Steph's and Sandris's Napoleonic wars scenario

After the release of Sandris new Napoleonic packs, I have started a new scenario, and we discussed the scenario with Sandris.

I'd now like to expand the debate a bit.

The initial setting will be 1815. Napoleon comes back in power in France, the map is roughlly the map of the congress of Vienna but the game is opened (no real lock alliance), so it remains interesting to play.

This is the first settings, it is likely that we build other scenarios from this one (lokced alliance, start at a differente date).

Why 1815? Because the units made by Sandris are late war units, a start in 1812 is IMO unbalanced, as France could control or be in alliance with the vast majority of Europe. Without a good way to represent Guerilla in Spain, or attrition in Russia, it wouldn't be really fun.

Another interesting start would be just before 1800, perhaps even 1792, when Poland still exists but we'll see later if Sandris makes an early war set of uniforms or not.

Anyway, before going in the details of the map, civilization or unit lines, I'd like to explain a bit the game mechanism.

Almost every unit will be build via buildings. Line infantry, grenadier and light infantry will use improvment, but the building time will vary (line infantry will build faster than grenader).
Cavalry will also use improvment but with the "delete improvment with same flag", so you cannot two types of cavalry in the same city.
Elte units, such as guard, will use a small wonder.

I haved added new "national" strategic resources to the game, such as "British", "Scottish".

The unit procuding improvement will require to have the resource in the city radius.

So you can build highlanders only in Scotland. And British units in other British cities.

As the unit procuding improvement will require a specific tech, via non-era tech, it means that the French will not be allowed to build British units in British cities should they capture one. And as the British cities will not have French resources, they won't be able to build French units either.

However, you will be able to build some units in the "conquered" cities.

For instance, France will have a "Italian ally" tech. If they research it, and capture an Italian city, they will be allowed to build "Italian ally barracks" using the Italian resource.
The Barracks will produce Italian ally units, but they will be slighlty weaker than regular Italian units (ie build by Italy), and not all the units will be available.

For instance, if someone capture a Prussian city, they can build line infantry, but not guard.

Infantry units will just require the national resource. Cavalry, Artillery, etc will require additional resource, such as horse or iron. But it won't have to be in the city radius.
To do this, the cavalry building will require the line infantry building, that will require the national resource in the city radius.

To sum up, if you invade a country, your reinforcment will have to come mainly from your home country, with some weaker locally raised troops.

And if you liberate an ally, it could be a good idea to give the city back to the "rightfull" owner, so he can build more and better units.

Also, the allies you can build can vary if you are "French empire" or "Coalition".

If the British occupy Prussia, they may be able to build a bit more units than the French. This is a point opened to discussion.

Now, I have a slight problem with some countries.

Let's illustrate it with Norway.

In the beginning or the Napoleonic wars, Norway is Danish. and it becomes Swedish in 1815.

What units should be buildable here? The Danes should be able to build Danish units if they take back a Norwegian city. It seems logical the Swedes can build Swedsih units (they would build Danish one).

So... To solve this I can
1)Add a "Norwegian" resource, and "doubles" the Danish and Swedish building, so they exist each with a version using Danish or Swedish resource, or using the Norwegian resource. I could even make it so the Norwegian version is not as good as the national one.

2) But two resources in each city (well, one inside, and one outside). But the resource would be visible on the map... And it may look strange. So
a) Resource are invisible, but they won't appear in the city screen
b) I never put the resource in the city tile, but outside. It means it will be visible on map (graphic is a flag). What should be the size? 32x32 is big, 16x16 may be better.
c) I put the main flag in the city, and an additional flag outside.

I think the problem exist for
Norway (Danish/Swedish), and Finland (Swedish/Russian), and perhaps for Poland.

I plan to make Poland an "unplayable civ". It will have a resource, that will allow the building of Polish ally only.

So Russia, Prussia or Austria will not be able to raise their national troops in Poland, only allies.

Now, if you have feedback, comments, suggestion...


Secret link to alpha test version

Reserved just in case

This looks really well thought through, and with Sandris' great units, it should turn into an amazing game!
However, does this mean your stopping work on your mod?

georgestow said:

This looks really well thought through, and with Sandris' great units, it should turn into an amazing game!
However, does this mean your stopping work on your mod?

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Not at all, but my mod is "stuck" until Sandris release a full pack for the ancient & medieval times (Egypt?) or I have enough gunpowder units to make the second era.

So, in the meantime, I'll work on some smaller scope scenario, like this Napoleonic one.

To avoid having too many barracks of the same time, I planned to use a "number of building required".

For instance, the basic unit, that will resources in the city radius is the recruiting center.

This will auto produce line infantry, let say 1 every 4 turns.

Then, you will find the "Grenadiers barracks". It will produce a grenadier every 6 turns. And it will also require 3 "recruiting centers".

Unfortunately, the engine doesn't interprete it has "if you have 9 recruiting center, you can have 3 grenadiers barracks", but "if you have at least 3 recruiting centers, you can build as many as you want"

To avoid that, depending on the number of buildings we will actually need, and also of the real size of the army, I may use some small wonder.

For instance, I could have 3 grenadiers barracks small wonder, so you cannot build more than 3.

However, given the number of units, and so the number of needed buildings, I'll keep this for the best units.

A thought re: 1812 vs. 1815: If you space the cities "correctly" and don't allow battlefield healing, then you could certainly simulate Le Grande Armee's attrition fairly well.

I think 1812 - 1815+ would be interesting (of course there could be no first exile for Napoleon but, then again, he may be winning).

Fixed alliances could be Russia & Sweden; Prussia & Austria; England, Hanover, and Portugal; France, Spain, Naples, Italy; Holland unaligned.

Just a thought

Best,

Oz

Ozymandias said:

A thought re: 1812 vs. 1815: If you space the cities "correctly" and don't allow battlefield healing, then you could certainly simulate Le Grande Armee's attrition fairly well.

I think 1812 - 1815+ would be interesting (of course there could be no first exile for Napoleon but, then again, he may be winning).

Fixed alliances could be Russia & Sweden; Prussia & Austria; England, Hanover, and Portugal; France, Spain, Naples, Italy; Holland unaligned.

Just a thought

Best,

Oz

Click to expand...

If we really start in 1812, France includes all of Netherlands, a good part of Italy and Illyria. The rest of Italy, Naples, Spain and Westphalia are under control of Napoleon's familly, Denmark and Norway as allied, as the German states of the Rhine Confederacy, and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Prussia and Austria are officially Napoleon's allies.

On the other side, you have only Portugal, Great Britain, Sweden and Russia.

We could make such a scenario, but it would be quite unbalance. The idea is to make first the 1815 scenarios, and then using the same base (unit lines, techs, etc) to change the initial start and alliances to propose alternate scenario, including a 1812 one.

Steph said:

If we really start in 1812, France includes all of Netherlands, a good part of Italy and Illyria. The rest of Italy, Naples, Spain and Westphalia are under control of Napoleon's familly, Denmark and Norway as allied, as the German states of the Rhine Confederacy, and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Prussia and Austria are officially Napoleon's allies.

On the other side, you have only Portugal, Great Britain, Sweden and Russia.

We could make such a scenario, but it would be quite unbalance. The idea is to make first the 1815 scenarios, and then using the same base (unit lines, techs, etc) to change the initial start and alliances to propose alternate scenario, including a 1812 one.

Click to expand...

Apologies, I wasn't explicit enough: aside from the British coalition, I would not set the other alliances as anti-French. (After all, it took the defeat in Russia to set Prussia and Austria against France in1813.)

As Ever,

Oz

A few points, if I may.

1. Are you putting any naval units or sea power into the game? The main reason I ask that is because in 1815, do the the extended years of the British blockade of Europe, Britain was pretty much the only sea power, although quite irritated by the US Navy's success in the War of 1812. The best you could expect of naval units from Europe would be maybe "regular" if you are talking the Dutch, and no higher than "conscript" if you are talking France. Realistically, British naval units should have a substantial hit point bonus over the rest of Europe, in addition to being view as "veteran" to "elite".

2. The Portuguese units were basically all raised and equipped by the English, or English advisors, so you might want to let the British raise troops in Portugal, with a higher rating the locally raised Portuguese units.

3. Remember that the Army that invaded Russia in 1812 was a very long way from exclusively French, and included troops from just about every European country under French control, to include some Spanish units. The loyalty of the Prussian units was always questionable. Cossack raiding of foraging parties and flanking columns was also a factor in the attrition suffered. You might compensate for French numbers by rating many of the Allied units as "conscript", except for the Polish ones. The Poles really hated the Prussians and the Russians.

4. The British should have more success raising troops in Germany, as some of the better British units were the King's German Legion, and some of Wellington's artillery in Spain.

5. You also have the differing abilities of the lower level commanders, which had a major effect in some battles, the classic case being Grouchy at Waterloo. I am not sure if that could be worked in or not.

timerover51 said:

A few points, if I may.

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Of course, I wouldn't start a thread if I did not want feedback

timerover51 said:

1. Are you putting any naval units or sea power into the game? The main reason I ask that is because in 1815, do the the extended years of the British blockade of Europe, Britain was pretty much the only sea power, although quite irritated by the US Navy's success in the War of 1812. The best you could expect of naval units from Europe would be maybe "regular" if you are talking the Dutch, and no higher than "conscript" if you are talking France. Realistically, British naval units should have a substantial hit point bonus over the rest of Europe, in addition to being view as "veteran" to "elite".

Click to expand...

Of course there will be sea power, or the British player will feel very lonely in his island.
Every power will start with a significant army, and in the case of Britain, navy.
Then, if you want to build more, you will have to build new recruiting center/shipyard, and for this you'll have to "reinvent" them.
I.e. although you start with grenadiers, there will be a "grenadier" tech that you need to discover to build new ones. This is mostly to bring some gameplay and have a more interesting tech tree.

timerover51 said:

2. The Portuguese units were basically all raised and equipped by the English, or English advisors, so you might want to let the British raise troops in Portugal, with a higher rating the locally raised Portuguese units.

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The British and Portuguese will raise the same units in Portugal. An independant Portugal could still have British advisors.

timerover51 said:

3. Remember that the Army that invaded Russia in 1812 was a very long way from exclusively French, and included troops from just about every European country under French control, to include some Spanish units. The loyalty of the Prussian units was always questionable. Cossack raiding of foraging parties and flanking columns was also a factor in the attrition suffered. You might compensate for French numbers by rating many of the Allied units as "conscript", except for the Polish ones. The Poles really hated the Prussians and the Russians.

Click to expand...

That's what I'll do with starting units when setting up the 1812 version.

timerover51 said:

4. The British should have more success raising troops in Germany, as some of the better British units were the King's German Legion, and some of Wellington's artillery in Spain.

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I'll ask Sandris to make some KGL or Hannovrian units, that the British could raise in Hannover, which should be in personnal union with Great Britain (ie British territory) in 1815

timerover51 said:

5. You also have the differing abilities of the lower level commanders, which had a major effect in some battles, the classic case being Grouchy at Waterloo. I am not sure if that could be worked in or not.

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Perhaps later, with a few preplaced armies with different stats.

Hmm, I like your idea of "reinventing" the navies, as that is what most of the European powers had to do. Oddly enough, Russia was not one of them, nor was Sweden. Prince Bernadotte's questionable loyalties to Napoleon led the British to try the carrot rather than the stick that they used on the Danes.

If you would like any help with the naval side of things, let me know. I am a reasonably good naval historian, and the Age of Fighting Sail is one of my areas of interest.

Actually, you could help if you can provide a order of battle for the naval forces of the countries in 1815, for the starting forces.

Civilization in the game:
France
Great Britain
Russia
Prussia
Austria Hungary
Ottoman empire
Spain
Portugal
Italy (no independant Sardinia, Florence, etc, just one big Italy)
Naples
Sweden
Denmark
Netherlands
Bavaria (the whole Southern Germany, including Wurtemberg)
Saxony (central Germany)

I beleive the Bavarian of Saxon navy is quite small .

Northern germany would be mostly under Prussian or British control (Hannover).

Speaking of order of the battle.

What scale would you like to see in the scenario for land forces?

Regimental level?

So France would have something like 30 dragoon units for instance.

Or should I use a divisional level, with roughly 4 time less units?

I personally prefer divisional level, as it has a better unit/population correlation (good for draft, for example).

As for the civilizations... why not make Tuscany, Lucca, Parma and Modena Austrian? They were practically Austrian satellites then, and most of those states had Habsburg rulers.

Because they were independant states, and Italy has availabe units .

I personally prefer divisional level, as it has a better unit/population correlation (good for draft, for example).

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I don't understand what you mean

Building produced units is a cool idea, but the way you're doing it, wont you have too many units after a bunch of turns? Or are you counting on the scenario to be so violent that makes "many" necessary?

The scenario will be mostly warfare oriented, after all it's a Napoleonic wars scenario, not a Napoleonic peace, love and little flowers . I expect casualties to be significant

However, if we use building produced unit, we can easily control the speed of reinforcement, as we have a direct number of turns before the unit is produced.

And with the use of small wonders, "replace building" flags, etc, we should also limit the amount of units. Each city should produce one or two units (ie one line infantry, one specialized unit). So not much more than if you build the units directly.

As the building will generate culture, it also means they will be destroyed when you capture a city, so you will have to rebuild barracks in occupied cities, it will take time and reduce the number of produced units.

Anyway, we will obviously need testers .

Steph said:

The scenario will be mostly warfare oriented, after all it's a Napoleonic wars scenario, not a Napoleonic peace, love and little flowers . I expect casualties to be significant

However, if we use building produced unit, we can easily control the speed of reinforcement, as we have a direct number of turns before the unit is produced.

Click to expand...

Isn't a downside of this that the player will have less control over such things? Playing the scenario might become just a matter of being drip-fed troops at a steady pace and deploying them as you see fit. This seems to be to detract from the game, since there would be less strategy involved of deciding what to build, where, and how many of them. Similarly, if all the units are being auto-produced, what will the player be building?