AGEOD Forums

It seems very difficult to replicate one of the key operational innovations which Napoleon pioneered (and which was later copied) - the Corps system. While the command structure definitely gets half of it right in terms of allowing (and encouraging) you to form these mini-armies, you are then very limited in telling them what they can do.

If the scale were lowered so that there were more regions, then you could "move divided and fight concentrated" as Napoleon historically did (or didn't, as the case may be). Currently that's impossible since the physical location of each Corps is so homogenized. Basically, you just cram them all into the same region, synch their moves, and that's it. The Corps System is thereby reduced to being a purely administrative utility, while largely ignoring the fact that they were also independent *maneuver* units.

As an example, just try to: use one corps to hold the enemy and then have the others converge from different axes of advance. This is the famous "manoeuvre sur derriere" which won Napoleon's biggest victories. But you can't do it with this system. Instead, the entire army advances and, effectively, attacks the enemy frontally. Where's the artistry in that?

By depriving you of the best tool in Napoleon's arsenal, you are reduced to (effectively) fighting Borodino over and over.

The abstraction lies in the leader values which summarizes all possible tactics. What the game needs is the result of combat but how this is achieved is up to those values.

Perhaps the beginning of something like you suggest lies in the ROE buttons...i wouldn't exclude further improvements in that field.

kondor999 wrote:
As an example, just try to: use one corps to hold the enemy and then have the others converge from different axes of advance. This is the famous "manoeuvre sur derriere" which won Napoleon's biggest victories. But you can't do it with this system. Instead, the entire army advances and, effectively, attacks the enemy frontally. Where's the artistry in that?

Instead of using Synchronized Move Special Command for all Army Corps moving from the same region you can issue single order to some Corps.
As a result you can order a Corps to hold in position, the larger number of corps to a Synchronized Move advance and you can even send single Corps along a unique advance path.

JastaV

Your are missing something major here: The March to the Sound of Gun rule. It works rather well to move corps and armies on the 3-wide regions formation.

No, I am well aware of that. What I cannot do in the game is assign, say, Davout to lead his Corps in the way that Napoleon did at Austerlitz or Jena (of course, at Jena, Davout ended up bumping into the main Prussian army - and defeating it at Auerstadt- c'est la Guerre!). These were *not* cases of "Marching to the Guns". They were pre-planned maneuvers which sometimes worked - and other times *really* worked (ie Auerstadt).

In this game, I simply can't order Davout to converge on the battlefield from an unexpected direction- thus causing the enemy a big morale problem when a new Corps shows up astride their line of possible retreat.

In this game, it all comes down to a dice roll. That's great and all, but pretty much defeats my intended purpose - which is to game out what-if's and see what happens.

My overall point is this - if you zoom out too far in an operational level simulation like this, you lose all the granularity that makes things interesting. A ridiculous example of this sort of generalization would be to simply use a complex algorithm to calculate the odds of your succeeding in the entire Campaign, rolling the dice, and there it is. Game Over. Hell, it might even be an accurate way of doing it. But it's not much fun, and it totally discounts the role of the player.

This game is not that bad, but it shares many elements of the above example. I mean, sure, you can simply look at Davout and say there's an 80% chance (or whatever) he'll do something brilliant.

But that's very different than ordering him to do something brilliant and seeing whether he actually shows up or not. Or, conversely, pushing things too far and having his Corps show up too late. Or, having him bump into an unexpected enemy concentration. Etc, etc..

I totally "get" that this is an operational level simulation, and I'm not demanding the ability to micromanage every little placement. But more granularity and detail is desperately needed in order to make your decisions meaningful to the outcome of the campaign.

I understand what you say. An operational level game has limits (as others) indeed.
You have some interesting tools though at your disposal: you can play with forced march, combat posture, rules of engagement. These are your choices, not just something precalculated by the engine.

For a more practical example, you can try to send Davout circling around the enemy, to cut his supply line and prevent him from retreating. In forced march and within 7 days, so that if you engage with Napoleon on day 1 of the second turn, the enemy can't fall back. The battle would happen in the middle region between Napoleon and Davout, with Davout being able to be called with the March to the Sound of Guns rule.

It seems rather rich too me ... for an operational game!

Sometimes I got that feeling too in NCP, while in ACW it was never present because the full campaign with it's various options looked more strategical than operational. In many NCP scenarios I feel reduced to plan the only one move possible and press "next turn" to see the conclusion. It's especially visible in the Waterloo scenario when the entire campaign happened during one turn... Maybe if the time per turn would be reduced to 2-3 days (and corps moved proportionally less during a single turn) the game would allow interesting maneuvering. Surely during a two week period Napoleon could dispatch more than one order to his subordinates.

At Jena-Auerstadt Naopleon thought his main body was fighting the Prussian main body and Davout supported by Bernodotte faced minor forces. Oops! But, the French won anyway.

The 1805 scenario is set up as a maneuver sur les derrieres. This sort of thing can be recreated in games.

One point I'd make is that in certain larger campaigns, more army HQs should be present, to control widely separated multi corps forces. The Russian and Spanish campaigns come immediatly to mind for this.