[SIZE="4"]
[font="Comic Sans MS"]Chapter 4: The first encounter[/font][/size]
After I pressed the end turn button, the days started to pass by and my units followed the orders I issued... but to my surprise, Austria started agressively by trying to reach Dresden.
Thanks to our orders, they met the heavy resistance of the Elbe Armee in full force while they were crossing the river... and this is what happened...
[CENTER]
[/CENTER]
A great victory for the Prussian Army. Outnumbered by around 10.000 men, we managed to inflict heavy casualties on the Austrian Army, including the complete destruction of many elements.
Now you may wonder, how do I know what happened during the battle? Well, the answer is complex and has three parts:
1) During the course of the battle, you will see dynamic graphic showing who is actually winning the battle (inflicting more hits on the enemy). But also, a new feature recently added, is that the engine will start commenting what is actually happening on every round of the battle. So you will be informed if your men are routed, if they are running desperately, if they are supporting another column, etc.
This was a very anticipated change to get more feedback during the course of the battles, so I am sure the old players of the AACW will be more than happy to hear this.
2) When the battle is over, you get that nice graphic that I posted in there. Apart from the numbers that you can see in there, you also have all those nice looking icons at the bottom. They are not there to "look pretty", they give you a lot of information about what happened.
For example, I can see in there that both armies were in offensive posture.
If you look at my icons, the 4 on the left represent the abilities present on my army at the battle (taken from the leaders or special units) and the ones on the right represent combat stats like luck, initial firing rage, benefit from favourable ground, etc.
Each icon has a nice rollover text that will be self explanatory, I will not get into them here... that will take forever.
3) There is another new feature... and that is the detailed combat report. Check the one from this battle:
[CENTER]
[/CENTER]
In there you can see round by round what happened to each element of your army. Again a muchly anticipated feature that will surelly be loved by most of the old and new players of AGEOD games.
As you can see, with those three parts you can really get an idea of what went good... or wrong during your battle.
But that doesn't end there... in the message log, we get more info about what happened AFTER the battle, like this:
[CENTER]
[/CENTER]
We can read in there that thanks to our victory, some leaders got their seniority increased.
Also, you can see the ammount of equipment captured... that will really come handy.
So, now that you have seen what happened during the first encounter... let's see what we will do next in the upcoming turn.
In the Southeast, we will keep advancing towards the south, while our King awaits for the austrians to attack him in Schweidnitz.
[CENTER]
[/CENTER]
In the North, the plan continues... most of the forces are gathering around Setting, while Dohna's Korps maintain his advance towards Colberg.
[CENTER]
[/CENTER]
As you can see, the first units of the russian horde start appearing on the far east...
Seeing the speed of their advance, we can supose that they are composed of light elements or mostly cavalry... so, they are not much of threat right now, but we must be careful so they do not wreak havoc behind our lines, destroying our supplies centers.
In the Center, we decide to start sending some new forces to the area of Torgau, that will later go to Dresden.
[CENTER]
[/CENTER]
With the recent fight to the south of Dresden, it looks like Austria is coming this way, so we must be prepared for the worst.
In the West, the french are nowhere to be seen... at least for now.
So, we maintain our plan of gathering all around Munster.
A new calvary raid is sent to Kasel to see if they are coming that way or they will go for Dortmund.
We will also send some light forces to Dortmund to collect more info about the area.
[CENTER]
[/CENTER]
Sadly, we do not have the posibility to recruit many units per turn... we could start training replacements for the future, but for the moment, we will avoid that.
A new Pioneer unit is ordered in Breslau... this unit will later help during the siege of Koenigratz.
[CENTER]
[/CENTER]
We are ready to hit the end turn button now... and see what happens... and good news come from the front!!!
The Austrians came again:
[CENTER]
[/CENTER]
We hit them badly, again, but this early encounters were not expected... I am not so sure that the Elbe Armee will be able to hold the line if they keep coming this way.
But surprisingly, the austrians try to make a deep raid into our territory, something that was not expected.
You may have noticed in some previous screenshot that there was an austrina force near Schweidnitz, I thought they were coming the Friedrich's way... but nope, they headed north, to the Glogau Fortress.
Our forces were ready ... but they were composed mostly of cavalry elements.
[CENTER]
[/CENTER]
So although we won... the cost was not exactly low for this battle... they will surelly come again in the next turn...