Battle of the River Peene, 2016-02-13, 20:00 GMT, 15:00 EST

This scenario requires a minimum of 2 experienced players for the Swedes or alternatively 3-5 people for the swedes.
The French requires a minimum of 4 players but preferably 5.
So in total around 6-10 people.

You'll need this in order to play the scenario:
Swedish Intervention 1.12
Swedish Maps and Scenarios

To install the Swedish Maps and Scenarios, simply download the archive and then drag and drop the contents from the archive into your mods folder.

Does this sound doable? Also please give me a time that's good for you.

You can either just pick a day and time (we usually play Fridays, Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays at about 20:00 UK time) or put up a Doodle Poll offering several dates and times and see which gets the preference of most players.

I find that designing a scenario that needs more than 8 players is often hard to schedule.

Did you contact Kevin about your large sprite texture files? I think they need compressing or reducing in bits from 32 to 16 for your mod to be playable on the average/older computer.

In the meantime, sign up so I know how many will approximately be there.

Sign up for which day and time?

It's in the title, 2016-02-13, 20:00 GMT, 15:00 EST.

That time slot might be taken by a campaign game. What we could do is schedule a campaign game and if again we do not get enough players we could play this game instead?

Sure.

I have downloaded the mod and the fix.

Look forward to playing soon.

Thx Jeanathan

No problem Morsey, I'm only happy to have the community be apart of this.

Six of us tried the Swedish mod last night and it works well. The new sprites are very nice. We had some issues with bad lag and freezes but testing the mod on a different map gave a very smooth fast game so the mod itself was not the culprit.

I hope we can get a full game in with the new Swedes very soon.

Yes indeed it must have been the connection of the players, I later tested the mod with Andrew and Doran seperately both playing my scenario and it worked each time. No big lag issues or anything.

I hope you have changed the OOB's, Jeanathan, to not have the cavalry spread out in infantry brigades. Otherwise there will be major issues with the cavalry balance.

The game is on tonight, use this teamspeak because the KS one is down:
5.249.157.159:10000
Password: War1815

Fixed the password.

Can not connect says the password is wrong

This was an excellent game although it was a shame to see the Swedes lose their debut full battle. I'll say again that the sprites look great - the uniform colours are perfect. A flag variant or two would be good but I am fine with the existing flag. I mentioned Reb Bugler on the NSD forums as a skilled flag-maker. If you approach him I expect he'd be happy to make you a few.

A few observations that I think you are already aware of Jeanathan:

1) Very big units. I always do my best to avoid battalions over about 700 - 750 men because the game runs out of representational sprites at the lower sprite ratios and these battalions then have an invisible set of extra men that add to firepower and melee strength. There's no way to counter them except by an opposing big battalion. I think it was Valory's(?) brigade of Gratien's division that had these. I think both could be split into a left and right wing.

For different reasons very strong cavalry units become unstoppable. I think this may be why the French cavalry ran amok last night. They had 2 units of nearly 300 men. I would suggest splitting these in the OOB as two troops or companies.

2) Very small units. The game cannot very well handle cavalry squadrons of below about 100 men since their combat ratio vs your average battalion is 1:4 or 1:5 and they begin to have very little combat effect. Obviously they can still threaten and add support bonuses but players will want to use them in combat as well. I always beef up weak squadrons by adding a few men from other squadrons or combine them into another unit which I give a designation such as "3rd Dragoons (1st/2nd Sqdns)". I feel that's a reasonable approach as very small squadrons may have ridden and charged alongside other ones for this very reason. Likewise infantry units begin to lose effect below about 200 men. I think about 150 is as small as I regularly go and that is only for the special rifle-armed British Peninsular independent 5th/60th units which can hang back behind or beside a firing line and use their longer range. Regular "battalions" below about 200 just give the AI the same pathing problems as a big unit and are not robust enough to stay in the firing line long.

3) Couriers. We saw a lot of couriers not vanishing after their messages were delivered. Do you just use a single courier per side and have him set as the commander of a separate corps?

4) Infantry skirmishers. On the French side these would be deployed by the AI when I issued a brigade-level formation that used them such as attack columns or line screened by skirmishers but they refused to skirmish when directly ordered to by direct command, so something is not working quite right there.

5) OOB. I notice that viewing this in Excel, column L is the wrong column. It's headed up "OOBMOD" which is a redundant column carried over from the Gettysburg game. Delete the cell L1 and let Excel shift all the rest of the row 1 cells to the left. Then your other columns will be headed correctly. I wonder if that might cause some odd behaviour in the game?

6) Dutch, Nassau and Spanish infantry in French service should not have the Brown Bess. I would  give the first two the Charleville and the Spanish the Austrian Infanteriegewehr 1798 to best represent the Spanish musket.

7) Try using non-British sprites for the Spanish cavalry. I think the 1806 Prussian dragoons would be the best fit for their horse and dragoons and some of the French hussars for their light cavalry, though according to Nafziger the Division of the North had only horse and dragoon regiments. I can offer assistance with the spellings and nomenclature for the Spanish if you need any. I use Austrian guns for Spanish. The British 6pdrs are too good.

For balance purposes I think all the foreign troops in French service are rated too highly. Knock everything down by 1 experience (in some cases by 2!). The Spanish at 5s are way too high I don't know enough of the Swedes how their ratings should be but going with 4s and 5s as you have done seems reasonable.

I didn't see anything else odd, though the Swedish artillery seemed very powerful! I think it was winning the long gun-duel that took the first 30 mins of the game

Some pics:

Artillery duel



French battalion moves up


Pushing out of the lower forested valley into the open


"A fearsome volley"


Dutch infantry and Italian cavalry pass the enemy first line and an abandoned gun


"Brave but foolish hussars"


The fight against the Swedish second position


The Swedes withdraw

Digby wrote:This was an excellent game although it was a shame to see the Swedes lose their debut full battle.

Thank you for the game, however, the scenario wasn't exactly designed to be fair from the Swedish point of view. And the balancing being wrong (I knew it was very off from before) didn't exactly help Sweden win a debut victory.

Digby wrote: A flag variant or two would be good but I am fine with the existing flag. I mentioned Reb Bugler on the NSD forums as a skilled flag-maker. If you approach him I expect he'd be happy to make you a few.

I have approached him and he is currently very busy with Quatre Bras about to be released and such, he wouldn't be able to help me until that was done.

Digby wrote:A few observations that I think you are already aware of Jeanathan:

I certainly am.

Digby wrote:Very big units. I always do my best to avoid battalions over about 700 - 750 men because the game runs out of representational sprites at the lower sprite ratios and these battalions then have an invisible set of extra men that add to firepower and melee strength. There's no way to counter them except by an opposing big battalion. I think it was Valory's(?) brigade of Gratien's division that had these. I think both could be split into a left and right wing.

For different reasons very strong cavalry units become unstoppable. I think this may be why the French cavalry ran amok last night. They had 2 units of nearly 300 men. I would suggest splitting these in the OOB as two troops or companies.

Attempting to recreate extreme historical realism is a tough thing when you face the issue of implementing such an idea into a rusty old game engine. But, I shall attempt to balance realism with gameplay in the future. However, there are certain things I will not do and such I cannot be persuaded to change certain things that you have suggested me to do. The very big units may not be one of them. I will certainly look over splitting the battalions into two detachments.

Digby wrote:Very small units. The game cannot very well handle cavalry squadrons of below about 100 men since their combat ratio vs your average battalion is 1:4 or 1:5 and they begin to have very little combat effect. Obviously they can still threaten and add support bonuses but players will want to use them in combat as well. I always beef up weak squadrons by adding a few men from other squadrons or combine them into another unit which I give a designation such as "3rd Dragoons (1st/2nd Sqdns)". I feel that's a reasonable approach as very small squadrons may have ridden and charged alongside other ones for this very reason. Likewise infantry units begin to lose effect below about 200 men. I think about 150 is as small as I regularly go and that is only for the special rifle-armed British Peninsular independent 5th/60th units which can hang back behind or beside a firing line and use their longer range. Regular "battalions" below about 200 just give the AI the same pathing problems as a big unit and are not robust enough to stay in the firing line long.

As I said above, I can be persuaded to change things, but this is one of them I feel I cannot be persuaded to change. I feel it is perfectly fine to have squadrons below 100 men. The Imperial Gendarmes, which have 94 elite cavalry men are meant to represent the elite of each french army during that time when it came to cavalry, just the same as the french guard was to display military tradition and professionalism in each army. The Imperial Gendarmes have excellent stats and can very well handle themselves in a fight against an infantry battalion of well over 600 men.

I am aware that the smaller a unit is, the worse it will do in melee. But I think your estimate might be pushing it. I have tested all unit formations before releasing my updates, and the small squadrons can certainly handle infantry battalions of well over 600-800 men.
Heck, I've even seen some chasseurs a cheval route a battalion of 1000 men.

I can be persuaded of making units smaller, but not bigger.

Digby wrote:Couriers. We saw a lot of couriers not vanishing after their messages were delivered. Do you just use a single courier per side and have him set as the commander of a separate corps?

To answer this is just as hard for me. The couriers are set up proper in the scenario oob. You can have a look yourself if you wish. My guess is that the couriers were affected by either the map or multiplayer synchronization. It could be a local problem such as the couriers being set wrong in the Scenario OOB, but I highly doubt that since I copied the courier text from the KS scenario OOB's.

I am just as puzzled as you are.

Digby wrote:Infantry skirmishers. On the French side these would be deployed by the AI when I issued a brigade-level formation that used them such as attack columns or line screened by skirmishers but they refused to skirmish when directly ordered to by direct command, so something is not working quite right there.

This could very well be a problem with the scenario OOB. Maybe some of the AI drills were set wrong or something similiar in that manner. My skirmishers could skirmish just fine with the button press. I can have a lookover at the scenario OOB later.

Digby wrote:5) OOB. I notice that viewing this in Excel, column L is the wrong column. It's headed up "OOBMOD" which is a redundant column carried over from the Gettysburg game. Delete the cell L1 and let Excel shift all the rest of the row 1 cells to the left. Then your other columns will be headed correctly. I wonder if that might cause some odd behaviour in the game?

Again, I don't use excel, and whenever I open my OOB's in excel or any KS OOB in excel, the top which selects what it modifies, such as "NAME1, NAME2" Are not in seperate columns, they all occupy the same A Column, that's why I use Garnier's OOB editor instead. The "OOBMOD" shouldn't effect the game in any way. I've tested the game over 100 times by now and the "OOBMOD" doesn't do anything to affect the game. There is however an issue when using Garnier's OOB editor and that is that everything that has to do with unit skills needs to be shifted by one column to the left. This will cause issues with unit balancing and I am working on fixing it for the next version.

Digby wrote:6) Dutch, Nassau and Spanish infantry in French service should not have the Brown Bess. I would give the first two the Charleville and the Spanish the Austrian Infanteriegewehr 1798 to best represent the Spanish musket.

Noted. I will replace it with appropriate historical muskets.

Digby wrote:7) Try using non-British sprites for the Spanish cavalry. I think the 1806 Prussian dragoons would be the best fit for their horse and dragoons and some of the French hussars for their light cavalry, though according to Nafziger the Division of the North had only horse and dragoon regiments. I can offer assistance with the spellings and nomenclature for the Spanish if you need any. I use Austrian guns for Spanish. The British 6pdrs are too good.

Mike already told me about some historical inaccuracy when it came to the Dutch sprites. I will have a look over at all the Franco-Allied sprites in the foreseeable future.

Digby wrote: For balance purposes I think all the foreign troops in French service are rated too highly. Knock everything down by 1 experience (in some cases by 2!). The Spanish at 5s are way too high I don't know enough of the Swedes how their ratings should be but going with 4s and 5s as you have done seems reasonable.

Again, this is a result of poor balancing on my part and will be fixed in the next version.

I would avoid Garnier's editor. It is designed for Gettysburg and as such may be the cause of your problems. You seeing the stats off set by one entry is part of this. I write my OOBs by hand, most frequently basing them off either a stock OOB or a KS one.

Here is the main SI OOB with the heading of column L corrected. If you'd like any assistance with the French foreign contingent ratings or sprites, just ask, happy to help.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/45euoza3h4e4bp2/OOB_SB_KS_SI_NAP_Sweden_1807_msc.csv?dl=0

Thank you. I'll try and use excel from now on, even though I already knew that Garnier's OOB Editor was designed for Gettysburg, it still works for waterloo. The problem is that the names for each column aren't correct, and such you have to just remind yourself which column you're editing.

Also, I'd like your answer on the other questions which I answered.

I will also keep in mind to ask for your assistance if I would need it in the future, thank you for the game and the suggestions as well as this excel file.

I didn't answer most of your points because you have made your own decisions (which is fine) and I didn't want to press the issue as I didn't want to sound like I was creating an unwarranted argument. The issue we have found that small cavalry squadrons are not effective units is based on years of playing the Nap mod for GB and making design and developmental changes. We have literally 100s of games in our experience and generally speaking, on the balance of things, its correct. A small squadron may well be okay vs a big battalion in a few tests but on the whole we've found them unsatisfactory - as much as large (say over 250 men) squadrons are equally unsatisfactory.

I wouldn't say that SoW had a "rusty old game engine"; yes, its a few years old but the WL AI has brand new elements and is quite effective at doing what it does, and compared to what else is out there on the market it is the best we have. It just handles its calculations in certain ways and you have to be aware of that while designing OOBs and scenarios and rating troop capabilities.

The couriers and skirmishers issues can probably be resolved if Kevin steps in to advise. We've played on that map many times and never seen this behaviour so I doubt the map is causing it.

To make your Spanish battalions look a little more ragged try using the SP_FUS_2, SP_FUS_3, SP_FUS_4, etc sprite classes.