BLENHEIM MOD (with Blenheim Grenadiers add-on)

Here http://www.norbsoftdev.net/forum/modifications/63998-blenheim-mod you can find the new mod I made for SOW:Gettysburg

alessillo

Brilliant Alessillo. Thanks!

I'll download this tomorrow with keen anticipation!

Martin (J)

Thanks. Been waiting a while for this.

Just been looking at this. Excellent work! A wide array of flags and uniforms, and some interesting map tweaks to fit with Blenheim, Chiari etc.

I'd like to try one of these soon in MP. It will be a challenge managing all that cavalry.

Martin (J)

Sounds excellent. If possible, I will include it in the Scenario Generator.
How many different OOBs are there and which would fit well into the SG?
KR

There are 5 different OOB:
OOB_SB_Blenheim
OOB_SB_Luzzara
OOB_SB_Schellenberg
OOB_SB_Chiari
OOB_SB_Fictional

I think that for a balanced battle the best are Blenheim and Luzzara, then the Fictional OOB;

I launched the Blenheim scenario to take a look. I am impressed, Alessillo. Nice work on the sprites, flags, menus, music and map adjustements!

My download from mega worked. With the download from mediafire I couldnt unzip one of the files and crashed or had strange graphics.
I noticed a lot of units have a secondary flag with a white cross on white background - on both sides. Is that correct?
Some cavalry brigades are enormous, with like 14+ squadrons to control ;-)
Some infantry brigades have 1 embedded artillery gun. Is the idea to take that gun to the frontline?
Musket range might be a bit large with 150yards - historically. But no prob for me.
Has anyone tried MP yet?

Many Thanks!

I'm sorry for the problems with mediafire, when I uploaded the file  on mediafire I tested the download five times and worked very well, so I don't know what is the problem.
The white flags with the white cross are the colonel flags of the french regiment, I saw them in the book of Robert Hall,


Cavalry is a challenge for the players and I think that in multiplayer sholud be even more challenging.
The embedded artillery guns are the battalion guns or regimental guns, they were attached to the infantry units and were mobile enough to be manhandled about the battlefield.
About the musket range I decided to make 150yards to give an advantage to infantry against cavalry, cavalry in this game must be at 100 yards to charge the enemy, so an infantry unit has 50 yards of space to fire at the enemy before the charge.

Ah thanks for clarifying the flags. I'm not familiar with these flags anyway, so I often have to look at the toolbar to find out which side a unit is from . It was just a bit confusing to see all those white flags around. Just an idea: Maybe the Colonels flags could be made half the size?
And it is correct, that also some Habsburg Allied Units carry this Colonels flag?

In the Blenheim order of battle 3 dutch regiments, Hirzel, Stuerler and Rechteren had a white colonel flags similar to the french flag; so I used the same colonel flag. About the demension of the flags, as you can see in the page of the book, they were of the same size, but if you has problem with all those white flags you can edit the order of battle and delete them leaving only the regimental flags.

ok thanks, I think I will do that :-)

If you place them all as the second flag entry the royal colour would be on top so you would not notice them so much.

IIRC the Colonels flag is already the second flag but the second flag is not always behind the first.
I think it's related to the point of view if you see the second flag behind or above the first flag.

I've had a few games with this now including an MP game with Kevin last night. I'm liking this mod more and more but I can see a few areas that might be looked at. Alessillo - I hope you don't mind some discussion on this?

1) Speed of armies. Movement is slow and I appreciate it was historically that way. I can see a clear design need for these armies to move slower than Napoleonic armies but in my view the movement is very slow. Perhaps all troops could be speeded up a small amount?

2) Infantry columns. I can't help but think the 4-wide road column doesn't look quite right when marching across country. I think that a wider column would look better, something equivalent to column of companies about 8 to 10 sprites wide.

3) No morale penalty from being attacked in flank or rear (firing and melee). I think this needs to be included and a very effective mechanism can be directly ported over from the KS nap mod.

4) There's been some discussion on the NSD forum about cav v inf melees but I think these could be altered to make the game feel less like an all-or-nothing deal for cavalry that charges infantry.

5) The troops seem to become exhausted extremely fast. I can't think this is right. I'd like to investigate this. I know there's experienced modders on the NSD forums who use the exhausted category to reduce casualty rates and stop melees but I feel there's a better solution to these two issues.

6) Non-professional artillery. Can this be represented in some way?

First of all thank you for your comment and feedback,

1) in my opinion this is one of the most important aspect of the mod, with this slow speed the player can't do what is possible to do with soldiers of others periods; in the famous march to the Danube Marlborough's infantry covered 300 miles in 42 days, 7,1 miles a day; they did not use cadenced step while marching in the battlefield. One consequence of the slow speed of the armies is the absence of meeting engagements in 14 years of war, there was only one battle of this type, the battle of Oudenaarde. The armies were always aware of the movements of the enemy and the slow speed prevented the commanders to surprise the enemy: almost all battles were fought on prepared battlefields, with entrenchements, fortifications and so on. With this mod the sandbox "Hunt them down" battle type is almost ahistorical.

2) I didn't find descriptions of the column formation in this period so I used the 4-wide road column.

3) Here I left all as in the original game

4) The result of a melee between infantry and cavalry is the consequence of the numbers of the two units, in a melee between 600 soldiers against 100 or 120 horsemen, the latter will be defeated and will surrender, I tried in many ways to do that cavalry should retreat from melee before 60/70 percent losses, with no result. Cavalry is the limit of the mod, in the Marlbourian period cavalry avoided to charge infantry, the role of the cavalry was quite simply to neutralise the enemy cavalry, anything more was a bonus for the commander. So when I was making the mod I've been tempted to give up, but I thought that there is also the multiplayer option in which you are not against the AI.

5) This is a mistery, I altered all values in statetables.csv, but troops soon get exhausted.

6) What do you mean by "non professional artillery"?

Cheers

Thanks for taking the time to reply so quickly.

Yes, the movements of the armies on camapign was slow and on the battlefield as well. I am looking at this more as a gameplay issue where the slowness of the movements effectively makes the maps much bigger. Sandox hunt them down is still a valid game type people will want to play. Even if its not historically correct I think you need to cater for this scenario the where long march distances may be required. I'm not suggesting we speed the troops up to Napoleonic levels of manouverability, just speed them up a little.

I'll look at the cav vs inf issue. I feel sure we can have cav fail to beat infantry yet fall back with fewer losses.

I'll look at exhaustion levels too.

Non-professional artillery is presence of civilian drivers so that once placed, guns in battery could not be moved because the civilians took their horse teams away to safety!

I found an error in drills.csv, now the corrected file it is in Blenheim_V_1_0.zip, no need to download drills.csv.

About the artillery, probably only the bigger guns could not be moved, 12 - 18 - 24 pound, for example at the battle of Blenheim a battery of English 9 pounders was moved across the Nebel stream.
There is a way to simulate an immobile gun, but only in a single player scenario: you must use the "lockunit" and the "tcommon" commands in battlescript.csv, the command "lockunit" disables player's ability to control the gun, while "tcommon" command disables the control of the AI, the result is that the guns remain in the same place and they can only be rotated but not moved.
If you add the following lines at the start of battlescript.csv of the Luzzara_French scenario, you have all non-professional french artillery
17:00:00 PM,RAF_690,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_690,tcommon,,,,,,

17:00:00 PM,RAF_691,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_691,tcommon,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_692,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_693,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_694,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_695,lockunit,,,,,,

17:00:00 PM,RAF_696,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_696,tcommon,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_697,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_698,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_699,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_700,lockunit,,,,,,

17:00:00 PM,RAF_703,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_703,tcommon,,,,,,

17:00:00 PM,RAF_704,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_704,tcommon,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_705,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_706,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_707,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_708,lockunit,,,,,,

17:00:00 PM,RAF_709,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_709,tcommon,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_710,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_711,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_712,lockunit,,,,,,
17:00:00 PM,RAF_713,lockunit,,,,,,

Unfortunately in multiplayer, battlescript.csv must be left without commands, so to simulate the fixed guns, like 12, 16, 18 and 24 pounders, you could make a fair agreement between the players and establish that once placed the guns, the players take command of the battery commanders and of the artillery commanders if there are artillery brigades or divisions, and then they do not give any command to the commanders. In this way the guns will remain in the place where they were unlimbered and they will not advance or retreat.

And the Dutch also used mobile guns in their attack on the village of Taviers at the Battle of Ramillies in 1706. I presume these were smaller battalion guns.

It should be mentioned that there was a difference between the Bourbon armies and most of those on the Allied side.  In a number of areas the French were more professional, and this included their artillery arm.

The French raised a regiment in 1670 called the Royal Artillerie.  Battalions had a mix of sub-units, and included companies of cannoniers, together with a larger number of infantry companies, whose primary duty was to protect the guns.  I have not studied this specific aspect, but my guess is that the private soldiers in the infantry companies also provided unskilled labour to the gunners, if the guns were not under immediate threat.

The number of battalions in the regiment varied over time.  5 were available in 1710 for example, and contemporary OOBs normally show that at least one battalion was provided for each major French army.

As well as battle, the battalions also operated the heavy artillery in a siege.  In that case they were normally assisted by another, smaller, regiment called the Royal Bombardiers, which operated mortars.

In  the Succession War, French influence began to spread to the Spanish army, which raised its own battalions along similar lines.  Due to the chaotic state of Spanish affairs however, not all of them lasted long.

Having said all of that, I'm not sure how much difference it should make to treatment of artillery in Alessandro's mod.  One of the major constraints was that, excepting the smaller battalion guns, field artillery and equipage was just so heavy.  However professional they were, the French couldn't overcome physics.

Martin (J)

NEW Blenheim Grenadiers add-on

Here www.mediafire.com/download/1gnaix8e8bd4unz/Blenheim_Grenadiers.zip you find the add-on

This mod add the grenadiers to the Blenheim mod. It replaces the csv files used in Blenheim Mod.
For Multi-Player games, you must delete or rename the Blenheim\Logistics folder.

This mod must be BELOW the Blenheim Mod on the modification screen.

1. English, Austrian, Bavarian, Prussian, Danish, Dutch, Hannoverian and Hessian sprites have been added.

2. OOBs are modified to take advantage of new sprites.

3. In multiplayer you find a new Schellenberg scenario, "MP2 - Battle of the Schellenberg V2", delete the old one in Blenheim\Scenarios because there was an error.

Many thanks alessillo.

Martin (J)

We played a 'Lace Wars' battle yesterday using the Blenheim mod, and set in Spain in 1712. Whilst there are some aspects we want to explore in more detail, the initial impression was that the mod does a good job reflecting battle in the War of the Spanish Succession. There is also a wonderful array of flags and uniforms in Baroque (or is that Rococo?) style.

Well done Alessillo, and thanks for all the loving care which has obviously gone into it.

Martin (J)

With this mod I can't decide if I want to play the French (because they get the coolest flags) or their opponents (because then I get to enjoy all those pretty flags from a distance). It's really a visually stunning mod.

thank you for your comments Martin and Mr. Digby, modding the game has become my hobby, whenever I have a little free time I go to the computer and work on some changes, unfortunately the free time now that school has started (I'm a teacher) will not be much, however I can tell you that the next mods will be about The Zulu and Mahdist war and then The English Civil War, but I will seek the cooperation of other people to have a result in less time compared to the Blenheim mod. I think that you know that making all aspect of a mod is time consuming, I would like to concentrate only on the sprites, while another person makes the oobs, another the scenarios and so on. Last but not least I will constantly update about the state of the mod.

When you reach the ECW, give me a shout. I'd be happy to work on OOBs and scenarios with you.