nwg

Hello interested ECB people.

I have just tapped out a message at the TWC on the NBG thread after someone said something in the same thread that really made me think. The current chatter for the past several days has been revolving around a mix of unit stats and costs.

The thought is this: The 20 unit limit is a really big problem for those of us who want to play huge engagements in the Napoleonic era if we also want to present the different factions with noticeable differentiation via unit stats.

The differences between units represented via their performance statistics is an idea that I feel sure has grown out of the same idea in miniatures wargaming but the 20 unit limit in the TW MP game severely compromises the ability for games to be properly balanced. Why? Well, you can't fit enough poor or mediocre performing units into a 20 unit army.

I think the theory might go along historical lines actually, which is interesting. I strongly suspect that as a General you are better off with _more_ poorer troops than _less_ top performing ones, volume of fire rather then quality of fire sort of thing. Its almost certain to be related to the fact that a single bullet will kill a Guardsman as easily as a Recruit.

The problem for us TW gamers with a hard limit of 20 units is that when we assemble armies for a game the factionally stronger side is unlikely to be happy that he can only afford to buy 10-12 units, which would leave the factionally weaker side the option to use 8 or 10 additional slots because his units are cheaper (and perform worse). To get a satisfying game 20 units is a good flexible number, you get to probe the enemy with some, hold the line with others, assault with your elites and still have a reserve.

So, what to do, what to do. Traditionally in the NTW2 world we've tried to balance this out by making the money available to buy your army suit the mid to high performing factions and allow them a full 20 unit army roster with a fairly balanced historically indicative army. Very high performance factions (with expensive units) struggle to fill their unit roster which provokes ahistorical armies and the poorer performing factions with very cheap units often hit the 20 unit limit without really accruing enough numbers to provide a winnable army.

I wonder if there might be an answer in varying the number of troops per unit? So, by way of broad example:

- British Line, traditionally known for being solid performers with excellent shooting might come packaged in a battalion sized unit of say 160 models for $500
- Spanish Line, of somewhat variable quality might be presented in-game as regiments of 320 models for $700

This type of idea.

The effect is meant to mould armies such that overall poorer quality standard troops end up presenting on the field in much greater numbers than their better performing opposition yet everyone still has the flexibility of fielding 20 units if desired. Obviously some considerable care would need to be taken to ensure scaling and costing was appropriate, but those points aside, is there any substantial objection to the pursuit of this type of idea for ECB?

Regards,
Moopere

Wow M,
Another very very interesting idea

Could i please ask for about 12 months to get my head around what this might bring to our games

Yes, I'm not 100% sure myself which is why I am really soliciting opinion here. The above example might be a bit extreme on second thought and perhaps is not the best example.

Darths mod has done something like this, British line come in units of 225, Russians 375, Austrians 315, Ottomans 375, Prussians 285, etc, etc

I'm really unsure about how this would pan out on the field. Darths plays well enough and you can really see the merit in the idea, but historically and organisationally the idea is just fantasy I think ... or am I just looking at it from the wrong angle?

If we were to simply plagiarise Darths numbers:

- British unit 225 models = 1125 men, about 2 under strength battalions
- Russian unit 375 models = 1875 men, about 3 slightly under strength battalions.

A British infantry division then would be around 6 ETW units, a Russian infantry division would be about ETW 4 units (12 battalions in both cases).

From an Army level this would probably look about right, roughly, from a highest possible camera angle (hehe), but I worry a little about the close up and personal view where single ETW units become equivalent to a regiment and a half!

Anyway, enough from me. Whats the feeling out there?

Moopere

PS - Oh, almost forgot. If we were to find an acceptable way to balance games with numbers rather than cash I imagine we'd end up with reasonably static per unit costs. So, line might cost 500, and it would cost this for everyone, light might be 400, Guard 900, militia 300, etc, etc.

Or, even more radically, but perhaps even easier, all units become 500 regardless of their type (10,000 / 20 units = 500 each)..... All you need do is fill your 20 unit slots. Each unit would be assumed to be balanced via numbers against every other unit.......

Yes, fine sounding idea, but you will have a very hard job convincing a lot of the Community about this.


This sounds even more interesting, but will take a while to understand correctly, also has the same problem as above, but even more so !.

Perhaps. Not sure. There has always been a huge amount of confusion in the community anyway as far as whether we're really playing company, battalion or regimental units. I tried as best I could with CB to balance things across the factions but in the end the 20 unit limit is really a big problem that prevents truly equal armies turning up no matter what you do with the pricing.

I'm really starting to warm to the idea of perhaps combining both systems. Balance troop classifications against each other via numbers and against other classifications via price.

Historically there was so much wiggle room in battalion/regimental numbers. Regiments with an on paper parade strength of 1600-1800 men can be seen in actual OOB's with as few as 400-500, and these numbers could vary by hundreds of soldiers in just a few days due to one thing or another (not always fighting).

Maybe we'd serve the balance of our games better to decide upon a centre point, like regiment size then allow the real unit numbers to fluctuate around our centre point by a considerable margin to try and account for troop quality?

After decades of miniatures gaming where we have _never_ done this I feel I'm on rather uncertain ground I must say, but its obvious that with a 20 unit limit we can't ever hope to duplicate the flexibility of a miniatures system 100% in ETW.

The added benefit, in my view, is that we can allow ourselves the luxury of once again having decent stat variability. Russian or Spanish line could really afford to be quite inferior to British and French because you will get to use a whole lot more of them. There are quite different strategies required to use a small elite force as compared to a large sub standard one too which might add additional flavour and interest.

Cheers, M.

I would not for a minute say i am totally clear on all that you have suggested so far Moopere,

However the above does sound pretty interesting i must say
What really excites i think is that this would make ECB not just a larger better balanced version of the original (something to rejoice in, itself) but something completely unique and different from what has come before.
ECB battles could almost be a complete new ball game.

Just one slight concern at the moment, something i think you have already touched on, this being, that the greater numbers would always overwhelm smaller army's.

I'm starting to like this idea, so in this example a "Regiment" might be, say 320 models, with say only 250 in the Brit / French Regiment........as Dougie suggest's, it will give a whole "new" and "different" feel to the game - and seperate it from other (Grog/Lordz) mods.

Again, as Dougie says, the risk is the "BIG Battalions" will win through sheer numbers, but IF the moral and stats are adjusted correctly maybe this can be avoided.......sounds like the foundation of a good idea, but I suspect it's something that won't happen quickly !.

I get the feeling after your LG experiences G24, Patience has ceased to be one of your strong points

Your not wrong there, all this waiting is fine if something appears.....but if it don't, well, that's a different thing altogether.....you have to hand it to Moon, this guy knows how to get stuff DONE as well as talk about getting it done.

I'm told LG is on it's way but there is a MP snag with Vista now.....if it's not one thing it's something else !.

Moopere, will this idea be easier to "build" than CB was, or harder ?.

Release early, release often. Its the free software mantra and can work quite well. Currently NBG is a beta so Moon is able to release twice a day if he wishes (or even more!), but in truth its hard to bring your audience with you when things change a bit too fast.




Much much harder. At least initially whilst there are no good tools from CA. The 'problem' is that ETW is a much bigger game internally then RTW ever was. Its a good problem to have though because it allows many really fine tuned stats instead of the rather broad brush strokes we had previously.

Luckily though, many of the main characteristics of the soldiers work in a very similar way to RTW and therefore I've been able to convert the scaling and costing algorithms almost intact from CB. I need to tune the heck out of both but so far the scaling is looking really nice (field is about 3800-4000 yards square).

Interestingly I'm expecting ECB to have a real CB feel about it but without the rough edges (hopefully). Once CA fixes artillery I think we'll all be a lot happier.

Cheers, M.

Yes you are right, got to be careful of the possibilities for swamping the enemy in a blob / human wave type tactic. Probably the differences in troop numbers won't be all that pronounced on a per unit basis. For instance, Spanish line in CB is about 400f, French line is about 450f, at this early stage in planning I'd imagine this translating into a French unit of 250 men, a Spanish one of 281 men. Not a huge difference comparing one unit to the next, yet after you have bought your 14 units of line it would amount to 437 extra guys! After such a performance levelling I'm assuming that both line units would cost the same dollars of course.

Cheers, M.

Right, so is this going to be an "idependent" project from the one Moon is doing, or are they at some stage going to combine into one ?.....I ask because Moon also said something about unit sizes would be different for different nations - in months to come.....kind of sounds like your both heading in the same direction.

Ah, right. I must have missed that post. Moon and I are hoping to collaborate at some level no doubt about it. There are skills and pertinent information that both camps will benefit from and each is influencing the thoughts of the other even now (I think thats fair to say).

Our major, probably _only_ differentiation is going to end up being scale, he is happy with company size, I'm really going to be happier with battalion or regimental.

Having said that though, I'm more than happy to be flexible about these things. I can't see any point in making a new mod thats 99.9% the same as another mod, that would just be ridiculous. It may well come to pass that we will end up with the same mod and simply adjust the size of battles via the small/medium/large/ultra setting.

Cheers, M.

Sounds like a good plan to me.

Hello Moopere, now that MC has joined the Lordz to work on ntw3, will you still be kicking on with a CB style Empire version ?.