Napoleonic Battles 4.09 Updates

After a bit of a break we return to the Napoleonic Battles series of games with a new round of updates. As is generally our policy, we lead with a title or two to get the new version out into wider rotation - then the balance of the series will follow in 30 - 60 days.

Today we lead with updates for Campaign Waterloo & The Final Struggle demo.

A big part of the lapse in time between May of '24 and today has been spent gleaning feedback, identifying a few lingering issues, and testing. This round of updates will not be as feature-rich as the last several cycles have been, but we do feel it continues to take the games forward in the right direction.

The biggest "new" thing offered by this round is a new Optional Rule that we are calling "Push Skirmishers". Yes, you read that right, you can now have the ability to forcefully displace a skirmish screen that is blocking advance, outside of the Melee phase. Here's some details:

Formed infantry can push skirmishers during the move phase if:

• The attack strength of the units exceeds the skirmish limit (225). This strength is modified to 1/3 if a unit is Disordered.
  
• The skirmishers are in clear or field hexes.
• The skirmishers are not exceeding the skirmish limit.

With the following costs and impact:

• The act of pushing requires triple the normal movement costs.
• In phased-based games, the skirmishers will fire once for each push.
• In turn-based games, they will fire according to standard Opportunity Fire rules.
• If the pushing unit will become Disordered by the push move, then their effective push strength is reduced to 1/3.

Note: If a Push is attempted (In phased play) and the pushing unit does not meet the criteria, for example they don't have enough movement points, it will return a message about Melee only being possible in the Melee Phase.

In the melee phase, skirmishers will be pushed instead of fought using the same rules.

Push applies to Formed Infantry only. Non charging cavalry is too fast for skirmishers to evade so there will be a combat which will take place in the Melee Phase, but:

• The cavalry unit will get a +80% strength modifier.
• The skirmishers will receive a 66% strength penalty, as if they were flank charged.
• Both modifiers only apply when the skirmishers are in Clear or Field hexes.
• These modifiers will be applied regardless of the Push Skirmisher rule being active or not.

Note: This Update can be applied to on-going games, however the new optional rule will only be in effect when you select it when starting a new scenario.

(All images can be clicked for full sized viewing.)

This new feature has been in testing for several months and has been very positively received. It is not a "default" Optional Rule, so you will need to select it when you start a new scenario.

A further change that was geared towards curbing some long standing issues is:

• Adjustment so that a unit must have at least 25 men in order to initiate a melee.

Both of these changes are to move the dial towards more historical play - with larger formed units holding ground as opposed to small fractional forces.

Henrik has continued to refine the AI processes as well, so little by little the computer opponent gets a bit smarter and more of a challenge. Will it ever replace a human opponent? Likely not, but we know that for many of you it is your only option for a variety of reasons.

And as mentioned in the intro, a variety of problems have been identified and resolved:

Also, after listening to feedback and reviewing some results data, we have made the choice to standardize the Cavalry Charge Factor parameter across the series to a value of 4. The previous value of 3 seemed a bit under powered in the current state of the games and 5 over the top, so it is a good middle ground.