Trafalgar: Where's Le Grande Armie?

[rasnell]

Scenario 6: Trafalgar. The Army never arrives. All I have are ships and I'm now on Turn 6 of 11.

They don't show up on the ledger. They don't show up on F3 for recruiting. They aren't loaded on the transport ships. There is nothing using the E + R shortcut keys to view armies.

How do I get them across the Channel and into London?

The objective said they would arrive after two turns of clearing the Channel. got a message that the Channel was clear and ready for Le Grande Armie. No idea how to bring them in and manual has nothing.

[PhilThib]

This is a small scenario to learn naval mechanisms...there is no Grande Armée in here...your goal is just to achieve Napoleon's naval plan, i.e. take control of the channel with your warfleet for at least 2 turns...that's all for the moment

[arsan]

This is a small scenario to learn naval mechanisms...there is no Grande Armée in here...your goal is just to achieve Napoleon's naval plan, i.e. take control of the channel with your warfleet for at least 2 turns...that's all for the moment

Then you should change the scenario text. I talks about an army that you should take to Kent. And all the objetives are English cities that you cannot take just with ship
I tried it on the demo and was uterly puzzled about what i was supposed to do

Another thing i noticed on the Demo Trafalgar scenario is that one of the spanish leaders (the one with the fleet at Corunna) was a general not an admiral.
Is this intended?

Cheers!

[PhilThib]

You are right, the scenario text is a wrong copy paste of Boulogne's

[rasnell]

I thought I had completely lost the ability to figure out this game after BOA and AACW. Probably should remove this scenario from the game file until you've got it functioning.

[Adlertag]

Another thing i noticed on the Demo Trafalgar scenario is that one of the spanish leaders (the one with the fleet at Corunna) was a general not an admiral.
Is this intended?

Cheers!

It is Don Miguel De Alava, see his interesting story below.
From "Napoleon series" web site :

"Don Miguel-Ricardo de Alava holds a unique, but little-known, place in the history of the Napoleonic Wars. This naval officer, army officer, politician and ambassador is reputed to be the only man present at both of this period's two crucial military events: the Battle of Trafalgar (21.10.1805) and the Battle of Waterloo (18.06.1815).

Born in Vittoria in 1770, Alava began his military career in the Spanish Navy. In spite of having risen to the rank of captain (in command of a frigate) Alava subsequently decided to exchange services and continue his career - starting at the rank of captain - in the Spanish Army. So it was s an officer of marines that Alava participated in the first of the two great Napoleonic defeats - that of Trafalgar in 1805.

Alava had been posted to the 'Santa Ana,' the 112-gun flagship of his uncle, Vice-Admiral Ignacio-Maria de Alava y Saenz de Navarrete (1750-1817). At Trafalgar, Alava y Saenz de Navarrete commanded the Cadiz squadron and was second-in-command to Admiral Don Federico-Carlos Gravina y Napoli (1756-09.03.1806) on the 112-gun 'Principe de Asturias' [1]. The third Spanish flag officer present was Rear-Admiral Don Balthasar-Hildalgo Cisneros de la Torre (1758-09.06.1829) on the 136-gun 'Santissima Trinidad' [2]."

Maybe, he shouldn't have command of an entire fleet as he didn't attained Amiral rank, do you think a tweak is necessary in this case ?

[arsan]

Hi Aldertag!

Thanks for the spanish history lesson. I hadn't heard about this guy in my life!
About the tweak: well my experience on NCP VERY limited (just this scenario on the demo. Currently i´m too engrossed on AACW to begin with NCP :nuts .
But the problem i found is that the northern Spanish fleet gets s 35% penalty because Alava isn't an admiral and can't command ships.
Maybe this effect is intended for balance or historic reasons?

If not... Solutions:
- make Alava also an admiral (easy but not very historic) or... change him by his uncle who was the real admiral!
- Both were family, so maybe they looked so similar you could use the same portrait
- Use other Spanish admiral (if there is any more around).

What do you think???

Anyhow, i´m no history buff on the XIX spanish military (i know more about Napoleon commanders that about our own spanish ones leure: ) so don't take my opiniuon too seriously
Cheers!!

[Adlertag]

But the problem i found is that the northern Spanish fleet gets s 35% penalty because Alava isn't an admiral and can't command ships.
Maybe this effect is intended for balance or historic reasons?

If not... Solutions:
- make Alava also an admiral (easy but not very historic) or... change him by his uncle who was the real admiral!
- Both were family, so maybe they looked so similar you could use the same portrait
- Use other Spanish admiral (if there is any more around).

Here in this case, let's our game designer decide which is better. It's true Alava is only a frigate commander, so leave him or not at the command of the fleet ?

[Lonster]

This is a small scenario to learn naval mechanisms...there is no Grande Armée in here...your goal is just to achieve Napoleon's naval plan, i.e. take control of the channel with your warfleet for at least 2 turns...that's all for the moment

(Note: played with demo....I think that is 1c...I'll check...nope 1.01a so this is as bare bones as it gets.)

This wording is pretty vague.....I got tired of the Brits knocking the heck out of my fleet (as I'm sure so did Nappy during his time), so instead I just tried to draw the British fleets out to the Channel Entrance and around Brest.....where the British fleet continued to kick my fleet around.....BUT for the whole time that the Brits were chasing my fleets around in the Channel Entrance neighborhood, Verhuell sat with his fleet in The Channel and Bruix with all the transports sat in the Strait of Dover. Both of the fleets sat there until they ran out of supplies 3-4 maybe 5 turns....plenty of time to off load the troops. Now whether these troop would be enough to actually do anything is another question. I would imagine that it would be a question of keeping them supplied (can transports be turned into depots like in ACW....but then these would be blockaded so that may be a mute point).

Seems like in reality it all comes down to VP, and if that is the case, it would be nice to have that reflected somewhere in the scenario description.

One other thing, the Stalemate screen shows the text in white on a tan background without a picture and so it is almost unreadable.

In the demo do the ship ever get replacements. I noticed there are replacements, but they don't ever get to the units. A ship would gain one man per turn.....and then some turns even when passive, they would lose 6-7.....maybe there was a discount over at the House of the Rising Sun. But the replacements never seemed to go down and once the ships took damage they were out of the fight....cohesion would come back but that was all.