So I think I may have resolved these issues slightly: Clausewitz

The one advantage we have now over the "old rulewriters" is the use IT to help with the game accounting. I too wanted to record casualties and morale at detailed and summary level across large armies and found bits of paper too much hassle. I use an Excel spreadsheet to do the grunt work and whilst there is still some time taken in recording information it is quite effective at combing information and taking different factors into account. So if I have a unit fighting on a hill slope, I don't have to remember how strong that unit now is, what its current morale level is, what the impact of the slope is on their fighting ability. I simply tell the computer this unit is fighting on this type of terrain, roll the dice and it tells me the result.

How many players do you usually have for your games, David? I ask because I have unhappy memories of PC-based tabletop games where several of us would sit around the table waiting while the GM fiddled with his mouse to tell us every combat result. I like multi-player games, but I want to get a healthy share of game time myself, and some game systems do that better than others. I wrote a blog post about this back in February.

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!

David has a point if done correctly and fully supported by the rule system that it is for this could be a very effective way of tracking things easier.

Having a simple page on the rule website where you simply place the terrain and the unit etc and it gives you the various rolls you may need could work very well. For example, on the website I select line infantry and Forests. It could then say for combat you need 4+, shooting gives a penalty of +1 on your roll and morale has a -1 effect on your rolls.

Or in the case of Clausewitz perhaps you may have an order of battle you can build on the website and leave open which you can simply over write the strength, morale and dice figures on.

I think it's to easy to disregard an option like this due to the traditionalist view of some wargamers. 

That said I agree with Chris tons point in that it needs to be done in a way that doesn't have a detrimental impact on the way a game is played itseld. 

Trying to balance the complexity of monitoring details at a unit level whilst fighting a historically sized battle will always be a challenge. The usual trick is to abstract upwards and reduce everything to a few factored dice rolls that are assumed to take everything into account. As an alternative to consider, I use an Excel spreadsheet to do all the grunt work in my rules.Have you thought of doing something similar?

Sorry just spotted page 2! Please ignore the previous post.

My rules are for me playing solo-games so it works OK for me at my sedate pace of life. I have used them to host a battle where the generals were remote and responded to situation updates but rolled no dice.

Could it be applied to multi-player games? With the networking and apps that are now available I see no reason why something could not be developed where each player can use their own smart phone/device and not rely on a single data control point. Whether it could be true similtaneous use or have to follow a you-go-he-goes-I-go process will depend on both rules concept and technology utilised.

Have now written up rules for Cavalry and Infantry fleeing rates:

Infantry Fleeing

Cavalry Fleeing

I'm also considering ditching the strength characteristic completely to use purely fire dice which would be differentiated by the unit itself. e.g. a Standard Foot Guard having 7 Firing dice while a Standard Line Infantry perhaps 5.  

Then adding or subtracting one depending on the size of the unit at that battle.

Ascarin,

what other Napoleonic rule sets have you played, what did you like/not like about them, and what is the philosophical purpose of your own rule set?

As illustration, why are you going with the CdO / APs command method?  What did you like or not like about other rule sets to decide to adopt this method?

I haven't played Napoleonics games in a long while, but I'll give you an illustration..  My favorite rule set was From Valmy to Waterloo, and I had the pleasure of knowing William Keyser, who created the rules.  It was a dense set of rules, but made easier through William's effective use of flow charts.  A player who knew the rules could effectively control one corps of troops at close to 1:1 time scale (a turn was 15 minutes of game time and took about 15 minutes to complete). 

William's idea with command and control was to establish kinds of orders (attack, defend, maneuver, withdraw), which determined what subordinate troops could do, and establish a command capability (from A to F, like school grades), which determined how frequently one could change orders and how flexible one could be with subordinate orders.  A unit with capability A could attempt to change orders every 1 turn/15 minutes (it was not automatic but based on the leadership value of the unit commander), while a unit with capability D could only attempt to change every 4 turns/1 hour.  Some of the units with capability A rating could do orders different from the higher echelon order (such as one division defending while the rest of the divisions attacked because the corps order was attack), while a unit with capability rating D could not.  Capability ratings were not immutable for a given nation.  The French in 1805 might be capability A, but in 1814 only capability C.  What William wanted to show with his command system was that the armies of some nations could plan and react more quickly than others.  Even if at Bn level the sides were relatively comparable in fighting power, the command capability of one side, say the French in 1805-1806, meant that as a force they were more responsible than the Russians, Prussians, or Austrians from the same time period.  When playing a scenario, it was tough to be the commander of a C or D rated force.  You really had to think ahead and estimate when would be the right time to transition of defending to attacking, or commit a reserve.  Thus the CdO of the player was filtered through the game mechanic to keep the flavor of the side one was playing.  It was really easy to be Davout's III Corps in his system, not so easy to be Wittgenstein...

The point is you want to be clear in your head what effect you want to achieve with the mechanic you are employing.  

Hi Jamesdiii,

Thank you for the comments!  

Yes, From Valmy to Waterloo does seem like a great ruleset (even if it is hard to get hold of these days!).

The command and control structure you've outlined, while authentic and realistic would be hard to adapt to a faster paced game such as the one I'm aiming to write.  Ideally the game should be played within 3 hours for a game the size of Talavera and as such a system like the one you've outlined above would add to the playing time considerably.

I have made a number of changes since my last post on here and I would urge anyone interested to head over to the blog to check out the latest rule set.  www.clausewitzs.com

Unfortunately when writing rules you certainly can't please everyone, but hopefully I've found some middle ground for the staunch traditional historical gamers while keeping in mind my idea of a fast okay set of rules that would appeal to those gamers coming to Napoloenic gaming from a Games Workshop background.

I'm really quite proud of these now.

Here's a link to the run through of the first few turns of a game:

YouTubes