Hi. At the moment I've just started reading the sharpe series of books by Bernard cornwell, a set of books about a British rifleman set before and during the early 1800's, who starts off as a private and rises to become an officer, fighting first in the battles in India then in the napoleonic wars in flanders, spain and france, (I've read some of these before and seen the tv series with sean been, but I'd not read the ones set early in Sharpe's life in India).
Cornwell is very historically accurate with the events, tactics and technology of the time, and indeed even when he takes poetic license he explains exactly what license he has taken in historical notes, so as well as being pretty good stories in their own right, the sharpe books give a real idea of how battles were fought at that time in history, (cornwell has also written similar books set in other historical periods, but the sharpe series are his most famous). The one thing however that really strikes me reading these books from a gaming perspective, is just how inadequate so many games are in portraying the situation, supplies, and tactics required by a miliary force. Even in time of conflict for instance, you don't have even an approximation of the sort of situations and decisions that make up a ilitary campaigne. To illustrate in the book I'm reading now, Sharpe's Triump (chronologicaly second in the series), two, a battle is taking place betwene a very large army formed of a confederation of the Mahrata indian princes, and two much smaller forces under the joint command of Sir arthur wellsley, later known as the duke of wellington. The indian force is ten times the size of the british force, and has a far greater load of artiliary behind them. Thus, in any purely numeric situation such as that in Toc, they should pretty much automatically win. however, there are several factors working against them. The bulk of the indian force are not carrying their own supplies, meaning that they are foraging the countryside for provisions, (including taking it from the local population), thus meaning that sinse resources in any given area are limited when it comes to supporting such a huge encampment, they are on a severe time limit. The british forces however carry their own food supplies with them. While this does give them advantages in terms of maneuverability and time, it also dictates their movements quite severely, sinse the food and other supplies are carried by bullock carts, which require roads on which to move, and also which obviously can't move too fast. Then, there is the matter of formation. One of the advantages the british army at that time had against a larger force was that british army fought in just two ranks. The front rank would fire, then kneel and reload their weapons while the rank behind them fired. This two rank formation also let them more easily surround a larger enemy force. The distadvantage however, is that this formation was useless at stopping cavalry, sinse horses were fast enough to close quickly, break through the ranks and do huge amounts of damage, thus forcing the british soldiers to break their formation and form defensive squares whenever they came upon cavalry units (and didn't have any of their own cavalry to protect against them). On the other hand, the large columns the french fought in, while less affective in terms of volume of fire or ability to encircle an opponent, were far more defensible against cavalry attacks. However, both of these elements, supply lines and formations are things I think could be quite easily added to a military stratogy game such as time of conflict, by basically setting the properties of each unit. For instance, changing the formation of a unit could alter it's attack or defense value against both other types of unit and other formations, ---- which would also make (as in reality), information about the enemy far more necessary. Obviously formation could be changed reactively, but not during actual battle without a severe loss of time and attack. Then, supplies! in time of conflict supplies weren't an issue, and in sound rts supplies were pretty static, simply build farms and farm them, with no suggestion of how the food got from those farms to your troops. of course, castaways had a much more detailed supply chain, but castaways was a far more individualized game with a different, none military setting. once again, supplies could be dictated upon unit creation or orders. For instance, having a property such that the more food a unit took them, the longer they could spend out on the map before returning to a staging point, however, the disadvantage being that the more it carried, the slower it's speed. Alternatively, units could be set to forage, but at a cost of their attack (hungry soldiers don't fight as well, and foraging is far less efficient at feeding troops than carrying their own rations), and also the fact that once one area of the map was foraged, it couldn't be foraged again for several turns. this would make supply lines, depots and staging areas far more of a concern, and mean that units such as cart trains would also have a place in the game as well. What are people's thoughts? Beware the Grue! Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
