Committing The Guard?

[Roads]

I don't object as much to the fact that it's ahistorical (which it is) as to the fact that it's extremely gamey, and gives a further advantage to the French (and somewhat the Russians) who can simply use the guard to cancel any bad chit choice. Very frustrating for the opponent who has to take his lumps if he makes a bad chit choice.

I'd be happy with any of the proposed ways to make this less happy, namely
1) You have choose whether to commit the guard or not on round 1 before you know your opponent's chit choice
2) If you commit the guard on round 1 and fail to break the opponent you have to fight a second round on the 'withdraw' tactic.
3) Guard can only be committed if there is a possibility of breaking the opposition
4) Failure to break the opposition causes some cavalry loss if the opponent has high morale after the round. One per 0.2 or 0.3 of morale left)
5) Extra guard losses if committed on the first round and enemy not broken.

I think it should be possible to commit the guard on round one to get out of a bad battle, especially on the second day. So I tend to prefer the others to (3). But something really should be done.

[ktotwf]

That is kinda what it was used for. If the battle wasn't going well send in the Guard to break them. Hello, Waterloo. We can certainly say Bonaparte made some very bad "chit choices" and so he committed the Guard to save his butt. Sounds historical to me.

And why shouldn't France have all the advantages? It wasn't called the Austria-Prussia-Russia-England-Ottoman Empire-Spain-France-all-on-equal-footing-with-an-equal-chance-to-win Era. It would be more accurately called the Napoleon-and-everyone-else-being-his-bitch Era

It was France's Great Shining moment and beating France should be a great challenge, not an expected game result.

[Pippin]

All this talk about commiting the guard and trying to add more rules for realism. The way I look at it, those precious guards are over-rated in the game, in respect to real life anyway. Perhaps someone can prove me wrong on this, I hope so! There are many historical cases of those patriotic guards ending up being nothing but a lot of hot air and performing as brave as weak conscripts.

My 2 cents.

[ktotwf]

The Russian Guard was more really for impressive looking soldiers than soldiers with any distinctive record. They weren't really elite, just kinda scary and tall.

Napoleon's Guard on the other hand played a big role in some victories. The Old Guard was only defeated in one battle (you know the one) and that was really due to Napoleon's poor judgement and desperation. In essence what I am saying is, were the Imp. Guard supermen? No. But, did they boost army morale when they entered a battle? Yes. Did they have an extremely above average combat record? Yes.

But, the stronger argument for the guard being in the game is that they are such a cool part of the Armies of the Era. They are the Imperial Guard as they "Ought to have been" and more often than not were. But the Guard is cool (and being cool is never a bad thing for a video game), and it adds to the Era feeling of the game as far as I can tell.

(The fact is when the Imp. Guard clashed with the Russian Guard at Austerlitz, the Imperial Guard won the day.

If you can't tell, I have a thing for the Imperial Guard. I wrote a large portion of the Wikipedia Article on them.)

[Windfire]

With the French Guard I believe there are multiple examples of them consistenly being better than the normal troop or conscript.

[Churruca_y_Gravina]

Certainly it is very frustrating catch to the French in the eleccion of the chit and that call to the guard to flee.
But. ....
If you have enough cavalry sure that does not flee.
Their greater enemies Austria-Prussia and Russia can be done it

The battle secret is only the cavalry expensive, put definitive.

[Roads]

(The fact is when the Imp. Guard clashed with the Russian Guard at Austerlitz, the Imperial Guard won the day.

As far as I know the French guard wasn't on the plateau when the Russian guard attacked. It was Soult's corps that beat off the Russian guard.

. We can certainly say Bonaparte made some very bad "chit choices" and so he committed the Guard to save his butt.

Care to name any where he committed the guard immediately after determining the enemy dispositions?

There are plenty of cases of the guard being committed because the battle wasn't going well. I don't think anyone objects to that. You certainly should be able to commit the guard to reduce pursuit losses when you see that you're about to break. But that isn't the situation on the very first round of battle when you find out that you picked badly on chits.

And once more, my objection is only partly based on concerns about realism - I'm coming back to realism because that's the argument everyone else throws back at me. My main issue is that it's a cheap and gamey tactic . As pointed out, if you have enough cavalry the tactic is easily overcome, but I still think that guard commitment on round one simply because of a bad chit choice should be penalized, for gameplay reasons alone.

[Roads]

Double post, sorry.

[ktotwf]

As far as I know the French guard wasn't on the plateau when the Russian guard attacked. It was Soult's corps that beat off the Russian guard.

Hey, I am not staking my life on it. I just remember that they said that the Imperial Guard beat the Russian Guard at Austerlitz in a documentary I saw.

[Roads]

I just checked and your right. The Russian guard mauled Vandamme's division of Soult's Corps and was turned back by the French guard.

[ktotwf]

Awesome. Thats what I thought.

[ktotwf]

Care to name any where he committed the guard immediately after determining the enemy dispositions?

If I am not mistaken, the Imperial Guard was committed throughout the Leipzig battle if only to help reduce France's huge numerical inferiority...

[DavidFaust]

War gaming is about tactics and choices. commiting the guard while you are losing to avoid losses is gamely with no bad result. Yes Nap did commit his guards at waterloo and the result was? Im sure it was not that he got to retreat from battle because he commited his guard to lessen his losses like some of these gamely people are wanting to do in this game. 1 or 2 victory points loss for commiting the guard and breaking will give gamers a choice and will nail this gamely tactic in the butt.

[meyerg]

1 or 2 victory points loss for commiting the guard and breaking will give gamers a choice and will nail this gamely tactic in the butt.

As I said earlier this is a TRICK and not a feature. Just like declaring war on Turkey and Denmark as France in a game of The Napoleonic War to throw the game to the British player because the Austrian/Russian player fairly kicked your butt is a TRICK and not a feature.

What the penalties are, I think we let the game designers decide. Having your guard commitment level reduced by one for a period of time (the guard is not willing to be "sacrificed" again for a while) is another thought. I do like the penalty to be proportional to the morale the other side has left (the more morale left the cheaper the TRICK). Maybe lose PPs equal to morale left divided by .5 rounding all fractions up.
greg

[Murat]

Well, as someone who will commit when I have a 2/3 chance of success, putting an additional PP penalty on it is TOO artificial - risks outweigh rewards and then you just have expensive infantry units. Fighting on the withdrawl chit is realistic as is the cav pursuit, due to the nature of committing the guard to effect a retreat, but I would not go beyond that (like I said, our house rule of no commit if you have no chance of breaking worked well, you could commit on a 1/6 chance but most likely cav pursuit was going to make a dent in you).

[hlj]

ORIGINAL: kingtiger_501

War gaming is about tactics and choices. commiting the guard while you are losing to avoid losses is gamely with no bad result. Yes Nap did commit his guards at waterloo and the result was? Im sure it was not that he got to retreat from battle because he commited his guard to lessen his losses like some of these gamely people are wanting to do in this game. 1 or 2 victory points loss for commiting the guard and breaking will give gamers a choice and will nail this gamely tactic in the butt.

When you loose a battle and have your guard pressent you normaly loose 3 pp, as you would normaly have 6 corps pressent. if napoleon commits the guard to get away he also looses 2 pp extra. Why should I be penalized expra if i as prussia get attacked by france, I choose a bad chit, and when time comes to round 3 I can se that I will be auto broken, and I wont get a chance to break him if i commit my guard, but I will get a chance of lowering the persuit. And what if I my chit choice gives me a better table in round 2 than round 3, giving me the same chances of lowering the persuit level in round 2 as I would have in round 3. And what if my best table is in round one?

eksample: nap chose an outflank against me, and I chose an esc. counter and have enough cav to get cav superiority before the outflanking forces arrive) I roll on table 3.3 but can get to table 3.4 if I commit my guard, and I have cav sup giving me +1 to my diceroll. I know that if the the outflanking force arrives after round one, ill be broken even if he rolls all ones and i know that there is only 16% chance of the outflanking forces not arriving. On the other hand, he have morale 4.1 so if I commit my guard I get a 16% chance of winning the battle.
To penalize me extra for choosing to take the best chance of winning in a given tactic is as i see it wrong. another example: Turkey choose outflank with the GV against charles who have choosen counter attack. to have a realistic chance of winning, the outflanking forces have to arrive after round 1, he only have 16% chance of that happening. Should he then be penalized extra for having choosen a tactic that only gives him a 16% chance of winning, just as you propose to penalizing prussia for choosing a tactic with a 16% chance of winning?
I think you are way off. There are 4 powers who are able to commit their guard, and I feel that the vp requirement for thouse 4 powers reflect their ability to commit their guard both to win battles but also to ensure that they have some troops left to conduct another battle. If you are to change the abilities of a power you are also bound to change the vp requirements for that and their surrounding powers. I.E. If russia cant commit her guard, she wont win as many battles against turkey, therefore turkeys VP goal should be higher, and russias lower, if it is just a penalization of the power that uses the guard, then you have to assess how many times he is going to use his guard and make his vp total reflect how many pp he is going to loose because of that. If you dont then you are giving Spain GB and Turkey an unfair advantage in the game, and I feel that is wrong.

[Roads]

I think you're right about this one - PP penalties are too harsh. You should be able to commit the guard in order to get out of a losing battle and reduce the pursuit. And the example you give is a decent one. I still think it's unfair for Prussia to be able to commit the guard as soon as he sees the chits, but I can see your point of view. At any rate penalties that forced additional losses on the guard if they fail and the opponent still has a lot of morale left would still allow, in your example, Prussia to take the chance - but would make it hurt a bit more if it fails. That, to me, is what is needed.

[hlj]

I could go for that, if I played with 6 other players that insistet on a restriction on guard commitment. A viable house rule would then be: "A major power that commits her guard and fails to win the battle has to take the persuit losses from the guard corps first."

IE Prussia commits her guard in the example above, she rolls a 4 in guard commitment taking 1 casualty, and in the battle she only rolls a 5 modified +1 for cav sup. Failing to break france she have to take the persuit losses from the guard first. The morale loss she inflicted to france brings the persuit table down to a 3. France rolls 2 modified +1 for Murrat for a total loss of 15% of the french cav. France have 26 cav, bringing the persuit up to 4 cav equivalent.
Prussia take 1 cav loss from the guard corps, and is now forced to take the next two losses as 6 guards, this whipes his guard and the remaining 1 cav persuit is taken any way prussia choose among its remaining forces.

If there had been only 5 guards and 1 cav left in the guard corps prior to the persuit, prussia would then have to take 1 cav equivalent and 1 inf equivalent persuit losses from the rest of her forces.

But this would still affect how much I think a player should bid for the difrent countries, and it would prompt me to choose a major power that did not have a guard that could be committet.

[ktotwf]

So, I mean, are guards useful? Do they fit well into most people's strategies?

[DavidFaust]

I could go for that, if I played with 6 other players that insistet on a restriction on guard commitment. A viable house rule would then be: "A major power that commits her guard and fails to win the battle has to take the persuit losses from the guard corps first."

IE Prussia commits her guard in the example above, she rolls a 4 in guard commitment taking 1 casualty, and in the battle she only rolls a 5 modified +1 for cav sup. Failing to break france she have to take the persuit losses from the guard first. The morale loss she inflicted to france brings the persuit table down to a 3. France rolls 2 modified +1 for Murrat for a total loss of 15% of the french cav. France have 26 cav, bringing the persuit up to 4 cav equivalent.
Prussia take 1 cav loss from the guard corps, and is now forced to take the next two losses as 6 guards, this whipes his guard and the remaining 1 cav persuit is taken any way prussia choose among its remaining forces.

If there had been only 5 guards and 1 cav left in the guard corps prior to the persuit, prussia would then have to take 1 cav equivalent and 1 inf equivalent persuit losses from the rest of her forces.

But this would still affect how much I think a player should bid for the difrent countries, and it would prompt me to choose a major power that did not have a guard that could be committet.

I would agree to this as a fix to the guard problem