Production System Clarification

[arsan]

I'll say this again.

It costs 8 horse to build 3 horse artillery. It costs 0 to build 3 non-horsed artillery. It costs 10 to replace a single element in both.

Please explain the math?

I think this summarize pretty well the main issue here: obviously arty recruitment and replacement costs are not consistent at all and should be tweaked.
Maybe adding some small horse cost to foot arty units recruitment to account for draft horses ( maybe 1 horse per element?) and specially by decreasing arty replacement horse cost a lot.

I would say 2 horse instead of 10 per arty replacement could be a good compromise given they will be used by both foot and horse units.
As a welcome side effect it will make horse resource a little less scarce.

Hopefully this tweak should be pretty straight forward to do ithink.

Regards!

[Drake001]

Also, play the campaign out a ways. By November 1805 playing France my horse issues lessened somewhat. I regularly had 400 or so in reserve and my elements were nearly always full. At the beginning it was difficult

[vicberg]

I think this summarize pretty well the main issue here: obviously arty recruitment and replacement costs are not consistent at all and should be tweaked.
Maybe adding some small horse cost to foot arty units recruitment to account for draft horses ( maybe 1 horse per element?) and specially by decreasing arty replacement horse cost a lot.

I would say 2 horse instead of 10 per arty replacement could be a good compromise given they will be used by both foot and horse units.
As a welcome side effect it will make horse resource a little less scarce.

Hopefully this tweak should be pretty straight forward to do ithink.

Regards!

Yep.

Also, the cost of conscripts for a single artillery replacement element is more than the cost of the brigade. The cost in War supplies is about 1/2 the cost of the total brigade. So it's not just horses. It's inconsistent for all 3.

[veji1]

No worries at all. I'm not frustrated at all.

FYI, France is difficult to play out of the game as things stand. The replacements for Artillery are extremely expensive (and incorrect by any math) at the current 10 horse cost per replacement. With only 3 seize horses cards, and a pathetic base production, all horses have to go into artillery replacement for months.

Why? In both January or August 1805 scenarios, on map units start without their artillery and require a LOT of artillery replacements in order to fill then out. With the artillery replacement cost so high, precious horses that *should* be going to horse replacements have to go to artillery instead in order to fill out all the requirements, meaning little to no horse replacements for months. This takes the French Cavalry completely out of any campaign, unless the French player is willing to risk units knowing there won't be replacements for months.

So the high horse requirement for artillery replacements snowballs into the first few months of the war which will affect any campaign (England in January, 1805 and Austria in August 1805) in a somewhat a-historical way.

Actually, being in late august 1805 as France in the Jan 1805 campaign, horses aren't the bottle neck at all : WS are because of all the artillery replacements one has to buy. until I had an unfortunate meeting between Murat and some Austrians in wooded hills which cost me quite a few horses, I had as much as 400 horses sitting in the pool (playing the horse requisition card as much as possible), 3 000 money and 6 000 conscripts but 0, zilch, nada in terms of WS : The artillery replacements keep eating my WS, not my horses.

Playing as France in Jan 1805, I think one might want to think hard a bout disbanding quite a few artillery units at game start actually, so that you don't end up spending as much WS on arty replacements and can keep more WS to build troops and such. With my stocks, I could have built close to a couple of corps woth of troops had I had any WS !

(Am not complaining in terms of engine, just saying that really WS are a massive bottle neck).

[Pocus]

Replacements will cost less overall in the first patch and in particular with cost less horses for cavalry (they will be aligned to cost half what a dragoon costs in horses) and also draft horses won't be factored at all in replacements, basically even if you pay a bit in horses for artilleries, when creating a unit (because some draft horses), you won't pay again in a replacement.

This will lighten quite a bit the tensions in horses, although France will still have a shortage that can now be alleviated more easily. Also the Pressburg treaty will give Austrian horses.

Please check that in the first patch when it comes out and keep in mind the system is simplified and so not all units have a cost in perfect ratio/proportion with the replacement they depend on.

[veji1]

Replacements will cost less overall in the first patch and in particular with cost less horses for cavalry (they will be aligned to cost half what a dragoon costs in horses) and also draft horses won't be factored at all in replacements, basically even if you pay a bit in horses for artilleries, when creating a unit (because some draft horses), you won't pay again in a replacement.

This will lighten quite a bit the tensions in horses, although France will still have a shortage that can now be alleviated more easily. Also the Pressburg treaty will give Austrian horses.

Please check that in the first patch when it comes out and keep in mind the system is simplified and so not all units have a cost in perfect ratio/proportion with the replacement they depend on.

Thanks for the reactivity. I would be mindful of being "too generous " tough : Replacements should be a point of tension and let's not forget that the 1805 Grande Armée was at a peak that lasted only 18 months or so, fading into the winter of 1806/1807 : horses SHOULD remain a point of tension, so should WS.

A bit of tweaking is useful of course, and as Vicberg showed, replacement costs compared to unit building costs need to be adjusted so that they are logical, but please make sure it doesn't become too easy : horses and WS should be big limiting factors.