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 __ Gamers@audyssey.org
If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to
gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org.
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/gamers@audyssey.org.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the
list,
please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus
signature database 7236 (20120620) __________
The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.
http://www.eset.com
