Rise of Prussia - Frederick Rex 1756-1763

[Sol Invictus]

Here's hoping. What I've seen so far caused me to start whistling "Prinz Eugenius, der edle Ritter" spontaneously out of happiness ... unfortunately I was at the office at that time.

You had best start whistling the "Hohenfriedburger Marsch". But please only do it in the privacy of your home.

[Padreigh]

You had best start whistling the "Hohenfriedburger Marsch". But please only do it in the privacy of your home.

The "Hohenfriedberger"? Only when drunk and 100% sure that (most of) my ancestors can't hear me.

[Sol Invictus]

Well drink up and whistle softly.

[Padreigh]

Maybe I am just too stupid or tired (no, not too drunk ... yet ) to search the forum properly, but do we have information on which countries can be played?

Prussia and Maria Theresia's happy little multi-cultural familiy, obviously.

How about Saxony, Bavaria and Hanover?
Will we be able to play as France or England or will they just sent money and/or troops? How about Russia?

Or will we have an "Alliance vs. Alliance" setting?

[Sol Invictus]

It will be Alliance vs Alliance.

[Florent]

Brand new system of Construction of Units, allowing players to choose and purchase their forces as they wish (or can afford) during the annual and grand campaigns.
Is the building of units stays in the historical limits.
For example the Prussians had 49 regular Rgts (33 to 49 being fusiliers)of infantry.
1. Can i expand these rgts when all the 49 are still there and thus create a 50,51 or even a 120th rgt ? Not historical.
2. During the 1759, i got a disaster said at Meixen and lost 5 Rgts, included 2 Fusilier. Can i, if i have the money and manpower start rebuilding my lost rgts?(and recuperate my rgts number;i lost IR 42 and 43 and i can rebuild one Fusilier with some ressource and it will be either 42 or 43 again; will it be the case ?)
Historically in the case of maixen(1759), the lost rgts had a lone battalion for 1760 (the remains) in Garrison and were available with 2 btns for the 1761 campaigns.
Will the game include new type of garrison ?
I mean from what had been released by Ageod so far, the fixed Garrison are in the case of the prussians the New Garrison (actually a last ditch defense mobilized early in the war or emergency, i don't remember) but will the standard Garrison Rgts (1 to 12)included : Those that could move and thus participate in campaign. For example at GrossJägersdorf the second prussian line was made of 8 garrison troops Btns (Rgts Sydow and Manteuffel).
These Garrison Rgts had 4 btns mostly and one had 6.

[Sol Invictus]

I am hoping there is a variable upper limit in Unit numbers for each belligerent. Either that or a steep increase in the manpower/money cost for additional Battalions after a certain range is passed so that you would bump up against a strong diminishing return at some point. I guess it will depend on how manpower/money is generated.

[Florent]

I don't think that the players should increase their Bts or Rgts in non historical numbers.
I agree that if the the game was between 1685 to 1815 you could increase your units but not on 7 years.
Robert Asprey said that Prussia had or reached 5.3 million inhabitants in 1756 and indicate that Koser gives 4.1 millions. This is less than 1/3 of Austria, 1/4 of france.
To have only for infantry 49 Regiments(not including the Free Btns) is already exceptionnal.
With all the battles that will be done the Prussian will have to rebuild but it couln't expand. IR 50 and after were created in the 1770.
France had in 1762 88 rgts with 187 btns but had more than 20000 millions souls. Not all the Rgts were send to germany, many were on the coast and i suppose that there is events or the Prusso-Hanovrian-British will be able to trigger raids on the french coast so that some rgts in germany will be send back in France.
Austria had 59 Regular infantry Rgts.
This is why i hope that the historical limits or numbers of rgts will be respected.
Only the special units created during the war should be done.
If a player has all his historical regular Rgts, he shouldn't be able to build more.
Historically Prussia had less and less troops for each campaign and when disaster stroke like Maixen, Landeshut where corps of 13000-15000 troops were captured it was terrible.
I hope that the system will be able to see how many replacements were taken from Prussia proper, that the prisonners (for prussia) will be put in the army (thus 2 sources of replacements for Prussia, but when defeated on the field there is likely to lose more men by desertion.
For example when dresden fall or other fortresses the Austrian asked to the colum to join them, of course former prisonner of war or saxon were just waiting for that.
I also hope that holding Saxony and Silesia will be important as historically (for Prussia)for that : Manpower.

[Sol Invictus]

I also don't want the Player to be able to create many Regiments above the historical limit but I wouldn't mind a fairly tight variable range. I guess it will depend on how the game handles the generation of manpower and money. Assuming that as a Prussian Player, I avoid the the Maxen and Landeshut disasters and the Kunersdorf and Kolin bloodletting and at the same time Britain grants an increased subsidy, I think that I should be able to decide to raise a couple more Regiments if the current ones are close to full strength. The game will have to be capable of handling a situation other than what actually happened. I am sure that Frederick would have raised several more Regiments if he had the resources, which in the game will be manpower and money. The game just needs to make sure that those two resources are really tight and hard to come by. Hopefully Hok will expand on this a bit with some info on how the game will handle this.

[Hohenlohe]

France had in 1762 88 rgts with 187 btns but had more than 20000 millions souls.

Dear Florent, are you really sure that the French had 20 billion inhabitants in that time??
I think you mentioned 20 million souls and that data belongs to historical files.
As I remember the French had around 200-400000 men under arms in that period and therefore the greatest army until the Russians appeared on the central european scene.
In that period the Prussians had the best quality troops until the SYW.

greetings

Hohenlohe

[Padreigh]

I'd prefer to have a certain freedom in raising regiments.
I know for a fact, that, if I have the opportunity to do so, I'll invest heavily in hussars and pandurs to lay waste to Prussian towns and supply lines (even more so than Austria really did) and be rather stingy when it comes to siege artillery.
And it would be really annoying if the game told me something like "Sorry, no pandurs for you. But you could still muster 12 batteries of siege artillery, because Austria had those in real life."

[aryaman]

According to Szabo (I am starting to read, so far very interesting) these are the men in the armies in 1756 (nominal strength)
Prussia: 153.700
Austria: 177.000
Russia: 300.000 (very inflated number, real strength around 144.000, only a fraction available for campaign in Germany)
France: 360.000 (only 124.000 available for campaign in Germany)

The limiting factor was not manpower, not even for Prussia, it was money. Russia received an annual subsidy of 2 million Talers from Austria, which in turn received 8 million Talers from France.Szabo calculates that Frederick squeezed Saxony to about 50 million Talers for the duration of the war. In the end all participants were on verge of financial collapse.

[Carnium]

According to Szabo (I am starting to read, so far very interesting) these are the men in the armies in 1756 (nominal strength)
Prussia: 153.700
Austria: 177.000
Russia: 300.000 (very inflated number, real strength around 144.000, only a fraction available for campaign in Germany)
France: 360.000 (only 124.000 available for campaign in Germany)

Interesting numbers aryaman.
Where did France hold 236.000 men ? I have read that they did not (want to/were able to) deploy many regular units in America and it also seems that they were unable to deploy them in other theaters (India, Caribbean) because of the British control of the seas.
I guess that both sides will have to take an eye on the other theaters not shown in the game,that did have quite an influence to the main European battlefield. Will the game simulate this via scripted events and military/political options ?

[aryaman]

Interesting numbers aryaman.
Where did France hold 236.000 men ? I have read that they did not (want to/were able to) deploy many regular units in America and it also seems that they were unable to deploy them in other theaters (India, Caribbean) because of the British control of the seas.
I guess that both sides will have to take an eye on the other theaters not shown in the game,that did have quite an influence to the main European battlefield. Will the game simulate this via scripted events and military/political options ?

According to Szabo, about 160.000 were garrison troops, probably very inflated numbers in any case.
Another important army was the English/Hannoverian, according to Christian Rogge detailed OOB, that army listed about 50.000 in 1758, but an impressive 102.000 in 1762.
The Prussian field army, despite big losses, remained above 100.000 for the entire war. As I wrote before, money was the limiting factor, to keep an army on the field was much more expensive that to keep it in garrison, so armies recruited during the war primarily troops for garrison duties, using them for refilling the field armies as required. It was money shortage that prevented to field larger armies.
In game terms this is a problem, since there is not upkeeping cost for troops.

[Florent]

I think that 20 millions was at the time of Louis XIV thus there was perhaps some more or less depending of the loss of men in his war and the fact that 300000 Huguenots took refuge in Prussia, Britain and other countries.
Anyway France was the most populated country at that time.
James Woods indicate 88 rgts in 187 btns for 7737 officers and 110000 men at the end of 1762. But these numbers are for native french only.
German and Wallons had in 1758 16 Rgts with 28 btns and 19040 men.
20000 Swiss, and 5800+522 officers Irish an Scotts.
Keep in mind also that France had a navy costing much money too.
France couldn't be both a continental and sea power.
I think that Aryaman is right about money shortage and the possiblity to increase rgts will certainly be difficult in the game.

[Florent]

Aryaman what is the name of Christian Rogge book. Does it include operationnal map to see the manoeuvers.
I know that there is "His Britannic Majesty's Army in Germany " for the seven years war and is certainly detailed but is out of print or rather in pre-order on Amazon.co.uk a few weeks ago with more than 500 pages about these operations that deserved to be better known.
British battles.com had the battles detailed but the oob are just for the british and there is no operationnal maps.

[aryaman]

No, it is just a collection of original documents listing troops, no maps at all.

[Sol Invictus]

As Cicero said over two thousand years ago, "Unlimited money, the sinews of war". Obviously actual bodies were an absolute limit, but money was easily the real limiting factor.

I also think that we should have a bit of leeway in deciding just what units to build. We should have the flexibility to decide whether to recruit more Jaegers, Hussars, Frei Corps, or Artillery. These were decisions that were made by every Monarch/War Minister at the time and we should be allowed and actually forced to make such decisions as well. This adds to strategic gameplay as well as being a historical decision. There just needs to be a tight control on how easy it is to accumulate money.

Manpower will also be important because even though the game will probably not factor it in detail, after a certain threshold, extracting certain numbers of the population from the productive economy into the non-productive military, there would be a depressive effect on agricultural and other forms of production and therefore tax revenue. Financial exhaustion almost always determined when wars finally ended.

[Florent]

We will have to wait for some explanations by Hok.

[Hok]

And explanations are simple :

Construction system are based on a Force Pool, no nation can have more than his Force Pool on the map at the same time.

So if Prussian have 49 Regular Rgt on the map, he can't create another one.

BUT, we want to let players a part of liberty ... so there will be few options who will permit to increase (slightly) the force pool (it can depend on subsidies or events .... etc)

[Padreigh]

So we are basically "stuck" with the historical units? Apart from slight increases triggered by events etc?

Or do we have a certain number of, let's say, infantry regiments and we can decide whether they are going to be line infantry, Freikorps or pandurs?
So would the Prussian player have a cap of 49 regiments of foot but could decide how to fill these "unit slots" or would he have to take the "proper historical units"?

[arsan]

So we are basically "stuck" with the historical units? Apart from slight increases triggered by events etc?

Or do we have a certain number of, let's say, infantry regiments and we can decide whether they are going to be line infantry, Freikorps or pandurs?
So would the Prussian player have a cap of 49 regiments of foot but could decide how to fill these "unit slots" or would he have to take the "proper historical units"?

I'm just guessing but... i suppose it will be like in AACW: You have a limited pool of each of different units types, based on historical data.
So you wont be able to create 49 padours, guard units or any other rare unit types.
Something like...
40 or so pool of regular infantry (minus what you already ahve on map)
6 elite units pool
8 light infantry units pool
4 heavy cavalry pool
10 arty batteries
2 siege arty batteries...
From them you decide what you want to "buy" and when.

Cheers

[Florent]

Good news for me.
Some events will add for exemple Pirna (if the Saxon surrender at Pirna or Dresden) some Rgts (10 of them) to the prussians even if one year later there was only 3 remaining(because of desertion).

[Sol Invictus]

Sounds great Hok. This is exactly what I expected and was hoping for.

[Hohenlohe]

I now own some very good books about the Prussian and the Austrian armies of that period and one book about the SYW from the Osprey series and even a book about the battles of Frederick the Great, so now I can't wait to get this game and to lead the Prussian to success.

greetings

Hohenlohe

[Florent]

Hohenlohe, i think a true Bavarian is supposed to fight those nasty Prussians i have told a few words about your conduct to General Brown and Daun, and Maria-Theresa is somewhat annoyed that you chose service for the blue coated Prussians.

[Hohenlohe]

Hohenlohe, i think a true Bavarian is supposed to fight those nasty Prussians i have told a few words about your conduct to General Brown and Daun, and Maria-Theresa is somewhat annoyed that you chose service for the blue coated Prussians.

Sry,but I am a Suebian immigrant here in Bavaria and I prefer service for the Prussian King,because I would get a promotion earlier in comparison to the Austrian Army which prefers the Irish Immigrants
So it seems I have to leave Munich very soon before the Austrian convince the Bavarian government to expel me...
I will show the Austrian generals what are my best talents:leading an army to success...

greetings

Hohenlohe apy:

edit: I like the blue coats because blue is my favoured colour...

[Florent]

As a french adviser in the Austrian service, Maria-Theresa just indicated me that if i was successfull enough in General Staff, i could get Hohenlohe' s important ground, castle and breweries (with excellent bavarian beer).

[Hohenlohe]

As a french adviser in the Austrian service, Maria-Theresa just indicated me that if i was successfull enough in General Staff, i could get Hohenlohe' s important ground, castle and breweries (with excellent bavarian beer).

For that case the Prussian King offered me a principality in Silesia as a substitution.So I will make any effort to get Silesia for my good king and perhaps Bohemia too.And afterwards I will come home to my old castle accompanied by some prussian grenadiers and dragoons to expel that nasty French advisor from my ground.

greetings

Hohenlohe

[Florent]

Oh, mein gott !!! I shall do good work then !!