Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

I wonder if we could achieve already something with adding as much uncertainty as possible to the game.
Just doing 2 CW games and in one one of my brigades routed, I wonder what the division commander would have done or more what he would have thought about seeing half a kilometer away a bunch of union regiments running back leaving there artillery behind.
I know what I thought and I saw their moral isn't as bad and that I can bring them forward again, but in real life the division commander might have pulled his whole division back.

For the Napi series I already suggest not using the "Optional Fire Results" & "Optional Melee Results" to add uncertainty.
If more values could be put under FoW like moral, if visibility could be lowered considerable, victory screen blocked, etc. I all is done to remove the almost god like certainty within the game I'm sure that player would drastically have to change their style of playing these games.

Mssrs.,

To expand further on Jim's point, every contemporary author emphasized the importance of resolving an attack with cold steel. If an attacking column stopped and got caught up in an exchange of fire, the attack invariably failed.

More importantly, the MORALE of the respective forces was generally the key to success, not the size of the forces per se. At its simplest, a Napoleonic attack was a colossal game of "chicken." If the attackers pushed ahead (e.g., did not pause to return fire, were disorganized by defensive fire, etc.) the defenders, in effect, needed to pass a morale check to see if they stood or ran away. If the defenders crumbled, the attack succeeded, if not, the attack generally failed. That's how a single battalion of Middle Guard could drive off an entire division of Landwehr Prussians at Plancenoit. As someone already pointed out, the key to British tactical defenses was that they would: 1) Hold their defensive fire until the attacker was at point blank range (25 - 30 yards); 2) Deliver one (1) volley of fire which generally shattered the attacker's front rank; 3) Immediately counter-charge the now disorganized attackers.

None of this can be simulated with the Tiller game engines.

Regards,

Paco

_________________
Maréchal M. Francisco Palomo
Prince d'Essling et Duc d'Abrantes
Commandant en Chef du 1er Corps d'Armée

Christian,
your last post is a point I was trying to make earlier---I think that the hard coded melee loses are too high (especially when combined with 3 to 1 and 4 to 1 odds for infantry, which happen with high stacking) for frontal attacks on non-disordered units.

The pity is I thought just like in the operational games we have the high/low combat values in the PDT but this is not the case for the Nappy series, anyhow I think these are general values that would effect every combat and so we couldn't adjust fire combat and melee combat separately.

But I think it could still be achieve it, if we would want to lower melee casaulties we could lower the Terrain Combat Modifiers and raise the fire values, so that you keep the casualty level for infantry fire & artillery fire but lower casualties for melee.