Thank you for your rapid reply.
Regards
Mike
Campaign Options for Wavre
Re: Campaign Options for Wavre
I have run through my Wavre campaign scenario a few times and I am still tweaking some of the AI behaviour and the exiting of Prussian units headed for Waterloo. The actual Prussian plan was quite subtle and designed so that even if Grouchy was able to impede some Brigades (IVth and IInd) taking the more Southerly route to Plancenoit this could be compensated by additional ones from Thielmann’s III Corps taking a more Northerly route to Smohain to reinforce Wellington’s left flank. Thielmann’s defence of Wavre would require less strength if Grouchy was already fighting Bulow and Pirch. I am still fine tuning when it would be fair to have the Prussians start doing this.
I am starting to think about how to pass the outcomes from Wavre into the play of Waterloo without giving the French (human) player too much foreknowledge of what is coming his way.
It was not such a problem for QB and Ligny as the battles took place less than one hour by courier apart and there was only one significant movement between the two battles. Historically Napoleon and Ney were not that efficient at telling each other what was happening but they could have done more if they had chosen to do so. Thus in my scenarios I have designed it so the French side plays QB for 3 hours and then sends D’Erlons newly arrived Corps to the Western map edge. The player then switches to Ligny and plays that for 3 hours before having to make a decision about how many of d’Erlons units will be used at Ligny and whether that will leave enough for the situation at QB when that game is resumed. These movements between battles are effected by the player placing units on particular objective locations which triggers them to freeze and vanish to simulate them disappearing back out of sight or, for example, by sending D’Erlons to a location on the QB map which causes one of his divisions to reappear there as if he has recalled them.
Historically 6 x Prussian Infantry Brigades participated in the fighting at Waterloo plus 3 x Cavalry Brigades and elements of 2 Reserve Corps Artillery units. There were another 4 x Brigade sized units approaching and probably within sight of the French which no doubt helped to cause the French collapse into sauve qui peu.
In tests of my Wavre scenarios Grouchy’s force has had more success in slowing down the later stream of Prussian reinforcements rather than the first few Brigades.
I am using a notional time delay of about 4 hours between a unit exiting the Wavre map and being available at the Waterloo map edge. Thus I can design it so the French player can run through until about 3pm at Waterloo as this is 4 hours after my Wavre scenario’s 11am start. Thereafter events at Wavre will have almost a real time impact on what will happen at Waterloo. I think I will just have to settle for the player doing 1 hour sessions at each battle and having to trigger a series of objective locations that will either advance or delay the arrival of the next few Prussian units. I can rationalise this as the French being able to observe the Prussians advancing from beyond the map edge as of course Napoleon did with Bulow’s Corps.
Another approach of course would be for different players to take the parts of Napoleon, Grouchy, Wellington and Blucher but I have not looked at what is needed for multiplayer scenarios so will have to leave that for another day
Unfortunately I will need to make quite a few changes before I can publish these scenarios as the mechanism I use to transfer casualties between battles is a tool I did not develop myself and requires quite a lot of casualty report manipulation to work with the standard report files. I suspect I might have to produce a series of scenarios based on 2 or 3 different levels of previous victory and let players use those based on their victory levels rather than the actual casualty results. Even using the carry forward tool I have to apply some smoothing so that whole units do not disappear or become impracticably weak. For example in a recent Ligny trial the Prussians lost about 50 guns including some complete batteries. I smoothed this result by making all the participating Prussian batteries have 6 rather than 8 guns but with full manpower for each gun for their next battle.
As before if anyone wants to give comment or suggestions on my design ideas I would be interested to consider them.
Regards
Mike
I am starting to think about how to pass the outcomes from Wavre into the play of Waterloo without giving the French (human) player too much foreknowledge of what is coming his way.
It was not such a problem for QB and Ligny as the battles took place less than one hour by courier apart and there was only one significant movement between the two battles. Historically Napoleon and Ney were not that efficient at telling each other what was happening but they could have done more if they had chosen to do so. Thus in my scenarios I have designed it so the French side plays QB for 3 hours and then sends D’Erlons newly arrived Corps to the Western map edge. The player then switches to Ligny and plays that for 3 hours before having to make a decision about how many of d’Erlons units will be used at Ligny and whether that will leave enough for the situation at QB when that game is resumed. These movements between battles are effected by the player placing units on particular objective locations which triggers them to freeze and vanish to simulate them disappearing back out of sight or, for example, by sending D’Erlons to a location on the QB map which causes one of his divisions to reappear there as if he has recalled them.
Historically 6 x Prussian Infantry Brigades participated in the fighting at Waterloo plus 3 x Cavalry Brigades and elements of 2 Reserve Corps Artillery units. There were another 4 x Brigade sized units approaching and probably within sight of the French which no doubt helped to cause the French collapse into sauve qui peu.
In tests of my Wavre scenarios Grouchy’s force has had more success in slowing down the later stream of Prussian reinforcements rather than the first few Brigades.
I am using a notional time delay of about 4 hours between a unit exiting the Wavre map and being available at the Waterloo map edge. Thus I can design it so the French player can run through until about 3pm at Waterloo as this is 4 hours after my Wavre scenario’s 11am start. Thereafter events at Wavre will have almost a real time impact on what will happen at Waterloo. I think I will just have to settle for the player doing 1 hour sessions at each battle and having to trigger a series of objective locations that will either advance or delay the arrival of the next few Prussian units. I can rationalise this as the French being able to observe the Prussians advancing from beyond the map edge as of course Napoleon did with Bulow’s Corps.
Another approach of course would be for different players to take the parts of Napoleon, Grouchy, Wellington and Blucher but I have not looked at what is needed for multiplayer scenarios so will have to leave that for another day
Unfortunately I will need to make quite a few changes before I can publish these scenarios as the mechanism I use to transfer casualties between battles is a tool I did not develop myself and requires quite a lot of casualty report manipulation to work with the standard report files. I suspect I might have to produce a series of scenarios based on 2 or 3 different levels of previous victory and let players use those based on their victory levels rather than the actual casualty results. Even using the carry forward tool I have to apply some smoothing so that whole units do not disappear or become impracticably weak. For example in a recent Ligny trial the Prussians lost about 50 guns including some complete batteries. I smoothed this result by making all the participating Prussian batteries have 6 rather than 8 guns but with full manpower for each gun for their next battle.
As before if anyone wants to give comment or suggestions on my design ideas I would be interested to consider them.
Regards
Mike
Last edited by mcaryf on Wed May 31, 2017 10:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Campaign Options for Wavre
I have previously posted details of my campaign scenarios for Waterloo which has the French player avoiding some of the mistakes made by Napoleon and his Marshalls prior to Waterloo. I am currently reconsidering my approach to Wavre and would appreciate any comments. Those of you who have read previous comments about my Ligny and QB variants can skip the next paragraph.
QB & Ligny Scenarios
I have created a version of Quatre Bras where the French player can choose how many Divisions of D’Erlon will stay or go to Ligny depending on how well they are doing at QB at the time. My version of Ligny has the divisions of D’Erlon sent from QB enter on the road that Napoleon intended during the late afternoon but the Napoleon player can choose to send some or all of them back to participate in QB if they do not think they need them at that stage of the battle to win at Ligny. I have been given the use of a tool that carries OOB’s forward from battle to battle by another player but unfortunately it takes a lot of work to clean up the casualty database before the tool can be used. Thus I cannot really publish that for others to use in its current state. My plan was to develop a variant of Wavre removing most of Grouchy’s errors and then develop a version of Waterloo using the outputs from the three previous battles which I would publish for other players to try to win. To even up the mistakes I would give the Wellington side access to the force he actually left at Hal.
Wavre Scenario
Unfortunately I had a period of bad health through the summer and early autumn so did not do any further development. Since then I have further developed a version of Wavre where the French player starts with Gerard and Exelman approaching from their historic directions but at 11am rather than in the afternoon. I also gave the player options to have some or all of Vandamme, Pajol, Girard and Teste’s forces appear on the East of the map but already across the Dyle having used the bridge at Mousty. Those of Grouchy’s forces that the player chooses not to use in the Wavre scenario would instead be available to Napoleon at Waterloo although on the Southern edge of the Waterloo map because of the additional congestion on the roads from Quatre Bras and Ligny.
My Wavre scenario gives the French the opportunity to take various objectives within artillery range of the roads to Plancenoit and Smohain which will be judged to cause various delays as well as casualties to the Prussian units moving to Waterloo. The time of exit for each Prussian unit from the Eastern map edge is reported in courier messages as is the holding of the relevant delay point objectives. I planned to use averages from this data to construct my Waterloo variant. I have played the scenario quite a few times and it is quite interesting as the Prussians have a massive advantage in numbers but their vital objective is to exit the map rather than deploy their full strength. Unfortunately playing it has convinced me that this would not have been the best strategy for Napoleon/Grouchy as too many Prussians still get through.
I am now thinking that the best strategy for Napoleon/Grouchy after Ligny was for Grouchy to have a much smaller force of 5 divisions all of whom would cross the bridge at Mousty. They would initially move north towards Limale arriving about 11am both to attempt to cause disruption to the Prussians moving to Plancenoit but more importantly to keep the Prussian III Corps in the vicinity of Wavre to guard the Prussian lines of communication. At some stage, when/if their situation becomes too perilous, the 5 divisions would attempt to exit the East edge of the map hoping to reach the SW corner of the Waterloo map in the early evening – it would have taken about 4 hours to move that distance. This would give Napoleon an extra 7 divisions (6 from Grouchy plus Girard if not too damaged during Ligny) from the start of his battle with the prospect of 5 more coming later. The Prussians would be possibly a bit weaker than they were historically at Waterloo if Grouchy’s force achieves any disruption.
By the way the problem with the option of keeping all of Grouchy’s units with Napoleon is that the Prussians actually had observers near Mont St Guibert on June 17th who saw Napoleon’s army on the march from Quatre Bras and part of Grouchy’s force following their own army’s retreat route to Gembloux. They estimated Grouchy as having 12 – 15,000 men – probably they did not see those he initially sent to recce the road to Liege. This sighting was sufficient for the Prussians to plan to keep their III Corps at Wavre to protect their lines of communication. If the observers at Mont St Guibert had reported that there was no pursuit then the Prussians could have started moving forces on both roads to Waterloo on the 18th at 6am or earlier. Most of III Corps, which was already North of Wavre so not delayed by the fire, together with I Corps from Bierges could potentially have reached Waterloo before noon thus offsetting any benefit from Napoleon having Grouchy’s forces with IV & II Corps still to follow.
I would welcome any comments on these new ideas for Wavre and Waterloo.
Unfortunately I still have my problem with the “Go to me” button not working – any suggestions appreciated. Currently I put Napoleon or Grouchy on Ctrl 1 so I can jump to them but it is annoying.
Regards
Mike
QB & Ligny Scenarios
I have created a version of Quatre Bras where the French player can choose how many Divisions of D’Erlon will stay or go to Ligny depending on how well they are doing at QB at the time. My version of Ligny has the divisions of D’Erlon sent from QB enter on the road that Napoleon intended during the late afternoon but the Napoleon player can choose to send some or all of them back to participate in QB if they do not think they need them at that stage of the battle to win at Ligny. I have been given the use of a tool that carries OOB’s forward from battle to battle by another player but unfortunately it takes a lot of work to clean up the casualty database before the tool can be used. Thus I cannot really publish that for others to use in its current state. My plan was to develop a variant of Wavre removing most of Grouchy’s errors and then develop a version of Waterloo using the outputs from the three previous battles which I would publish for other players to try to win. To even up the mistakes I would give the Wellington side access to the force he actually left at Hal.
Wavre Scenario
Unfortunately I had a period of bad health through the summer and early autumn so did not do any further development. Since then I have further developed a version of Wavre where the French player starts with Gerard and Exelman approaching from their historic directions but at 11am rather than in the afternoon. I also gave the player options to have some or all of Vandamme, Pajol, Girard and Teste’s forces appear on the East of the map but already across the Dyle having used the bridge at Mousty. Those of Grouchy’s forces that the player chooses not to use in the Wavre scenario would instead be available to Napoleon at Waterloo although on the Southern edge of the Waterloo map because of the additional congestion on the roads from Quatre Bras and Ligny.
My Wavre scenario gives the French the opportunity to take various objectives within artillery range of the roads to Plancenoit and Smohain which will be judged to cause various delays as well as casualties to the Prussian units moving to Waterloo. The time of exit for each Prussian unit from the Eastern map edge is reported in courier messages as is the holding of the relevant delay point objectives. I planned to use averages from this data to construct my Waterloo variant. I have played the scenario quite a few times and it is quite interesting as the Prussians have a massive advantage in numbers but their vital objective is to exit the map rather than deploy their full strength. Unfortunately playing it has convinced me that this would not have been the best strategy for Napoleon/Grouchy as too many Prussians still get through.
I am now thinking that the best strategy for Napoleon/Grouchy after Ligny was for Grouchy to have a much smaller force of 5 divisions all of whom would cross the bridge at Mousty. They would initially move north towards Limale arriving about 11am both to attempt to cause disruption to the Prussians moving to Plancenoit but more importantly to keep the Prussian III Corps in the vicinity of Wavre to guard the Prussian lines of communication. At some stage, when/if their situation becomes too perilous, the 5 divisions would attempt to exit the East edge of the map hoping to reach the SW corner of the Waterloo map in the early evening – it would have taken about 4 hours to move that distance. This would give Napoleon an extra 7 divisions (6 from Grouchy plus Girard if not too damaged during Ligny) from the start of his battle with the prospect of 5 more coming later. The Prussians would be possibly a bit weaker than they were historically at Waterloo if Grouchy’s force achieves any disruption.
By the way the problem with the option of keeping all of Grouchy’s units with Napoleon is that the Prussians actually had observers near Mont St Guibert on June 17th who saw Napoleon’s army on the march from Quatre Bras and part of Grouchy’s force following their own army’s retreat route to Gembloux. They estimated Grouchy as having 12 – 15,000 men – probably they did not see those he initially sent to recce the road to Liege. This sighting was sufficient for the Prussians to plan to keep their III Corps at Wavre to protect their lines of communication. If the observers at Mont St Guibert had reported that there was no pursuit then the Prussians could have started moving forces on both roads to Waterloo on the 18th at 6am or earlier. Most of III Corps, which was already North of Wavre so not delayed by the fire, together with I Corps from Bierges could potentially have reached Waterloo before noon thus offsetting any benefit from Napoleon having Grouchy’s forces with IV & II Corps still to follow.
I would welcome any comments on these new ideas for Wavre and Waterloo.
Unfortunately I still have my problem with the “Go to me” button not working – any suggestions appreciated. Currently I put Napoleon or Grouchy on Ctrl 1 so I can jump to them but it is annoying.
Regards
Mike