Scourge of War Boards

Sir, you are too kind...

I find it very hard to play Napoleonic war games. Napoleons genius was in his maneuver and his ability to understand, thwart, and defeat his enemies. How can that genius be simulated in a game? How can someone play Napoleon and have his genius?

I have messed with the Napoleon mod for SWG and it is good. I played a game made by Frank Hunter that was a Napoleonic game and I liked it, but it is almost sacrilegious for me to try to play Napoleon.

Napoleon is one of the 5 or 10 best military leaders ever. Right up there with Alexander, Ceaser, and Hannibal.

Sir, you are too kind...

I call it as I see it Jack, your all right in my books!

Keep up the good work because believe it or not we wouldn't have some of these cool battles without you Sir!

Napoleon is one of the 5 or 10 best military leaders ever. Right up there with Alexander, Ceaser, and Hannibal.

And the historic personality which more wargames have been based in. Pre or in the videogames era.

SoW tweaked could be the best natural platform to simulate the genious of Napoleon maneuvres.

So, There a is a hope!

Returning to Histwar

Anyway there is a feature I love in HistWar:

Those arrows in the map when you give orders. It gives you a great feeling of command map, as in a documentary. In fact that is the idea of the game, focusing in the strategical point of view and command views.

If the game were more polished, It would be great. In a near future I will purchase it. Hoping that things will be much better. I see flaws, I am not confortable, but potential.

I think the most immersive napoleonic MP experience you can get is with NTW and historical battles of NTW3 mod. I did 12 detailed maps and scenarios usually at battalion/regimental size depending on OOB. The key as always is the people you fight with, I'd be scared to play against kiddies or competitive players who cannot follow house rules to implement a better degree of realism when game engine does not provide it.
I've tried Histwar but found little immersion and a an overall difficulty in managing troops and understand battlefield dynamics and the graphic and effects...well...SOW is far better in my opinion.
If you have NTW and GMT timezone you might think to install NTW3 (free mod) and try an historical battle with us. Maybe sometimes later we'll have a napoleonic mod for SOW playable in MP, that would be great.

I find it very hard to play Napoleonic war games. Napoleons genius was in his maneuver and his ability to understand, thwart, and defeat his enemies. How can that genius be simulated in a game? How can someone play Napoleon and have his genius?

I have messed with the Napoleon mod for SWG and it is good. I played a game made by Frank Hunter that was a Napoleonic game and I liked it, but it is almost sacrilegious for me to try to play Napoleon.

Napoleon is one of the 5 or 10 best military leaders ever. Right up there with Alexander, Ceaser, and Hannibal.

SOW is tactical based battles, for now (You already know that). What made Napoleon, Hannibal, Lee, and others great was the strategical moves leading up to the battle. Napoleon, in most cases, left the tactical dispositions and movements to his Marshall's, who for years were great. And he had a brilliant staff until the end to relay his plans and orders. Napoleon, most of the time, had the uncanny ability to predict his enemies movements before they did. Like Lee and Hannibal, arrogance and underestimation of the enemy was their demise. I agree, Napoleon was one of the most brilliant commanders period. I hope NSD or the Mod group will do some Napoleonic era maps in the future to support all the work that Gunship and the rest of the Nap guys (Jack) have done. bon travail. Plus à venir mes amis

I find it very hard to play Napoleonic war games. Napoleons genius was in his maneuver and his ability to understand, thwart, and defeat his enemies. How can that genius be simulated in a game? How can someone play Napoleon and have his genius?

I have messed with the Napoleon mod for SWG and it is good. I played a game made by Frank Hunter that was a Napoleonic game and I liked it, but it is almost sacrilegious for me to try to play Napoleon.

Napoleon is one of the 5 or 10 best military leaders ever. Right up there with Alexander, Ceaser, and Hannibal.

In addition to what 2nd Texas has said, I never consider myself to be trying to emulate Napoleon, or even a small part of his genius (which as correctly pointed out was strategic or at the most grand-tactical (e.g. Austerlitz)) when playing a Napoleonic wargame. In the same way, I don't ever hope to emulate the genius of a Lee, a Jackson or a Sherman if I'm playing SoW. I am certainly able to more than emulate some of the more incompetent commanders of the time though!

You do have to have an affinity for the time and place I guess and the motivations for war in Europe in the early 1800s were steeped in the political and religious climate of the times - essentially Revolutionary France and her ideals was seen as a threat to the security and stability of Europe and the Great Powers were looking after their own interests. These were ancient monarchies remember with a very different world view to the liberterian culture of America in the 1860s, so you have to get your head into that space and read around the subject before the strategic concepts of Napoleonic warfare start to make sense.

The way warfare was conducted in Europe from the early 1700s until Napoleon's time was based around small professional armies and a limited 'fortress warfare' mindset. There were many ancient and traditional alliances, usually built on common religion and a desire to maintain the status-quo by the rulers.

Napoleon's great contribution to the art of war was to break those rules, to mobilise mass conscript armies and to fight with a proto-nationalism that was alien to the kings and queens around him.

The European landscapes were generally much more crowded with villages, many of them with strong stone built structures like churches and manor houses which became the focus of many ferocious street combats There was a lot of open farmland (crops and grazing) giving a much more open aspect to the battlefields and with quite good road networks tied towards key settlements and established major river crossings so the way the commanders of the time visualised the map-space they campaigned over was somewhat different to the ACW.

The Mississippi river in the ACW with commanders building riverine fleets to facilitate manouver and apply force would have been a completely alien concept to Napoleon and his enemies, and not just because they didn't have steam-power to do so, but because of the layout of Europe's map. Europe was a 'finished', established place. There was no frontier mindset and no wilderness.

The gaudy uniforms of course are all linked in with the history and social culture of the warring nations - you could say the attitudes of the aristocracy were 'gaudy' too; what was going on inside the head of a nobleman who commanded a regiment of dashing hussars is probably quite difficult for the average American to fathom - it is foreign country, both in time, space and attitudes.

The Napoleonis period is my personal favourite.

The best game I have played is a Mod for Napoleonic Total War called simply NTW3 'Version 2' from The Lordz: http://thelordz.org/mods.html

Version 2 makes Single Player useable.

That link has the old, dead, megaupload link for the installer, better to go here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=525874