A bunch of silly newbie questions

Brill , thanks . Just the job . Sounds like a Napoleonic wargame I used to play 100 years ago where you never actually took any figures off the table but their morale went steadily down as casualties were incurred . on a twenty sided dice I think .

Mike wrote:Brill , thanks . Just the job . Sounds like a Napoleonic wargame I used to play 100 years ago where you never actually took any figures off the table but their morale went steadily down as casualties were incurred . on a twenty sided dice I think .

Should have probably have added that while SL#1-3 is fairly normal (but at #3 your performance in action is likely to suffer, as does the watchulness of sentries) it should also be noted:

SL#4-5 sickness has reached a serious level and is severely impacting the ability of the force to fight

SL #6-8 the force remains intact, but is pretty useless militarily, while recovery is still possible so are mass desertions, mutiny and even rebellion!

SL#9 plus....oh dear, the force is in a real mess, desertions are probable rather than possible and even moving will be problematice

So if you allow a whole Army/Fleet to get to high sickness levels you are probably going to start to see whole units vanish untill you can get them some rest/repair. Units with a high sickness level are also likely to start to vanish from your order of battle if the foe continues to hit them.

Think the key points to keep in mind are:

a) Keeping a fresh Cavalry reserve is vital to cover a) Your retreats and b) Purse a routed foe...........Basically if you have beaten a foe and want to back sure their routers do not rally and come back another day you need to ride them into the ground or trap them. Think Jenna or Ulm.

2nd Dumbarton in G7 was a good example of this, the Dutch broke the Jacobite-English Army in a fire fight and the English foot and Artillery was falling back in some disorder when they were charged from the flank but Dutch Cavalry. The English Cavaley countered and held the Dutch Horse for long enough for the Army to get away........fairly chewed up and badly in need of a rest but able to recover.

b) Units attacked while they are resting/repairing in dry dock are at a really, really bad disadvantage.

1st Dumbarton in G7 was a horrible example of what happens to forces caught resting/repairing by a really heavy attack. In this case the the Jacobite-English did not get away.

Sometimes both forces are equally in need of rest and the game becomes a game of "Chicken" to see who cuts and runs first in search of rest and recovery unless someone can bring in some fresh forces.

Rather than trying to rest/repair in the open and hope you are not attacked the best option is to do this in a nice friendly fortress with a fresh garrison so that the foe can not get at you and finish you off.

I did manage to actually recover most of a Spanish Fleet from SL #12 and low morale because they got shot full of holes just outside of Cadiz in good conditions and Spanish Light forces were wiped out rowing my smashed up line ships back into the major base of the Spanish Navy with repair yards and hospitals and hundreds of Fortress Cannon which you do not want to get near. The next few months became a contest between the Garrison of Cadiz trying to protect the ships under repair and the Victorious English who wanted to finish them off.

Hope the above points are of some use and I would stress that in my opinion this is now a game not of tactics but of logistics and SL management ie Lack of supplies = SL = Defeat. And SL #0 raw Dragoons with beat the Highly drilled Elite Cavalry of the Mason du Roi or Horse Guards if the later are SL #7.

I think Richard has a rule where an army can have camp followers and if you use them up to help recover SL then you have an improved chance to recover. Will look up in rulebook/supplement if required.

Marshal Bombast wrote:I think Richard has a rule where an army can have camp followers and if you use them up to help recover SL then you have an improved chance to recover.  Will look up in rulebook/supplement if required.

Camp followers Improve military health..? (Seems like it should be the other way around.)

Me again , thanks for all the answers so far .

Do I need an army camp for a palace guard ?

Game 9 Shantung China, I raised two palace guard companies at Shanghai without having an army camp. So I'd say no you don't need one.

Brill … that's what I was hoping to hear .

Can you " do up " old walls round a city or can you only destroy and build anew or build more walls further out ?

You can upgrade old walls to new ones, which costs £50,000 (as if building new fortifications) and takes a year, same with old citadels.  My understanding is however that during that period they are ineffective as they are being rebuilt.

In one of the newer supplements (can't remember which and not got easy access at the moment), it does say what you can do is build completely new walls further out.  During this time, the old walls would still be effective if attacked, as no work is being done on them.  The new walls still take a year to build but cost more (I want to say £200K but that could be wrong), I think the justification is they would be encompassing a much greater area and the cost increase represents that.  Of course, also means you still have the old walls afterwards.

The supplement is Glory & Argument and its on page 8 under "Retrenchments".

In a "normal" siege a retrenchment is when the defenders identify the area were the attacker is making a breach and build a wall behind it. If you are being really nasty you can also cut away the rear of the breach and mine the area as well with the object of making a killing zone.

In historic sieges this was a sign of real determination and was not oftern achieved due to time probblems and the the amount of fire the attacker would put down to stop the defenders doing this type of work.

So one solution to this problom was to build "retrenchments" behind all of your nice new defences before the siege. Or more commonly build you new crown works, horn works, revelins and other modern defences further out and leave the old often middle age city walls in place as total "retrenchment".

How effective this style of "extended" defence was shown at Antwerp in G7 were a very large and well equiped French Army under a top commander spent four months taking the covered way, then crossing a wet ditch, then putting two breaches in the outer defences, but still had to make a breach in the inner defences (which I assume were Antwerp old walls) and take the Citadel when the Dutch a) Used the time gained to flood out the entire siege and b) agreed a peace treaty to end the war before the French could drain their flooded siege lines and continue the siege.

The disadvantage of such "extended" defences is that a) They cost a lot more ie £200,000 rather than £50,000 .........or if you are really worried about your major Naval bases being attacked by say English Pirates £200,000 plus cost of up to x3 citadels, a wet ditch, a silo for supplies, a hospital, repair yard and counter mine galleries. and b) The greater area means that you need a larger garrison than normal to defend them.

This more than the cost probably limits the use of this type of defence to a few key locations such as Capital Cities and the like.

It should also be noted that such defences are impossible to hide and unless your foe is either a) Blind or b) Like the French in G7 very strong and up for the challenge.......the odds are that no one will attack you here and you will have a lot of cash and troops sat around doing not a lot.

Pity in G7 the "alternative" defences of Glasgow designed to look weak and encourage an attack never got a test.

Thanks for all the super info . So would a growing fortress look like this
1)Citadel (2)walls (3) ditch/moat (4) covered way (5) retrenchment .

Mike wrote:Thanks for all the super info . So would a growing fortress look like this
1)Citadel (2)walls (3) ditch/moat (4) covered way (5) retrenchment .

Hi Mike,

The Citadel which is a stand alone fortification can be placed and used in several different ways:

- Either like the Bastille in Paris, the Tower in London or the Kremlin in Moscow it can be in the middle of the city and used as a final strong hold and in Capitals as a bolt hole for your Character, your government ministers and treasury if the city ever falls to the hostile forces or the forces of revolution. In game this type of Citadel adds time to a siege and denies the attacker bonus captured treasuries and the like if the city falls to a sudden "coup de main" (or underhand low blow....depending on your view point)

- Or it can be placed often on headlands or Islands to defend Harbours entrances from Naval attack, the defences of Havanna included no less than three Citadels so that any ship trying to break into the harbour would be taking fire from left, right and head-on and while any one fort remained in action a fleet was denied use of the Havanna anchorage. Being exposed on the North Coast of Cuba is not were you want to be in a Tropical storm.

- Or it can be placed outside the main defences normally to deny the attacker control of high land overlooking the city or a particular approach to the city. St Elmo on Malta, The Ottoman defences of the Straits which deny a naval approach to Constantinople and the Montjuich outside of Barcelona are good examples of this type. In game the disadvantage is that you have to provide a seperate garrison etc and if for example the Montjuich falls you have just given the attacker a really good base to conduct a siege of Barca from.

But these type of stand alone Citadels do give the attacker a problem.......do you try and conduct two sieges at once? Take the stand alone first? Or ignore it and face problem that some of your besiegers are being shot at from two directtions? Which could be a particular problem if defending against a outside relief attempt from outside.

As for placement of other elements the covered way always goes outside the main area of defences and the retrenchment/old walls always go inside the main defences. But you can also get a bit creative with the placement of wet/dry ditches. Many fortications in the low countries such as Mons detached the main bastions and placed them in the wet ditch with the defenders retreating from bastions across a wooden bridge which could then be pulled in. So you can either have a ditch outside of the main defences or between them and the inside re-entrenchment.

Or particular interest here are cities like Vienna, Buda-pest, Paris, London, Antwerp etc which are divided by rivers. In the Great Siege of Vienna in 1683 the Austrians abandoned and burnt down the east bank suburbs but by 1700 these suburbs had been rebuilt and fortified. So if defending Vienna or Buda-pest in a game of Glori do you just give up say Pest or the new Vienna suburbs torch the bridges and just defend the most important half of the city? Or do you go hard core and if half the city falls retreat to the other half blowing up the bridges behind you?

So an attacker of say London from the south takes covered way, walls and then faces a large wet ditch AKA The Thames (do not fall in with mouth open....or 99% chance of nasty diseases) before getting to the Palace, treasury etc on the north bank. Or even as the Palace and Parliament buildings on the North Bank fall to the Jacobites so the King and Parliament moves to the finest brothel on the south bank and vow to continue the fight.

Haha .. Don't give up .. you are doing a great job . Soooo ... the retrenchment costs 4 times as much because it is covering a greater area but goes inside the main defences . I don't understand that . Is it because the retrenchment is four times as thick ? ( but like mesel) and has sticky out bits . ( that is the technical word we use in my fort building academy )

In my example of a slowly developing fortress above where would the retrenchment go . Number 2 3 4 ?

Mike wrote:In my example of a slowly developing fortress above where would the retrenchment go . Number 2 3 4 ?

Think example of slowly developing fortress would be:

Govt of Scotland in 1700 looks at entry for Edinburgh:

1) Old Citadel (Edinburgh Castle) on rock in middle of city

2) Old city walls

And decides it needs to upgrade its defences in the modern style to show the world that Scotland is a modern power with first rate engineers and is not still stuck in middle ages.

It could just knock down its old walls and rebuild in modern style for £50,000.

Or it could leave the existing walls in place (as a permenant re-entrenchment) and build "sticky out bits to protect new surburbs and increase the depth of the defences for £200,000 (extra area = extra cost) plus another £10,000 for a wet ditch.

So when the nughty Jacobites sweep down from the Highlands on the fair burghers of Edinburgh they will need to ( in reverse order) overcome:

5) The covered way
4) The Wet Ditch
3) The main Modern defences AKA known in best engineering Academies as "The sticky out bits" and ramparts in between such bastions
2) Then after making a breach in the main defences and breaking into the city they still have the old city wall to get through
1) Then they have a final fight to get up the hill and take the castle were the Lord something of Scots is now holed up with the Scots Treasury, The Governments stock of Wiskey and Mary the barmaid from the Dog & Duck.

Probably by this stage the Jacobites are feeling a little bit tired, wet and running short of supplies and gunpowder and if the Lord Something of Scots has any friends at all in the world who think he is worth saving they should have shown up.

If your Academy is also teaching "How to attack" as well as how to defend fortress this is the point pupils need to turn to chapter on "Armies of Oberservation"

Smashing that .. thanks for all that and Jason2 too ...so I might not be first with the news , call me Sherlock , but I suspect you live in or play Scotland .

This image from Marlborough as Military Commander by David Chandler (ISBN 0-946771-12-X) might help with the terms used in sieges in the game:





Being a military dunce I wouldn't wish to disagree with Stuart about defences, but my understanding is much simpler:

1. Defences make it harder for the enemy to enter a town without taking huge casualties.
2. The stronger the defences the smaller the garrison needs to be so troops can be released into field armies.  historically, of course, this often meant that garrisons were too small to man the defences properly.
3. If defences are impossible to assault then the besiegers are obliged to conduct a long siege which will cost them in attrition and require even more men.  The garrison may well be starved into submission within a short period of time, far shorter than it would take the besiegers to get through the defences.
4. If you are going to build fortress impossible then how are you going to retake it after it falls to the enemy?

In the campaigns in G7 the enemy generally refused to attack towns with defences, but instead showed up in towns which were not marked on the map.  This possibly gained them an honour point and somewhere to rest, but it did make wars more about chasing the enemy round than bringing them to battle.  No player can fortify and garrison every possible village, so fortification is inevitably a question of protecting the main strategic towns/ports with whatever your budget runs to remembering that although fortifications have an initial cost, the upkeep is really that of the garrison required to man them.  In the rules the minimum effective garrison was stated somewhere as 100FC and 5F.

Over the years I have experimented with building fixed fortifications which were designed to block key strategic routes through passes, but these never brought the benefits I had hoped of slowing the enemy down or disrupting his communications/supplies.

I guess that if you are fighting an enemy who is very heavily defended, find a way to get round the defences or render them strategically redundant.  It is much cheaper and really irritates them.

This is another diagram from the same book, which shows the terms used when attacking a fortress:



Hope you can now visualise it better.

Of course, if you really want to go the whole hog on fortifications, in addition to the range of defences Stuart suggests, add in Montalembert fortresses, one as your citadel and four others built into your outer walls. Would take a lot of resources (money and recruits) but with "normal" fortifications (eg city walls and a citadel) you "only" face 200 fortress cannon, with Montalembert fortresses an attacker faces 2,100 fortress cannon.

I do find it interesting how the range of fortifications in-game has expanded over the years. When I first played (in 1999/2000?) there were "fortifications" (city walls and citadels) and stockades...now we've got stone forts, martello towers, etc, ranging in size from the block house with one fortress cannon to the montalemberts with 400. While I am sure some might query the value of smaller fortifications, it does allow players to be more realistic in their fortress cannon as well as make better use of limited resources, esp in smaller positions with low recruit numbers.

It is interesting to read both Stuart's and Papa's comments as both have a lot of experience of the combat side of the games yet both seem to have had very different experiences of fortifications. I am a little concerned at Stuart's in-depth knowledge of Auld Reekie's defences...anyone would think he has naughty spies going on tours of Edinburgh Castle...

Haha ... that's another thing I don't understand mont .. whatever it was .. fortress . Do you need the guy of the same name to invent them ?
Can you build citadel of the regular sort into your walls ? and if you do is it at 25 cannon a side with 25 poking out towards your own , inside the walls .
Is that the difference ? That the Montalembert all stick out one way ?

Montalembert fortresses do seem available to all without needing anyone to invent them for you. My understanding has always been that all guns in fortresses are considered to face outwards (be that Montalembert or "normal"). Gven fortress cannon are quite heavy duty guns, you wouldn't want to fire those inside your fortifications even if the enemy has made a breach and they dash around inside your fortress, you would be more likely to do damage to your own remaining fortifications (including any citadels?) rather than hit them.
However, it does make me think, maybe lighter guns (eg swivel guns?) mounted and facing inwards?

As to the idea of having "normal" fortresses in the walls in a similar way, I've not come across that before.

Mike wrote:Haha ... that's another thing I don't understand mont .. whatever it was .. fortress . Do you need the guy of the same name to invent them ?
Can you build citadel of the regular sort into your walls ? and if you do is it at 25 cannon a side with 25 poking out towards your own , inside the walls .
Is that the difference ? That the Montalembert all stick out one way ?

Montalembert fortress:

Detached forts with 4 required to defend all approaches to a city or one to dominate a mountain pass. If 4 are used then a 5th forms a central citadel. Square masonry walled towers (no bastions), 4 levels of gun battery (resembling in cross section a 4-decker ship); 400FC rather than 100FC can be mounted; large number of caponnierres stick out at right angles to the wall to provide crossfire: Caponnierres are situated in the dry ditch. The forts have no covered way, the taller towers gaining no protection from them. Cost per fort is £100K taking into account extra gun galleries, but the saving in having these x4 length galleies in a single wall), build time 1 year.

What does all that mean ... trouble!

Papa Clement wrote:

Mike wrote:Haha ... that's another thing I don't understand mont .. whatever it was .. fortress  . Do you need the guy of the same name to invent them ?
Can you build citadel of the regular sort into your walls ? and if you do is it at 25 cannon a side with 25 poking out towards your own , inside the walls .
Is that the difference ? That the Montalembert all stick out one way ?

Montalembert fortress:

Detached forts with 4 required to defend all approaches to a city or one to dominate a mountain pass.  If 4 are used then a 5th forms a central citadel.  Square masonry walled towers (no bastions), 4 levels of gun battery (resembling in cross section a 4-decker ship); 400FC rather than 100FC can be mounted; large number of caponnierres stick out at right angles to the wall to provide crossfire: Caponnierres are situated in the dry ditch.  The forts have no covered way, the taller towers gaining no protection from them.  Cost per fort is £100K taking into account extra gun galleries, but the saving in having these x4 length galleies in a single wall), build time 1 year.

What does all that mean ... trouble!

Indeed and what that doesn't make clear is you can have city walls in addition to the Montalembert fortresses around a city.

It takes a lot of time and resources to add them to defend a city but when you have a city that is worth that level of defence, and you can do it, I have to say it does give you a sense of security, esp when you use 48-pdrs as fortress cannon. I wonder how many positions can really justify them though?

Sooo . Thanks for looking that up and the other info . So this sounds like 100 guns a side instead of 25

Jason2 wrote:Montalembert fortresses do seem available to all without needing anyone to invent them for you. My understanding has always been that all guns in fortresses are considered to face outwards (be that Montalembert or "normal"). Given fortress cannon are quite heavy duty guns, you wouldn't want to fire those inside your fortifications even if the enemy has made a breach and they dash around inside your fortress, you would be more likely to do damage to your own remaining fortifications (including any citadels?) rather than hit them.
However, it does make me think, maybe lighter guns (eg swivel guns?) mounted and facing inwards?

As to the idea of having "normal" fortresses in the walls in a similar way, I've not come across that before.

This is something that has slightly puzzled me as well, probably one for Stuart's input.

If you look at the Vauban plan for assaulting a fortress (2nd picture) then he planned from the start where the best place to make a breach would be. The number of guns he was facing didn't seem to make much difference because of the way he dug his lines and protected the approach. So although a larger and more complicated series of fortifications will protect from any approach, the number of guns which can effectively fire is always going to be a quarter of those you have in total. If the attacker is not only digging, but also pounding the walls to knock out the FC, then in a standard fortress with 100FC there will be 75FC which cannot fire and cannot be moved into a position where they can fire on the attackers. I suppose if you are trying to make multiple breaches and attacking on different fronts then the other FC will help, but just how much damage would 25FC do against a large siege army, protected by their own fieldworks?

According to the book, Vauban's longest siege was 210 days, with an average of 40-60 days and this was fairly consistent irrespective of the design of fortification. The longer sieges were complicated by hitting heavy rocks (which hampered digging) or weather.

It is in this context that I am slightly skeptical about building huge fortifications.