Height advantages for infantry?

[FroBodine]

Excellent response, Eric. Thank you very much. So, hills pretty much just affect line of sight, then?

Note to self - don't listen to zakblood! [;)] [:D]

[ericbabe]

Right: in terms of firing, heights affect line of sight but also increase the effective range of artillery. In terms of charging, hills should provide a significant defensive bonus.

I think zakblood generally knows this game better than I do! He's certainly played it through many more times than I have. [:)]

[FroBodine]

I'm sure. I just like to tease. [8D]

[Duck Doc]

On second thought I like this line of reasoning. For artillery the main advantage of commanding heights may be the view: more enemy units spotted the more damage. For obvious reasons however charging up a hill in the teeth of an enemy, especially a fortified one, puts the attacker in deep doo doo. Think Maryes Heights.

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

Yes, 0/29 means 0 moves remaining out of a possible 29. The ratio here is important, so a unit with 1/4 moves remaining is in better shape when firing than a unit with 1/29. The former has 25% of its movement left which translates into more time for firing while standing still.


With regard to heights, I believe there is no firing modifier for height differentials. This may seem surprising, but recall that our heights represent significant elevation -- 50' or more per height differential. That's a slope of about 1:3 or more. From everything I've read, infantry seem to have had a harder time when firing at angles like this. Regiments were often organized in depth and when firing at a target if your range was a little bit off you still might hit someone behind your target. But when firing at an angle, the shot instead goes into the ground. There are some obvious advantages for firing when holding heights, since shooters at a height may have some cover of their lower body and looking into the sky may be more difficult than looking into the ground, and so forth. We decided just to have these advantages and disadvantages cancel each other and to give no modifier overall. I note that many classic war-games at this scale for this period also do not give fire modifiers for height differentials. (I'm thinking of Napoleon's Battles and of the many Richard Berg series in particular.)

For artillery, the problem of firing down from a height was even more severe than with infantry. Artillery shot tended to skip over the surface of the ground like a pebble skipping over the surface of a pond. When firing down from a height at closer ranges, artillery shot instead was likely to sink into the ground rather than skip, and so an argument might be made that at some closer ranges artillery might actually have penalties when firing from a height. Artillery manuals talk about finding high elevations when deploying the guns, but in those manuals the high points are more likely local elevation features -- little berms and mounds that are more like 10' above the surrounding elevation. There are significant advantages for placing artillery on proper 50' heights -- line of sight, the ability to shoot over friendly units, longer range for artillery. But I don't think a significant bonus to damage would be justified.

There should be significant charge penalties when fighting melee against a unit at a greater height. It should be much harder to capture/displace enemy artillery when charging up-slope against them. I can't remember what these modifiers are off-hand.