Jean Jodoin - 12:44pm Nov 28, 2001 PST (#4317 of 4320)
Concepts are easy; implementations are more difficult

John:

This was my biggest gripe about Eylau: the fact that 1 x SP arty + 1 x
SP cavalry could double up the strenght of 13 SP infantry. My take on it
would be to investigate the sequence of events constituting a battle. My
(preliminary) thoughts on the matter are:

A) Artillery should fire first, with the attacking artillery having
first fire. This represents the attacker initiating the assault.

B) The defending artillery should elect to engage in counter-battery
fire or hold its fire against incoming infantry/cavalry. If the attacker
does not launch the assault, the defender has wasted its chance to fire.
This puts the defender in a vice: fire too early and the assault part
goes in undisturbed; hold your fire and there is a chance the attacker
was bluffing and effectively achieved a diversionaty attack with
artillery only. I love those kinds of dilemna.

C) The attacker decides to attack first with infantry .OR. cavalry, but
not both, his call. Cavalry going in first might force the defender to
launch a counter-charge, go into square to reply the cavalry coming in,
fire the guns to disrupt the charge, or accept the charge as is. Again
we have both the attacker/defender confronted with hard choices
depending on their force mix. The defender may elect to use/not use
units as (s)he sees fit.

D) The attacker can now call the whole thing off, or follow-up with the
third remaining 'arm' (infantry or cavalry). I visualize this as being
either as infantry exploiting the situation created by a cavalry charge,
getting a bonus of sorts against squares if present, .OR. as cavalry
charging the enemy prepped by an infantry assault. The first assault
might have drawn so much fire that this second wave goes in practically
unmolested.

Each unit get to fire/fight only once per battle. When it gets to fight
is in the hands of the players (both attacker and defender) to a large
extent, provided they have a combined arms force. Get caught without
either arm and you could be in for a world of pain. I see that as the
real benefit of combined arms, not a generic and arbitrary bonus.

I realize that I am complicating the system, but if you are going to
throw in some tactical concepts (e.g., combined arms), you might as well
do it right IMO. Eagles of the Empire allows us to maneuver in such a
simple an elegant manner that it is a shame not to follow it up with a
tactical combat system that allows gamers to exploit to the fullest the
situation thus created.

There is more to my thinking but I thought that I would reveal some of
the aspects that I would tinker with to make Eagles a better system yet,
in my eyes at least.

Opinions?

Jean