Someone win the first Battle of Breitenfeld ?

[Rigmoor]

I’ve tried several times but always get beaten (medium difficulty and lower).

Troops at the beginning of the battle:
Catholic League (enemy): 31202 men
Saxon and Sweden (friendly): 24725 men

Is this historical correct ?
I’ve researched about
Catholic League: 35000 men
Protestant States: 41000 men

[rbodleyscott]

The historical numbers have been tweaked in the interest of scenario/game design.

The battle is hard to win but it can be won once you get the trick of it.

[nikgaukroger]

I found that moving the Swedish army somewhat right so that some infantry get to interfere with the Imperial cavalry on the (Swedish) right and the Swedish infantry attack is concentrated on one end of the Imperial line paid dividends - you can get Average Swedish horse round Pappenheim's flank this way and ruin the kuirassier's day I generally ignored what was happening to the Saxons but sent a few Swedish horse units in as spoilers when the Imperial attack was committed. Worked twice for me at SMG level.

[Smirfy]

It's a bit odd that the Saxons can't move at all, not even rotate. The scenario feels like a Death Star simulator, not sure 50% causaulties and not even disruption is reasonable.

[rbodleyscott]

It's a bit odd that the Saxons can't move at all, not even rotate.

Unfortunately the engine will not support putting player side units under full AI control using the algorithms used by the AI side. We use simpler custom scripted algorithms for the AI-controlled player units in Fornovo and Bicocca.

We could have just made the Saxons rout, but we wanted to let them put up a bit of a fight.

We also tried letting the player take control of them after the first few turns, but that did not seem right either.

[nikdav]

And if all the saxons are Disrupted or Fragmented , except Arnim, Bindauf and Taube regiments but in full control of player ?
It could be interesting to play.... and more historical !

[nikdav]

There is a way to load in the editor a base game scenario for modding and save as new battle ?

[rbodleyscott]

There is a way to load in the editor a base game scenario for modding and save as new battle ?

Yes.

Actually you don't need to mod the .BAM file, you need to mod the .BSF script file. That is what makes the Saxons uncontrollable.

[Smirfy]

You just dont get the feeling that the Swedish force are particulary handy especially the skirmishers and cavalry

[Smirfy]

Played the scenario again this morning boy the Swedes are pretty useless

[TheGrayMouser]

As Nick said above, to win this battle you need to play flawless due to the victory conditins. This basicaly means destroy the Imperial left cavalry wing with minimal casualties. its tough but very doable, I won 3rd time around

[nikgaukroger]

As Nick said above, to win this battle you need to play flawless due to the victory conditins. This basicaly means destroy the Imperial left cavalry wing with minimal casualties. its tough but very doable, I won 3rd time around

"Flawless" is a bit of an overstatement - the day has not yet come when I play a flawless game

However, it is a scenario where you do have to execute your plan pretty well and know what your troops can and cannot manage.

Played the scenario again this morning boy the Swedes are pretty useless

See my last point above.

Don't expect the Swedish horse to beat the Imperial kuirassieres in a straight up even fight - apart, maybe, from the Hakapells if they get a good Impact. The superior ones can go toe to toe and blunt the kuirassiere attack, but you need to work on getting other units into their flanks. Using the commanded shot to ensure your line is long enough helps here as they free up units to get around the enemy.

The Swedish salvo infantry can beat almost any Imperial infantry due to their massive Impact advanatge. As all the really tough Imperial foot is on the Imperial right this allows you to aim the Swedes at the Imperial left meaning you don't have to fight many of their tough infantry tercios if all goes well.

As ever, its about getting the matchups right and delivering a heavy blow at the right point and exploiting the success.

The Swedes are far from useless, but won't just sweep away the enemy.

[Smirfy]

Ive seen the Imperial Cavalry can rotate and charge how come my units cant do that? The Swedish cavalry is pretty useless even when I win an engagement because you need so many units to win they all follow the rout. Perhaps you can win if you get all the planets in line but it feels more like a puzzle than a wargame.

[Smirfy]

Finally won the game, the secret is keep your cavalry and skirmishers from getting in the way of your infantry (the hardest part ). Keep all your infantry together and overload the flank rolling over first their heavy cavalry and then their infantry.

[nikgaukroger]

Now you can move onto Lutzen ...

[shawkhan2]

Guess then I am not the only one dissatisfied with the way the Swedes are nerfed in this battle.
It appears that noone can win this one fighting the battle historically.
This is a problem for me as I have studied Gustavus' tactical innovatiions for years and was hoping this game would do them justice.

[TimW]

I've managed to win on the middle difficulty setting but it took many tries and certainly wasn't the kind of victory history records the Swedes as achieving.

I think I got lucky because the Saxons held out pretty well for a while (I've sometimes seen the entire Saxon right break on contact with a single Imperial unit) and tied up the Imperial cavalry on the left while pretty much all my horse focused on flanking the Imperialist horse on the right while foot provided fire support. After that the Swedish foot disposed of the smaller tercios pretty easily but the big early tercios still managed to go through Swedes like a sausage machine. I managed to break one, but it went all the way to auto-routing through casualties while being engaged by five batallions without even becoming disrupted despite taking around 200 casualties in several turns.

The Swedish commanded shot are almost useless by the way. They inflict very few firing casualties to opposing horse but do manage to delay for a while whatever horse melees them. What they don't do is disrupt opposing horse by fire. Never seen that happen.

At which point I just scraped a victory.

[nikgaukroger]

Guess then I am not the only one dissatisfied with the way the Swedes are nerfed in this battle.
It appears that noone can win this one fighting the battle historically.
This is a problem for me as I have studied Gustavus' tactical innovatiions for years and was hoping this game would do them justice.

Played it a few times now and have won by defeating the Imperial left wing cavalry and infantry whilst moving most of the Swedish second line to screen off where the Imperials will win by routing the Saxons, and then moving my victorious right round to finish off the Imperial army. Sounds pretty much like the real battle to me.

[shawkhan2]

Not really.
The Swedish cavalry cannot defeat the Imperial cavalry.
Everyone has to use infantry units to help out.
Historically, the Swedish cavalry defeated 7 charges, then swept around the Imperial left.
Gustavus then turned the Swedish line at right angles and shot the Imperial tercios to pieces, since the Swedish ROF was at least 3X that of the imperials and he had turned captured Imperial artillery on the Imperial tercios.
W/o supporting the Saxons one cannot win this battle. Noone wins fighting historically, meaning that this battle fails as a simulation. The Swedes are much slower than they were historically, while the early Imperial tercios race around the field, despite having a huge complicated rigid formation of some 1500 men, while the Swedes are stuck with the same maneuverability despite having smaller maneuver units of around 200 men and horse-drawn light artillery that maneuvered separately from the rest of the unit.
I say again, this was not the way Gustavus won this battle.

[TheGrayMouser]

Not really.
The Swedish cavalry cannot defeat the Imperial cavalry.
Everyone has to use infantry units to help out.
Historically, the Swedish cavalry defeated 7 charges, then swept around the Imperial left.
Gustavus then turned the Swedish line at right angles and shot the Imperial tercios to pieces, since the Swedish ROF was at least 3X that of the imperials and he had turned captured Imperial artillery on the Imperial tercios.
W/o supporting the Saxons one cannot win this battle. Noone wins fighting historically, meaning that this battle fails as a simulation. The Swedes are much slower than they were historically, while the early Imperial tercios race around the field, despite having a huge complicated rigid formation of some 1500 men, while the Swedes are stuck with the same maneuverability despite having smaller maneuver units of around 200 men and horse-drawn light artillery that maneuvered separately from the rest of the unit.
I say again, this was not the way Gustavus won this battle.

My ist win in this battle was using my right wing cavalry and two units of Swedish Salvo infantry to destroy Papenhems cavalry, by that time I was feeding more and more left flank infantry and cavalry into the gap left by the vanquished Saxons. Reasonably historical IMHO

I do agree that perhaps commanded shot need to be adjusted. IMHO the issue isn't that they themselves are weak, its that weak cavalry should get some POA benefit for having c-shot adjacent (like the TT)
I believe it wasn't added as there is no way the AI could handle such a formation, especially in the skirmish battles.

Now I dont know how you can explain the below formation was capable of "rapid maneuvers" , or at least compared to rectangles only about 10-12 deep
Its veracity cannot be argued since it was allegedly drawn by Gustov himself.