Actual armies in varying periods

Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 8:07 pm

And then of course there would be Russian and Spanish things.

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

Probably because we haven't even gotten any playtesting results from the basic generic medium troop v. generic medium troop foundations.

Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 9:13 pm

Guess its time to get out there and playtest!! Exclamation

Huzah!

Joined: 16 Jan 2007 Posts: 4

Just had a quick read through this thread and my thoughts are that there was no real change of weapons or tactics over the periods more a change in uniforms. so for me the periods should be split by campaign years,when most uniform changes accured

1815 should be a period all to its self.
As should spain
1813-14
1812 russia
1809-11
1806-8
and last 1795-1805

You could also do 1812 america as a seperate book. If that is in the future this go's the way of FoW wwII

Mick

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

Do you think each of those needs to be a seperate period, or could it be covered somewhat in the way that Ostfront and Afrika divide up the Mid-War period in regular FoW?

Joined: 16 Jan 2007 Posts: 4

I believe they should be done as seperate books due to the amount of detail required for each campaign era, especialy Russia and Spain and the amount of campagin speacific rule (again Russia and Spain).

Joined: 03 Mar 2007 Posts: 16

Although I agree that playtesting with just basic troops is indeed a necessity to get things going. The idea that you can divide the Napoleonic Wars up into EW/MW/LW or even by uniform changes is just far off of the mark.

The armies that fought in each of the campaigns were radically different in many ways. It'd be the best idea, IMO, to divide force organisation by those campaigns. Unless you support constant 'what if' battles, for me, I really wouldn't enjoy playing my 1809 French against Prussians.

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

So the thought might be to have more like campaign lists (ie. Peninsular British, French, Portugese & Spanish) as opposed to going with a more nationalistic angle?

Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 55 Location: Washington

So we create all of the books for the campaign years. I like it much better that way. I really like Age of Victory though... They did a great job especially with the army lists. As soon as I get my figs done, I will be using those rules to test out the points and stuff. I have a camera so I will take some pics as well.

Joined: 13 Apr 2007 Posts: 89 Location: Naples, Fl

I'm no expert, especially in EW (Why does it seem I don't like EW no matter what the era?), but this is how I see the Napoleonic age breaking down. First, let's take the Peninsula, and set it aside as a genre of it's own. While we're at it, I think it's safe to assume most people would prefer the Hundred Days to be kept separate as well. To me, it seems apparent that 1813-14 (Napoleon at bay) is also a well defined period.

Now here is where it gets a little fuzzy for me. First we have pre-1805 (opening moves), followed by 1805-08 (Napoleon's ascendancy). After that comes 1809-11--- the Empires (Austrian & Prussian) strike back. That leaves us with 1812, Napoleon in Russia. Does it deserve it's own period, or should it be included with 'before' or 'after'. I vote 'before'.

So to sum up:

pre-1805
1805-08
1809-12 (early 1813---the retreat from Moscow)
1813-14
1815
and the Peninsula.

Don

Joined: 03 Mar 2007 Posts: 16

HobbyDr wrote:

First, let's take the Peninsula, and set it aside as a genre of it's own. While we're at it, I think it's safe to assume most people would prefer the Hundred Days to be kept separate as well. To me, it seems apparent that 1813-14 (Napoleon at bay) is also a well defined period.

There were a lot of variations over the years in the Peninsula, would be a big book =] Hundred Days could easily be one as well. The size of 1813 might preclude combining it with 1814, and the forces that fought the second campaign were radically different even in such a short span of time.

HobbyDr wrote:

Now here is where it gets a little fuzzy for me. First we have pre-1805 (opening moves)

Like with the Peninsula, there are a lot of differences between the forces from year to year in this period as well as from one theater to another. You could make some broad generalizations, but I think you'd be falling far from the mark if you did.

HobbyDr wrote:

,After that comes 1809-11--- the Empires (Austrian & Prussian) strike back.

After the Treaty of Tilsit, 1807, the Prussians were on the side of the French until Yorck's defection in 1813.

HobbyDr wrote:

That leaves us with 1812, Napoleon in Russia. Does it deserve it's own period, or should it be included with 'before' or 'after'. I vote 'before'.

Again, you could lump them in, but to save space you'd have to make a lot of broad stroke decisions, that IMO would do little credit to the effort, and certainly to the Period.

I still hold that there are so many differences between troops from one year to the next, campaign to campaign throughout the Napoleonic wars. That the only way to provide for it is to focus on each of the campaigns individually. I just don't think that throwing a three or five period list bracket would do any justice at all to the era.

It would just seem to open up way too many loop holes to come up with troop combinations that would just not make any sense. 1808 Grand Duchy troops fighting against 1805 Austrians for example. I may be in the minority, I'm not psychotic about historicity. I just think that if your going to start this, you should try to do it in a manner that would encourage the least amount of list insanity.

Which, I'd think would best be done by focusing on the later periods, 1813 preferably, simply because its one of the few campaigns that included just about every continental power. There were even Congreave rockets at Liepzig......

Joined: 13 Apr 2007 Posts: 89 Location: Naples, Fl

So Grognard, I guess what you're really saying is that there's no hope of standardization. Wink

What you've written certainly makes sense. The question I have is, if we have different organizational units for each campaign, and we only allow the actual participants of the campaign to fight, can we come up with one set of rules (with variants) to cover all the campaigns? In other words, can we fight the whole breadth of the Napoleonic age with, say, 20 campaign books and one rule book? (Or does that defeat the 'FOW' concept we're looking for?) If we must pick one timeframe to make this work, then I agree the battles of 1813-14 are very attractive. If that's the case, however, I know there will be many disappointed people who want to refight the early French vs Austrian/Prussian conflict.

The waters seem to be getting murkier.

Don

Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 55 Location: Washington

Well, with the variety of napolianics, we should probably choose something later... Once we get a set of core rules down. I started posting some basic Ideas on Morale and Shooting statistics and tables in the core rules section.

When we get the rules down, we can then start working harder on the army books.

Site Admin Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 174

One word of caution I'd like to express ...

I know that with the plethora of details available during the Napoleonic period, along with the long history of making use of those details (ad nauseum) in the genre that its easy to slip into the habit of overcomplication.

I would, however, lament seeing that institutionalized in this project.

As an example, consider the three periods in WW2 FoW ... late '43 companies don't really compete or blend well with mid '42 lists; and yet BattleFront had to make divisions somewhere.

If we were to have a different period/sourcebook/army list for every single year or operation of the war, I think we'll seriously be handicapping the accessibility issue with the game. I would not be excited about collecting an army only to find out that its not compatible with any of the armies my friends have put together due to the discrepancy created by such narrow bands of restriction.

Just my two cents.

Joined: 03 Mar 2007 Posts: 16

All good points. The simpification of Armies for the period becomes much more problematic when you focus on a battalion level game with each base equaling one company. Apart from the quality of troops from year to year, the support allocated to the divisions that changed itself in organisation and numbers from year to year. You run into a different problem with a pure Nap/Fow system at the company per base level.

For most of the forces that fought the Napoleonic Wars you can look at their composition from the beginning of the era to the end of it and see very little difference in the overall composition of the troops. Where you do see the differences is the manner in which the forces are organised.

These variations would have a large impact on game play, but wouldn't necessarily have much impact on the figures you would need to field the troops. The biggest problem that I see with a company per base system, if thats what people are going for. Is the differences in company size when you consider all the different armies.

French line companies post 1808 were ideally 140-ish, but were often only in the realm of 80 men each. Austrian companies were ideally 230-ish in strength. Though often closer to 120 men each during a long campaign. Both of these nations infantry units were comprised of six company battalions.

Now if the system awards bases solely by how many companies a battalion fielded, how does a rule set reconcile the difference in casualties incurred for every base lost? It gets more troublesome when you look at Prussian infantry battalions, which were nominally the same size as the French, but were organised with four companies rather than six.

Take a look at the Russians, and you find a battalion with roughly the same strength on campaign per company as the French, but like the Prussians, they only organised their battalions with four companies. So they had much smaller battalions. British companies were even smaller, but they had ten per battalion, with battalions roughly on par with the French in numbers. How is this reconciled when you remove bases to represent losses? Especially when each base represents a company?

I like the simplified approach, I'm just not sure it can be accomplished with any sort of versimilitude at the level most folks seem to want to play the game with.