It's hard making historic battles

[Truls Engebakken-Fjell]

I’ve played quite a bit of Pike&Shot Campaigns.

Originally the game covered the period 1494-1654  but after the wars of the sun king expansion came out.  People have been making custom battles outside the period. You can now download battles like Waterloo and even battles from the ACW, FPW and even Zulu wars.  As well as earlier battles from WOTR.

 

Anyways I downloaded the battle of Kliszów. In that battle the Polish contingent was some 5000 strong.  But took very little part in the battle.  They were easily chased away by Swedish volleys and cavalry.

 

But in the game the Polish troops not only stayed to fight but was very challenging. Some of the hussar units beat back my swedish life guard horse. Quite unhistorically.

But you can’t really have it like real life.  Because if you chase away the Poles as easily as in history.  Then the battle would be way to easy.

[Not Connard Sage]

The P&S engine is deeply flawed. To give just one example, missile armed ‘irregular’ light cavalry are deadly, especially en masse.

The scenarios that extend into periods P&S was never intended for are just silly. It just about works for the WSS.

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Norm S]

Was the problem in your game to do with bad / good die rolls, or did your rules fail to replicate troop quality / capability?

The rules (or at least special scenario rules) should at least be capable of  delivering pure history, even if the history gives an uninteresting battle from a play perspective – in which case, it may just be one of those battles that should be avoided for lack of challenge or entertainment value.

 

[Not Connard Sage]

Norm S wrote:

Was the problem in your game to do with bad / good die rolls, or did your rules fail to replicate troop quality / capability? The rules (or at least special scenario rules) should at least be capable of delivering pure history, even if the history gives an uninteresting battle from a play perspective – in which case, it may just be one of those battles that should be avoided for lack of challenge or entertainment value.

He’s talking about the computer game Norm, we’re on the PC and console gaming board 😉

 

 

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Truls Engebakken-Fjell]

Not Connard Sage wrote:

norm smith wrote:

Was the problem in your game to do with bad / good die rolls, or did your rules fail to replicate troop quality / capability? The rules (or at least special scenario rules) should at least be capable of delivering pure history, even if the history gives an uninteresting battle from a play perspective – in which case, it may just be one of those battles that should be avoided for lack of challenge or entertainment value.

He’s talking about the computer game Norm, we’re on the PC and console gaming board

 

Technically the game does use dice roll.  It’s based on fields of glory renessanse.  So there are dice.  Just virtual dice.

[Norm S]

Aah – thank you. I have been caught out by this sort of thing before. I need to pay more attention to the pathway shown at the top of threads.

[Whirlwind]

It is one of the major disadvantages of (most) computer games: they aren’t amenable to amendment in the same way as tabletop games, so they  are harder to adjust to replicate one’s own ideas of the fighting.

As a suggestion, one could alwways think of units as having an overall combat value, where one can interchangeably increase or reduce the size of units to reflect that.

[Truls Engebakken-Fjell]

I think one of the problem was that the Polish hussar have some basic armor bonus that gives them a edge even if they are just average in quality. The Saxon horse are also average but got chased away easily probably because they don’t get the same armor bonus.

That one hussar unit that chased away 3 of my cavalry units including one life guard unit. Was thew kings hussar.  So basically it gets the effect of being superior and what ever armor bonus it gets.

 

Another problem is the saxon infantry is just too good. Yes they are easily beaten in mele and with flanking cavalry charges.  But they have a pretty deadly volley.   This is probably because they are all musket vs my pike and shot swedes. But reading the history of saxon volleys in the great northern war.  It was usually ragged and ineffective.

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