Can someone make an A&A style Napoleonic game?

Yah your right, the closest anyones ever gotten to A&A Napoleon is Eagle Game’s Napoleon in Europe which is a acaully a really great game that is pretty accuarte, however it takes really long to play(each turn represents a month and the game goes from 1796-1815 (180 turns!) and the rule book is incomprehensible so you just gotta make it up as you go along.

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=18813.0 !!! :D

I’ll quote myself from the other thread by Dylan the Canadian:

"I’m actually doing something similar, but only for my own amusement. I’m using the map and some tokens from Napoleon in Europe, the units from Viktory II, the chits with the generals from Age of Napoleon, and the battlefield rules from Napoleon’s War for tactical battles.

It will play as a sort of Napoleon: Total War, The Boardgame. The ship pieces included with the Viktory II set are excellent for naval engagements.

Altough this isn’t an Axis & Allies clone, it will look and feel a lot like it, with area movement, dice rolling, and plastic units."

@Raeder:

I’ll quote myself from the other thread by Dylan the Canadian:

"I’m actually doing something similar, but only for my own amusement. I’m using the map and some tokens from Napoleon in Europe, the units from Viktory II, the chits with the generals from Age of Napoleon, and the battlefield rules from Napoleon’s War for tactical battles.

It will play as a sort of Napoleon: Total War, The Boardgame. The ship pieces included with the Viktory II set are excellent for naval engagements.

Altough this isn’t an Axis & Allies clone, it will look and feel a lot like it, with area movement, dice rolling, and plastic units."

Pleas post a copy of your rules when completed.

@allboxcars:

OK the problem that I can foresee quickly arising in this thread is that it depends on how one defines what is an A&A style game.

What constitutes an A&A-type game is an interesting question.  The first idea that came to my mind was the criterion that such a game is driven by the basic four-cycle mechanism of “Income buys units / Units fight battles / Battles win territory / Territory generates income”.  But exceptions in both directions are easy to spot: there are several non-A&A games which use it (for example Risk, which pre-dates A&A by many years), and the mechanism isn’t used in the three A&A local campaign games (D-Day, Bulge and Guadalcanal) in which there’s no industrial production as such.  So yes, a lot depends on the definition that’s being used.

@allboxcars:

OK BD, not sure what your point is… are we to presume from your cut n paste that you foresee no difficulties in creating such a game?

Admiral:

@Raeder:

Altough this isn’t an Axis & Allies clone, it will look and feel a lot like it, with area movement, dice rolling, and plastic units."

Well yes dice and plastic pieces I can see although IMTO that may be better at a tactical level.
But when you picture this game, do you see multiples pieces moving across the globe in different directions and being generated like A&A?

I guess a horsed piece could represent an army with a cavalry brigade while the infantry piece would represent minimal cavalry assets… a screening force only?  The grouping just seems to drag down into details that scream tactical to me.

Mind you it could just be me. Dragging and screaming etc.

And definitely I applaud any serious attempt by someone to craft his or her own game.  
Even IL, ha ha. :-D

And finally:
@Dylan:

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=18813.0 !!! :D

No comment.

#632

NO COMMENT!!! (111111)

@i:

dyaln…. are you… er…syico?(spelling)

Go back to school.

I am not sure that it would be that difficult to make an A&A type of Napoleonic game.  Eagle Games makes Napoleonic figures in a variety of colors, covering infantry, cavalry, and artillery.  That covers your basic unit types, although ships would be a problem, since the only way to get sailing ships would be to get the Sid Meier Civilization military runners and cut out the ships, although that would give you additional cavalry and artillery units, so the pieces are there.

While some of Napoleon’s campaigns were over with a single battle, some, like the Spanish campaign lasted from 1809 to the 1814, while the Russians and the French sparred a couple of times prior to the disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812.  Austria kept renewing the fight on a regular basis, while the Prussians proved to be less than dependable auxiliaries.  You might want to restrict the number of infantry and cavalry units that can be raised by Great Britain, while allowing the British unlimited ship building.  Also, you probably would want to have some what of adjusting for British superiority at naval combat, along with allowing for national revolts to occur, based on either a cumulative die roll or French setbacks. You would have to play with the exact manner of creating new units, but something like the way the Chinese get to muster units based on the number of territories held would be a good starting point for infantry and cavalry units, possibly with a terrain adjustment for cavalry based on plain verses mountainous, watery (i.e. the Netherlands), or poor terrain (such as Spain).

It would take some work and development time, say 6 to 9 months, but I do not think that it is in any way impossible.

@timerover51:

I am not sure that it would be that difficult to make an A&A type of Napoleonic game.  Eagle Games makes Napoleonic figures in a variety of colors, covering infantry, cavalry, and artillery.  That covers your basic unit types, although ships would be a problem, since the only way to get sailing ships would be to get the Sid Meier Civilization military runners and cut out the ships, although that would give you additional cavalry and artillery units, so the pieces are there.

While some of Napoleon’s campaigns were over with a single battle, some, like the Spanish campaign lasted from 1809 to the 1814, while the Russians and the French sparred a couple of times prior to the disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812.  Austria kept renewing the fight on a regular basis, while the Prussians proved to be less than dependable auxiliaries.  You might want to restrict the number of infantry and cavalry units that can be raised by Great Britain, while allowing the British unlimited ship building.  Also, you probably would want to have some what of adjusting for British superiority at naval combat, along with allowing for national revolts to occur, based on either a cumulative die roll or French setbacks. You would have to play with the exact manner of creating new units, but something like the way the Chinese get to muster units based on the number of territories held would be a good starting point for infantry and cavalry units, possibly with a terrain adjustment for cavalry based on plain verses mountainous, watery (i.e. the Netherlands), or poor terrain (such as Spain).

It would take some work and development time, say 6 to 9 months, but I do not think that it is in any way impossible.

Okay why are you talking about video games now.

@i:

why would you say that dylan? and im in school you dont be mean, and insulot my spelling(wicth im not good at anyway)  :x :x :x :x :x :x

I got B in english, what did you get.

And I said that as a punnishment because I know your in school (unless your one of those gangster kids.)

and now I’m no a phyco

Also stop using internet exploer, Chrome you can right click and it’s like a spell check.

One thing that might need to be considered in designing a realistic (as opposed to an abstract) A&A-style Napoleonic wargame is the fact that battles of that period (and of earlier periods) generally weren’t structured in the same way as those of the Second World War.  Generally speaking, the combat phases of pre-twentieth century wars tended to be concentrated into a very small number of decisive engagements occurring on a single primary battlefield and lasting for just a day or so – Waterloo being a good example.  The outcome of a war would often depend on what amounted to a single roll of the dice by the opposing forces, and most of the direct combat casualties of the war would take place during that single engagement.  Apart from those concentrated battles, serious fighting tended to be limited or nonexistent the rest of the year; armies engaged in a war spent a lot of time marching, maneuvering, training and so forth, but spent comparatively little time in outright combat.  Ditto for naval forces: battles like Trafalgar were decisive and produced many casualties, but they were rare events within the overall course of a war, with much of the rest of the time spent on operations like blockades.

In the First and Second World Wars, the structure of armies, fronts and battles changed radically, owing to such factors as scientific and technological progress (which led to the creation of weapons which could deliver ever-increasing volumes of increasingly lethal fire, like the machine gun), industrialization (which allowed the mass production of these improved weapons) and urbanization (which allowed the conscription and/or recruitment of millions more soldiers than could be supported by the primarily agricultural societies of earlier times).  These factors produced continuous fronts hundreds or even thousands of miles long.  Rather than being concentrated in location and in duration, fighting became stretched out: major battles might last days, weeks or even months, and lesser battles were taking place in multiple places more or less continuously (an example being the bomber offensive against Germany, which saw almost daily combat over the course of several years).

The A&A gaming system used in the various global editions, and in the AA Europe /  AA Pacific games, works well in the context of a war in which there is more or less continuous fighting on multiple fronts.  I think the problem it runs into when transplanted into the Napoleonic period is that combat in the Napoleonic wars didn’t involve continuous fighting on multiple fronts.  (Allboxcars mentioned some points along these lines in his original post, for instance when he talked about whether a diplomatic phase might be used to fill in parts of the game taking place during the long intervals between battles.)

@allboxcars:

Admiral:

@Raeder:

Altough this isn’t an Axis & Allies clone, it will look and feel a lot like it, with area movement, dice rolling, and plastic units."

Well yes dice and plastic pieces I can see although IMTO that may be better at a tactical level.
But when you picture this game, do you see multiples pieces moving across the globe in different directions and being generated like A&A?

I guess a horsed piece could represent an army with a cavalry brigade while the infantry piece would represent minimal cavalry assets… a screening force only?  The grouping just seems to drag down into details that scream tactical to me.

Do I see multiple pieces moving across the globe in different directions? Well, maybe not the globe, but at least the game board ;) I basically want plastic pieces moving around on a pretty map of Europe. But the idea is to incorporate things that are good from different Napoleonic games, like for example the map from Napoleon in Europe, and the generals and strategic battle system from Age of Napoleon.

Do I see pieces being generated like A&A? Well, sort of, I guess. But I’m thinking along the lines of 4 turns to a year, where the fourth turn is the winter turn, when forces go into winter quarters (no battles), and the units purchased/recruited during the year being mobilized on the board. Something like that.

Well,the tactical versus strategic scale. Always a problem. The way I’m picturing it is that infantry pieces represent divisions, and to these divisions you can attach artillery or cavalry brigades (artillery or cavalry pieces). I want to use the battle system from Age of Napoleon, though slightly tweaked. You calculate the sum of the troops you have in your army, you add the Battle Rating of your general, if your army has one, and you roll a D6. You check a table for losses. So no rolling 1D6 per unit and hit on a low number, like in A&A.

So basically you can resolve battles on a strategic level with armies consisting of a number of infantry divisions and attached arty and cav brigades and a general, using AoN battle system variant, or you can jump right into the tactical level, where the army is divided into brigades and regiments and things are far more detailed. To this end I will probably use Napoleon’s War, or some such. Kind of like the Total War series. You fiddle with armies on the campaign map, then the armies clash and you jump straight into the action.

What do you think?