New Required Mod For Napoleon SOW Games

Martin,

I agree, the British did use line for attack (although not exclusively- columns might be used to protect flanks [similar to L'Order mixte]). IMO once within several hundred yards of the enemy, line formation should be encouraged in our games with columns only on flnks or in second line.

In Philip Hythornwaite's book on British Nap Inf Tactics ( I have no doubt you have this one Martin:D ) he does suggest that company columns were likely to be used commonly for manouvre and, even at Waterloo, behind the ridge the Brit 3rd div was formed in Company columns when not in combat.

Yes, I will try the full sepia look. Sorry about the wait though fellas.

Kevin, having re-read the above mentioned book, I would suggest Keeping the Brits to column of companies and not Divs. Spacing them so that they could smoothly adopt line or double line would be useful IMHO.

I don't know about anyone else but I dislike the brigade in column formation (marching closely side by side) that is used commonly in the game. I expect brigades would only use this when very distant from the enemy such as in reserve. They do allow for easy (prob too easy) shepherding of our brigades in closely packed areas but I wonder if this is in itself discouraging us from deploying on a more realistically wider frontage or depth. Maybe using the new formations might just spread us about a bit more, like we were finding seems to help control.

 

Grog wrote:I would suggest Keeping the Brits to column of companies and not Divs. Spacing them so that they could smoothly adopt line or double line would be useful IMHO.

Done.

Yes, that 4-wide column should really only be used on roads. A column of companies (or half companies) would be used to manouver on the open battlefield because it allowed a fairly fast response to form into other formations. A road column had no capability to form into anything else at all in a reasonable time. The issues with changing formation are something that SoW totally fails to address. I'd like to see a representation of the proper delays and complex issues involved with deploying close order troops in a future PC wargame. Even a simple function such as the unit frozen in place with a timer on it giving how long until it was formed in the new formation and facing would do - and if charged or shot at during this timer countdown it would be at an extreme disadvantage both morale and combat wise.

The duration of the timer could be affected in either direction a little by the troops training, ability of the commander and the terrain it was in but it would be mostly a fixed time due to the drill books that nation used and what formation it was changing from and to.

I haven't even installed and tried the new formations yet Kevin, but are the companies of the British column spaced apart behind each other in a similar amount to the French column of divisions? They should be, if not a little more.

Of course there's built-in code that the sprites use to change formation which we don't seem able to control and while some formations may look good, the way the game code interprets the movement of sprites from one formation to another can have unexpected and visually unfortunate effects, like the 3-wide road column did, so some formations that look really nice may just not be usable.

Had a look through the new updates files but have not played it yet. A few remarks.

1) Please can you use rifles.csv from the Peninsular Mod as I fixed a few anomalies in the weapon ranges and some of the reload times, misfire %ages and the minimum ranges which were strangely high. Your rifles.csv has a typo on the French Pattern Musketoon line, though its not one that will cause an error.

2) Please use my artillery.csv as I fixed all the broken ammo type %ages. Yours looks like Gunships original which he admits is incorrect.

3) In Unitglobal do you mind if I make a few changes? I'd like to order the entries to the way they are in the Peninsular version as these are much easier to find when you're building OOBs and I'm doing that a lot ATM. I can see you've gone for an alphabetical listing but since the sprite names don't actually follow any sensible alphabetical naming convention its pretty confusing. I also find it much easier to have France and her allies all at the top, then the Coalition nations below - again, makes skimming through it when making OOBs faster.

The French need a _sk version of all their infantry except Oldguard as at times, they all could skirmish. This should be reflected in the toolbar of course as well. In fact we probably should have a _sk version of every single infantry type just so that we have that functionality in reserve in case someone wants to write a specific or unusual scenario.

What's the _1ST designation used for after some infantry? Do all inf need it maybe?

Your British Rifles designations are reversed from the convention used elsewhere, okay if I make it so it uses the same convention as the others?

You've given a _Sk version of the British centre companies (which possibly don't need it) but not given one for the Light Infantry (who definitely do!)

A number of Spanish infantry need _Sk versions (Miquelets and Cacadores especially).

Portuguese Cacadores need a close order formation; they didn't always skirmish.

The Swiss inf should have a _Sk version.

A better sprite for the Nassau Light Infantry would be the Wurttemberg Lights, a much closer uniform pattern than British rifles.

We probably need a major overhaul to fit in sufficient new sprite sets for the 1815 campaign, the current list is lacking and sadly we can't use Gunships sprite pack at all as its not compressed.

Wurttemburg Jager and Light Inf need a non _Sk version and the current _Sk version uses the opposite naming convention like the British rifles.

You mentioned Italian troops but I don't see them in the list.

LOL, I'd never noticed we had a Hungarian fusilier sprite in shako in the game. Its never used in any OOB, strangely enough. For German fusiliers in shako we could use the Westphalian sprite; close enough at the graphics resolutions the game uses.

A new version KS Napoleon Mod has been uploaded. It is version 1.620. The links are in the first post of the thread. Numerous changes have been made. The four oobs included in the mod all have at least one battalion that can go out and skirmish. There are now 4 distinct types of cavalry, light, (hussars, chasseurs), medium, (dragoons), heavy, (cuirassiers, life guards) and lanciers, (ulans). Heavy cavalry doles out the most punishment, while light cavalry is the fastest. The cavalry is now less aggressive. The AI will tend to use it later rather than earlier in the fight. As before, the only real defense infantry has against them is to form a square.

Many thanks Uncle Billy.

Looking forward to trying this.

Martin (J)

Thanks Kevin,

Sounds good, looking forward to trying it out.