Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Good day gentlemen
I was looking through some material of the revolutionary wars and wondered what it would take(besides a lot of volunteers to do the work of course) to bring the early Coalition wars(1st & 2nd) out as a variant of the John Tiller engine.

Besides the usual improvements that are always wanted in new games, what changes would be mandatory compared to the current Napoleonic engine we have to cover this period?

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No game engine changes needed. The main thing is the uniform images and the OB info.

There is a portion of the Neresheim map in Austerlitz.

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Would love to see these too!

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Generalfeldmarschall Scott Kronprinz "Vorwärts" Ludwig von Preußen
Kommandeur des Königlich-Preußischen Armee-Korps
Chief of Staff (CoS) of the Allied Coalition
Allied Coalition Webmaster & Club Website Support

Doing the latter part of the period is a must. The earlier battles are not as well known and probably could be left to a mod should we not be able to afford the additional artwork it would need to cover this period.

In the later period - 1796-1800 - the Austrians had uniform changes in their infantry and cavalry. That is not a big deal but I think they also had different uniforms in the earlier period as well.

Add in the French army of that early period ... there was quite a bit of difference.

Add in the Prussians ... about 15 to 20 icons I think.

Doing the Egyptian campaign would add in too many icons to make it worth our while. Also a desert terrain set ...

The main campaigns to cover are those in Northern Italy from 1795 (yes, Loano) to 1800 to include Suvarov's 1799 campaign in both Italy and Switzerland.

This title would cover a lot of ground and the planning has to be carefully thought out.

The problem over the last few games was I covered too much ground. The scenarios were playtested but the balance issues came out after they were released.

I now think its more important to give the customer well crafted scenarios than to try and "cover it all."

However, we will try and do our best to cover as many of the early battles in a future title. It definitely been one that folks have asked about.

Jemappes, Neerwinden, etc. All good topics but the amount of research to do them all ... well we would need a good team to get the correct OB info and unit placement. The old maps I see do not show the deployment down to the units so they would have to be laid out in a "block" of units with no historical concern. Which usually brings out the folks that say "I have a book that says ..." ... well great but we dont have all of the books that are needed to cover all of the actions of these wars on the level of detail that folks desire.

The amount of "emigre" units is amazing. Add in the Vendee (which some folks would want but I find to be a waste of time) and that is another entire image set unto itself.

Its not fun to leave out actions or battles in a game. However, the main thing is that when the players start up a battle that they know that it was tested properly. We are past the days of "Battleground Waterloo" where a smaller group of scenarios can be given proper coverage.

Its also obvious from the feedback I see that folks dont want to copy a scenario and adjust the settings to balance a scenario OR just agree at the end to a different outcome. I know I have done BOTH of those in the past ... when I felt a scenario was favoring one side I just said "its your win" and moved on. I also have come up with my own versions of the scenarios too.

By and large the "stock scenarios" provided in our games are the ones folks play. The H&R and custom scenarios and so on do not get played as much. I also note that the Campaigns, while getting some play, are not as popular as the "Historical" battle scenarios.

Now I like the what-if scenarios the most to be honest. History is rarely balanced.

What-if there was an extra French division at Albuera? I plan on putting together a scenario that has more French forces for that battle. ....

Anyway, the French Rev Wars (or early Coalitions if you want to use that phrase) are definitely popular. Battles could be added in future updates if they cant get out with the initial release.

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Interesting. Thanks Bill.

Fwiw, desert terrain set would not pose a problem (I would start with MAW and go from there), although as was noted, there are other considerations.).

Good to know and yeah Steve, I assume you would've just adapted from MAW a little bit. It'd be fun to see the Egypt stuff and have some Turks involved. Only ever saw one NIR Project module for such a campaign....

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Generalfeldmarschall Scott Kronprinz "Vorwärts" Ludwig von Preußen
Kommandeur des Königlich-Preußischen Armee-Korps
Chief of Staff (CoS) of the Allied Coalition
Allied Coalition Webmaster & Club Website Support

the MAW i think is a different game engine, it uses the ren game engine. not sure if it's that big an obstacle. bill peters would be able to comment more on that than i am

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Terrain tiles, not engine.....Steve has done work with various series terrain tiles. Really cool work too....

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Generalfeldmarschall Scott Kronprinz "Vorwärts" Ludwig von Preußen
Kommandeur des Königlich-Preußischen Armee-Korps
Chief of Staff (CoS) of the Allied Coalition
Allied Coalition Webmaster & Club Website Support

What is MAW? Never heard of it!

The terrain sets are out of my line. I have tweaked some of the files of course but I dont dabble in what we will or wont add into our games as far as the terrain goes.

I always wanted to see a "vineyard" "beach" and a couple of other terrain types added to the game though I guess for "vineyard" you could use the fields and increase the height of them for that scenario (in the PDT file). Or use Orchard terrrain ... some vineyards are very tall in Europe.

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

MAW = Mexican-American War....

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Generalfeldmarschall Scott Kronprinz "Vorwärts" Ludwig von Preußen
Kommandeur des Königlich-Preußischen Armee-Korps
Chief of Staff (CoS) of the Allied Coalition
Allied Coalition Webmaster & Club Website Support

Nice to hear that no engine changes are needed, but I guess besides the work on uniform & OOB doing all the necessary maps would be a lot work too.

While the 1st revolutionary war is surely interesting especially because of the high amount of battles, but that also makes it an obstacle it is simply a huge conflict to tackle, one can assume that multiple titles are necessary to cover this war with so much ground to cover regarding the participating belligerents and the areas of war that go from Belgium down to Italy(ignoring the minor things like Middle East and Spain).

The 2nd revolutionary war seems to be an easier target with less battles, belligerents and area to cover, and if one would decide to let out Holland it would save some work, same counts for the minor actions like the Middle East or sieges like Corfu.
So concentrating on the actions in Germany, Switzerland & Italy would lower the amount of work again, so depending on the scope one could cover the main action with a single titles while either doing a second title for the minor action of the 2nd coaltion.


Regarding balance issues, I think you will likely always see them because if the game is released so many more players will play the scenarios compared to the original playtesting that it's only natural that the will uncover some issues. Personally I prefer historical correctness over any balance issues, like Bill said you can always do a What-If if you want to balance the scenario.
Despite that, what is necessary is to look at a battle from all perspectives, inf the last few months I threw some feedback at Edward Williams AKA Volcano Man for his France 14 title and at some point in my research it was clear that German sources seems to have been rather thinly if any at all used.
So cover a research for a topic in all the likely languages of the belligerents is mandatory to get a good first version of a scenario, the perfection will come with feedback after release.

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Bill might not (apologies for the editing - I did not want Bil's entire post

All prior stock art s fair game; it also is fair game to be converted to 24 bit from 8 bit -which I think MAW is.

Scott is correct in that it is the bmp files that I am talking about and not the engine itself; as far as the artwork goes the engine is irrelevant as long as you match up the dimensions.

I don't mean to claim that there is anything like that in the works, I only mean that the graphics conversion would not be an issue.

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Wouldn't that require an engine change to add those terrain types, as well as locations on the bmp files? I mean, you can change an existing spot on the bmp and call it something else - like I was toying with the idea of changing 'Orchard' over to something like 'light forest' - or maybe 'fields' into 'mud' or some soft of 'soft' terrain -but I don't know - if you can't change the name of the terrain in the pdt (and you can't short of an engine change as far as I am aware) -then it probably is not going to be worth the hassle.

Fwiw, I do a lot of work in the Musket and Pike engine ( MAW is an Early American Wars series title) MP is pretty close to the Napoleonic Battles' series -although sometimes it is more flexible (ability to assign vps in the OOB to specific unit types, can assign fire and melee bonuses [penalties too as you can code these in the negative]), and other times it is less flexible (command range currently does not apply to Army and Wing commanders, plus you only have half of the available weapons' slots in the PDT -because you need to rate weapons against armored and unarmored targets.). But I am getting a little too far from the graphics points that I was trying to make.

I only mentioned MAW because it has a tan to yellowish set of hexes that are an excellent starter color combination for desert terrain -it would probably need the larger hexgrid that I think Bill might have started using some time back but that is fairly easily done -I mean it is all relative and a bit of trial and error. I mean, what with the elevation hexsides now being used in 2d -you might not even find that you need all of the different level's with a big different in color -the elevation hexsides might take care of that visually. (Keep in mind the trial and error part of this - everyone's aesthetics are a little different.).

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And over to Christian's last post:

Imo - the maps would be the big hang up. I don't know who has time to do it -in the past it was one of those things where if there was a project in development then it wouldn't happen, and if there wasn't then you sort of had to ask nicely and hope that you got lucky - and it is by no means automatic. I guess you can ask the support desk -but, I don't actually know of any mod projects underway at the moment - and the maps (if they don't currently exist) -are going to be what stands in the way ... artwork is what it is ... you can put together a units.bmp file and a leaders.bmp file on ones' own.

I am not meaning to suggest that I would be available for any of this work, as I have to focus on project work and by that I mean projects that are intended to be retail products.

i think that MAW and REN are company level based games. not sure how the terrain and everything else would work trying to scale it up to regimental size. not trying to throw cold water on this worthy project but i think those might be obstacles. but on the other hand i really don't know what i am talking about either.

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REN isn't a company level game (I was one of the testers on REN that took to release and fwiw am working on some other MP projects in development) - it (MP and REN in particular) uses the same standard ground and time scale as NB does. Manpower in units is more or less the same as NB- but it sort of depends upon the formation being represented as you sort of have to work with NB unit designations to represent something that was not so clearly delineated.

Example - a Spanish pike block in REN typically exceeds 1000 men in a single unit (not a company ) ... also technically not a regiment - and depending upon how you want to code the pdt and the oob -it also doesn't technically need a single weapon -you can set things up to create a pike and shot capability in a single unit (you just need to play around with some of the math to represent different amounts of guys in a single unit doing different things...).

Anyway... none of that has anything to do with the graphics. Trust me - those are re-useable ... I have done it already when playing around with BPW.