1. Archduke Charles is impossible to dislodge from a city. In my first game, he parked in Munich and the entire army's artillery, directed by Napoleon himself, blasted away for 3 months with little effect. This game, I figured out how to get to Munich before he arrived, but he dug in in Venice and prevented me taking that city, even though I'd decisively defeated the Austrians and beaten the Russians at Olmutz. This prevented me from imposing a peace treaty on the Austrians. I was in the process of redeploying the main army's artillery south to Italy when the Prussians declared war. Have you considered making him (and other generals such as Blucher) offensive units, instead of defensive ones. Something I've sometimes done with AI generals is to give them the air superiority flag. They tend to wander around a bit, but avoid suicidal attacks.
This is one of those situations that are difficult to evaluate. I’ve replayed the scenario multiple times, in particular the first year of the game, and have never failed to defeat Austria in the first 5 to 6 turns. I’ve never been unable to defeat Charles, or any other leader for that matter, though I will admit they can at times be difficult to dislodge when they are entrenched (and this was my intention, as a well entrenched and located coalition leader can slow down a French advance and force the player to redirect his forces to deal with the situation).
2. British naval bombardments significantly affect play balance. My elan advantage was lost in the spring of 1806, despite great care to conserve line infantry units. I estimate about 2/3s of these were lost to British shore bombardments. Given the Readme advice to garrison ports, there's little choice but to use French line units, since there just aren't enough other types available. Besides, you just keep losing them each turn. In my games a single 3-decker takes out the Brest fortress each time. I suggest that it's also somewhat unrealistic as shore bombardments just didn't kill whole divisions at a time. Perhaps there's some way to restrict the number or strength of these attacks.
Again this is a situation that is difficult to evaluate. I’ve gone through different variants on the naval aspect of the game and came up with different results.
With regards the shore bombardment ability, in some play tests I would see that the British 3 Decker killed too many Regiment de Ligne, whereas in other play tests they didn’t. In that regard, it’s impossible to predict the AI behavior from one play test to another.
All the same, in the last version I added the Coastal Fortress improvement to the scenario and added one each in Calais and Amsterdam, at the start, and this seemed at the time to give the French player a little more respite and to bring back some balance.
3. 2 deckers weren't actually faster than 3 deckers as far as I know. Frigates were somewhat faster than ships of the line, but not much. The movement differential might be adjusted to reflect this.
I took a little bit of liberty here to provide a little bit of diversity.
4. I suggest raising the cost of the Constabulary units. They can't move and they pile up very quickly in the cities that produce them. I sell some of them off to build improvements.
I guess I should have included this note in the readme. The Constabulary isn’t really supposed to be used at all. I originally had a settler unit in the unit grid, which was supposed to be unbuildable. But every time the French would first capture a city they would be given the option to build a settler, which I didn’t want, so I replaced the settler with the worthless Constabulary unit, in the hopes the players would realize it has no value (its stats are 0m, 1a, 1d, 1hp, 1fp).
There is some good news, for what it's worth. I'm up 5-2 over the British navy, but 15 looks a long way off. That's it for now. Back to fighting the British, Austrians, Russians and Prussians. And before long the Spanish too, I imagine.
Sounds, unfortunately, that your opening moves didn’t go well for you. It’s critical to be able to kill off Austria within the first 6 turns otherwise, as you indicated, your headaches will become very challenging indeed.
Alternatively, my suggestion would be to have the 3-decker able to fire 3 times, the 2-decker twice, and (you guessed it) the frigate once, with the frigate only losing part of its movement. This would most accurately reflect the firepower differences of the ship types. Also, would it be possible to make British ships similar to French ones with events replacing their ammunition automatically each turn? Just some thoughts.
I originally had the 3 Trois-ponts have the ability to fire 3 shells, the Deux-ponts fire 2 shells and the Fregate fire 1 shell. Unfortunately, this proved much too powerful and allowed the French navy to contest Maritime supremacy much more easily. So I scaled the number of shells back to provide a greater challenge. This had the consequence of making the difference between the Frégate and Deux-ponts less obvious.
In addition, the Coalition 3 Decker also had a weaker defense factor and the French would typically be able to either destroy or severely damage it with one naval shell. So in the last play test, I increased it’s defense value. Based on current feedback, I may decide to reduce it a little.
2. Consider removing the 2-decker altogether, renaming 3-decker "Ship of the Line" and then using the 2-decker slot to create another less powerful munition for the frigate, and allowing it to fire a few times so it can use its speed to escape.
The 3 Decker is essentially a Ship of the Line. The Frigate is the only vessel that has the find submarine flags, so the intent here was to allow it to seek out enemy vessel so the 3 and 2 Decker vessels could close in for the kill.
I like your idea of creating an extra munitions slot (I happen to have one spot left in the unit grid). In this case, I would have a more powerful 3 Decker shell and a less powerful shell for the Frigate and 2 Decker vessels. In this manner, the 3 Decker could fire 2 shots as before, the 2 decker fire 2 shells and the Frigate one shell. This might bring more value to possessing a diverse fleet.
On that note - should the French admiral have some sort of bonus effect?
I hadn’t thought about that. This could be an interesting addition to give Villeneuve a leader attack bonus. This would give the French player a greater incentive to preserve this unit.
Hussar still not working as a spy unit.
I retested this again yesterday and it works fine for me. As such, I really don’t know what’s going on here. As I mentioned, the unit is located in the regular spy slot and I’m not applying any other special feature to it so it should work normally.
Again, I’d be interested to know if anyone else has experienced this problem.
I have started the game a few times, no problem with Archduke Charles.
As I mentioned to Techumseh, I’ve never been able NOT to defeat Charles, so I’m not certain why he’s having such difficulty.
Have never gotten to a point where I can defeat the Brits in naval action. Even with a three decker I do not feel like I make a dent in there three deckers. I got up to 13 on British ships sunk, but that was mostly getting lucky by finding there frigates.
As I mentioned above, I will continue to review the changes that can be made to the naval aspect of the game.
I feel like I am spending a lot of resources trying to make Germany useful once I conquer it. Maybe put something in there about happiness buildings automatically regenerate once Confederation of the Rhine created? Germany becomes a money pit, spending lots to increase happiness in the hope to eventually have them generate money market.
This was intentional as I understand it France experienced some level of difficulty in controlling this region.
France struggled economically during the war and I wanted to reflect that in the game. In the long term, it will be very important to build ‘financial’ improvements to increase your revenue, otherwise you will find yourself with serious financial difficulty.
Besides, you will find later in the game that you will need to be able to buy units if you want to make up for battlefield losses. If you don’t have the ability to generate these funds you will find you may be running out of units when you need them to fill the gaps in your armed forces.
If you do take the time to build these improvements in your conquered lands, your investment should payback in the long term.
I don't know if Lua would allow you to do this, but you can have the happiness buildings go away in Germany if Prussia and Russia 'liberate' cities that the French had previously conquered.
Some of the buildings already disappear as part of the normal conquest game mechanics. I didn’t see any reason to change this. As I mentioned above, it’s the improvements that generate revenue that were designed to be the more important in this scenario.
Traditionally the Tyrol area was also a major source of partisan warfare against the French. Maybe generate partisan unit through events which would require the French to put a sizable garrison in the area?
This is an interesting idea. I was reading yesterday that there was peasant unrest in the Vendee region of France during this period. In addition to Spain, I might consider adding partisan activity in the Tyrol and Vendee regions.
Still the fact that I keep restarting and playing speaks to how much fun and how well constructed this scenario is.
I’m glad to hear your are enjoying yourself. Sometimes, when a designer gets feedback, its not always easy to tell if the issue reported by the players are seen as a major downside to the scenario or simply ways to make the scenario better.
Here's something odd. I found that French fregate units do not see British ships until they move next to them, despite having the two-space visibility flag.
I would have to double check but I think this may due to the fact that all the naval units have the 'Submarine advantages/disadvantages' flag and therefore you need to be next to them to discover them, even if the Frégate has the 'Unit can spot submarines'
