isn't entirely important. Second, it drastically reduces the casualties that the screening unit takes which again isn't entirely important in this case. But thirdly, it does slow down units trying to push through it. That's why I formed the screen.

Screens can move but only in certain ways and they can be broken down if pushed through too much leaving the originating unit in a precarious position. The Austrians had screens up early on but took them down pretty early too perhaps in part to the fact that I didn't have any cav at the time.

[Joram]

15:00

Not much is going on this turn, I'm resting some of my units. Here though I did try to charge with one of my lancer brigades. This time the Austrian formed a square. If I still had movement points I may try to break the square which Lancers are particularly well suited for though of course still very dangerous. Maybe next turn.

[Joram]

15:20-15:40

In 15:20 I did actually manage to break the square and inflict a fair amount of casualties. Around 400. I though took a couple hundred myself so like I said, breaking a square was dangerous. If I tried to do it with regular cav, it very likely would have failed outright. There's no screenshot as it looks like every other battle.

By 15:40 I had routed two more units in the north including the one whose square was broken. My gut tells me they are going to break soon and their WTF is starting to take a drop.