16. Battle of Miranda - 26th October 1808

We have a battle this turn, the Spanish army of the Asturias is attacking Soult's II Corps at Miranda.

Doodle here, please sign up

Sam and Ike, can you make this weekend? If either cannot, please issue orders to be followed in your absence.

Strategic location:


Tactical Map:


The town of Miranda del Ebro is shown as Pedrosa on the map and indicated by two objectives. The westernmost one is the town itself and the location of the main French administration complex of the area. The easternmost one is the supply depot of Marechal Soult's II Corps which is encamped in and about the town.

The important road junction here controls communications from Espinosa (and then Santander) to the NW, Vitoria (and the French border) to the N, Zaragosa and ultimately Barcelona to the SW and Burgos and Madrid to the S. This location is one of the most critical places in Spain right now and French II Corps has just completed a long process of reorganisation and replacement including even its commander - Marechal Bessieres has returned to France and Soult has taken his place. Weakened battalions, squadrons and batteries have received replacements and some brigades and divisions have been entirely replaced.

All this activity has been keenly watched from the foothills to the west of town by Spanish cavalry officers with reports being sent daily up the Espinosa road. Towards the end of October the strong French cavalry detachments allocated to II Corps were sent west and north in response for increasingly excited reports by locals that an army was advancing. Sure enough the French cavalry encountered none other than their old opponents General Acevedo's Army of the Asturias. The men of General Mouton's division relished the news and their chance to get even after their defeat at San Milan in the summer.

The French cavalry was numerous and professional and slowed the enemy advance for several days during which time reports were sent back to Soult that gave him a good idea of the numbers, strengths and weaknesses of the enemy moving upon him.

Soult has held his ground. Over the last weeks he has even had the Miranda position fortified with earthworks.

A battle is certain.

Is either tributary of the Ebro fordable at any point before their confluence? Downstream from that point I assume it to be crossable only at bridges; is that likewise correct. Should this be "Third Miranda"?

I will not be available but will post orders in the appropriate thread.

Maréchal Soult, being absent from your post in this crucial time is not what one expects from a Maréchal de France. Miranda must be held.

If you have ever seen my battlefield performance, you would applaud my absence, Sire.

(In addition, Real Lifetm, prevents me from attending battles most week ends.)

All rivers are fordable, please ignore the blue colour denoting some of them. I was planning to have these are unfordable but the difficulties with the map and my limited graphics tools defeated me.

Thank you, sir. Compliments of an Arctic cold front unexpectedly reaching into the wilds of Texas, I am available on Saturday and perhaps Sunday; depends upon the duration of the freezing rain. I'll doodle.

I'm in the process of learning SOW and getting the mods to work. Progress was made yesterday and I watched in joy as a sandbox division of french marched against the british. It slowly turned to horror as I realized how much harder it is to play with the camera chained to you, and no idea how to order at a higher command level than a brigade commander (having just finished the cavalry tutorial).

I'm pretty sure I'd be a HUGE liability to whichever side had me at this point. In related news, I may be set up for a game by the weekend.

Besides the tutorials are there any suggestions on improving your game play beyond trial and error?

Dave

Dave wrote:Besides the tutorials are there any suggestions on improving your game play beyond trial and error?

There is no magic formula, everyone learns this by trial and error. It would be best to concentrate on just learning how to move individual battalions around as a brigade commander. For your first few MP games at least, you'll have your hands full just doing that. Fighting at ground level isn't easy. If you end the battle with some units still able to fight you can consider that a major personal victory. If you don't, you'll get a new, fresh brigade the next week. We butcher a lot of pixels in this game. Only once you become comfortable with that aspect of the game would it be time to move up to division command.

Set up a division vs division attack or defend sandbox game with you taking a brigade. The AI will handle the rest of the units. That will be the quickest way to learn the fundamentals.

The asturians secret weapon: Fabada Asturiana.

The Battle of Miranda MP game is going to be played on Saturday at 20:00 GMT - our usual time and the day the most people can attend. Please invite anyone you think would enjoy it, there are numerous commands on both sides.

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Dave -

You will be very welcome to join us for the campaign battle this weekend. You can take a brigade on either side at your choice. I suggest an infantry brigade for your first command.

If you find moving units around at HITS height is awkward, try using the updated keyboard.csv linked to below.

There's two main things added/changed in the HITS keyboard.csv, and both were done purely because of the HITS and couriers environment.

One changes uses the INS/HOME/PGUP - DEL/END/PGDN keys to move your general avatar around the battlefield. With a 2 yards camera distance HITS gives you basically what is a first person environment and with this view moving your general around the battle landscape can be frustrating, especially in hilly terrain where the odd perspective can make clicking on a specific point tricky.

INS = GoTo Me - makes your avatar the selected unit.
HOME = Advance 300 yards. Repeated pressing keeps your avatar advancing to a point 300 yards distant.
PG UP = Run. Your general avatar gallops forwards.
DEL = Turn 22.5 deg left. If your avatar is stationary he turns his horse to the left. If you are moving he will turn 22.5deg left when he stops.
END = Stop. Avatar comes to a halt.
PG DN = Turn 22.5 deg right. If your avatar is stationary he turns his horse to the right. If you are moving he will turn 22.5deg right when he stops.

The other change is the arrow keys. These are set to navigate through the order of battle. /\ moves you up one level in the command hierarchy, \/ moves you down one level, < and > move you back and forwards one unit or commander at that level. For example if you are a division commander in a corps level game and you start with your general avatar as the selected unit and hit > repeatedly you will cycle through all the other division commanders in the corps. Return to your avatar as the selected unit and hit \/ and you descend one command level in the hierarchy to your first brigade. Hitting > again will then cycle you through all your brigades and battery commanders and end with your division supply wagon (damn useful when you lose wagons as you often do). Hitting \/ at any brigade commander followed by > then lets you cycle through the regiments in that brigade.

I find this setup very easy to use and it lets you select one of your brigade commanders or regiments even if they are a mile away over a hill. Once a unit is selected I pull up the command map 'N' key and double click on a place I want that unit to march to. I then issue them a formation order and whether or not to use road march. Giving them orders this way still results in couriers being sent but its a great way to keep control of your division even in dense wooded or hilly terrain.

The HITS csv is here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nhbrdl0lo1rq07g/keyboard.csv?dl=0

The file goes in your SoW - Gettysburg\Work folder.

Backup/protect the default file first by renaming it to something like keyboardbackup.csv so that if anything goes wrong you don't lose the original Norbsoft file.

I'll try to attend tomorrow. I'll show up early and see if I can get the various tech hurdles overcome.

Dave

I will be in attendance tonight

Looking forward to it

Mike

It'll be good to see you Mike. Cuesta's sweaty bulk is always missed.

Had we a catapult, we could launch Cuesta at one of the fortresses and demolish it in a single stroke.

Or corrupt an entire city with terrible diseases.

Either way, we're winners.

Senor,
I am merely 'big boned'. A firm embrace would soon convince you that surrounding this extended ribcage is layer of firm steak for which a prize bull would be proud.

Cuesta

I didn't enter into doodle, but I will try to get there....

Congratulations to the French on their spectacular victory yesterday, I was pleased to see the French have such a good win after a string of unhappy defeats elsewhere.

Soult remains in control of Miranda and the Spanish must retreat back the way they have come.

There is a caveat however and this is because of a weird and alarming bug that gripped much of the Spanish troops in the game. I'm told it is a game bug though in all my years of playing I've not seen it before. About 1/3 of all the Spanish infantry did not fighting at all. They didn't shoot or melee and the ones I commanded wouldn't charge either. There were just no combat animations playing. I had a square that stood still in formation while it was steadily chopped up and one battalion lay on the ground and let a French battalion run along the lines stabbing everyone in the backside before it routed.

I haven't decided how I'll tackle this but I will have to reinstate some Spanish losses and also increase the French losses. I need to come up with a fair formula to apply. It seems that Kevin's, Ron's and Pepe's divisions were okay. Sam and I had the problems and the scores from Kevin's post battle analysis program clearly show no kills for several brigades.

Certainly the last unit that the portugese regiment of doom (miranda garrison) charged did no fighting. To the best of my knowledge the others that charged them sequentially seemed to have fighting animations. Though there was enough of a crush of sprite I may not have seen it otherwise.

Towards the end of the melee I caught a LOT of spanish couriers ordering regiments to move. I don't know the default behaviour of units well enough to know whether this would affect them not shooting/charging automatically at certain distances.

Daveb

Some of the Units in the center were most assuredly fighting. As many line regiments of Bonet's first brigade were taking casualties in square and could do nothing in response until the huge glob of Spanish cavalry was dealt with.

After action report incoming.

The 2 infantry brigades of San Roman just caused zero casualties on the enemy, I believe all battalions were routed by the end.

Pepe - I am thinking it was just San Roman's division that was affected, although Sam did say some of his infantry were having the same problem.

It looks like Pepe, Ron and Kevin's boys were okay - the gamedump definitely shows the brigades of these commands caused some casualties. I have no issue with the Spanish cavalry and artillery - it performed below par but was at least functioning.

Mark87 has kindly e-mailed me to mention what he saw of the anomalous behaviour of the fighting yesterday with some suggested correction to the casualties. That helps me quite a bit to reach a fair decision over this.

Would everyone else who experienced this 'non-fighting' bug please advise me by e-mail and what you think the corrected casualty levels might fairly and reasonably be?

I have another suggestion as well...

I am going to just run it up the flagpole to see who salutes it.

What is your reaction to replaying the game?

I am partly expecting to have a 2nd 'French Revolution' on my hands but it is one option I want to explore.

I don't know how the 2nd division troops would have performed. They were not engaged against any infantry. Nearly all their casualties were from artillery. One battalion was charged twice by cavalry and drove them off while taking only a few casualties. They were in square of course. Most of the problems with the Spanish performance likely had to do with the very low stats of the brigade commanders and the battalions themselves.

I don' have any complain myself, my division seemed to follow my orders, they were extremly slow and inefficient but they shot and charged. Some units did OK, and those that didn't cause any casualty probably were shaken before firing.
I was annoyed with my battery, as the guns never seemed to face to the direction I ordered them. they were so slow to fire that Sam asked me what was going on with them.

I don't know Kevin San Roman's troops are supposed to be the pick of the Spanish Army.