Slitherine

Never having done an AAR before, I thought it might be fun to try doing one for this game. I chose the 1809 scenario, where the French are forced to deal with a defiant Austria.

I played agains the AI, normal settings, "no fog", "advanced weather", "fixed end date" and as you will see from the screenies, "counters" (apologies to Slitherine---although the artwork for the unit icons is wonderful, I am an old-time gamer and like my morel traditional counters )

TURN ONE:

February 8, 1809 and the once pliable Austria is threatening to attack Bavaria. Such an action will have the potential to destabilize Prussia, and unrest there would spill over into the Rheinbund Coalition, unraveling all of Napoleon’s carefully woven alliances.

L’empereur is determined this will not happen. Austria will be stopped, and to that end massive French forces deploy in the direction of the River Danube.

The French hold their breath, waiting to see whether or not the Austrians will fall into the trap Napoleon has prepared for them.

TURN TWO:

In fact, the Austrians do exactly what Napoleon hoped for. They divide their forces, but unequally, unable to resist the lure of an apparently weak defense around Munich. The bulk of the Austrian army is in the south, and Davout prepares to turn the enemy flank.

Davout’s horse artillery opens the action, bombarding the Austrian corps anchoring the left wing of the Austrian line. Davout’s corps, supported by a light infantry corps, annihilates the Austrian defender!

Now the jaws of the trap snap shut---Napoleon’s corps smashes the Austrian corps in front of Munich, while a bit further north the corps from Württemberg joins a French corps in crushing an Austrian light infantry. A strong French cavalry force sweeps down from Davout’s front and finishes off the remnants of the Austrian unit. A Saxon heavy cavalry corps charges into the Austrian rear, all but destroying Austria’s only horse artillery corps.

TURN THREE:

Inexplicably, the badly demoralized and damaged Austrian horse artillery retreats to the north, accompanied by the Austrian HQ corps. While this puts the Saxon cavalry out of supply, this is only a temporary situation and of no real consequence.

Davout’s army rips through the Austrian defenders, in the process destroying the Arch-Duke Charles’ corps, and while the Arch-Duke manages to escape, he is badly wounded.

In the south, Napoleon’s army rolls up what is left of the Austrian line. By March 20th, it is clear that the Austrian threat to the Prussians and the Rheinbund has been removed.

TURN FOUR:

Around Prague, the situation is only marginally better for the Austrians. A large portion of the northern army is still relatively intact, but in danger of being cut off. Fatigue is also becoming a factor.
Davout pulls out all of the stops, and smashes one Austrian cavalry corps into extinction, while almost destroying another. He detaches one of his infantry corps, as well as the Saxon cavalry to join the final push for Vienna.

TURN FIVE:


After a couple of weeks of rest, Napoleon resumes the offensive. By April 9th, his army has destroyed most of the Austrian army on the Danube, and is at the gates of Vienna. An Italian corps now starts marching from Venice to join the French assault.

South of Vienna, the Italians and French have linked up, destroying the Austrian light infantry and the remnants of the Austrian foot artillery.

TURN SIX:

Now the French and allied armies are at the gates of Vienna!

TURN SEVEN:

The French forces pause outside of Vienna to reinforce their depleted units. Meanwhile, Davout's corps, with 80% of its men still fit to fight, moves down from the north.

TURN EIGHT:

(Regrettably, no screen shot was recorded for the final turn).

The French enter Vienna, and victory is proclaimed. Austria bows to the inevitable, and once again assumes a role as France's vassal.

Some final comments:

As I said, this was my first AAR. Not fully understanding the process of how the game records screenshots automatically, I had been making my own screen prints. So the pictures that are posted with this AAR do not always coincide perfectly with what is in the text.

If anyone wants to see the MS Word document with more pictures, feel free to PM me with your email address, and I will send the document to you.

My impression of this scenario is that the AI did a credible job of trying to stave off superior French forces. The one glaring mistake, in my opinion, was after the Arch Duke Charles' corp and its supporting horse artillery was smashed, they retreated towards Prague. While this was perhaps intended to support the defenders at Prague, it was ill-advised. It made it all the easier for the Saxon cavalry to cut the road linking Prague to Vienna, and ensured that no Austrian forces from Prague would ever be able to assist in defending Vienna (which was after all, the only objective for Napoleon).

Anyway, it only took about an hour to play the scenario, and it was very entertaining. All in all, the AI did quite well with the inferior force at its disposal.

Thanks for the report!
The scenario is 8 turns for thos who did not play it and you managed to secure the victory on turn 7, woudl be exciting to see what happens on say "small AI advantage" difficulty.

I will be posting a bit about multiplayer on the sticky multiplayer topic about what we have planned. We want to launch a ladder similar to CEAW but here we want feedback from players so that we can balance a few of the scenarios in game so that they are real 50-50 situations and intended for the multiplayer crowd.

1806, 1809, 1812 especially comes to mind as perfect scenarios to be balanced for multiplayer since they are already very close, while some other scenarios could be beter to leave as is since single player ppl woudl want some scenarios to be tougher than others.

Thanks again

firepowerjohan wrote:Thanks for the report!
The scenario is 8 turns for thos who did not play it and you managed to secure the victory on turn 7, woudl be exciting to see what happens on say "small AI advantage" difficulty.

I will be posting a bit about multiplayer on the sticky multiplayer topic about what we have planned. We want to launch a ladder similar to CEAW but here we want feedback from players so that we can balance a few of the scenarios in game so that they are real 50-50 situations and intended for the multiplayer crowd.

1806, 1809, 1812 especially comes to mind as perfect scenarios to be balanced for multiplayer since they are already very close, while some other scenarios could be beter to leave as is since single player ppl woudl want some scenarios to be tougher than others.

Thanks again

UR welcome!

One more comment: players will note, when reviewing the screen shots, the rapid increase to the French stockpiled production. I only built one additional line infantry and one horse infantry, very early in the game. After that, it was simply not necessary. Since I am a competent, but not a brilliant player, I would have to say that perhaps the French production for this scenario is a bit over done.

I agree with your comment that the 1806, 1809 and 1812 scenarios would be especially good for PBEM.

Borsook and I played the 1812 scenario during the beta, and it would appear to be in need of balancing for PBEM purposes. As the Russians, I think I had a little too easy of a time in holding off the French.

One of the major issues for Borsook was that his supply became awful. Neither he nor I could quite see why he was suffering such penalties. With one exception, I did not raze cities before he captured them.

The conclusion we came to was that we simply do NOT fully understand how supply works, how it is calculated, how it is used up, what penalties come into play and of course how supply becomes better.

Johan: can you perhaps expand upon what the manual tells us about supply? I think players need a thorough understanding of this critical component of the game.

ok, I will expand the faq topic with some supply info