The following discussion took place on the world-wide-web.

Dick Vohlers - 05:23am May 10, 1997 PST (#218)

I fooled around a bit with making the NAB sequence more interactive. For instance, after rolling for initiative at the beginning of a turn, the initiative player moves all his leaders that he's given APs to, followed by the other player doing the same. Then the players alternate trying to move their leaders by initiative. The thing I never fixed on was when to have combat--after each unit moves, at the end of the phase, or what. Anyway, it's something you might think about. It does make it more critical to determine which units move by APs.

Mark Sterner - 07:50am May 10, 1997 PST (#220)

It's really nice to see you on this board soliciting opinions on your famous NAB system games. I bought every one of them up through The Emperor Returns. Believe it or not, my favorite one was Struggle of Nations that you did for TAHGC, despite the "innovative" maps and counters, and a few deployment questions I never had resolved. ... I was always a little sensitive to the "all or nothing" initiative rolls. I understood what you were simulating and believed it perfectly valid.

But personally, I like a game where the initiative varies not just by the leaders' personalities, but also by their place in the organizational hierarchy. So a brigade leader will be less likely to have a "successful" initiative roll than a corps commander would. In conjunction with this idea, I agree with the comments that the initiative roll should afford "some" movement, as opposed to all or nothing. The best initiative/command control system I've played, IMHO, was that employed in TAHGC's "Advanced Gettysburg '77." There ..., after the automatically "activated" formation was designated and moved, the player could roll for initiative for his other formations to the extent they were within proper command radii of their relevant commanders.

Then, based on the level of the cmdr., the initiative roll would yield anywhere from 0 to the full MP allowance of the formation. Moreover, since it was a tactical game, once a unit entered the 3-hex "range of influence" of the enemy (it was a 250 yd or so scale), it was considered "named to attack" and received automatic full MP's until it did something inconsistent with closing with the enemy. That was a very authentic rendition. The same *could* apply at your strategic/operational level, if you're of the mind that once a leader receives "orders" (AP's) directing him to a certain place, or if he rolls initiative to move to a certain place, he would generally keep moving until there was a change of intent, whereupon, initiative or AP's would come into play again. Anyway, those are just some thoughts/feedback from a veteran player and admirer of your system. On the battles, I recall that with the "pitched" battle concept, there could be multiple rounds of combat, and that was a welcome development. I may be confusing systems a bit, but in general, I would like to see the abstracted battles done in a number of "rounds" with chances for reinforcement during rounds and perhaps a little more color with the different arms.

That's a very delicate area, I understand, and one that has to be carefully considered, as others state, in light of the "manuever" thrust of the game. (Nonetheless, after a significant amount of manuever for the "grand bataille," it can be a let down to have a simple resolution, one round kind of exercise that is sort of anti-climactic, you know?)

Richard Simon - 09:24am May 10, 1997 PST (#221)

Just Plain Wargames did several games on the ACW, using a very similar system. IMO, it works okay if you have a small number of leaders, as did those games. The observation, if you will, is that, for each leader using the system, you have to do some cross referencing off tables (and then a little math to apply the %'s). It's not bad if you don't have to do this too many times. NAB has many more leaders than did the JPW entries, plus, you might have to do this in both movement phases. This will tend to slow the game down some. One of the virtues of NAB is that it moves along quite briskly. Adding this type of leadership system involves a tradeoff. Is it worth the extra complexity?

Ed Wimble - 06:57pm May 10, 1997 PST (#222)

I reprise the comments regarding Joe Balkoski's method of force marching. Currently it is all or nothing, but it may be better to have it be "some and more." Bernadotte rarely did nothing, he usually just did not enough. So for him the liklihood of force marching the full distance would be unlikely. Whereas Davout usually did more than he was asked. Thus he would be very likely to force march the full distance. I recommend it be done as a negative modifier. You roll a die for distance, Bernadotte subtracts three or four from the result (he could thus march two or three extra hexes at most).

Davout, on the other hand would be a "O," he could march upwards of 6 extra movement points with his command (of course, some of his units may not be able to keep up with him). Mark, You know, you didn't mention "1807" in your list. If you had you would have noticed that units that force march to the sound of the guns do not arrive on the first turn of a pitched battle, but, depending on their die-roll may arrive on round two or three or four. Thus, the side who they are reinforcing may take the chance of getting clobbered in the hope that the cavalry will arrive to pull their fat out of the fire.

Many times a force would start out in the wrong direction and end up passing back through its starting point once they got the word. This led to the conclusion that a wrong way march, a slow march, or no march could all be represented "roughly" by the "no march" option. However, at times, if a force could move only one or two hexes, it would be crucial. Ed, I like your idea of subtracting from the maximum move, it's straightforward and can be presented without increasing complexity or slowing down play.

I thought of a simplification of Ed's very elegant idea which (in base 6) would work so: If your initiative die roll EQUALS your initiative rating, reduce your maximum MA by one; if you MISS your rating by one or two, you can still move one MP.

A failure to march in the game covers several cases: wrong-way march, lost orders, misunderstanding are the main ones. Except for 1805 and 1806, I don't see incompetant generals. Even in those years, armies had a standard day's march, which even incompetants could accomplish unless they had too many troops trying to cross the same bridge. What caused a general to move slowly was most often his inability to form a clear idea of where to go. Once he made up his mind, marching was easy.

Steven Kosakowski - 11:02am May 11, 1997 PST (#224)

Mark--Maybe it's just us, but Struggle of Nations has been on my "Ten Best" list since the first time I played it. Only game I ever played using calipers to figure out how far apart I could march and still be dangerous--great period feel.

Et al--I agree with Richard that there's not much you'd want to change. The March/Line modes from "Struggle" were good. The rounds of battle evolved nicely over the years--the force march delay handles the late-breaking flank attack nicely; maybe launching the cuirassiers could be handled like the guard?

Artillery gives a sense of the center of gravity for each army, and gives you the ability to say "THIS is the hill one of us will die for."

Re: Interactivity--sounds good in theory, but the Igo-Yugo forces you to attempt an overall plan, which gives better feel and results for the scale and the time. As for the incremental march, "all or nothing" gives good results over a week or so, but misses the "Ney only managed 8 miles that day" effect. Ed's tweak should be just right.

Markus Stumptner - 05:00am May 18, 1997 PST (#244 of 246)

To return to the issue of the game system, while I liked what I played, I always wondered a bit about the veracity of the combat system, in particular two aspects.

First, the purely odd-based approach. ... Napoleonic commanders seem to have worried little about gaining really large odds, but still a lot about being locally superior by whatever small margin - i.e., their thinking seems to have been more differential-based than odds-based. I've always wondered whether a differential CRT might not be more appropriate.

At the same time, occurrences of the French in particular holding off forces several times their size at least temporally are frequent, and in such cases, troop quality (morale, if you will), seems to have played a very large role. Yet, in the games in the series that I own that aspect is only covered in terms of the break ratings (or whatever) they're called, and typically only proves influential after losses have been heavy. I wonder if such aspects could be covered in some manner, in particular, since troop morale typically was influenced quite a bit by the outcome of earlier battles, or even skirmishes in the campaign. Or are the effects of that considered negligible?

I liked the notion of pitched battle, and basing the length of such on the commanders' ratings. And, of course, I like the rest of the system. The more gradual influence of initiative proposed here sounds very good.

Richard Simon - 06:52am May 18, 1997 PST (#246)

It always seemed to me that the "point" of this system, unlike a lot of other games, was that combat is not the be-all and end-all of the campaigns. Most battles were fought for a reason, rather than the sheer joy of beating the hell out of the other guy (unlike wargamers). That being said, the emphasis of the game was in the maneuvering and leadershipt, rather than the combat. Thus, we get a set of "simple" combat mechanics so that we can concentrate on the "net effects" of the combat, rather than the combat itself. (Did I get that right, Kevin?)

Right.

Rear guard actions often took place over a space of several days. This is represented by an Allied force approaching a French one (moving adjacent) and stopping, preparing to attack. The French force, using its superior Command Rating, Force Marches away. There are undoubtedly combat losses here, only at a scale that is too "low" to be picked up by the game scale. (and factored into the attrition) The fact that we can't "see" it, doesn't mean it isn't there. IMO, I think the combat system is a fairly elegant way of portraying the net effect of combat, without requiring the players to go through hoops. We can concentrate on the action.

John Vasilakos - 04:21am May 21, 1997 PST (#260)

An idea I have toyed with would limit the number of units or number of strength points able to attack or defend per HEXSIDE. In your example, let's say the limit is 10,000 for a clear hexside attacking/ defending. If 20,000 attack 10,000 from one hex its only 1:1, if they attack from 2 hexes its 2:1. If 10,000 attack 20,000 from 1 hex its also 1:1, To repersent defensive terrain you can allow the defender to use more men i.e only 5,000 men can attack through a defile hexside in this example, but 10,000 can defend each defile hexside. While I can imagine problems with a hexside approach, I hope to see more experimentation with it or similar approaches.

Mike Traynor - 03:19pm May 21, 1997 PST (#262)

In the context of KZ's NAB series games, you have to keep in mind that the battles may represent more than one 'clash of arms', even if they don't involve multiple rounds within the game. Even though one side may not be able to put more people into contact with the other at one instant, the ability to feed fresh troops into a battle can be decisive. Front matters more in a particular moment, but depth has a place in combat calculations too.

The question is, is the period of combat being considered so short that reserves (not necessarily general, army level reserves) could not be committed. In such a case, frontage overwhelms depth as a consideration. If the second line can make it into combat, then they should count. Don't ignore the morale effect of the committment of fresh troops.

Since no leader can produce more than 5 rounds of combat, there can be no more than 10 in two days (something I've never seen in one of these games), which means each round can be approximated as at least about 2-4 hours. This may not be time enough to get all 48,000 men in a hex ... into combat in one round, but maybe a second or third line could make its presence felt. So a frontage of 10,000 men per hex does not, at this scale imply that the appropriate odds would be 1:1 between a force of 10,000 and a force of 48,000.

Waxing philosophical, or geometrical, I would say that depth is frontage on the time axis.

Richard Simon - 05:44pm May 21, 1997 PST (#264)

The concept of battle in NAB was that it represented approximately one day's combat (or half of a turn), the remainder being spent resting, consolidating, and preparing for future operations (including rounding up soldiers who have headed for the hills). Thus, the frontage might not be maintained for a whole day.

Meanwhile, there is something to be said for "depth" as well, ISTM. For one thing, it had to be somewhat heartening to know there were guys behind you who could plug up a hole in the line, or that reserves were available to exploit an opportunity, or protect you from enemy action.

Further, depth could affect an enemy. The Confederates at Chattanooga had a commanding position and should have been able to repulse a Union assault in their sleep. However, one reason given for their demise was that each soldier could see the entire Union army deployed in front of them.

Ed Wimble - 01:19pm May 23, 1997 PST (#265)

Everyone is thinking in terms of hexagons, as if their minds were shaped by them. In miniatures play you can see the or'lapping of the lines. There is no hexagon keeping everything rigid and predictable.

If 50 thousand men are going to keep hammering at the same two mile bit of terrain all day, sure they'll eventually prevail if the combat goes to sufficient rounds for them to wear the opposing 10 thousand down. (In fact, I can see the real limiting factor for commanders of less skill, being that they would keep hammering on a narrow front, while, at least in the KZ system, a leader with a better span can extend his front into adjacent hexes.)

My point is that they'd have done much better deploying 25 thousand men in two hexes and attacking on a 4 mile front. No game simulates this as far as I can see. Rear guards are maneuvred out of position, not hit head on (if you want to succeed, that is). Ney was so good at defensive, rear guard actions because he knew when to break contact; i.e., the moment before the frontage facing him was about to expand beyond what he could cope with.

Wellington was able to fight Waterloo on a fairly restricted front. He was able to stretch his best troops across it, keeping his softer units in reserve. Mere attrition nearly cracked his egg but the Prussians arrived increasing the frontage the French had to deploy in (eating up their reserves). See what I mean?

Charles Vasey - 01:07am May 26, 1997 PST (#267)

Ed Wimble makes an excellent point about frontage. The Prince de Ligne claimed that he had never known of a battle [this must be in the 18th century] where more than six battalions had been engaged at any one time. Of course the "Lead Three" on both sides might have lots of boosters standing behind them and these units might step into the breach if their chums got the bullet but essentially as long as you keep going there is a limit to how many men the other side can oppose to yours.

Markus Stumptner - 05:08am May 26, 1997 PST (#268)

The question, was whether the NAB series underutilizes what's available in the arsenal. So the issue was not what the shape of the pegs is, but whether the holes are square.

As for the chitpull system, while it certainly is equivalent from the designer's point of view, it has a certain elegance from the user's point of view. The original raison d'etre seems to have fallen a bit by the wayside though and was only published as an optional rule: it was Miranda's idea to leave random chits out of the mix before a game, so the players would suffer from the same ignorance as the historical generals of that era before a campaign. Will cavalry charges work or fail? Will losses be high or low? Players would find this out over time as the appropriate chits would appear (or fail to appear) in a number of battles.

This, of course (I call it "design for mindset"), is only usable as an experiment every once in a while, because with hindsight the facts are clear and choosing the factors to work differently will ultimately distort what happens on the map. Ignorance can be simulated by making factors variable that historically were not; but the results will only be historical when the variability actually ends with the historical choice once more. The problem is unsolvable. We've seen a number of instances of that ilk recently (e.g., making a small fortress a large one because "the attackers treated it as if it was a large one historically", or the case of putting a town on the other side of a river).

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