Historical Alexander

[edward77]

HISTORICAL ALEXANDER
The vanilla Campaign versions of three of Alexander`s battles, Issus, Guagamela and Hydaspes take a broad brush approach to numbers, OOBs and deployment. This is fair enough as they have to allow for different levels of player skill.

For a stand alone scenario however a more detailed approach can be taken to get a closer approximation to the historic view as there is no need to meet all these other requirements.
I have designed new versions(V2) of all three scenarios using the historic estimates, other wargame versions etc as guidelines. Here is my take on all three scenarios, highlighting the differences from the vanilla versions. I should emphasize that these are my personal preferences based on the historic information available and do not claim to be definitive answers. The truth has long been lost in antiquity.

ALL THREE.
More attention to possible terrain features, slgnificant changes to OOBs, deployment and unit proportions to total and fuller use of the Custom unit facility to give a more historic flavour. I have chosen an alternative view of the Hypaspists which is that they were more like Superior Veteran Hoplites as there is evidence that they may have been much more flexible in movement and used shorter spears. This is I think a closer fit and looks much better than a unmanoeuvrable pike.

ISSUS.
Alexander uses the oblique deployment and is placed with the Companion Cavalry (not Hypaspists). All Cretan Archers, Thracians and Illyrians are now on the LW front line. Greek Mercenary and League Hoplites reduced from 16k to 9k. Macedonian archers and Light javelins added to the RW front line. For the Persians, Kardakian peltasts and Mardian archers (6.5k) have been added to the front line and mounted archers have replaced some of the RW cavalry.

GAUGAMELA.
The vanilla version has the Macedonian Strength (64k) at 50% greater than that of the Persians (42k) mainly due to the large contingent (16k to 21k) of Mercenary and Citizen Hoplites. I have reduced these to 9k. Alexander's use of the oblique deployment added. Elite Silver Shields (2.5k) also added to Macedonian RW. All Thracians are now on LW. Adopted the same vanilla approach to omitting the large numbers of Persian conscripts who were quite useless in battle.

HYDASPES.
Thracians, Macedonian Archers, Cretan Archers and Agranians added. I don't think any Thessalians were present. The Macedonian Army increases from 16k to 30k but now includes Craterus' forces (7k) making a late entry. Time/space are slightly bent to include Poros' sons attempt to slow down Alexanders advance. Greater expanse of river forded for Craterus' crossing.

So far we have got the set up and deployment addressed. Now comes the difficult bit. The squad files show a base phalanx size of 960 and a Companion Cavalry a size of 240. A fairly consistent view is that the Companions Cavalry totaled around 2000 so that would be equivalent to 8 units.

Each scenario has a % Strength multiplier which changes the numeric size of all base units on both sides in the scenario by this percentage. So 50 is 50% or half, 200 is 200% or double. This enables one to set the base unit at troop, battalion or regimental level. For the Ancient Battles the number chosen is based on what size you want the largest unit ie a phalanx unit to be.

The vanilla values are:- ISSUS 200 GAUGAMELA 300 HYDASPES 170

ISSUS. Strength multiplier increased to 220

GAUGAMELA. The Phalanx unit size is 960 x 3 = 2880. This immediately increases all the other units by the same factor. So the Companion Cavalry unit is now 240 x 3 = 720. If the Companions Cavalry did total around 2000 then this is equivalent to only 3 units and not much fun. Moral of the story is that the larger the Phalanx is set at, the greater the reduction in the individual units of all the other types. Perhaps this could be solved a different way? Otherwise, obviously, one has to try and strike a balance. I have increased the base value of the phalanx to 1200 and used a % Strength multiplier of 220 which gave reasonable sizes for the various types.

HYDASPES. I increased the % Strength multiplier to 200. I have halved the chariot base numbers to 100 men (4 crew) for Heavy and 50 men (crew 2) for Light so each chariot model represents 25 chariots. 8 models = 200 chariots which is about right. Each elephant model is equivalent to 40 elephants so 7 models = 7 x 40 x 1.1 = 300, the required number.

Finally I used the Start strength values to decrease the Macedonians by 10% (Wear and tear) and increase the enemies by 10% (Fresh troops). Below are the final figures for the Armies effective sizes for the Vanilla and Version2:-

------------------------------TOTAL ARMY IN 000's

SCENARIO--------------------VANILLA----VERSION 2

--ISSUS.---------------Mac-------40----------37
-------------------------Per- ------38----------44

--GAUGAMELA.-------Mac-------64--------- 44
-------------------------Per-- -----42----------38

--HYDASPES.----------Mac-------16----------30------23 Alex + 7 Craterus
-------------------------Ind--------42----------43------37 Poros + 6 screening Craterus


As one can see the differences are quite significant making Issus and Gaugamela probably harder and Hydaspes perhaps a bit easier and hopefully all a bit closer to the historic events. Of course we shall never know. Comments and opinions very welcome.

References:- http://www.ancientbattles.com, http://www.lukeuedasarson.com

[Hendricus]

Great job, and I would love to meet you on the battlefield. For that we need a multiplayer version. I would appreciate that enormously.