I'm not sure how to actually go about winning a campaign. A battle well-won is usually thrown away through attrition of besieging a province for a measly extra 100 gold taxation.

No doubt horse archers were quite fearsome troops but they seem to have been eclipsed quite rapidly when firearms came into play. Look at the rapid demise of all the Khanates in the 1500's and the expansion of Moscow all the way to the Pacific with small groups of arquebus armed adventurers. The Ta...

That's a pretty rough review. I love the game and it's what got me into researching early modern warfare. However, the way pursuit/flanking is implemented is extremely frustrating and often makes me ragequit for months at a time. If we accept that it's a game, an abstraction and not a simulation, th...

In FOGR tercios can shoot all round, but we made a design decision in P&S that this was not completely realistic, because a tercio would not be able to shoot all round while advancing. Hence we require it to turn to face to shoot, which effectively prevents this. Not sure that this is the case....

I gave the section of your link related to small arms a quick read. One thing that's interesting- I'd never thought to use the rear sight of a musket to hold the match before. http://www.angelfire.com/ga4/guilmartin.com/images/Fig05.jpg Historians who spend their careers discussing historical weapon...

Could you do the battle of Dussindale? It's interesting because a loyalist force made up of 3/4th cavalry with some pikemen and harquebusiers engaged a much larger rebel army of billmen and bowmen. The rebels had more artillery too. There's maps and explanations of the battle here. http://intarch.ac...

I dont know ... in the Napoleonic era the effective range of a musket is 100 yards .... 200 yards is max range. Rifles 300 yards. No commander would have his men try for a target 300 yards away with a musket. Very inaccurate. The maximum range of a musket is far longer than 200 yards, whether you'r...

There was quite a big debate in the 16th century, especially in England, about whether bows were still militarily useful or had become obsolete, with both sides presenting their arguments in pamphlets and military manuals. I've been studying these debates, along with every battle I could find where ...

Here is one historical quote I like a lot. "A soldier's musket, if not exceedingly ill-bored (as many of them are), will strike the figure of a man at eighty yards; it may even at 100; but a soldier must be very unfortunate indeed who shall be wounded by a common musket at 150 yards, provided ...

What does stick in my mind from the Conquest of New Spain is that the Spanish seem to have wasted little time exchanging their heavy metal breastplates for quilted linen armor, presumably because of the heat. From my reading, Diaz says that the conquistadors brought the cotton corslets with them fr...

Otherwise, even with adjustable sights I would have no idea where the shot was going. Remember, at 300 yards, there is an elevation correction of around 20 feet. At 400 yards, the correction is more like 40 feet. That's much flatter than the trajectory of a bow, if a period bow could even reach tha...

none of this applies to battlefield situation where a couple of volleys by a few hundred muskets would create such a cloud of smoke that it was better to wait for the enemy to close in Do actual battle accounts apply to battlefield situations? There are several battle accounts which affirm the same...

A musket won't hit a man-sized target at 200 yards every time, but it won't miss every time either. An archer might be able to cast an arrow hundreds of yards but it's doubtful that he could hit anyone at that range with any more consistency than the musketeer. The fletching might help keep the arro...

Regarding bows vs. firearms Anyway, I can chip in with an Asian example. The Koreans were actually given the opportunity to procure firearms before the Japanese invasion of Korea. But during a test, they concluded that the arquebus took a long time to load and not accurate with all the smoke that t...

Assuming that the mounted have a 4 square move (i.e. not early Gendarmes) and start their whole turn adjacent to the light foot, they should have a more than 50% chance of catching them. Gendarmes will have more trouble catching them as their move is the same as that of the light foot. The next ver...

I agree, fogman, that those battles don't seem like examples of the kind of charge that happens in the game. This might be a picture of pikes charging cavalry. Dornach, 1499. I can't find a detailed account of the battle though, so who knows if it's artistic license? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wiki...

Best I got was 58%.

I also tried running for the woods, managed to route all Catholic cavalry and support units. The problem is that the Catholic infantry chase my cavalry around the map instead of heading towards the woods to fight my infantry. Not very historical behavior.

I meant that they chase fresh, unbroken horse. It's actually a huge pain on Dreux to try and regroup my after the initial battle against the Catholic vanguard because there are so many kiels trying to charge them.

Where did you see the info about Swiss charging cavalry?

This has been bugging me for a while. I'm sure this must have actually happened a couple of times in history since it's in the game, but I haven't been able to find an account of it. What is the source the describes pike charges against cavalry? Also some weird behavior from the AI at Dreux- kiels p...

Edgehill was tough. I won on my first try, but I don't exactly know how. The cavalry fight was simple, except on the left where you have to be mindful of Parlimentarian shot as you charge. The infantry fight was a total slog. How can the Swedish brigade formation be used effectively? While splitting...