The Grognards

[Ozymandias]

Originally posted by Rocoteh
Concerning "grognard" = "grumbler" I did not know that.

I live in Europa and many, many years ago in school I lost
interest for English and French since both teachers hated
me for some reason. In fact I am self-learned in English.

With regard to NAPP I think that the best solution is to
have divisions/corps and some brigades+regiments since it
will add "chrome"to the scenario.

Still I do not think we should rule out a strenght-point
solution since it would simplify things.

Rocoteh

Well, your English is certainly very good -- and (back OT )the more I think of it, the more virtue I see in a strength point approach.

Consider: no matter how it's analyzed, the basic decision for AF/DF/HP is ultimately going to be some metric re: relative troop quality (sound familiar? ).

Personally, I would suggest using HPs to simulate training and elan -- recall this was an era that men were willing to line up in straight lines in open fields in bright clothes and fire and withstand volley after volley because they were more afraid of their officers than death or being maimed!

Strength points can then be used as a straightforward numbers game, with, e.g., 1AF = 1000 troops yet also being used as a "fudge factor" when a finer gradation than 1000 men x N#HP is required, so that a truly wretched group of 5000 conscripts could have an AF=3 and HP=1, etc.

... And we should definitely try to get BomberEscort to run some numbers for us!

As Ever,

Oz

 

[Rocoteh]

ozymandias,

Yes with regard to "what-if", Napoleon had plans for
both India and China if Russia had been defeated.


Rocoteh

 

[Rocoteh]

ozymandias,

Yes, I agree strenght-points have many positive aspects
and we could still have "chrome".

I think we should completely rule out to have different
national organizations since (mentioned before) a Prussian
brigade was larger than a French division and so on.

By the way: At Borodino only 12 out 20 Infantry divisions
were "real" French. Maybe we should think out a system
to simulate Napoleons cap. to set up armies from de facto
occupied nations.

Rocoteh

 

[Steph]

Originally posted by ozymandias

*creaking with age* I was playtesting for the old SPI with Jim Dunnigan & Co. as far back as 1972, and of course had some experience prior to that ...
Oz

I wasn't even born

But I also have a small wargaming background. I used to play a lot a small wargame. Ever heard of Advanced Squad Leader?

 

[Steph]

Originally posted by Rocoteh

By the way: At Borodino only 12 out 20 Infantry divisions
were "real" French. Maybe we should think out a system
to simulate Napoleons cap. to set up armies from de facto
occupied nations.

Rocoteh

The idea was not from me, but we could have small hidden resource (below the city), and this resource will be prerequesite for "occupied land units".
Every civilization would have two versions of its unit : when when it is independant, one when it is occupied.
So French can decide to:
- Ally with German states, and trust them to send troops to Russia.
- Occupy German states, and recruit local troops from there. He will have more controls, but the troops won't be as good.

This should be done for all units and countries : Highlander can be recruited only in Scotland, Cossacks only in Ukraine, French troops only in France, etc.
This would probably give a nice national feeling to the army recruiting. It could even be refined more.
For instance, if Polish cities is occupied by France, then France can recruited good guality polish troops. If it is occupied by Russia, troops will be less efficient.

This would need a lot of work with the editor, but as we can keep the same graphics and change only the name, it's perfectly doable.

Beside, I don't think settlers should be allowed. we should stick to initial cities.
And we could make every unit cost 1 pop (as we won't have settlers, we need a way to "use" extra pop).
Beside, it could be a nice incentive fro conquest : to avoid completly deplete your cities by en masse recruiting, you may want to occupy a country to recruit local troops.

 

[Rocoteh]

Steph,

The solution you describe sounds very good!

With regard to settlers I agree, they should not be
allowed. Let us hope there will be an "never burn cities"
option in Conquests.

Rocoteh

 

[LouLong]

Nice to see there are dynamic ongoing discussions but to get them organized I will start working on the CDG NAPP forum so that we can use the polls and separate files/threads for separate topic discussions.
Give me a day or two to organize that at :
http://www.cdgroup.org/forums/tbs/civ3/index.php?h=1&pf=395

Does not mean I will stop this thread at all though.

 

[Rocoteh]

CFC is the only fansite where I is a member so
I will continue to post here.

Rocoteh

 

[Steph]

I also lurk mainly here. It may change if I open a forum at CDG for SSS, but I will continue posting here anyway.

 

[Steph]

Originally posted by Rocoteh
Steph,
The solution you describe sounds very good!

Thanks. From time to time I happen to have some not to bad ideas.

 

[LouLong]

I lurk more around here too but for such a project to have its own set of forums is, I believe, both important and useful.
So updates and discussion can carry on here but the real organization will likely take place there. You can register there without any dificulty.

BTW Rocoteh, where are you from ?

And if armies work well in Conquest, what about using regiments or maybe more brigade size units and a small wonder that creates automatically an army every few turns (using the Temple of Zeus ability) ? We could have different versions (= different number of turns) for the diferent countries and we would not have to worry about the AI building armies but only about using them (and it seems Conquests aims at doing that) ?

 

[LouLong]

Originally posted by Rocoteh
Steph,

The solution you describe sounds very good!

With regard to settlers I agree, they should not be
allowed. Let us hope there will be an "never burn cities"
option in Conquests.

Rocoteh

YES definitely.
Now it seems culture plays a large role in deciding whether the AI razes a city or not. And we will need to have strong culture in some small cities (Scandinavia mostly) to represent their frontiers correctly. I hope C3C will help on that too !

 

[Rocoteh]

"Ever heard of Advanced Squad Leader" Steph

A short off-topic comment.

Interesting that you mention that game.
It was perhaps the most complicated wargame
ever done. Despite that it was very popular.
Avalon Hill failed to make a good conversion of ASL
to computers and that is one of the reasons to
why The Avalon Hill Game Company now rests in peace.

Rocoteh

 

[Rocoteh]

LouLong,

If armies works well in Conquest we should use
them, no doubt. The army-type concept used in ACW
is very good if AI could use it.

"BTW Rocoteh, where are you from?" LouLong

I am from the Europa Union.

Rocoteh

 

[Steph]

Originally posted by Rocoteh
Interesting that you mention that game.
It was perhaps the most complicated wargame
ever done. Despite that it was very popular.
Avalon Hill failed to make a good conversion of ASL
to computers and that is one of the reasons to
why The Avalon Hill Game Company now rests in peace.
Rocoteh

Yes, it is the most complicated wargame I know. It is still very popular. I've played several games that tried to recreate the feeling of this game in computer, such as the Steel Panthers serie.
I've come to the conclusion that it is NOT possible : I've never been able to get the right view of the map when playing a computer game. It's simply not the same.

 

[LouLong]

Originally posted by Rocoteh
ozymandias,

Yes with regard to "what-if", Napoleon had plans for
both India and China if Russia had been defeated.


Rocoteh

I knew for China and for the West Indies, never knew about China though. Nevermind his ego !
At the moment I am more planning on doing a purely European version but a more worldly scenario might be done by someone else (including Canada, USA, West Indies, Egypt and India, the rest of the world would not bee too relevent.

Err, Rocoteh, you don't have to say it if you don't want but I had a country in mind (rather than the generic European Union). But no matter !

 

[Rocoteh]

LouLong,

I did not mean we should make a worldwide scenario.
I mentioned the plans for India and China since I
mean the outcome of the war in no way was given.
Napoleon could have won.

About the nation I am from.

I had no intention to be impolite, but there is a reason
I do not mention it.


Rocoteh

 

[Ozymandias]

Originally posted by Steph

I wasn't even born

But I also have a small wargaming background. I used to play a lot a small wargame. Ever heard of Advanced Squad Leader?

Nope, I quit after the ORIGINAL Squad Leader series -- university was taking up too much time.

Nonetheless -- Comrades-in-arms!

:soldier: ,

Oz


PS BTW IIRC the best wargaming magazine these days is French -- Vae Victis, yes?

-O.

 

[Ozymandias]

Originally posted by Rocoteh
Steph,

The solution you describe sounds very good!

With regard to settlers I agree, they should not be
allowed. Let us hope there will be an "never burn cities"
option in Conquests.

Rocoteh

Agreed re: Steph's ideas 99% etc. with this 1% caveat: remember that Moscow was indeed burned; even though by the Russians, nevertheless as part of the post-Borodino course of battle.

Also (as -- I'm delighted we all seem to agree! -- we should consider hypotheticals) had Napoleon invaded Britain, I can readily imagine whatever port city he seized being put to the torch to keep it from being used as a base of operations.

-Oz

 

[Ozymandias]

Originally posted by LouLong

At the moment I am more planning on doing a purely European version but a more worldly scenario might be done by someone else (including Canada, USA, West Indies, Egypt and India, the rest of the world would not be too relevent.

Agreed -- even though that little 1812 affair in the New World did cause the British to divert some resources from Europe ...

Besides, Mod #3 on my post-Conquests schedule is "World War Zero" -- the 7 Years War globally, with the "cheat" of having a few American cities already in place.

,

Oz