nwg

I'm not sure about this to be honest. Back when I had a lot more time to be active with general lobby games I always found that with 1v1 games attacking was hard and people in general wouldn't attack even if they were the nominated 'attacker'.

3v3 games however, which have been popular for a while (despite crashing a lot) might be different as you have so many brains at work and quite a lot of troops too.




There has to be a way to bring them into the game in a legitimate way without ending up in the bad old days of CB30 where everyone had 3 batteries of howie and nothing else.

Cheers, M.

I think it's to do with scale and size, when attacking in the "normal" version there is more free space, so more room to flank around the side of any defenders who sit there and wait....in CB there is less room to do that as the defenders can cover a much bigger front so making flanking moves that much harder.

Generally I think it's best to attack, EXCEPT when the defenders position in ultra strong, then it's way to hard with 10k each (normal version).


I would say that you thought it was worse than me and Dougie, but not GP !.

Yes your correct, it should not be possible to have 3 or 4 howitzer batteries and no cannons.....I hope you find the solution, any hint on when to expect the update ?.

Moopere, before you issue the update, have you already seriously thought about starting with 14k in place of 12k?

We could use more easily strong units which seems very difficult actually. I know the florins develop up and down after battles but even when going down the choice of units could stay more diversified.

I recommend 10-11K for standard CB one-off lobby games. Campaign games are different and seem to work best with a larger base florins settings because of the high probability of unbalanced games.




My strongly held belief is that Napoleonic armies should be composed mainly of Militia, unseasoned (green) line infantry or veteran line infantry - the proportions of each of these depending largely on the nation involved and the exact date we're talking about (in NTW2 I think 1812 is it).

To encourage this type of army build the florins are suggested at a level which allows you a few special units (guard infantry, guard cavalry, a bit of artillery) but if you choose too many elites the price cap is meant to ensure that your army suffers in other ways.

Of course the 10-11K for general use and 12K for campaign use is only a suggestion, players are free and welcome to play their CB games in any way they prefer.

Cheers, M.

Yes, thats true.

I have noticed over time that seasoned CB players are tending to build more and more depth to their formations though. This is pleasing to see because I think its a lot more historical. Its often a big risk to string out a long long front line thats only one unit deep.



I'm aiming at a test and possible release before Christmas. No-one will use it before the current campaigns are over anyway so whenever the current games start to finish up would be a good time to get a little bit of testing in and then make the release shortly afterwards.

I'm going away on holidays at Christmas so I have to do it before then....otherwise I'll be thinking about it the whole time I'm away!

M.

I see our work goes on Many thanks M



As i have said before this has to be one of the best ideas ever for CB


Ha ha lots of lovely cannister


OK playing devils advocate again, ""REALLY FICTITIOUS"" and we will have the shell capacity with our other guns, so why have howitzer battery's at all



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Fair enough although i have seen Simpson use this in his battles with Gunner.


Here here to this, 25florins does seem very cheap indeed, but perhaps i just still haven't recovered from my first encounter with the mad axeman against M,

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Yep sounds good, nice to see the French making an appearance in the wiki

Its a good question. I did post earlier on a proposition that we drop the howitzer unit altogether. We still might do this, however, after doing some actual work on CB 3.2.1 I am wondering if this might be a mistake. The reason is game engine related. I can't have the 8 and 9lb cannon use different maximum range for their roundshot versus their shell in a way that will make sense to players. 12lb cannon and 6" howitzers have a roughly similar maximum range so this worked really well in previous CB versions.

Those factions which had 12lb cannon could make their enemies life hell at long range, but then those without 12lb cannon could still do similarly with the long range of their howitzer units. If I remove the howitzer unit altogether and push shell into the 8/9/12lb batteries then those factions without 12lb cannon will also by default lose any truly long range artillery (a particular problem for the Dutch as they only have the 8lb cannon as their big gun)

The idea at the moment then is to transform the existing howitzer battery into some sort of fictitious unit of 8" type howitzers with extremely long range, probably even just a touch longer range then the current 12lb cannon. This addition would allow those factions with the smaller calibre cannon to still have an effective weapon for very long range use. Howitzers are generally best used at long range anyway, so it seems to make sense....at least at this early stage of the testing.

I do harbour concerns that doing the above to howitzers + adding canister will make them once again become the weapon of choice and supplant cannon, so the canister thing is not a definite at this stage, we'll see how that goes.



Mmm. I see guys new to CB use the small units like Voltigeurs and such but only once or twice. I think this is carried over memory from standard NTW2 games where these units are quite different in their stats. Once we get used to the big units they seem to become the standard as everyone is always trying to field more troops then their opponent.

I've only rarely used the smaller battalion sized light units and have never once used the battalion guard units....seemed like such a good idea at the time but I'm less certain now.

I think these tiny units confuse the unit selection panel and no-one would really miss them all that much if they were gone.




These super cheap militia really are crap. If you can hold their morale together then they can seem more intimidating to the enemy then they really are. There is a definite reason why they only cost 25f. In the campaigns militia (or other cheap) units play a really important role which I think is realistic and a good thing. Its probably true historically that militia were essentially 'free' to the state sponsoring them, but its hard to show this in a tactical game, probably something more relevant to a grand strategic or political/diplomacy level game.

My suspicion is that we'd be a lot better served to think of our militia units more as green or unproven recruit type line troops rather than armed civilians. As such, I'll try to tweak these two units stats a little to make them slightly better on the field and by do doing also raise their price a bit. As a general rule I'm not keen on adjusting the stats provided by TheLordz as I think they did a really good job in giving us a wealth of variation in unit type and capability. Also, and this is extremely important, those factions with poorer than average shooting and/or morale stats need to have a cheap unit to remain competitive....but there is a limit and I really think that 25f is too low. I'll be aiming at 75f and see how we go.

Regards, M.

I accept this argument completely, any faction without the long range artillery option is going to be at a serous disadvantage, not desirable at all.


Yes mate the trickiest part of all here, For me Howey's having the cannister option was never the reason i picked them, although i did try to use it on a couple of occasions without success, it was very difficult and ineffectual if i remember, it was the feeling that at such long range you were getting a large amount of cheap and pretty risk free kills,
So its simple really make them effective enough to be a consideration, but not to effective for them to become always the weapon of choice, GOOD LUCK M,



Your probably right, mate they wont really be missed.



i will look forward to seeing what we end up with here.

I re-call "asking" the Lordz for a CHEAP Line Infantry unit to represent "green" troops, what, over a year ago ?.

Everything your planning above sounds fine to me.

Perhaps the howitzer unit having a LOT of guns in it is the answer, they will be really hard to move around and would only be chosed IF the map really warrented having howitzers on the battlefield. That way, you would never buy them to use on a flat map (which was happening before when they were so good), but you may well do on a very hilly one.......

Yes, I remember it. Representing real "Militia" is fine, but frankly, not a huge number of militia were ever fielded, not really. Militia in NTW2 really does mean Green, homeland, National Guard, Recruit type troops I think. Their useful firepower was extremely limited, their morale was bad, they training and uniforms pretty sketchy (if any).

The dream for CB was to add something like Spanish Patria Provisional to almost every faction, a sort of sub-line. Some factions already have this, like Ottoman Janissaries, but every faction really needs a unit like this. Anyway, its too late in the year now for me to seriously start learning how to texture things so we'll never get there in this instance I don't think.



I agree. I think everyone struggles with the 6 gun batteries because they seem to spend so long faffing about refacing and generally carrying on getting tired etc. We also need more then the current 3 guns to get effective fire from such an inaccurate weapon.



This is the plan, but getting the balance just right is certainly a challenge.

M

Moopere, maybe you discussed these, before or after i joined Napoleonic War Gamers but i wonder,
when do you plan to release CBv4.0?
will we have cheap! russian militia in the new release? you plan any change at the army skills;att.,def.charge... or will it be the same with v3.2?

*ex.me if these questions are repetition.

Heres an update on the testing thats happening for the next CB version:

- 8/9/12lb cannon will lose canister and gain shell instead. This will be true of both the divisional (4 gun) and position (6 gun) batteries.

- 4 & 6lb divisional guns will lose some ammunition in an effort to reduce their cost. As these are close support weapons I think they pretty much get killed before their ammo runs out right now so this should be a positive change and will further encourage people to use them.

- Howitzers will enlarge to 4 guns again and will gain canister, at an appropriate range, as their secondary fire type (range will be pretty limited). These batteries are really fictitious as I don't think dedicated howitzer batteries were used by anyone as a field asset at this time. We'll make them the big 8" type howitzers with the longest range of all the field artillery, this will help out those factions who don't have a 12lb cannon option.

- Howitzers will have their ammunition increased to allow for their horrible accuracy, this also makes them more expensive. A 4 gun howitzer battery will cost about the same as a 4 gun 12lb battery.

- Costings rejigged to smooth out the variations introduced when weighting on primary fire statistic was increased. In particular we will see medium and militia cavalry get a bit cheaper.

- Remove the battalion sized elite unit and the battalion sized light unit

- Tweak the stats of the Ottoman and Russian Militia to raise their cost a little bit. These will cost 50f going forward with slightly improved stats. I'm done the minimum tweaking possible to raise their price up to 50f

- Reinstate French Grenadiers, French Voltigeurs and Dutch Flankers to full regimental size.

- Russian Licorne battery becomes a 20lb licorne (4 model guns), similar to the standard howitzer but with a flatter trajectory and slightly longer range (as historically indicated) + canister as other howitzers (canister range similar to 4lb cannon)

- British Rockets become 12lb with range similar to Russian Licornes (ie; very long). Improved accuracy, though still not anywhere near as good as howitzers (which themselves are no where close to the accuracy of cannon). Reduce crew numbers to account for the fact that the Rocket battery only needs 3 crew to operate it and in an effort to reduce cost to a level where they may become a worthwhile purchase.

- The small General cavalry Unit will lost its current 'hardy' statistic and get a standard (across factions) set of fighting stats that are more like Hussars.

- A new (small) 2 squadron size light cavalry unit will be created for each faction following the stats of each factions own cheapest line cavalry (not militia unless there are no other choices). Aiming at a target price between 200-400f with a size of 42 troopers, we'll see where this ends up.

Still play testing and checking the workability of some of the ideas presented so nothing yet set in stone.

Best regards, M

Definitely before the end of January. I'm hoping to get a beta test version out within 2 weeks.




Yes, but not as cheap as before.




There will be tweaks for Ottoman and Russian militia to bring their cost up a bit. Also some units in all factions will get tiny tiny tweaks in order to help differentiate them due to where the costings fall. To understand why this happens imagine this:

British Hussars might cost 800f and were rounded up to the nearest 25f
British KGL Hussars might also cost 800f because they were rounded down to the nearest 25f

Yet, these two units are almost identical with the KGL Hussars being slightly better. If both cost 800f then there is no incentive whatever to buy the Standard British Hussar unit.

So, in a case like this I'd be inclined to ever so slightly tweak the stats on either the KGL unit in order to have it round -up- to 825f or the Hussar unit in order for it to round -down- to 775f.

Best regards,
M

Moopere,

Following the "descr_unit" file, the Voltigeurs and French Chassers are so more weak at firing than their equivalent opponents.

Am I wrong?

Actually I chose Young Guard for light infantry in place of the two above.

If I am right, perhaps it is time to adjust that?

Your opinion will be greatly appreciated.

Best regards, gp.

I don't see that GP, to what exactly are you referring?

The Volts a primary firing stat of 16, almost as good as the british line and certainly better then most factions light troops (or line too!).

The Chass have a primary firing stat of 15, which is still very good and about average for most infantry throughout the game. British lights (KGL too) have only 14.

All light troops in NTW2 tend to have lower than average morale, which is a tradeoff for game reasons to make sure that when they are in open order and charged by cavalry they will rout. If they have morale equivalent to line infantry then they will tend to fight off cavalry even when they are skirmishing....

Best regards,
Moopere