April 1755 – Braddock expedition on the march
Situation in April 1755 :
The game starts in April 1755 [each turn lasts one month. It is a simultaneous turn-based game. I prepare my orders, Loki prepare his orders, and they are solved together]
There is not much I can do right now, as only three forces are “unlocked” for the British. You have to remember the war is not formally declared… yet.
One of the three forces I have is Braddock’s Expedition. Braddock has been sent from England to take Fort Duquesne, which stopped English expansion to the West. Braddock’s force was joined up by Washington, who had a quite an experience of the area since his traitorous attack on Jumonville’s diplomatic expedition [as a reminder, I am French IRL] and then his capture by the French reaction force coming from Duquesne. This had started the war. As Horace Walpole said :
” The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire”. I always wondered whether the Americans knew this part of G. Washington history.
Back to the subject - here is Braddock force and its target, Fort Duquesne. The first stop will be Fort Allen, from which the force will hop from English forts to English forts until it reaches Fort Duquesne.
It is a sizeable army, with :
- 3 leaders : Edward Braddock, Thomas Dunbar and George Washington
- Two units of British regulars – 720 men
- Three units of militia ((from New York, Virginia and Maryland) : 1 100 men
- One unit of Light Horses : 180 men & horses
- One unit of rangers : 360 men
- One unit of guns : 8 guns
- One unit of siege guns : 4 guns – it will be quite difficult to carry across the mountain.
- One unit of supply wagons.
Usually, it is not a good idea to actually launch Braddock’s expedition :
- siege guns are so rare and useful you want to put them out of harm’s way
- Washington is best used as a trainer, so you don’t want him on the front (I will explain this later),
- Horses are very rare, and useless in the mountains, so you prefer to keep them away and use them in deeper South,
- Without Washington in the expedition, all the Colonials are difficult to lead to battles, so you have to take them out of the expedition as well,
- By that point, the expedition is too small to be useful, so you cancel it.
But in the interest of the game, as a self-imposed rule, I will try to lead this expedition as far as possible until it meets its first opposition. Then I will see what I do with it.
Note that if the expedition is successful (unlikely, but possible), an early seizure of Fort Duquesne is a tremendous advantage for the British player.
But let’s make a point about organizing and moving units.
Beginner’s corner : Organizing Forces
In Birth of America, they are three types of land units :
- Leaders
- Troops
- Supply wagons
Units are the little red or orange rectangles with a picture inside. Together, they constitute an army, which I tend to call “a stack”. Some stacks have only one unit, some others… much more.
Units (except leader) are then divided in between 1 and 4 elements. A unit is not destroyed as long as it has not lost all its elements.
Leaders never fight on their own. They are used to command troops. They generate Command Points (CP) for this purpose. Here is the rule :
- One star leader : 2 CP
- Two stars leader : 4 CP
- Three stars leader (rare) : 12 CP
Troops (including guns) can fight on their own, but in this case they got a sizeable malus in moving, in cohesion recovery and in combat. To be led, each unit needs a certain number of Command Points, most of the time one, but sometimes two (for Elite troops). A few units need 0.
Supply wagons don’t need command points, but don’t fight either. They can be captured easily.
So of course, the objective is to have enough CPs in your forces to lead your troops properly.
As an added difficulty, if you choose the option (we did), “colonial” (in orange) troops cannot be led by English leaders (in red), nor can regular troops be led by colonial leaders. One colonial or one regular leader is enough to avoid the malus, whatever is the number of colonials / regulars.
Here is a serie of examples to illustrate how CP works :
Beginner’s corner : Moving around
Wars in America use a very simple drag-and-drop system. Drag the stack to where you want it to go, and it will calculate the fastest way. Of course, you can force a certain way to the target.
An army speed moves more or less quickly according to what is inside :
- It takes 28 days for Braddock’s army to reach Fort Allen. That’s what I going to do.
- If I get rid of the canons and of the supply wagons, it takes only 18 days !
- If I have a command malus (here, I took Washington away), it takes 26 days, even without guns !
Individuals units take different time. Here is an example (one unit per stack only) :
Note that it takes the cavalry 5 days to go to the province of Montgomery, a civilized plain north of the starting point, vs 6 days for the ranger, but 9 days for the cavalry to go to Fort Allen (uncivilized forest), while the ranger takes only 7 days.
The advantage of fair terrain is not enough for the regular army to compensate for the time to cross the river without bridge from Montgomery to Fort Allen. For this reason, the regulars take the more direct route.
End of Beginner’s corner
The second stack I can move is up North, in Hallifax. The stack includes 2 leaders, 3 units of regulars, one unit of Canadian militias, one unit of guns, one unit of supply. I want it to take Grandpré, a strategic city, and a threat to Halifax in the long run :
Finally, I have a small militia stack available in Boston, with a boat to transport it wherever I want (I did a copy / paste to show the two of them at the same time). Due to difficult weather in the sea, and since I have no pressing needs, I decide not to do anything for now.