Army Structure

There is no easy answer to this question, Mark. I think it depends on the position you are playing, what its natural advantages are and its starting technologies. Some countries actually lose honour if they go ‘Western’ (Asante, Japan). If you can only raise TF then they will not make steady troops when fighting ordinary F in a musket duel on a battlefield. Some nations have a natural advantage of light cavalry which would need to be used differently to ordinary horse. So my first general piece of advice would be to play to the strengths of your position.

If you can’t raise a certain type of unit and feel you need it, then you could try hiring them as mercenaries or by asking a friendly nation to send you a mission. The mercenary route is the quickest, but doesn’t help you longer term. It also makes it more difficult to standardise drill across all your units. Missions tend to be more flexible, but it can take time for newly raised units to become proficient with new weapons or drill. Expect failures. This also applies to ships: a country with no naval tradition does not just need the technology to build ships, but also training to sail them otherwise they can simply be captured by the enemy or sink on their first trip out of port.

The 3rd piece of general advice is that however you structure things, the real test is in combat. In the past I’ve had several ideas which I was convinced would give me an edge, but in combat they have failed for one reason or another. This may be a one-off or it may be a design flaw. So view the army as work in progress and don’t be afraid to change things if you make a mistake. The game is flexible enough to let you do almost anything, but that doesn’t mean to say that once you’ve done it your army is going to work as you expect.

If you would like more information on the types of units I raised for the French army, then see the French Uniforms thread. Reading about how some units performed I would certainly do some things differently (apologies to Jason and subsequent players of France in G7). One of my biggest mistakes was equipping uniforms with boots instead of shoes. The idea was sound: I thought it would be more comfortable for men on the march and more waterproof, reducing SL losses and boost their morale. However, in practice the boots supplied were difficult to fight in, so need to be replaced. I would also simplify things slightly with fewer unit types. I don’t regret dividing troops into regiments with uniforms, though. That kind of thing really adds to the period detail.

To answer the specific point about Napoleon, you would need an awful lot of troops to replicate the Corps system properly and I doubt it would work in 1700. If you look at army lists from the time most regiments were single battalion strength with very little standardisation of equipment let alone drill or deployment. The mentality was very much that the colonel of each regiment determined how it fought and would view the instructions of his superiors as polite requests, particularly if the colonel concerned was of a higher social rank. The nobility would rather fight bravely in an honourable way than go sneaking around, even if it meant their troops suffered. So tactics really were rather primitive and support functions (logistics, general staff) were also way below the standard needed to get Napoleonic levels of efficiency. You could no doubt split your Grande Armée into 5 separate corps, but having done so don’t be surprised if they all march off to different places and are defeated piecemeal. Co-ordinating 5 separate armies on the march to mirror what Napoleon did really isn't going to work. Even if you split an army of say 50F, 50H, 10Art (48,500 men) into 5 corps of 10F, 10H, 2FA, then each corps is not really large enough to stand on its own which defeats the objective! Of course if you have 250,000 men under arms then you won't have this problem, but you will probably be fighting an opponent (or opponents) who can match the strength of a single corps quite easily. Very few players willingly attack a superior foe.

The other big difficulty to adopting a corps system is in supplying/co-ordinating its movements. 5 formations will take up 5 lots of grain each time they receive an order. And any one of the 5 orders can go astray. When you are fighting a complicated campaign in LGDR (as I did in my conquest of England in G7) or on multiple fronts across different continents (as I did in 1704) it really is very difficult to plan and control. Be prepared for such things as late or missing orders, commanders misunderstanding even the simplest of instructions, units simply not moving where they should do, attacking towns instead of observing them … the list is almost endless. This is all very 1700 and not something Napoleon tolerated! LGDR seems to work reasonably well at the strategic level, but relatively poorly at the tactical level. Unfortunately most of the changes you can make to units are more beneficial at the tactical level, so their effect is limited.

As a guide campaigning seasons tended to be short, so wars were very much stop/start affairs with limited gains and limited objectives each year. One of the problems in the War of the Spanish Succession was that even after a major battle, armies could not follow up their victory before the campaigning season ended. Sieges were far more common than battles: from 1702-1712 there were only 4 major battles in Flanders; all the other combats were sieges. OK, some of this could well have been because France fought defensively instead of offensively, but even after such victories as Ramillies and Oudenarde there was no sustained breakthrough. The French did learn how to stop Marlborough by Malplaquet and both sides were in no condition to fight on. Denain (an outright French victory) came too late to be exploited, and we simply don't have the historical evidence to speculate on how the war may have developed from that point. It just shows how different warfare of the period was from Napoleon who in the 10 year period from 1803-1813 fought several campaigns, knocking out nations in a single battle, overrunning most of Europe and forcing peace. That kind of success simply wasn't possible in 1700 and I doubt you will be able to mirror it in LGDR.

Hope all this helps.

I edited my last post to add more detail for you.

Perhaps as a starting point you need to decide whether you want to fight offensively or defensively and then create an army which will allow you to do that? I originally conceived of France as having a defensive army, but events forced me to change things round dramatically. You learn so much about how the system works from having to fight a war it is difficult to be specific. I guess some things you have to learn for yourself.

In a way, fleets are harder than armies to organise.

Historically SoL were used in giant battlefleets which could comprise over a hundred vessels supported by various auxiliaries and smaller ships. SoL only fought in large fleet actions and the real day to day work was done by frigates. Even Nelson complained he never had enough frigates.

Unfortunately by the time line of battle tactics had been formalised (roughly 1700), large fleet actions were indecisive: both sides fought defensively. Because such fleets were very expensive to maintain, France switched to commerce raiding and used its fleets strategically to support its armed forces. A victory would be when one side failed to get into line of battle and hold formation, or through ill luck lost a single ship. As wooden ships could be repaired within a month (much longer in the game), such duels went on for ages.

In the game I don't think it matters how the navy is organised as much as the army. A battlefleet needs to be at least as strong as the enemy and assembled as needed for a certain battle. For smaller ships on patrol/anti-piracy duties, the size of area being patrolled seems to determine effectiveness more than just numbers. 5 corvettes can be very effective in a busy sea route whereas 1SoL may not be very effective at all in the same situation.

I don't think you can have a hard and fast rule on any of this. Smaller nations may get away without a main battlefleet and would probably find their navy more effective if they focussed on frigates or smaller vessels.