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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Empires in Arms the Napoleonic Wars of 1805 - 1815 >>

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- 9/26/2003 9:49:30 PM

shane

Posts: 16
Joined: 9/10/2003
Status: offline

True France moves four, but let's face it: Britain, Austria, Prussia, Spain, and probably Russia would all be spying on France anyway. France might need that advantage. Naturally the one with the most counters would have the most potential to see through FoW.

(in reply to pfnognoff)

Post #: 1

FOW - 9/26/2003 9:53:01 PM

Roads

Posts: 180
Joined: 12/14/2002
From: massachusetts
Status: offline

From a purely historical point of view I think there shouldn't be too much FOW. Sure the Ottomans wouldn't have had knowledge of the locations of corps in England, but from a game point of view that knowledge is irrelevant.

The scale of EiA is largish provinces, corps, and months. Did anyone in the period achieve that level of surprise?

In 1805 the allies had a pretty good idea of the size and location of the Grande Army. The surprise was that it showed up on the Rhine so quickly, and that the army in Italy was smaller than they expected. These are adequately modeled by existing mechanisms (unknown corps size and force march). The Russians had a very good idea of what was coming their way in 1812, months in advance. They may not have known how "full" the French and allied corps counters were, but they knew where they were and where they were headed. The Waterloo campaign is a great example of surprise, but the army was pulled together in under a week, and it was the initiation of the campaign that caught the allies off guard. On 15 May 1815 I daresy Wellington had an excellent idea of the location of all French corps. I could go on, but the point is that the existing mechanisms allow for realistic treatment of FOW, and no-one could hide a large army.

I don't think dummy counters help much. What might be nice would be 'discount' ot 'militia' corps that might cost less to maintain and supply but would have a very limited capacity (3M for example). These wouldn't change much in the game but would allow for more (and cheaper) deception campaigns which is appropriate.

On the naval side everyone knew when a fleet was fitting out months in advance. And had a good idea of the number of ships too. Perhaps allowing strengths of fleets at sea (not blockading) to be unknown might make sense, but anything beyond that is, to me, unrealistic.

(in reply to pfnognoff)

Post #: 2