Napoleonic Wars Campaign - Sign-up/Rules thread [Complete]

[AlekoTheGreek]

Spoiler

Rule amendment up for discussion...

7.1 - Casualties in engagements are determined by entire 'battle groups' (battalions/squadrons/batteries) so individual companies can not be considered casualties; If half of a battle groups' companies have lost all their men then that group is considered a casualty and will respawn a turn later (they will take a week out of play) at a friendly fort of their choice.

As there were a significant amount of casualties were sustained by both sides on turn 2 these will all be spawning by turn 4 (so next week), please could all attendees who have an opinion on the matter please respond as to whether they approve of the following additional rule:

7.2 - Respawning troops may restart on the campaign map with existing troops from their division (assuming any are present), providing the territory those troops are in is connected to a friendly fort by friendly territories (not cut-off). If this is not possible then respawns must pick a fort to restart in as normal.

I hope this will allow play to continue more smoothly and also add an element of authenticity; divisions that have suffered casualties will need to maintain 'lines of supply & communication' if they wish to replenish as quickly as possible. Thoughts??

[close]

Fine by me, (considering half of the idea was mine )

[33rdKincaid]

Spoiler

Rule amendment up for discussion...

7.1 - Casualties in engagements are determined by entire 'battle groups' (battalions/squadrons/batteries) so individual companies can not be considered casualties; If half of a battle groups' companies have lost all their men then that group is considered a casualty and will respawn a turn later (they will take a week out of play) at a friendly fort of their choice.

As there were a significant amount of casualties were sustained by both sides on turn 2 these will all be spawning by turn 4 (so next week), please could all attendees who have an opinion on the matter please respond as to whether they approve of the following additional rule:

7.2 - Respawning troops may restart on the campaign map with existing troops from their division (assuming any are present), providing the territory those troops are in is connected to a friendly fort by friendly territories (not cut-off). If this is not possible then respawns must pick a fort to restart in as normal.

I hope this will allow play to continue more smoothly and also add an element of authenticity; divisions that have suffered casualties will need to maintain 'lines of supply & communication' if they wish to replenish as quickly as possible. Thoughts??

[close]

Fine by me, (considering half of the idea was mine )

What can I say, great minds think alike

[King_George]

 ?

[Diamond63]

Rule 7.1 is kinda bad. It forces the people to camp more, instead of encouraging trying out different tactics. For example, imagine that you have full battle group and then you start clashing with the enemy. At some point you might have to sacrifice some companies in order to win the engagement by ordering them to charge while other companies hold flanks. Now, if those companies who charged, die, let's say 4 out of 6, your entire battle group would be considered dead, despite you taking care of enemy troops with 2 of your companies still alive and ready to kick ass.
I do have a lot of experience with this on EU_Commander. My suggestion is that you let the players to decide whether they want to lose some of the troops or all of them, meaning that the battle group should be considered dead only if it loses all the men. So the respawns could be done by the company, not the battle group. This way it is more dynamic and would allow people to think more about their moves. While at the same time, there wouldn't be that many campers.

[33rdKincaid]

Rule 7.1 is kinda bad. It forces the people to camp more, instead of encouraging trying out different tactics. For example, imagine that you have full battle group and then you start clashing with the enemy. At some point you might have to sacrifice some companies in order to win the engagement by ordering them to charge while other companies hold flanks. Now, if those companies who charged, die, let's say 4 out of 6, your entire battle group would be considered dead, despite you taking care of enemy troops with 2 of your companies still alive and ready to kick ass.
I do have a lot of experience with this on EU_Commander. My suggestion is that you let the players to decide whether they want to lose some of the troops or all of them, meaning that the battle group should be considered dead only if it loses all the men. So the respawns could be done by the company, not the battle group. This way it is more dynamic and would allow people to think more about their moves. While at the same time, there wouldn't be that many campers.

It's a very tricky rule this and I agree that it's not quite there yet and does not suit all situations, although I will say that the rule was initially chosen to impact entire battle groups purely to simplify things for the organisers; working out casualties by companies as opposed to groups for a turn like this weeks would probably be OK, but last weeks one not so much - would have taken me days!!

Also I do think their are some positives to consider aswell; with the current ruling it causes the commander of a group to consider all it's members and to look if anyone is seriously taking a beating and to advise them to pull-back out of the line of fire, as it's in the interest of the group as a whole to preserve its comprising companies. In this way I think it make the groups think more cohesively and less selfishly. This of course does have to go hand in hand with the rules of them all staying relatively close together being followed, which should be pulled up on an admin if not.

I would suggest (since the only fight the 32nd have participated in as yet was a siege and there was some bad meshing) that you keep an open mind until you see a straight up battle and see what you and your guys think from there. Unfortunately due to the pressure it would put on myself I'm not prepared to deal with casualties by company, however if some additional/changed rules could be added to make the current rule fit as many situations as possible that may work.

As usual thanks for the feedback and we can go over all points that have been brought up over the campaign for discussion at the end, so that the next iteration can be that much better!! Sorry, tried to keep my response short and failed miserably... can I assume you agree with the added rule regarding respawns?

[Stasiulek]

CO Name: LV_Stasiulek
CO Steam ID: https://steamcommunity.com/id/Flew897
Regiment: Légion de la Vistule
Class: Infantry (Polish if possible )
Number of Companies: 1
Faction: French Empire

[33rdKincaid]

CO Name: LV_Stasiulek
CO Steam ID: https://steamcommunity.com/id/Flew897
Regiment: Légion de la Vistule
Class: Infantry (Polish if possible )
Number of Companies: 1
Faction: French Empire

Hi there - the campaign is currently in progress but if you only wish to take part yourself as your app suggests you could ask any one of the French division commanders as to whether you could tag along and attend their matches? all their contact details are on the 2nd post of this thread

[Stasiulek]

CO Name: LV_Stasiulek
CO Steam ID: https://steamcommunity.com/id/Flew897
Regiment: Légion de la Vistule
Class: Infantry (Polish if possible )
Number of Companies: 1
Faction: French Empire

Hi there - the campaign is currently in progress but if you only wish to take part yourself as your app suggests you could ask any one of the French division commanders as to whether you could tag along and attend their matches? all their contact details are on the 2nd post of this thread

Sure. Will do that. Can you please accept my steam invitation?

[Spoons]

Don't really like 7.2, I get why its good for the winning side of the campaign but it makes it almost impossible for the side already losing, to be continually pushed from the place they just lost despite having worked hard to kill as many of that group as they can.

I would guess this idea comes from the fact that the losing side of the campaign has less territories and so inevitably re-spawn troops closer to their front line. Though in my mind that is why Badajozhozwoz is such a key strategical position on the map for either side, as that position gives one team a greater ability to push the lines over the other.

I mean as France already has a score advantage and spawn point advantage in terms of options it doesn't make sense to further hinder the uk team at THIS POINT of the campaign. Unless the uk team all want this rule!

Equally, if the rule was a 'must' it wouldn't work for obvious reasons (inability to re-act to new threats behind lines etc) however as the rule says 'may' also I think it gives each team far too many re-spawn options as they could spawn with their group OR in any fort they control. I think it leaves far to many unknown options for us to consider each week with regard to trying to hold lines during troop movements.

If an attacking force has a pyrhric victory then that should hurt them on the map too as with the current system, it does (as long as the losing side wipes out enough units )

[33rdKincaid]

Don't really like 7.2, I get why its good for the winning side of the campaign but it makes it almost impossible for the side already losing, to be continually pushed from the place they just lost despite having worked hard to kill as many of that group as they can.

I would guess this idea comes from the fact that the losing side of the campaign has less territories and so inevitably re-spawn troops closer to their front line. Though in my mind that is why Badajozhozwoz is such a key strategical position on the map for either side, as that position gives one team a greater ability to push the lines over the other.

I mean as France already has a score advantage and spawn point advantage in terms of options it doesn't make sense to further hinder the uk team at THIS POINT of the campaign. Unless the uk team all want this rule!

Equally, if the rule was a 'must' it wouldn't work for obvious reasons (inability to re-act to new threats behind lines etc) however as the rule says 'may' also I think it gives each team far too many re-spawn options as they could spawn with their group OR in any fort they control. I think it leaves far to many unknown options for us to consider each week with regard to trying to hold lines during troop movements.

If an attacking force has a pyrhric victory then that should hurt them on the map too as with the current system, it does (as long as the losing side wipes out enough units )

Originally the idea came from thoughts that the fact that unit casualties would take a turn to respawn and then a further turn or two to actually reach combat again with the rest of their sign-up ( a potential 3 weeks!), all because they lost one round of commander battle. I suggested the rule out of a desire to perhaps strike a happy medium between maintaining fse map strategy and player satisfaction so they would only take a week out max, unless their army has been cut-off from a friendly fort of course!

As you say if the rule were a 'must' it would not work, so if it were tried out it would be 'may' to allow for more options. It's also worth mentioning that in following weeks I will get the respawn locations of those troops who are in time for the end-of-turn update, so you won't have to make your move trying to weigh up all the potential places they may respawn as you had to do this week.

I agree that a significant change like this does have the potential to imbalance things but I'm unsure that this would always be to the detriment of the 'losing' side. I'm also eager to see if the rule encourages more 'retreats' as if the defenders about to lose can still maintain a presence in the map they can try to prevent too much loss of territory and fight again after probably only taking 1 turn out.

 As this campaign is largely a test I would still like to pursue this rule change to see what affect it has map wise, but the one thing we can be certain of is that both teams will be able to play with all their members more as I'm sure they'll wish to. Others please do present your opinion as if their is significant opposition to putting this rule in of course we won't!

[33rdKincaid]

Just to update everyone we won't be going ahead with the rule change just yet; we'll use this turns respawns as an opportunity to see how this rule feels and then later test out the altered rule so we have some comparison!

There is however one rule which we have added to resolve any stalemates that may occur during matches, if anyone has any issues with this rule do let me know and it can be altered slightly one way or another:

5.8 - In the event of a prolonged period (10-15mins) of neither attackers or defenders engaging their opponent the admin may advise that the attackers need to start engaging or be forced to retreat. The only exception to this rule is if the match involves multiple servers, in which case the attackers can choose to stall for time if other servers are suitably engaged.

[33rdKincaid]

Just bumping to let anyone who is potentially interesting in joining know that we have an opening to fill in for the following units on UK:

UK, I Corps, 1st Division
1x Infantry Battalion (6 players)
1x Cavalry Squadron (2 players)
1x Artillery Battery (2 players)

Just let me know if you wish to take part for the remainder of the current campaign with these units - at present in the troops table on the map thread they are all listed with 54th tags.

[GonZo1]

Name: Gonzo
Intended in-game name: Pedro Miguel
Steam ID: Thought a link might be easier https://steamcommunity.com/id/_GonZo1
Class: Line or lights.
Faction: Portugal please.

[33rdKincaid]

Name: Gonzo
Intended in-game name: Pedro Miguel
Steam ID: Thought a link might be easier https://steamcommunity.com/id/_GonZo1
Class: Line or lights.
Faction: Portugal please.

Accepted - will assist the 92nd with filling in for the above sign-ups, Welcome!

[33rdKincaid]

Just bumping to let anyone who is potentially interesting in joining know that we have an opening to fill in for the following units on UK:

UK, I Corps, 1st Division
1x Infantry Battalion (6 players)
1x Cavalry Squadron (2 players)
1x Artillery Battery (2 players)

Just let me know if you wish to take part for the remainder of the current campaign with these units - at present in the troops table on the map thread they are all listed with 54th tags.