Ne Plus Ultra - 18th century Europe campaign idea

For a while now I've been thinking about arranging another campaign. It would be quite casual and might only produce SoW battles occasionally but the main focus would be roleplaying, communication and managing your small state. It wouldn't supplant either our regular Napoleonic campaign or our usual planned scenarios that Kevin mainly provides.

I was aged 14 when I got into wargaming. Prior to that age I had played with toy soldiers and even begun making up crude rules of my own. I remember well the weekend in the early 1970s that wargames and I collided for the first time. I was staying at a friends house and his mother brought him home some books from the library. One of them was Charles Grant's "The Wargame". I borrowed it and was completely hooked. There were lines and columns of immaculately painted toy soldiers (Grant used Charles Stadden 30mm plastics) marching heroically across a huge green-painted wargame table with model hills, houses, trees, rivers... the book had a complete set of fairly simple rules for mid-18th century warfare in Europe (loosely based around the time of the Seven Years war) but above all it had accounts of campaign battles including maps, rules, larger-than-life characters... I was drawn in and have never really let go of this era of military history or wargaming. I have gamed in almost every period from ancients to sci-fi but the colourful, formal and character-studded 18th century will always be where I feel most at home.

Taking what we have in Scourge of War, there are two suitable mods. The Blenheim mod (1700-1710) and the Fontenoy mod (War of the Austrian Succession 1740-1748). Both work well although I feel the range of units in the Blenheim mod is better and that mod uses battalion guns which is an unusual feature that is implemented very well. I feel there is a weakness in the cavalry and melee system in the Blenheim mod and we would need to do some work on it. If nothing else the flags are fantastic as are the unit names, nationalities, and so on.

The element of Charles Grants book I'd like to pick up on was the basis of his campaigns. He and his son played the leaders of two fictional states, the Vereinigte Frei Stadt (based on Prussian practice) and the Grand Duchy of Lorraine (with French inspiration) and its the idea of fictional minor states led by colourful Prince-Generals where I'm interested.

Every player would be his own boss and be the ruler of a minor state; Elector, Prince, Duke, Archbishop, Count. Every leader is autocratic and rules his small nation as he sees fit. Each state will have a treasury, a population, perhaps an economy (divided into rural and industrial bases), a small standing army, a capital city, other key towns (some fortified) and so on. Each turn would be a month. Players can write letters to other rulers which are sent via diplomats, raise troops (or disband them if the expense is too great!), implement taxes, engage in treaties with other states and go to war. Wars of the mid 18th century were limited and armies were small and professional for the most part, though mercenaries were very common. Field battles were rare, sieges were much more common. Small or unbalanced encounters I would resolve by arbitration and a dice roll or two.

I'm toying with the idea that each state is represented by a single SoW 5m x 5m battle map (one produced by Norbsoft) and these are linked by generic terrain provided by Garnier's random maps. This gives players an opportunity to know what the countryside is like in the nation they are attacking or defending. I am not yet certain this is how I'll go, but its an idea that appeals. I may also use Malcolm Macallum's maps, principally north and south Germany, France and the Low Countries. These would either need a hex-grid overlay or a system of march distances.

I'd like to see how many people would be interested in this. I forsee there being much to involve players without it being focussed on the battles, so non computer gamers are all welcome!

count me in for any campaign stuff and any SOW battles that come up!

I'm very tempted as well.

DaveB

Sounds rather like the "Imagi-Nations" group somewhere on the Internet!  I'm in for some small German principality; say, "Grafschaft of Zolms" located sort of in Hesse-Darmstadt, just downriver (the River Lahn, if it  matters) from Wetzlar, with two line battalions and one light battalion of foot and one light horse regiment of - say - three squadrons and one medium horse of four squadrons plus one 8-pounder battery of 4 guns and 2 howitzers a pied and one 4-pounder battery of 4 guns a cheval?  Graf von und zu, Prinz of Zolms.  His arms would be:  on a shield d'or, a lion rampant in azure.  If we're in 1710, he would be Wilhelm Maurice; if 1742, Frederick Wilhelm.  I have photos of the current castle and a number of other items of interest.  So, I suppose that I'm saying, "Count me in, Mr. Digby!!!!"  

This was the era of the dynastic wars, without the widespread devastation of either the Wars of Religion which preceeded them or the wars of national pride and survival - Napoleonic - which succeeded them. Very civilized, limited "collateral damage" ... will we have assassins? Espionage?

I intend this to be pretty open ended. Limitations are going to be players imaginations. Metagaming is welcomed. There will be 2 scores that will track the success of each principality: Honour which is a measure of how the nobility and upper classes of the state perceive their ruler and Economy which represents the general well-being of the nations civic and fiscal affairs and is more a measure of how the peasants feel and how the economy is performing. Economy will be slightly linked to Honour but not directly. Honour is not linked at all to Economy.

Economy will control your tax income and its affected too by the harvest.

Honour among other things will affect the reliability of your officer corps and so will directly affect the quality and responses of your army on campaign and in battles.

A high Honour score should be one of the goals of every prince.

Individual states will not be powerful. Coalitions and treaties should play a significant role in the campaign.

The forces you describe Ike are fairly close to what I intend initially. Each state will probably start with a weak division. Army size will be limited by population size.

There's only going to be a very limited number of troop types:

Militia (part-time soldiers, good for garrison and policing duties, not reliable in battle)
Musketeers/Fusiliers/Foot (line infantry, the jack of all trades of the army)
Grenadiers (elite infantry, expensive)
Guards/Garde (the best infantry, very expensive, rare)
Freikorps/Jager/Fantassins/Croats/Light Infantry (irregular light infantry, rare, not really fit for open areas on the battlefield, good for forests, hills and scouting)
Battalions are about 600 men, Freikorps and Militia battalions are 400

Dragoons (useful for scouting as well as in battle, also useful for policing, armed with sword and musket, can dismount to fight as either close order or skirmish infantry)
Horse/Cuirassiers (the majority mounted arm, armed with sword and pistols, charges at the trot)
Garde (usually horse, but can be dragoons, never hussars)
Hussars (rare, only available to some states and in small numbers. These are semi-irregulars, mostly skirmish, armed with sabre and musketoon)
Cavalry squadrons are about 150 men

Battalion Guns (3pdrs or robinettes - one per regiment/3 per brigade max)
Field Guns (6pdrs or sakers - in companies of 4)
Heavy guns (12pdrs or culverins, or 10pdr howitzers - in companies of 4)
Siege Guns (map use only, not seen on the battlefield)
Gallopers (3pdrs attached to cavalry - rare - in companies of 2 guns)
Artillery companies are about 100 men

Sounds interesting and I would be interested.

I don't think my last post was communicated; how will battles be resolved? If we are all King's I would not want to fight in another King's army. Furthermore, would this be a HITS campaign?

Well, Mark, we can have alliances aimed at placing one of us on the Imperial Throne ... actually at least two factions with that aim and each with a different candidate. If it's War of the Austrian Succession, the issue is can a woman inherit the Imperial crown in the face of tradition and the Salic Law? The 18th Century had European wars about every two or three years, starting with Queen Anne's War in '02 and going into the start of the Napoleonic Wars in Italy in '92. How about the War of Jenkin's Ear?

Mark - Yes, KS HITS campaign. Battles resolved using the Blenheim mod but I will need to modify it as it has a few rough edges. We would consider the time period to be the 1750s but for those across the pond who may not be familiar with the "Age of Reason" in Europe, things were extremely similar socially and culturally in the 1770s in the American Colonies so some knowledge of the way men's minds worked in the 1775-1783 period will be a good solid background.

There's a screenshot of the mod above. Minor or highly unbalanced battles would be adjudicated (to get around one of the principal issues with the Peninsular campaign).

There are no kings in the game, things here are set in small states well below those exalted heights! 'Elector' is the highest title which is a political label for a ruler who has the right to vote in the electoral and judicial process of the Holy Roman Empire. Most rulers of these small states were Dukes. Elector - Duke - Archbishop - Bishop - the generic terms for these gentlemen was 'prince' as in 'a prince of the Holy Roman Empire'. But please don't be concerned, kings and emperors all had coalitions in this period and their armies fought in alliances, it was a major element of statecraft. Kings and emperors rarely took the field of battle however. Your persona as the head of state need not be your general.

For example the King of France (arguably thought to be the most powerful and honourable man in the world) in the late 1770s and early 1780s happily sent significant numbers of troops and generals to be allied with a rebellious republic that had extremely weak financial credentials. It just suited his purpose to do so because it was a way to weaken Britain.

These coalitions were not always solid and workable. To shoehorn this style of warfare into the SoW OOB framework I envisage either an army commander who is not played and each Prince has his own corps, or a level lower with an NPC corps commander and each prince's army is an SoW division. There may be but need not be a formal chain of command as well - so 2 divisions belonging to two separate states might not agree on the best way to conduct a battle and neither commander can pull rank! I think this is where one of the most fun parts of the game could be.

I see this as a game of role-playing and political and diplomatic intrigue with war as merely one among many tools of statecraft and the military side of things not being the only path to getting the upper hand over others!

Ike - and others! - this is a fictional world. It'll borrow much background from our own and may even use maps of Europe (I haven't decided yet) so the wars and machinations of these small states will be considered "petty" by such people as the King in Prussia, the Emperor of Austria and the Kings of France and Britain. We won't be addressing huge questions like who is the Holy Roman Emperor but nonetheless the aim is to make your own small state "more powerful" but you can approach that in a number of ways.

Koolio!!  I await the details with bated breath.  

An additional source of campaign mechanics and similar ideas is (or at least, was) Battlegames edited by Henry Hyde from somewhere in the vast dark reaches of the UK. I subscribed for several early years - I think I have issues #1 - 11 or somefink like that - and there are many ideas therein, especially in the articles about his "Wars of the Faltenian Succession", set in the Lace Wars era, sounding in generalities rather like what you have in mind. If it is still in publication, the address was Battlegames, Ltd., 17 Granville Road, Hove BN3, East Sussex. But I suspect it is defunct as his website is gone. Just a thought of potential help.

Sounds great, Martin

Count me in.

I could help out with map hexes and any GUI graphics stuff. One or two portraits shouldn't be a prob, either.

Mike

Thanks Mike.

Don't worry about portraits at this stage. A complete overhaul of the Blenheim and Fontenoy mods needs to be done. I shall probably combine them into one and use the Napoleonic mod as a base but then cut parts out of it and add in early 18th C bits from the other mods, so all this is going to be in a future a way yet. I shall make it a generic early-18thC KS Mod in the same way that Martin's Reisswitz mod is a generic late-19thC mod. The two will complement each other and I'll combine all the Fontenoy and Blenheim sprites into it as well as the new Spanish Napoleonic artillery sprites by Pom because they have those cool ox-teams. The mod will in addition need some kind of Jager and Croat/Grenzer sprites for the freikorps units and some dismounted dragoons.

Mike, I would be interested if you would be willing to overlay a hex grid onto one of Malcolm Macallum's maps. I'm not even sure I'll use those because they will be a constant reminder to players of the real world and that may or may not have an undesirable impact. I may go with a set of fully fictional maps if I can find some, or software that generates them.

Anyone got any ideas on that side of things?

I'm very interested in playing such a game. I like the autonomy you offer.

Please count me in.

Bump.

Any new thoughts or progress?

Not really but I definitely plan to go ahead with this. I need to find the time to build a new mod. I will use the KS Nap mod as it's base then add-in/take-away parts relevant to the 18th C and much stuff from both the Fontenoy and Blenheim mods.

Fontenoy and Blenheim sprites will be used (lo-res in the case of Fontenoy).

The mod won't be a depiction of any specific historical battle, war or even era. Like Martin James' Reisswitz mod set in a vague 1860s Europe, mine will be set in a vague 1730s-1750s Europe and be built specifically for the fictional campaign.

I also need a map, preferably fictional but it could also be the Rhineland/Low Countries region as well in a suitably old style. I haven't decided if I'll use a hex grid yet. I probably will as these make things much easier.

Malcolm Macallum's maps are still high on my list. A person who has the graphical skills and tools to overlay a hex grid on one or more of those would be much appreciated and would earn an extra training rank for some of his troops!

Thank you for developing this appealing campaign!

Another question: is it possible to mod the color of the troop uniforms?

Modifying existing sprites is more work that its worth. Adding your own sprites would be a better choice.

Although this is a work of fiction I would like it to be based on mid-18thC European practice so no shakos, no pea-jackets, no stars and bars coat colours etc!

There is a very wide range of uniform colours available in the two mods and you can probably get close to what you want as long as you're happy with the base of early to mid 18th C fashions.

What did you have in mind?

Well, mostly not blue uniforms for me. LOL

I like white, a lot, although that wasn't really a choice back then either.

Regardless of what color I draw, I am hopeful that the different sides have a distinct color, just as the British were known for red, the French for blue and the Russians green. I know these are sweeping generalizations. Regardless, even if you assigned me blue uniforms, none of it would be a deal-breaker. The entire concept is very exciting and I am looking forward to it.

There are both white and pale grey uniforms available. The French wore white throughout this period and the Austrians pale grey. This would allow you to have a Confederate-y looking army in a fictional state on either the west or east bank of the Rhine!

I'd like to see all armies wear a variety of colours, although each state might have a base common colour, there would always be variations and of course mercenary units (like Swiss, etc) would fight for you wearing their own uniforms.

Mt preference is that players use the general uniform theme of the nation they are geographically close to, so French/white, Austrian/grey, Dutch and Prussian/blue, Bavarian/cornflower blue, Hanover/red, etc. There are some very bizarre yellow and grass-green coated infantry as well.

For me one of the more fun elements of this period in a HITS SoW game is seeing a bunch of white or blue-coated troops in the distance and not knowing if they're friendly or enemy.

French:
http://www.album.atomic-systems.com/showPic.php/22426/FrenchAdvance.jpg

Confederates Austrians:
http://www.album.atomic-systems.com/showPic.php/22426/8-SbergSmoke2.jpg

Grey-coated cavalry and artillery:
http://www.album.atomic-systems.com/showPic.php/22426/screen0055.jpg

I rather like the color of the French uniforms (white).

I'm getting excited about this. I think I might surprise a few people with my skills as an earl. :-)  (Dude, those be some mad Earling skillz, as we'd say in Cali.)

Anything I can do to help, let me know.

-Neal

Can I be the Duchy of Grand Fenwick?




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared

Fenwick does not sound terribly Germanic or French, or Dutch. How about Vjenwijk (Dutch), La Fonique (French) Vernwik (German)? Or you could stick with Fenwick and claim to be some kind of European coastal state affiliated to the Island Kingdom of Albion (my fictional campaign version of Britain) which would give you red as your base infantry coat colour.

People are free to send in other requests for state names, ruler names, general's names and their basic army uniform colours (guards, grenadiers, musketeers, militia, light inf, horse, dragoons, hussars, arty, etc).

There are two basic infantry fashions. Long coats that are not turned back at the skirts or slightly shorter coats with turnbacks. Base coat colours tend to be white, grey, red, dark blue and cornflower blue. There's even grass green and yellow ones which are rather harsh on the eyes, but will definitely get you noticed! There are various colours of facings and stockings or breeches, usually white or buff. Hats are all tricornes except for grenadiers which have tall mitre styles usually, or sometimes bearskins which at this period tend to be in the fashion of Austrian or Spanish hats rather than the plumper French Imperial Guard hats. There's one highlander infantry sprite set. I'll probably limit these to mercenaries unless someone wants a Scottish-inspired state.

Cavalry wear long coats or turnbacked shorter ones as the infantry and headgear is a tricorne, a steel 'pot' helmet (some cuirassiers) or a soft hat like a forage cap (usually dragoons). Cavalry coat colours tend to be sourced from the same range of colours as infantry (white/grey/red/blue). There's a dark green one as well. We have a dragoon set in red (dismounted version as well) and two hussar sets both in blue. There are a couple of horse grenadier sets which would make nice horse guards, both are red.

Artillery coats are often red or dark blue, with white stockings or buff breeches. These too can be long coats or turnbacked shorter coats. There's one set in cornflower blue coats with red guns which looks pretty.

Artillery pieces tend to be sandy-yellow, grey, red, light grey-blue or dark blue but as these are fixed by what sprite coat colour you choose the choice is really about coat colour or gun colour, not both. A nice feature of the Blenheim mod is it depicts different gun types, so there's 3 pdr, 6 pdr, 12 pdr and howitzer sprites. You can look at the enemy guns through your spyglass and make out what weight of cannon he's pointing at you!

As you'll begin to gather from this the unitglobal.csv of the mod will have to allow for every single sprite to be available for both sides so we have complete flexibility on who is the 'red' army and who is the 'blue'.

This may cause me a technical hitch later on. For example, I think if we had three armies, A B and C, and A fought B in one campaign, and A also fought C, this would mean that A would need to be the 'blue' side (Union) and B and C both the 'red' side (Confederate). But if B then fought C we'd have the problem of both sides being 'red'. I'd have to be able to switch one of them to the 'blue' team. I assume this is possible but it would mean that toolbar graphics and portraits would also have to be completely generic or if specific portraits were wanted, they'd have to be duplicated for both red and blue and occupy the same x-y co-ordinates on the portraits image file.

In effect we'd have just one set of generals images pages but they would be named twice; one set called 'CS_Portraits_LVLn.dds' and the other 'US_Portraits_LVLn.dds'. Likewise all the flags would have to be duplicated exactly to be available to both sides.

I hope I'm making myself clear!

I'd like a Scottish inspired state! lol

I need to think on this. Too bad you can't have multiple factions fighting!!! A 4 sided battle would be interesting to say the least.

We are limited to the blue and red sides of course but you could have an alliance where one side had been bought off and didn't fight, or just manoeuvred around and made threatening gestures but didn't get involved.

Now if only NSD would add in friendly fire... there could be no limits to the backstabbing and skulduggery!