AGEOD Forums

In a few recent posts, it has been noted that in ROP armies and corps will "march to the sound of the guns", which from playing AACW I suppose means will move from adjacent regions to join a battle.

I'm pretty well up on mid-18th c. military history, but I confess I haven't made a systematic study of this issue, and a brief survey of major battles hasn't turned up any examples. So I'll ask - are there examples of 18th c. corps/wings/columns/whatever marching into battle on the scale and time-frame represented by this rule?

As a design concept, "sound of guns" looks to me like a hold-over from NCP/AACW and I'm not sure it belongs in ROP. Retaining corps (or "columns") gave me some concern for how successfully an engine originally created to simulate early- and mid-19th c. warfare could be adapted for mid-18th c. conditions. The operational flexibility represented by the "sound of guns" rule seems to me the prime example of this problem. To me, it seems anachronistic - I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

I don't see it as actually "marching to the sound of the guns" as understood by Napoleon when he directed his generals to do that - not even in AACW or NCP. The turns are to long and the regions to large for that. After all, the battles are done in a day, or at most two or three days in some cases. And in the game it will take an army or column usually longer then that to go to the other region.

In my opinion it is more an abstract reflection of traveling or camping dispersed, and concentrating before battle. Due to the two week long turns an able commander can certainly concentrate his troops from two adjacent regions within the timeframe of a turn when an enemy approaches . As we can not do this, due to the simultanious resolution, it falls to the AI to react.

The solution isnt perfect - I have some trouble with a WW1 style line of mutually supporting stacks, all dug in to 4 levels in adjacent regions, as happens in AACW. But to change the rules (as in moving the supporting stack over, or letting it loose its dug in status) invites gamy tricks (like luring a stack the wrong way, or attacking an adjacent stack, only to get the point of main attack loose its dug in status).