Crown of Glory: EE, an AAR from the French point of view

Hi there, let me first say that although my postcount is low, I have been lurking in these forums for a long time. It is just that what I have tended to want to say have allready been said by others.

In this AAR, I am playing a game called Crown of Glory: Emperor's edition (CoG:EE), which is a game published by matrixgames.

This AAR will follow the course of a new pbem I am playing (8 players), and I got to play France (aka the big bad wolf). The game starts out in 1792, and I start out at war with Austria and Preussia.
In CoG:EE I would usually play detailed battles (that is I move my divisions around on the field at my own free will), but since this is a pbem, detailed battles will not occur, instead the battles will be "instant", making the game more challenging.

This AAR is also mirrored at http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2139859&mpage=1&key=?, where my opponents also keep their AAR for those that wants to read up on how the situations are interperated by the different nations.

NB! Since this AAR follows my pbem, I will usually only post once a day. Any thoughts/requests/questions are more than welcome.
And please allow me to say that I am NOT a very good AAR writer, so suggestions are welcome as well.

Terje

Turn 1

As allready mentioned, I will start the game allready at war with Austria and Preussia. Fortunately none of those nations has any military units close to my borders, but I am certain they will be arriving shortly. This means that I will need to gather my units, and form army units, attach generals to said armies and place depots for my armies so the men do not starve.

*edit* Hmm I guess I will need to use bigger fonts in my next screenshots, sorry about the writing in the screenie. I allready made all the screenshots for the 1st turn, so please do not get too angry with the writing on the screenshots for turn 1.

Terje

Turn 1 continued

I mentioned allready that Preussia and Austria does not have any military units close to my border, if we look at the map of Europe we understand why.

*edit* The graphics of this map is somewhat pixelled due to me resizing it ALOT for the screenshot.

Still Turn 1

Well, the Napoleonic area also saw extensive use of diplomats, so who am I to judge them wrong? Guess I better make use of my diplomatic corps as well.
And since I am at war, I better look at the replacements that are sent out to my troops, do I have enough men? Are they good enough? After all, a division without any men cannot fight.

Short term goals

These are the areas I hope to aqquire quite soon (1-2 years time).
Red circle I hope to capture in my ingoing war with Austria/Preussia
Blue circles I hope to gain by diplomatic actions and economic grants.
Yellow circles I am undecided about, either diplomatic actions, or I will go to war with the minor nations in question.

Turn 2

Thankfully no enemy army has appeared in sight of my borders yet. This gives me more time to gather my forces and prepare. The Austrians and Preussians will arrive. The question is when, where and how. Will they use private messages (on the games main forum) to plan a coordinated attack, or will they attack piecemeal?
All France can do at the moment is to wait and prepare. If they attack piecemeal, I should be able to field better troops than the Austrians, but the Preussian army is modern, well led and well equipped.

This turn also revealed some diplomacy effort. I have sent an offer to Spain were I guarantee not to attack Spain for 5 years if they guarantee the same for 3 years. To keep some secrecy I decided to keep this treaty secret to all but me and Spain. This should allow me time to rebuild my armies after the war with Austria/Preussia.
At the same time the Preussian King is eager to send his daughter to England to form royal ties with the British. My guess is that Preussia is hoping for British cash in return.
The Russians and Turkish try to make eachother not to form treaties with Spain. Now that is a move I can only understand if Turkey has serious ambitions in North Africa.
Under all circumstances the frontiers are being drawn.

Turn 3

Nothing much happens this month. All proposed diplomatic actions were declined. Seems Spain wants to have the option of attacking us at a time chosen by her.

We need to produce more Glory if we want to win the game, this should be doable by gaining some target provinces and by winning battles.

The only good thing this month was that our people continued to feel happy. A happy population means you will not be knocked out of the war too easy.

Spain also seemed to have sent her diplomats to Italy as the southern parts of Italy is now shown as a part of Spain. This is not good, we need those provinces to generate glory as well. We must rethink the Spanish problem after the war with Austria and Preussia.

Intermission

No turn in my inbox today, so I thought I would talk a little about battles.
Since this a pbem game, battles will be decided by the techs, morale, generals and number of units each side brings to the field. This is then simulated by the computer, and a battle report is made.

That is boring to watch in an AAR, but alas...
However for those of you (if any???) that reads this and wonder what detailed battles look like, I've taken the liberty of posting a link here to another AAR by yours truely that covers a single battle.
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2109219


Here you can get a look at what detailed battles look like. In CoG:EE you get the option of playing out battles at division or brigade level. Due to the immense size of the battle I recorded in the link above, that battle was fought on division level. The main difference between division and brigade size battles are just that, size. Your units are broken down into smaller units, to give you more units to play around with.

Last thing to add about battles, I guess is that it is played out in WEGO manner. That means that each unit has an initiative rating, and the higher the initiative, the earlier in the turn the unit moves and fights.

New to CoG:EE from its predecessor CoG, is that now also naval battles can be fought as detailed battles. Unfortunately I did not find any AAR with pitures from this on the matrixgames forum.
Naval battles involves frigates, 4th line ships, 3rd line ships and 2nd/1st line ships, and on ocasions also shore batteries.

Terje

Wow, a lot of detail for a TBS battle on the map, I love how the smoke and ground are torn up and get worse and worse.

PrinceScamp said:

Wow, a lot of detail for a TBS battle on the map, I love how the smoke and ground are torn up and get worse and worse.

Click to expand...

Western Civilization Software's other game about the Civil War (Forge of Freedom) also has those detailed battles. IMO it's the best of all Civil War games to date. Highly addictive.

terjelin,
Keep going! I have Crown of Glory EE but haven't really had a chance to play it yet. It's nice to read an AAR on it.

Thorn said:

Western Civilization Software's other game about the Civil War (Forge of Freedom) also has those detailed battles. IMO it's the best of all Civil War games to date. Highly addictive.

terjelin,
Keep going! I have Crown of Glory EE but haven't really had a chance to play it yet. It's nice to read an AAR on it.

Click to expand...

Yes, the smoke and the holes in the ground makes a good show, but my favorite part is how the smoke also affects casualties taken/inflicted due to loss of sight. Other factors vectored in is fatigue, morale, formation, range, facing, wether or not your troops have the range to the target etc etc.

One major change from FoF is that you can now set units to react to the enemy if they have atleast 50% of their movement points remaning. This allows your units to change facing if charged by a CAV unit, fire at oncoming enemy troops, take up blocking positions etc etc.

I'll keep this AAR (and the one at matrixgames) going, just waiting for our Russian player to mail his turn so we can keep the game advancing.

Terje

Still no sight of Russia, and if he does not reply soon he will be replaced.
Too bad since he is a fun player to have in the mix.

Terje

Turn 3

Still no sight of enemy armies. This is good as our total forces still only number some 90.000 troops. The longer they wait, the better.
However our national income of labour is a little too low, so no new military units have been ordered so far, however now all provinces have been given production-orders, and been given the resources needed for those orders. The next ammount of labour that is produces will be going towards the construction of a new infantery division.

For the time being we will not move out and try to take Luxembourg or Flanders, we will wait a little while to allow our troops to gain even more strength before we push on. The fact that the Austrian/Preussian armies are nowhere to be seen also means that we need to guard Paris by not moving our armies too far away.

Turn 4

Still no sight of enemy armies. This pause is a blessing. It gives us time to build up our forces. But we will try to use this break to take the fortress of Luxembourg from the Austrians. Since Luxembourg is a protectorate, it means that if we capture the province it automatically becomes French territory without any peace talks. If we capture a normal Austrian province we will have to hand it over when peace is declared.
We also issue the orders to raise a new infantry division in Paris. We chose to do so in Paris because this is the city with the highest level of baracks, which again improves the quality of the units created there.

Turn 5

The Austrians have decided to go to war with Poland. That is great news! They will need to keep atleast some of their armies in the east to capture Polish provinces before the Russians do so as the Russians too have issued a DoW on Poland.
France is in Polands dept for this.

France on the other hand, being a peace loving people decides to use their diplomatic powers in the hope that some of the minors will ask France to protect them from harm.
There are two ways to use diplomats to gain control over minor nations.

a) I could try to make a coup, this makes the minor a part of France in every way, allowing us to use their provinces to produce anything we need.
b) By becoming friendly enough the minor might ask us to protect them (form a protectorate). This transfers their fleet/armies to us, but they regain some freedom in that we do not get to run their provinces. They will however pay some cash and deliver some goods every turn. The provinces of these nations will not count towards the limit for waste, which is a really good thing to avoid.

Of the nations we currently engage in diplomacy with, we hope for option a) on all three. This is most important with The Netherlands as we want their fleet, espesially since Britain formed a protectorate with Denmark, seizing the Danish fleet.

Turn 6

We start our siege at Luxembourg and cause aprox 1000 casualties and take the same ourself. At this rate we will need 6 months before the fortress is taken.
The Inf we started building in Paris was completed and the division was ordered into one of our two almost empty armies. Another Inf division was ordered in Paris.

Poitou finishes its construction and we have to order something new built here. When looking at the city it becomes clear that we only really have two options (well four really but...)

We either build a bank or a farm. Since we currently have enough food, and we have a goal of expanding our military money is a better bet here.

Farms are always good as they provide food. More food means more people which means more and healthier taxpayers and soldiers. Although if this is a more short-term game then perhaps a bank would be best.

PrinceScamp said:

Farms are always good as they provide food. More food means more people which means more and healthier taxpayers and soldiers. Although if this is a more short-term game then perhaps a bank would be best.

Click to expand...

This is no short game at all
23 years, 1 month turns should give a total of 276 turns.
The thing is that all farms are added together for a national stockpile, and as such it does not matter if one province does not produce any food at all. However I agree that farms are a good thing, but this province produces alot of money, and banks adds 10% to the base income making a bank in this province a better option than in a province that produces less money.

(gee did that even make sense??)

Terje

Then definately go with the bank.

Turn 7

An eventful turn. We will start with the events were we are directly involved.

Our siege in Luxembourg only killed a mere 108 Austrians (there should be some 6000 left in the fortress), so another army with 22.000 men were ordered to leave Paris and aid the siege at Luxembourg.
Once more our valiant diplomats and not so valiant bribes increased our understanding with Genoa, Switzerland and The Netherlands.
Alot of our provinces finished their constructions, and we ordered the following to be built - 3 farms, 1 bank, 2 barracks, 1 court. Had we had more national labour we would have ordered 2 more farms, but that will have to wait untill next month.

Sweden and Britian made a deal, and taking a wild guess, they will soon include Preussia as well (as soon as Preussia and I are at peace, which should be in five months as there then has been no hostility for a year).

Not only were the Austrians attacking Poland with their army, it seems they did their best to form a coup as well, infortunately, this turn their diplomats succeeded. This is bad news for us. The European map is completely redrawn, and Austria is now so big that she will experience alot of wast, which is good for us.