Napoleonic HITS Game March 28-29

Well. . .

It wasn't really a mass charge straight into melee.

I sent my far right brigade (not in Martin's picture) to the flank and put them on ai control and all out attack. That brigade didn't do terribly well but it didn't melee at all (I don't think).

The far left brigade was also not tc'd and had all out attack orders. Of course, the brigade commander was tc'd until I got within 100 yards and then un tc'd and given the all out attack stance.

The middle brigade (my best troops) commander was tc'd the whole time. Their task was to drive off the guns. They got to them first (each battalion tc'd and running). Martin brought up a brigade to protect the guns, so I sent in three battalions to melee and used the remaining battalions to capture the guns. Once the guns were captured, there was a lot of auto-charging going on, so indeed I did have a few 2 on 1 melees.

But I didn't go in using the classic old GCM "column charge" of my whole division straight to melee.

I haven't watched the reply, so I'm not sure how many melees there were. But I'm pretty sure my right brigade didn't melee at all and my left brigade didn't melee very much if any. But no doubt, in the fight in front of the guns, my level 7 experience battalions were heavily engaged in melee. Mostly as a result of Martin (who really had no choice) moving right up into his guns to defend them.

I have always said that the battalions should have much stronger firepower at close range. And agree with Martin 100% that closing to melee should be VERY costly. So much so that commanders would be hesitant to do so.

Earlier in the battle, I snuck a skirmish battalion up to Martin's gun's flank. I didn't want to charge them, but after firing for a few minutes and only killing 2 gun crew members from less than 50 yards and with Martin moving up support, I was forced to charge the guns.

I have an issue with that. The battalion was taking no fire and couldn't hit squat.

My opinion is that by increasing the firepower of the battalions, we might actually get battles with fewer casualties, as commanders would think twice about closing on an enemy line.

Would someone please post a link to the replay.

There's not a lot of evidence of assault columns stopping and changing into line to fight it out with musket fire even though it was part of the tactical doctrine. The French armies of 06-07 may have been able to do so but I doubt later armies could. Even the Old Guard at Waterloo failed in the attempt.

I guess I don't see the repeated use of the same battalions in a melee as the big problem. Historically, when a battalion retreated its neighbors fell back too. That doesn't happen in the game, so repeated charges force that result. To be sure, it's not an elegant solution, but breaking a line has no real consequences in our battles as it did in real life.

We could use historic numbers of artillery but supply them only with enough ammo to fire continuously for an hour. That would encourage players to keep a reserve of guns handy. Those could be brought up to counter an infantry assault. I think one of the Martin's suggested this sometime ago.

Sunday's Replay: Replay

thanks for the replay - as expected - lots of maneuvering...

one question however (having been part of the briefing...):

the initial plan for the French called for MTG staying down south - using his guns (dunno how well this worked with all the forests there..) and Martin with Pepe moving up north and doing an attack from the north...
Pepe apparently was soon engaged and was thus unable to proceed - why did Martin stay up north? - did the CinC specifically tell him to do so? or did he fail to tell him NOT to do so?
there must have been a reason for being all alone up there...

only interested to see the reasons behind such situations - since I wasn't part of it - unfortunately..

Sorry Mark, I take back what I said. As I noted before my view wasn't great due to the shape of the hill and of course 1st person view musket smoke. I did see a small part of what occurred on my far left and I agree there seemed to be a good bit of firing going on there. My Polish brigade which was in my centre vanished literally within 5 minutes so I feel sure this was a result of melees. I don't think the mod will cause a brigade to break that fast from firepower and I did see a few white flags of surrender over there. The right of the line where I was (I needed to maintain comms with my C-in-C who was in that direction) did see some longer firefights.

I didn't lose that many guns. I lost my Polish horse battery entirely (6 guns) but your Jager attack had lost me 4 of those which I recaptured but that makes them fairly useless. My German 6pdr battery on my right got all its 6 guns away and the 8-gun French 12pdr battery lost 4 guns, so in fact your division assault only cost me 4 guns.

Problem is it cost me all but 1 of my battalions!

All my brigades were on AI control but I TCd a few individual battalions nearest me to try and hold the Russian hordes back long enough to get one-and-a-half batteries away. My battery commanders were TC'd of course.

But whoa, Exp 7 Russians? Yikes! That seems a bit high. I rate Young Guard as 7s, surely the Russian bog-standard infantry shouldn't be that good. Average French infantry should be 5s and the better regts, voltigeurs and grenadiers 6s. Poorer French should be 4s. In that scheme Russian infantry should be about 5 and their grenadiers 6.

I don't think your Jager firepower was out of kilter Mark, Russian Jagers were pretty bad and were not proper light troops. I'm even dubious about them being given a skirmish capability in our mod. They were often used by commanders as just ordinary infantry and the ideal light infantry requirements of being quick witted, having independent thought and able to make decisions fast were traits the Russian infantry was not known for.

I would prefer it if skirmish formations could not charge guns, or in fact charge anything, it simply was not what they were for. Kevin, can a limitation be put in for sk formation or are we stuck with what the game engine offers?

But I think we're all agreed that the ability to close quickly to a defenders position without great loss is a major issue. What factors can be adjusted to try to compensate this?

Move speed.
Musket firepower.
Fatigue?
Not sure what else.

If artillery is still not giving us historic casualty rates then I think we do need more guns. Our OOBs never seem to have a corps reserve of artillery - maybe they should.

The exhaustion from melee idea that Matt suggested seems like it may be worth a test game or two.

Good discussion. I hope it gets us somewhere.

But whoa, Exp 7 Russians? Yikes! That seems a bit high.

The Russian Guard were on the field yesterday.

Troops in skirmish formation can't charge and can't capture guns. They have to be placed in line or column of division to do so.

We tried the exhaustion experiment very early on. The problem we found was that both the losing and winning side suffer equally. The losers not only have large casualties, but also can't really participate in further fighting for some time. As I recall, it was felt to be unfair due to the fact that the melee should never have occurred in the first place. There's no practical way to avoid one. This also came up with cavalry attacks. We tried making it so cavalry became very exhausted after one melee. We found that unrealistic because they could not attempt a follow-on charge into another nearby battalion, which was not uncommon historically.

As I said, we just don't have any good way to solve the problem. Hopefully, when the new game comes out we will.

I thought skirmish default troops wouldn't charge because they always formed sk order in combat? I thought the only way to get a sk unit to stick in close order was to put it in square. Perhaps we could ask players not to do this with sk units?

If the guards were then then that explains their psycho-fanaticism! Just my luck to be facing them

The GCM gents seem to have made a way to get things to work. Could we at least try it?

 We tried the exhaustion experiment very early on. The problem we found was that both the losing and winning side suffer equally. The losers not only have large casualties, but also can't really participate in further fighting for some time.

I don't see how this is equal.  The losers are pretty much destroyed in any case, not sure how it matters if they are destroyed and exhausted.   One issue however is that in the GCM we can melee and leave the melee at a time of our choosing.   This doesn't work in HITS due to courier holocaust....

 it was felt to be unfair due to the fact that the melee should never have occurred in the first place. 

Huh?  This seems like the throw out the baby with the bath water type thing.   Melee destroys regiments, let's fix it, no because melee's shouldn't happen anyway, so why bother?  

 We tried making it so cavalry became very exhausted after one melee. 

Can you control exhaustion for melee separately for various unit types?   The thing with this is that if the setting were the same for both infantry and cavalry, i still think it would work even with longer melee times.   For this whole thing to work, you not only have to increase fatigue for melee, you have to lengthen the melee as well otherwise the increase in fatigue won't matter.  However, as cavalry against infantry out of square is such an imbalanced melee, the melee should end sooner than say two relatively equal infantry battalions in melee.  So while the cavalry will take more fatigue than it does now, it shouldn't reach exhausted before it breaks the infantry and thus could charge again.   I actually like this for cavalry because it would probably allow a cavalry squadron to break at most 2 infantry battalions out of line.  After that  if it charged again, the infantry would most likely defeat it.   This sort of helps the issue of a cavalry squadron running a brigade down because the AI won't put it in square.    Further, cavalry should be tired after a charge/melee.   Yes, i agree it should be able to follow up, but how many times before the horses are blown?   


Perhaps the new game will solve the problem, perhaps it won't.   Or perhaps there isn't a problem at all really and if outnumbered enough, you should expect to be run over.  


As for French deploying into line before making contact, it happened all the time....You even cited yourself an example of them trying to do so at Waterloo.  The fact that they broke before doing so doesn't change the fact that they were in the process of doing so.   'nuff said on this as this is an entirely different conversation that itself could go on for days....


Matt

We don't (thank goodness) have the same mass charge problems that the GCM once had.

Garnier did a lot to correct the problem he caused.  I know. . . Seal gets blamed for it, but really it was Garnier who started the mass column charge malady which drove Digby (and others) from GCM play back in the day.

He completely removed the morale proximity bonus units give to each other.
He greatly reduced the morale bonus officers give units.
He slowed movement speeds of road columns while within 300 yards of an enemy unit.
He greatly increased the fatigue rate of Melee.
He slowed down the recovery rate of exhausted units.

And it worked.  GCM games do not have near the mass charges they once did.  And when someone tries one, they usually fail.

Currently in KS NAP games, even though it's painful, it's possible to run battalions right up to guns and charge them without the battalions breaking.

The following are my suggestions:

1. Slow the speed of battalions within 300 yards of enemy units, not just road columns but all formations.  If possible, make them unable to run while within 300 yards.  This will cause the battalions to suffer more from canister and muskets while attacking frontally.

2. Increase the fatigue penalty for running.  This will keep commanders from running their troops up to the 300 yards threshold and thus cause battalions to take even more fire while closing.

3. Greatly decrease the firing accuracy of fatigued units.  I know in the stock game, there is hardly any accuracy penalty for being tired or exhausted.  In the GCM, exhausted regiments are pretty much useless.  They can't hit anything.  Garnier starts increasing the accuracy penalty beginning with tired.  I'm not sure if the ks nap mod does this.

I don't agree with the assessment of French attacking doctrine/tactics. In fact, the French were noted by their contemporaries for their musketry, ranking far above other belligerent powers (including the British). It was found that the French musket had a longer effective range than the Brown Bess, for example.

The changes in the French doctrine had more to do with quality, IE they opened fire at a longer range and generally fired "independently," aka at will. Once a battalion opens fire, especially 1810-15 French line infantry, it is almost impossible to return them to maneuvers. Either the attacker or defender retreats, but neither side tended to be able to move.

Early French tactics allowed for the French to pressure a relatively sedentary opposing battle line, and once a weakness was found attack with a bunch of differing moving parts. Specifically they used combined arms in the form of Artillery and cavalry. Allies commanders could not ascertain the French objective when you have entire Divisions moving around in smaller supporting parts moving zig-zag across the battlefield.

French were instructed to form in line before closing to musketry range; this is evidenced by contemporary documentation from Napoleon, Davout, and Ney, amongst others.


Going back to the battle of Sunday; I watched the fight from Herr's ridge and was actively sending reports to MJP, who I sort of delegated command of the Southern end of the field whilst I stayed in the center. Mark's flank brigades worked their way around the rear of the French battleline, it seemed from afar that the Polish routed and were then continuously fired on from the rear/flank so they surrendered. I couldn't make it out for sure but the battle lasted a lot longer than a column charge would have suggested. Additionally, Mark seemed in much better shape haha

I think our left was not extended as far as proper and we got jammed up in the woodline, allowing the French to defend and then exploit a relatively narrower Russian thrust than was initially planned.

I did not want to allow the French to maintain momentum. Attacking early and immediately seemed our best chance to sow confusion and hopefully hit the French as they were preparing to initiate their maneuvers. I think we achieved localized successes but were hampered by our inability to extend and the mixture of both southern divisions, thereby destroying command and control. Also, Peppi put up, as per the usual, a very stubborn defense.

Mark had essentially seized the NW heights when I recalled him; he then moved to the far south and repulsed the heavy French thrust.

I found it an enjoyable game. I enjoy being the C in C for the simple reason that I was able to do laundry, eat cookies, talk on the phone all the while winning another major fight.

5-0 baby.

Sorry for all this if people know it - I have no wish to teach granny how to suck eggs, but this discussion seems to indicate a fair bit of confusion over the intended mechanics of the Napoleonic battlefield.

I'm pretty sure the original purpose of the French columns was to allow their poorly trained infantry of the Revolutionary-rabble armies to be able to move coherently using frontages of relatively narrow width instead of the customary lines which required a lot more training.

The additional speed was not the intention. Troops march at the exact same speed whether in column or line, its that a line (or any formation with a longer frontage) has to halt more frequently to dress the formation to keep it coherent and stop it degenerating into an uncontrollable mess: the more men you stand shoulder to shoulder and order to walk forwards the greater the possibility that someone will step out of line, be too slow, too quick, stumble, hesitate, etc. Reduce the frontage and increase the depth and more men have to just follow the person in front rather than dictate or control the pace. Once a unit was out of formation it was as good as useless until it reformed, thus linear armies halted their battalions frequently to keep them in good order.

(For the same reason a unit was highly vulnerable when it was changing formation - another facet of black powder warfare SoW ignores).

So columns march at the same speed as lines, but they stand still less often, thus they cover the same distance in less time, but not faster in terms of march pace. Each army's march pace was set out in their drill books and would be cadenced to a drum beat. There would be a faster beat ("pas de charge" in the French case) played as the attackers got very close - but then most armies did the same thing since within the last 50 to 20 yards formation keeping was no longer the main concern - getting through the very lethal short enemy shooting range was.

The French expected their columns to reach an enemy already demoralised from the artillery prep phase and not to have to fight at all; this was a tactical invention from the mind of Napoleon himself (an artilleryman). He theorised that if you could smash up the physical and mental state of the defending troops at the particular point of assault before your own infantry arrived, your infantry need only keep marching on to a loud drum beat and cheers of excitement to put fear into an enemy and make him want to be elsewhere. The French were habitually encouraged to cheer and their officers to also be enthusiastic and be out front waving hats and swords - great for encouraging conscripts but not so good for officer survival.

As Napoleon's wars progressed one of the causes of the decline of the French infantry was the lack of good low-level infantry officers.

The artillery pounding of the chosen assault location was the key - many armies over many years had used artillery to bombard an enemy - but no-one had ever specifically concentrated the fire of many guns onto one location before Napoleon decided to.

The idea (originally) was not to deploy into line but to press on with the bayonet and hope the artillery had done most of the job. However the plan didn't always work so a Plan B was introduced - and by the very early 1800s this was possible as the quality of French infantry training was rising and so Plan B was to halt and form firing line if the artillery hadn't hurt the defenders enough.

The basic recipe though was never for actual melee to happen, either the defender retreated or the attackers halted to shoot. Melees were mostly restricted to small fights around colours, guns and other trophies, or in buildings.

I don't want to be contrarian, but I don't agree at all; I think you find a lot of the French tactics of the 1790's-1800's theorized in the 1760's-80's by the officers of the Ancient Regime, but for various reasons they were not put into practice. I think you are correct in later Napoleonic battles and campaigns, artillery and skirmishers were key and large formations based upon "shock and awe" were utilized.

However, the height of French doctrine saw the army continuously subdividing and reforming, which confused the heck out of the Austrians/Russians/Prussians.



Excuse the rudimentary knowledge of Microsoft paint; but very basically you have the Austrian weakpoint, marked with a red X. You have the Austrians deployed in their three-rank defensive line, assume cannon positioned and cavalry most likely on the flank or in reserve. The French deploy a cloud of skirmishers and then deploy artillery which pepper the Austrian position, which as you suggested is phase 1.

French infantry, marked on my rudimentary map as the various lines advances in column of division or mixed column of line or perhaps in ordre mixed, depending on the terrain. French cavalry, the hollow blue squares, are able to ride through and around the French infantry columns without interruption. Until the French infantry forms they can strike relatively quickly at any exposed targets; though in a long such as this Austrian squares would not be formed or necessary.

The key point is that the French infantry advance independently of each other, and swarm all over the field using the contours of terrain to shield this approaching formations from Austrian field artillery. French writings indicate that a simply rise of 2 feet was enough to ricochet a cannonball over an attacking column. Additionally, the Austrians will have to maintain their entire frontage as they have no idea where the French attackpoint is.

Once within deployment zone of the red X, the French formations will adopt their attack formations, usually line or mixed order. Firepower will force a hole, and cavalry and uncommitted infantry will resolve the issue.

A vast majority of the times it seems that the Defenders did not stand to face the French infantry attack when it was made, so effective French artillery and infantry skirmishers were.

This is at least my basic understanding of how Napoleons army achieved its greatest success. After 1807 with the loss of so many officers and NCO's, the French were not able to maintain the precise timing necessary to use these tactics to a successful conclusion. The various wars of the Revolution were numerous but did not employ the manpower or induce the casualties of 1805-07: those veterans lost, as well as the ever increasing army size gradually reduced the combat effectiveness of the French.


This is my opinion and understanding. I could be wrong

Yeah, i more agree with Mark than Martin on this.  I too think Martin's assessment is really only true from 1809 on.  Prior to that, the French armies has superior tactical/grand tactical doctrine which allowed them to pretty easily defeat their adversaries in what are, compared to the later battles, much less bloody affairs.    I think it comes down to the French ability to operate on multiple axis of advance and maneuver both at a divisional level and grand tactical level while the linear contemporary armies simply could/did not.   I also think this difference goes a long way to explaining why the armies that just sat purely only the defensive tended to fare best against the French as it's hard to use maneuver to your advantage if your opponent isn't moving.....

After this early period, France's enemies changed their organization and tactics along with the deterioration of France's lower officers as Martin points out and now with armies of rough parity, the only way to win was through brute force or, in fewer cases, through superior strategic manuever (an area where Napoleon was still better than his contemporaries).  But no longer could the French win simply by being superior at the tactical level.