First Impressions?

[CheerfullyInsane]

First impression: I kinda hated it. Too much stuff happening that I couldn't figure out.
But second and third impression....Well, it grows on you.
The thing is, unless you're used to the ageod engine, there's so many new things to get used to, and so much stuff going on under the hood, that it takes a serious effort to play it well.
And I dearly miss the replay-option available in both AACW and WiA.
It's too easy to miss events if one isn't paying attention.

Case in point (and this comes under the heading of newbie boo-boo):
I thought I had finally figured out the Austerlitz scenario.
Mack was kicked out of Ulm suffering 68k casualties, Augsburg was controlled, Munich was under siege with the Grande Armee pausing in Linz to gather cohesion for the push towards Vienna.
In the north two Corps were besieging Prague, whilst a handful of cavalry was marching towards Brünn.
I figured that with winter fast approaching, the two corps would besiege Prague for a couple of turns whilst the main army could take Vienna.
I really thought I might have a chance to actually *win* this scenario.
So for 3 turns I concentrated on the Grande Armee and its conquest of Vienna, figuring that the Prague siege would need a month or so to take effect.

What I had missed was an insurrection in Pilsen......
So when I turned back to Prague intending to send my victorious troops into the streets to wreak havoc, I found that everyone had gone home because of lack of supply. leure:

Lesson to be learned: Everything in this game is important.
So from then on I'm cycling through *all* my units *every* turn, no matter if I'm going to move them this turn or not.

So there's a definite learning curve to this game.
But it is *so* worth the effort.

CheerfullyInsane

"A man trying to carry a cat by its tail, learns something he can learn no other way"
- Mark Twain

[moloko]

To all my fellow grognards out there who cut their teeth on SPI and Avalon Hill boardgames, this is our dream come true.

It's funny because playing Napoleon's Campaigns prompted me to drag out my old board games. So now I'm playing the 1809 Danube scenario on the PC and I set up Victory Games 1809 and am playing that too. Kinda neat.

[moloko]

One quick question: is there an attrition report anywhere?

The only thing I've seen is it will tell you so and so unit took so many hits due to bad weather. It would be good if the game told you more, like how many men were lost marching, or just more attrition info in general.