nwg

I have been meaning to post this since my battle with Dougie the other day when I used TWO extra General units as scouts, and hampered Dougie's artillery with them.

Is there a case for having ONE small Cavalry unit per faction (Lights) with about 40 men and about 40% cost of the full size unit ?.

These would not have much "combat" power but would be excellent to use when having few florins to fight with - better than trying to manage with an "extra" General.

They may not get used much, but would add another element into the CB Army make up, which is so much better than the normal version - this may make it even better !. One half strenght Cav unit would be a lot more use than a half strenght Inf unit I'm sure.

Any good M ?.

Not sure Gunner. As things stand the General unit is about the same size as a cavalry squadron which at first glance would seem to fill the need you mention above. In many ways it would make sense at this scale to remove the ADC models that make up the "General Unit" and replace them with Guard cavalry type models but I'm disinclined to waste any of the lovely models that are present in the original game.

Is there anything that I'm missing which makes additional General units a pain to use or not appropriate to use for scouting and skirmishing work? One thing that immediately comes to mind is the fact that I've purposely left the 'hardy' statistic turned on for the General unit - its the only unit in CB which still has this stat. For the benefit of those who don't know, 'hardy' allows units to run further before getting tired and recover more quickly once they stop moving. I did this primarily to allow the actual General (who usually gets attached to the General Unit) to be able to move across the battlefield without too much of a problem.

I've now removed from the next CB version -all- the extra little half sized units and I think the unit selection line up looks a lot cleaner as a result so I'm not that keen to put anything similar back in there unless I've missed something important.

Cheers,
M.

The General unit is ok for the job of a scout, but a little too small to do anything more than that - that's all.....If it contained about 40 men it would be that more usefull, at say a cost of about 300-350 florins for Light Cavalry.

I think the General has about 20 odd men at 150 florins cost, a "small" Light Cavalry unit would be really usefull with about 40 men.

Mmm, fair enough. This would primarily be for the classic artillery ninja I suspect?

A unit the size of a couple of squadrons could be done I guess. I'd be inclined to increase the size of the General Unit in this case. Its already far bigger then just a general and his staff, and is normally just a wasted unit - this idea could make the full 20 unit allocation actually useful and usable.

What does everyone think?

M.

That might be easier to do than create a whole new unit, so yes, seems ok for me, even 50% bigger, making 30-40 odd men would make it more usefull.

I'm a tiny bit hesitant about this though as we (the community) had a similar conversation a couple of years ago, that being whether it was deemed acceptable to attach the Army General to a standard NTW2 unit instead of attaching him to the 'general unit' as had become the custom.

As I recall plenty thought this was a bad idea, though one wonders if this might be because of the scale of the NTW2 game (company, rather then regiment as with CB).

For mine I'd rather not have to waste 1 of my valuable 20 unit slots on a flag and fancy hat. Theres no getting around the fact however that the General, single model guy though he may be, is a tremendous morale mechanism in this game. If I were to make the General unit 30 or 40 models strong, and if folks were to actually use this unit offensively, you run the real risk of getting your General killed.....

Nevertheless, I guess its a valid choice that each player could make for himself. Certainly it would be possible to buy extra 'general units' (but without the general of course) and in so doing have access to some relatively cheap cavalry...though one wonders who would find themselves with unit slots free ... the Brits perhaps??

I'd probably want to remove the 'hardy' stat from such a unit to bring it in line with other cavalry... don't want any 2 squadron super horse flying about We could think of them as some sort of Gendarme formation...most countries had them.

So, if I can see some sort of show of hands in support or otherwise I'll explore the idea further.

Cheers, M.

Why not create a 30-40 models from Hussars, for example?

Cheers, gp.

Yes, I agree, that's what I'd rather see, but if it's easier to enlarge the General unit and use that, then I'm happy.....at around the 10-11k mark many nations would find this "new" unit very usefull, but maybe the Brits mostly.

I don't see it can take anything away from the game, only add something extra.

I go with GP - Why not a 35-40 man Hussars unit, at about 300 florins cost - where's the harm in that ?.....as I said ealier, it would be much more usfull than a 123 man Infanrty unit - which is being taken out, rightly so for me.

Nice idea Gunner
For me its quite a tricky question, i think its perfectly reasonable to assume that Napoleonic army's would look after there gens very very well for obvious reasons, so if increasing the size of his unit it would be difficult to argue that he is over protected,
Of course the real question is then what do you do with this unit, well you send it off roaming around the battlefield harassing arty etc, hardly appropriate behaviour for a Napoleonic general I'm sure we would all agree.
I for one would not like to do anything to encourage this sort of thing, (hey Gunner I'm not having ago at you over your appalling behaviour using this tactic )
Therefore i would go for leaving the Gen well alone, and give the players a better option other than using there gen.
The idea of having the smaller size light cav sounds good to me.
Off course i don't have to do any of the work involved, wish i could i would love to help

Its not difficult to do this and it can be done either way. However:




This is the reason I am inclined towards using the General Unit. I'm not sure it would ever get used otherwise. The battalion sized units for infantry also seemed like such a good idea at the time, and most players would use 1 or more of them in their first or first couple of CB games, then, after that, never again. People realise quickly that CB is a game where numbers really do matter.




True, though I'm liking the 'cleaner' unit selection more and more after having removed the small infantry units.




None, except my doubt that they would be used. The doubt stems from the same old hoary chestnut, the 20 unit limit. Whilst a 20-30-40 man unit would be perfect for many tactical jobs (as would 123 man infantry units by the way), if you have a choice to make, given the 20 unit max, I'd guess most will simply opt for the standard 80 man cavalry units.

The only case I can think of where the 20 unit maximum might not be the determining factor would be low florins when using British or Portuguese.

As we've mentioned Hussars more then once I'm guessing that we're all looking for a high quality light cavalry unit with plenty of punch am I right? This would put a half sized standard unit in the cost range of about 325 through 450 depending on faction. Given the value I'm willing to bet a fair bit of money that after the novelty wears off most players will choose another line unit or militia unit over such a small cavalry unit.




Not sure about this. Keeping the General unit as he is today means we essentially waste a unit slot (as we always have). I really don't know how often we'll see folks choose to 'waste' another one on a really small unit. The argument for me runs similarly to the small infantry unit. Choice always appears to be a good thing so on the outset there doesn't appear to be any harm in making more choices available for players....yet, no-one chose to use the small infantry units in any real way and they just cluttered up the unit selection panel and made it harder to read and use.

I've been struggling with myself about the same question in relation to artillery as well. We seem to have grown used to, and for the most part like the 4 (Division) and 6 (Corps) gun artillery units, but I feel certain there is a good reason to add 2 gun (brigade) small calibre cannon units as well, yet, whenever I add them for experimentation reasons they really clutter the unit selection panel and I fear that its really not obvious to newer players why all this clutter exists. Again, ultimately, I wonder if despite it seeming like a really good idea would anyone actually use such a small artillery unit? The 20 unit slot maximum would almost certainly prevent it I feel.

Cheers,
M.

I have been using the EXTRA General unit a lot with the Brits, and might do with other nations - when I have low florins.

Moopere, there is no point in added this unit if you make it expensive, as then you will be right, NO ONE would use it.......make it about 40% the cost of a normal size Lt Cav unit, and it WILL be used, no doubt at all.

Example : Cheapest Brit Cav is 725 if I re-call.
Make the "new" unit half the size and cost 40% - 290 florins, you will see it get used, I'm 99% sure.

Also the same thing with other factions will work, no one will use them if they have loads of cash - no need, but they would become important for the low cash player, which we need to remember as some players will be using upto 4,000 florins (10k v 14k) less than the other.

I'd not bother with the 2 gun unit, fine in theory, but in practice they will get destroyed in seconds and be a total waste of cash.

Hmmm i read M's last posting and thought yes hes spot on other than maybe the Brits and Ports, this unit is unlikely to be used.
Then seeing Gunners reply things look slightly different, i think Gun has hit the nail on the head, as with almost all deployment in CB its cost that is the deciding factor.
I would think that a low cost half size cav unit will have more potential to be useful than the equivalent infantry unit, although if you can get a full size infantry unit for the same price, then it makes deployment of said cav unit a lot less likely.
Anyway as i have said I'm not really in favour of Gen units being used aggressively charging all over the battlefield.
So for me i would vote for the proposed smaller cav unit if as Gun has suggested it is reasonably priced.

I agree, I don't like it much either, but if you only have a few hundred flroins and one unit slot left, there is currently no choice but to do this.

I'd much rather see a small cheap "proper" (like a Hussar, as GP suggested) unit than a "General" but I can live with ti either way.

Absolutely mate i have no problem with players doing everything they can within the rules to win the game, you have proved with a difficult CB faction like the Brits that using Gens in this way is a legitimate tactic,
As you have said there is little choice when you are down to only a few florins with unit slots still to fill.
Clearly we agree its hardly ideal.
Please M can we have another option

Yes, again, it seems to make sense, yet we didn't see the small infantry units used in practise. I'd have expected to see the small guard units any maybe even the small light units getting used during low florins games if for no better reason then simply their flexibility.

However, Cavalry are a slightly different case so perhaps they would get used....




Yes, but of course you know that the pricing is not arbitrary, its determined entirely by the performance of the unit and its size. So, roughly speaking, if the standard unit is 82 models and the proposed unit is 41 models (50%) then the cost will almost certainly be 50% of the standard unit (+-25f which is our resolution)



Probably, but part of the reason is that the player would be getting a 'freebie' - if he buys two of these units he gets the full regiment but at a discounted price (though he loses a unit slot...). I've not done any weird stuff like this in CB since the price levelling came into being.

Don't get too hung up on price though. Such a smaller unit certainly won't be -more- expensive. Comes down to how many models we want to use. Theres a bit of price readjustment going on behind the scenes at the moment anyway. The unit price progression was a big 'jagged' after the last change to the weighting used for primary shooting stat, I'm trying to smooth that out a little bit.




Sure. I see a really interesting battle coming up between yourself and GP with a fair margin between the forces. I'm not sure money gets really tight, even for Britain, until they come to the field with significantly less than 10,000 florins though.

Nevertheless, I sound like I'm against the idea and I'm not really. I'm just teasing out the angles here as this is likely to be the last CB build and I don't want to leave something in there that sounded like a good idea but wasn't if you know what I mean

We'll have a short beta period anyway...we can see what happens during that.




Yes, this is my worry also. Mind you, again, for a small money army, they could be really flexible. They would cost hardly anything (currently 600f for 2x 6lb...liable to changes still though) and are super manoeuvrable as compared to the 4 or 6 gun batteries. Still, I'm inclined to leave them alone and concentrate on the big game.

Cheers, M.