Balancing Effects of Leadership

[bbriley]

Hi Everyone,

I am in the midst of the Austerlitz campaign (as the French) and both my opponent and I have wondered if the campaign is perhaps unbalanced due at least in part to the excellent leadership capability of Napoleon.

To be truly historical, Napoleon's brilliance would presumably be reflected in his ratings in the game. On the other hand, it might give the French an unfair advantage in, say, the Austerlitz campaign.

This leads to two question groups (given that I cannot see "under the hood" of the game engine):

1. Are my assumptions about likely outcome above reasonable? If not, why not (the answer would I assume have to do with the game engine settings and/or the philosophy behind the game engine)?

2. If my assumptions are reasonable and the scenario is "biased" on behalf of the French, then what could one do to balance the scenario (to add to the fairness at the expense of historical accuracy)? For example, most or many of the HPS Sims games allow shifting a balance scale, if one scenario is clearly unfair to one of the opponents.

Anyway, I am indeed enjoying the PBEM match, and thanks again to the AGEOD for developing such a marvelous game.

Thanks in anticipation of getting an informative answer.

Bon Jour, Messieurs (et Mesdames...)

[Pocus]

We have not balanced the scenarios to favor the historical outcome. We tried to be the more impartial (fair) possible, expecting that the realism of the engine is high enough to reproduce the historical outcome most of the time, given 2 players of the same playing level.

[bbriley]

We have not balanced the scenarios to favor the historical outcome. We tried to be the more impartial (fair) possible, expecting that the realism of the engine is high enough to reproduce the historical outcome most of the time, given 2 players of the same playing level.

It sounds like, as much as possible, you tried to estimate the capacities and weaknesses of the various senior officers as much as possible based upon historical data, and then put that into the ratings for those officers in the game engine. It sounds incredibly complex, and I admire your research and your programming skills in building that sense of realism into the game. Frankly, I cannot imagine how you were able to do that - even to begin to have the game engine approximate how the various major officers might have performed!

Given that in the Austerlitz Scenario (Scn. 6), I was able to crush my email opponent (in Germany and Eastern Austria, not in Italy) when I played the French side, it tells me that in a game engine sense Napoleon's "hand" (besides my inexperienced hand) is influencing the French tiller, giving the French an advantage over the Austrians and Russians. My email opponent and I have agreed to now play the larger 1805 campaign, Scn 5 (Themes or Danube), and as the French did in history, I have skipped an invasion of England in favor of moving the main French Army from the Boulogne (sp?) area down to southern Germany. We are both immensely curious about how the battles in southern Germany (and northern Italy) will now proceed.

Again, you are to be congratulated for having such high goals for reproducing the conditions for these historical battles and campaigns.

[Bylandt]

2. If my assumptions are reasonable and the scenario is "biased" on behalf of the French, then what could one do to balance the scenario (to add to the fairness at the expense of historical accuracy)? For example, most or many of the HPS Sims games allow shifting a balance scale, if one scenario is clearly unfair to one of the opponents.

There might be 2 options you could try:

1. Set the randomization of generals to level 4. I imagine this would benefit the side with the bad generals. A rating of 0 can only be randomized upwards, after all.

2. De-activate the activation rule. This cancels part of the disadvantage of bad strategic ratings.