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Curtis Lemay -> RE: Commander Task Force: Call for volunteers! (10/12/2020 2:00:51 PM)
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ORIGINAL: golden delicious
quote:
ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
In my instructions, I suggested that no one should rate above Napoleon. But I also left plenty of range.
Like a lot of famous generals, Napoleon benefited a lot from his conditions: leading a mass army against long service regulars. Napoleon could handle his forces in a relatively reckless way which he knew his opponents would be constrained from imitating since their armies were irreplaceable.
That's not to say Napoleon wasn't a good general- but I'm really sceptical of ratings like this. Again, how far can Rommel's results be attributed to individual genius rather than to the generally excellent quality of officers at all levels in the Wehrmacht in general and the panzertruppen in particular? Alexander the Great inherited the world's finest army from his father, etc. etc. etc.
Then, too, how reasonable is it to rate these "offensive" or "defensive" skills as absolutes? It was very apparent in the latter part of Napoleon's and Rommel's career that their skills didn't translate well when handling larger forces. From 1812 onwards, Napoleon rated between unimaginative to outright clumsy. Rommel for his part was hardly dazzling once he traded a modest-sized panzer korps for an Army Group- and in fact even in Africa he largely just went off to lead whichever panzer division was going to be at the front.
Finally- who's the player? Is Napoleon acting as a subordinate to the player and doing his dirty work for him, or am I getting some sort of bonus for "being" Napoleon? At all but the most strategic levels, most of the work of these senior generals is actually being done by the player.
I'm no doubt too late to the party on this- but this seems to be a feature that belongs in Europa Universalis or Panzer General- not in TOAW.
Nice to see you back, Ben. But all the above is entirely at the prerogative of the designer. They can choose whether to include Napoleon or Rommel commanders. They can choose to modify their ratings. Note that Rommel's ratings may suffer upon promotion if he is given a low "Organization" rating (which he has been). And what of his units receive his bonus will depend upon their "Command Radius" and how far he's from them. Finally, note that these are tactical ratings: the player is the operational commander - tactics take place under the hood.
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