Good game....

[rwenstrup]

Good game

[Ilitarist]

Good.

[Durk]

Ok guys, humor me, why is this a good game?

[Baris]

Good but more good when played in pbem. I advise anyone try the 4 player version of the scenario.

[loki100]

Ok guys, humor me, why is this a good game?

to me, its a very elegant game, and relatively well balanced.

There are real subtleties in there about brigade/corps/army formation but its not at the level of detail of say RuS or AACW. So a good PBEM comes down to a lot of manouver, feints and looking for the gains that end up escalating. Its also a game that can see significant reversals, in particular an able Prussian player with nerves of steel can really exploit the central position they have once the Austrians are back in Saxony and the French move into the Rhineland.

Baris is right, the 4 player campaign is even better than 2 player, as towards the end the allies do have slightly divergent aims and it also means that a player can't channel the bulk of replacements etc just to the Austrians.

[Shri]

Can you guys help me a bit?
I purchased this game after BETA TESTING for TEAW, have only played WW1 Gold before this; not interested in US Civil War history to that extent so the 2 Best AGEOD games possible were- ROP and NCP, but NCP is quite old and people say- NCP2 on cards, ROP was best bet possible. I must say- excellent game, even better than TEAW, lot of complexities though AI does a few deep raids, it is ok. Also MTSG looks a bit out of place in age of Fredrick, it was more a Napoleonic innovation with much larger armies in the field.


I wanted some tips on-
-Artillery- how good is it? Historically, Fredrick was not too fond of it.
-How to attack/defeat the Swedes quickly and clean one front as Austria and France are too strong to be defeated and Russia- too strong and too far.
-Why do AAR's advise leaving Koenigsberg? i think that should mean drastic fall in NM, the Hohenzollern family capital for a long time. I won't leave it even if i lose, it is not Historical. Freddi lost a couple of big battles to the Russians in order to keep it and rightly so. It is more symbolic than Berlin.
-How to anticipate Winter? is March to October the campaign season? or should i retreat earlier?
-Taking Prag in 1756 is tough, AARs said they did it, i think i am a lousy player of ROP or too scared of Winter.

[loki100]

Can you guys help me a bit?
I purchased this game after BETA TESTING for TEAW, have only played WW1 Gold before this; not interested in US Civil War history to that extent so the 2 Best AGEOD games possible were- ROP and NCP, but NCP is quite old and people say- NCP2 on cards, ROP was best bet possible. I must say- excellent game, even better than TEAW, lot of complexities though AI does a few deep raids, it is ok. Also MTSG looks a bit out of place in age of Fredrick, it was more a Napoleonic innovation with much larger armies in the field.


I wanted some tips on-
-Artillery- how good is it? Historically, Fredrick was not too fond of it.
-How to attack/defeat the Swedes quickly and clean one front as Austria and France are too strong to be defeated and Russia- too strong and too far.
-Why do AAR's advise leaving Koenigsberg? i think that should mean drastic fall in NM, the Hohenzollern family capital for a long time. I won't leave it even if i lose, it is not Historical. Freddi lost a couple of big battles to the Russians in order to keep it and rightly so. It is more symbolic than Berlin.
-How to anticipate Winter? is March to October the campaign season? or should i retreat earlier?
-Taking Prag in 1756 is tough, AARs said they did it, i think i am a lousy player of ROP or too scared of Winter.

Some answers.

Artillery is vital but not the battle dominating arm it will be. If you are outnumbered (& this is common for the Austrians/French), you'll see it in the heavier losses in the range fire phase - and of course in addition to your losses you take cohesion hits;
My advice is either leave the Swedes or go in very hard. They fight poorly outside the north and suffer for supply (if I recall only have a couple of supply wagons). If you want that flank secure, don't just engage with the Prussian units that start in the north, add at least one, pref two more corps. Also move the fort guns from the mouth of the Elbe to help the siege (Narwhal did this to me very effectively). Even so its risky as you will struggle to get breaches.

Koenigsberg, you just can't hold. In earlier versions, you could exploit the game engine a little to make more of a fight of it. A competent Russian player will construct a terrifyingly effective siege force, even the best forts will be breached a level a turn. But the Russians are very fragile in open combat. So best to wait till they cross Poland and then think of a very strong riposte. A couple of heavy battles will seriously harm their offensive capacity - but as ever with Prussia, you pay a price either way. In the war, the Russians won a big battle on the outskirts in 1757 and then turned back - thats the reason for the sacking and later death of Apraksin (he was very pro-Prussian and suspected of treachery). The next summer they invaded again and took it fairly easily.

Winter in RoP isn't too bad, certainly not as grim as say Wars in America. Best solution is not to move to seek battle (cohesion losses are inevitable) and make sure you have full supply wagons with your force (to take the attrition hits). Both the Prussians and Austrians can use the Elbe to transport wagons up and down to keep an army moving. So you can campaign up to the snow as long as you are close to decent supply, just don't launch a major invasion that would mean moving turn after turn, but I've grabbed a vital fortress from an inattentive opponent by attacking in winter.

Prag in '56 is a 'balls to the wall' gamble. You need to make the Austrians fight, as if they add their intact 56 army to the 57 reinforcements you are in trouble - have a look at the AAR I did with Narwhal for the consequences of misjudging this. So decide - do you want to make the Austrians fight and take losses (in 56-57 as the Prussians you can mostly replace your lossses), or take Prag.

If the latter, you need everything, the forces in both Saxony and Silesia, use the supply trick above, and hope. If it works you can manage it (I have in one game), if it fails it will be game over. To make this worse, the game I took Prag I lost in the end. Its not a game winner, but it gives you a chance to do serious damage to the Austrians before the French and Russians are in the game.

You can eliminate MTSG with modding the game files - but I wouldn't. I think that mutual support is the only tool an Austrian player has to squeeze the movement flexibility of a competent Prussian - but it could be interesting to try the game on this basis. It also allows a Prussian player to defend the Rhineland quite effectively.

[Shri]

Hey thanks LOKI, thanks a lot for the quick and detailed answer.

- Artillery it is good that the Prussians and their allies start with a decent stock of artillery and so i will try and use it effectively.

-Well, after hearing about Koenigsberg i am happy and sad, happy that i will have a strong corps of Infantry and 1 of Cavalry to play in North or in Austria but SAD that i abandon the old capital. I have read not extensive but some books on the 7-year war and i knew about the Russians vs Prussian battles, costly battles for the Prussians with their limited Manpower.

- I think i am going to go all out to take PRAG, all or nothing; if all else fails- restart the game!!

-For MTSG, if my memory serves me right, Freddi and his generals won several battles in the War where 2 enemy Corps were less than 40-50 miles from each other and yet they did not MTSG and so one of them lost. As said by you- maybe it is the only way Austria will win, but they lost simply because MTSG was not so prominent back then, Napoleon's main achievement in the early years was MTSG when enemy armies were not doing it, when both started to do, Napoleon lost due to sheer weight of numbers, Frederick was lucky or fortunate or simply GREAT as his opponents did not think of MTSG.

- As to Rheinland Campaign, the French have a huge Army. Hannover and Brunswick have just about 4 decent corps size formations though an advantage in Artillery and also an advantage if you send F.von Brunswick to this theatre as army commander, he is having Multinational Command and good stats.

P.S. - Your AAR against Narwahl and Narwahl's other AAR against Baris is what i read before buying the game. Narwahl seems like the Best Attacking Player out there in ROP terms. Both suggested PRAG gambit, but i failed in my first attempt and hence, posted on forum for help. But seems like best thing to do, will try again this week.

[Shri]

While i am picking your brains, let me continue-

Do you guys form separate Armies in North? for Sweden and Russian attack's defense?
I Formed the Brunswickian Army for my Brunswickian/Hanoverian Troops in Hanover and will use the English as a Corps of this army, as Ferdinand V. Brunswick was an exceptional commander in History and has good stats in game.
Freddi of course is the commander in Austria, but just wanted to know about North Prussia!.

Again - Cavalry is useful in armies or separate? Von Zieten and Von Seylitz of course were excellent Prussian Cavalry commanders in the War.

[loki100]

you don't want too many armies - as the Austrians et al press into Prussia you'll find it harms your defence (loss of MTSG mainly), so I tend not to form one for the Swedes (but then I tend to the mindset of just screening that sector). For the Russian sector, post-the fall of Koenigsberg it depends on how you want to handle them. If your response is a fast redeployment of the main army to hit them hard then you may not need an army but in the main if you are likely to be using 2+ corps to contest their advance you might as well.

Narwhal has the nasty habit of making up a purely cavalry corps with the Prussians. The gain is this moves incredibly fast and in clear terrain hits very hard (in one of our games I had a disaster in Silesia when he did this). The risk is they are very vulnerable to losses and can't really contest a siege. With the Austrians, I tend to build balanced corps with cavalry brigades in that overall structure. The exception for both sides is to keep the Hussars (& Cossacks) in brigades on their own (or even as individual units), they are invaluable for scouting and so on. We ended up with a house rule to stop them taking military control or the Russians and Austrians can more or less capture Prussia without fighting.

To your earlier question, thing about the French is they are very fragile (lots of units with few elements) and badly led. So you can usually stall them around Minden for quite a while. Sooner or later they will push past this - but if you then swing Frederick and the main army their way you can inflict quite a beating on them.

The limit on MTSG for the Austrians is a lot of numpties in charge, at least till you have managed to promote some better commanders. Thus MTSG is a gamble as a key corps may be inactive and then fail to respond. Purely as a rule of thumb I'd expect it to fail me 25-33% of the time. It is moddable, you can either eliminate or depress the base chance to happen. With the Austrians, I'd not rely on it if it was completely critical (such as a defense of Prag in 1756) but my feeling is it gives the game a key part of its flavour (in the way its lack is a key aspect of Wars in America).

btw, if you fancy PBEM, drop me a request

[Ebbingford]

How do you mod the MTSG chances Loki?
I played a PBEM with Squarian ages ago and we did away with MTSG from adjacent regions by changing a 1 to 0 or something like that, but I can't seem to find where now...... Any ideas?

[JacquesDeLalaing]

Afaik: Settings/GameLogic.opt, where you can find the following (the values are not the vanilla ones):

// ********************************************************
// ***** RESERVE *****
// ********************************************************
resBaseChanceOff = 0 // Base chance if in Offensive posture
resBaseChanceDef = 0 // Base chance if in Defensive posture
resCostPerDay = 27 // -10% for each day of marching
resModAdjGHQ = 1 // +10% if adjacent to army HQ
resModIsGHQ = 1 // +25% if the army HQ itself
resModLeaderStrat = 0 // +5% for each pt of strat factor of the leader
resControlChunkMod = 5 // Every 5% of MC lacking gives -1% chance (both for start and end region)
resCohCostPerDay = -5 // -3 cohesion for each day of marching

[Ebbingford]

I guess the first two lines are 0= MTSG won't happen?

[loki100]

I guess the first two lines are 0= MTSG won't happen?

yes

could also be interesting to alter the other variables to keep it in, but increase the risk, could be good to increase the time delay factor (so provinces in poor terrain or with no road connection) or the military control criteria?

I'd certainly try this, it would alter some of the standard tactics in the game quite substantially (and that is no bad thing)

[Ebbingford]

I've always thought that the MTSG function is too Napoleonic for this period.

[candylarry]

Well said. This is definitely a good game..

[Shri]

To LOKI-

Thanks again. The game is quite different from TEAW, i am still learning some tricks mainly from exp. players like you and Narwahl, well i will drop in a request for PBEM, once i understand this game properly (Bought it about 10 days ago). One more thing is- REPLACEMENTS is very tricky in this game, you get options to pick replacements, eg: i want- Prussian Grenadiers but options has only Hannover Infantry etc. Further, building those DEPOT is too slow, some 90 days. This is a real challenge. As Grenadier is the real advantage of the Prussian (quality).
On the other hand, ROP is more interesting than TEAW simply because Prussian situation was so hopeless to begin with. Also with no 'RAILWAYS' it is frustrating to shuffle armies between fronts. Quite slow + Winter attrition (But mirrors the problems of Frederick accurately, as per the Books i read on SYW, Freddi was always trying to separate his enemies and 'knock-out' one of them. The ENGLISH certainly helped with their money and manpower after 1759-60 and the death of Catherine II was a huge plus. These were the 'luck factor', that to paraphrase Frederick- Allowed him to show the Bit**** on the Thrones of Europe who was the Master.

BTW- Thanks for the tip with Hussar, i will try to place 1 Unit separately and scout.

P.P.S. : If NARWAHL is on this forum- big thanks, your game against Baris giving tips to beginners like me really helped me understand important concepts like-
Replacements, Supply etc which are not well covered in manual.

[H Gilmer3]

This is an older thread but I'll answer as what makes it good as well.

If you play Prussia, you have to be very good at strategizing on using your forces. You are attacked North, South, East, and West. You only really have enough troops to stop two of those fronts dead in their tracks. You have the general but not enough men.

On replacements - you can get replacements two ways for elite infantry, I believe. In the F3 screen "Buy Prussian Elite Infantry replacements" and then in the unit buying screen, buy "Grenadier Battalion Depot".

How I handled Sweden. Well, actually, in my Let's Play Russia never came. They sat out the war (against the AI). But, I beat the early Austrian army fairly convincingly and took Prag in 1757. Then when Hannover, Kassel, and Braunscheig activated, I moved Frederick to the West and reorganized the Elbe Armee with Hannoverian, Braunschweig, and Kassel troops. I left James Keith in charge of the Koniglische Army to watch Austria.

After defeating France and lifting the siege of Wesel. I left them there to take some of the Palatinate fortresses. With an Army now built around Kurt Von Scherin with a lot of Prussian troops and Erbprinz Karl's formations, I moved North, defeated Sweden and Took Stralsund.

From there it was just fighting Austria.