Unit Stats

After our MP game on Sunday we had a fairly long talk about troop stats (the values in columns X to AH of the OOB.csv)

I was unaware how much lower or higher values here were combined with the base experience (column X) to reduce or increase the final calculation.

I have recently rewritten the 1815 and Peninsular OOBs using highly variable stats and maybe that is wrong and we're going to get some skewed troop behaviours.

It strikes me that we might want to just set all these values to the same number for every unit, and just raise or lower a couple of values based on what historic evidence we have.

Example: set ALL values for Close / Open / Edged / Firearm / Marksmanship / Horsemanship / Surgeon to a base 4.

INFANTRY

French get an increase to 5 for Close Open and Horsemanship
The better French light infantry battalions get an increase to 5 for Firearm
Russians and Highlanders get an increase to 5 for Edged
British get an increase to 5 for Firearm and Marksmanship
The best British light infantry battalions get the Marksmanship stat further raised to 6
Spanish, 1806 Prussians/German states and 1807 Russians get a decrease to 3 for Close, Open and Horsemanship
Russians get a decrease to 3 for Firearm

CAVALRY

ARTILLERY

(would welcome input here)

...and so on.

Thoughts?

I think variability is a good thing in general so long as it is not too skewed. It makes the battles interesting in that we never know if a particular battalion or brigade will do as well as we hope or will surpass our expectations. If we know ahead of time that one side or the other has troops superior to its opponent, it makes battlefield surprises much less likely.

When I create OOBs I try to find references on how well a regiment performed during a campaign of specific battle. If they did well, I increase their stats. If they did poorly, I decrease them. This kind of information is easier to find for French and British units than for the other armies, but even so it affords the opportunity to keep players from having any really good idea what they are facing.