• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

NapoleonComple

Never permit evil to prosper
44 Badges
Nov 26, 2011
2.014
23.613
  • Cities in Motion 2
  • Crusader Kings II
  • Supreme Ruler: Cold War
  • Darkest Hour
  • March of the Eagles
  • Hearts of Iron III
  • Supreme Ruler 2020
  • Imperator: Rome
  • Victoria 2
  • Victoria 2: A House Divided
  • Victoria 2: Heart of Darkness
  • Rome: Vae Victis
  • 500k Club
  • Europa Universalis IV: Pre-order
  • Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword
  • Crusader Kings II: Way of Life
  • Crusader Kings II: Conclave
  • Stellaris
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Cadet
  • Tyranny: Archon Edition
  • Stellaris - Path to Destruction bundle
  • Knights of Honor
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Death or Dishonor
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Expansion Pass
  • Arsenal of Democracy
  • Hearts of Iron III: Their Finest Hour
  • Crusader Kings II: Legacy of Rome
  • Crusader Kings II: The Old Gods
  • Crusader Kings II: Sunset Invasion
  • Crusader Kings II: Sword of Islam
  • Europa Universalis III
  • Divine Wind
  • Europa Universalis IV
  • For The Glory
  • For the Motherland
  • Sword of the Stars
  • Heir to the Throne
  • The Kings Crusade
  • Majesty 2
  • Victoria: Revolutions
  • Rome Gold
  • Semper Fi
  • Sengoku
  • Ship Simulator Extremes
Let’s See YOU Do Better: The Game

EDIT: Chatroom used for the game: Tiramisu. http://www.coldfront.net/tiramisu/

Rooms are #Referees #Carthage and #Rome

To join, you must visit the site available, create a user name (similar to your username here preferably) and type /join #(team)

The space between join and # is important!

Good luck to all participating!

1st Battle: Cannae

Romans (Avenging Players)

Varro: Humancalculator and Reis91
Paulus: Doombunny

Carthaginians (Defending Champion)

Hannibal: Tamius
Mago: MastahCheef117
Hasdrubal: Esemesas

Referees (Fun Ruiners)

NapoleonComple
Nachopontmercy
Kingepyon

Hello all.

This is a game that was essentially concieved in order to challenge the old accusation thrown at historical generals who lost badly; that they were incompetent. It does this by allowing a team of players to step into the shoes of the leader or leadership of an army in a period of history, and forces them to plan a way to win a battle that their side historically lost based on what the commander could have physically known at the time. However, they will be playing against another team which will be taking control of the other commander, and instructed to play that commander in the way that they believe that commander would have reacted to the situation as closely as possible. Not their own reaction; how they believe the other commander would have reacted based on the information available and their own personality/precedent at other battles or later battles. In addition to these two teams, there will be a panel of three referees who will set up the scenario and who will focus on the plausibility of the proposed actions of both sides. The referees are also the ones who decide what information should be provided as useable to each side’s commanders in the first place.

The objective of the game is to try to simulate how difficult the losing commanders position really was, by testing another command group’s strategy against a living, breathing opponent who will attempt to modify the victor’s strategy in real time against an opponent who may try a different strategy, rather than the commanders of the losing side playing against a fixed strategy which cannot adapt. The players of the victorious side must therefore do their best to win while still keeping to the spirit of the victorious commander.

Ancient battles and battles not being fought along an entire front (as opposed to a recognisable battlefield; in other words, battles fought prior to WW1-style fighting) are set up in four phases. First of all, there is the planning phase, where both teams will have a chance to discuss what they are going to do the night before the battle. Players must take into account previous events in the campaign overall, as well as what information their commander has available to him about the enemies current strength and location, taking into account, in particular, the landscape. They decide on how their troops will approach the battlefield, and should decide here how they intend to deploy their forces for the battle, as well as attempt to make as detailed a plan as possible as to how to win the battle itself based on what they think the enemy strategy and deployment will be. Players may also play out a scenario beforehand where they not only attempt scouting, but attempt to counter the other sides scouting, and mask their own forces.

The next phase happens the following morning; Deployment and Skirmishing, where both sides attempt to deploy their forces and also have the opportunity to screen their forces with skirmishers, attempt battlefield scouting to detect ambushes, and even disrupt the other side’s deployment. The objective here is to deploy in a method that is closest to the general’s original vision of their plan the night before, modified in real time based on what changes during the deployment phase. Both sides will have the opportunity to observe the deployment of their army and change their strategy within realistic parameters. One side may choose to withdraw at this stage if they feel that they are outnumbered, in which case the other side may choose to pursue and attempt to shadow them; this may evolve into a battle. If one side escapes, the scenario ends there and we move straight to the post-mortem examination.

The third phase is the battle itself, which is a post-by-post run-through of the battle, where one side opens the battle and the other side gets a chance to react to the changing situation. For example, one side may choose to open the battle with a frontal infantry charge. The defender may choose to counter this with a cavalry charge into the other side’s cavalry, or may bring up reserves to flank. The attacker may then react to this situation. The referees will judge the result of all combats and, to the best of their ability, will determine roughly the length of time it would take for a situation to resolve itself. This includes the pursuit phase of the battle where the victor attempts to cut down or capture as many soldiers of the opposing side as possible, while the loser attempts to preserve as much of their army as possible.

The final phase is where the two sides choose what their next moves would be, based on the facts on the ground after the battle. Would the loser, having lost narrowly, attempt to regroup nearby and counterattack? Or would they withdraw back to a nearby settlement and prepare to guard it? If one side was completely annihilated then this may be a one-sided exercise.

Once both sides are done, the thread opens for the post-mortem discussion, a general debate by all players, referees and observers as to how well-done the scenario was overall, whether the scenario redeemed the losing general or not and, of course, who needs to be kept as far away from a command as possible as a danger to their soldiers!
I reckon a good first scenario would be Cannae, where one team will be playing as the two consuls, Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus, and the other team will be playing as Hannibal, Mago and Maharbal.

Now, we need our teams, and we need our players. Participants may volunteer for whatever they want, but there can only be three referees and I would like to be one of them, and if we end up with no volunteers for a side then someone will have to volunteer to switch sides. Ideally both sides should be roughly even in numbers.

The referees are the ones who go away and decide together what is to be provided to each commander in terms of useable information. They are also the ones who have to go away and research the battle itself so that both sides can be told where they are fighting and what forces (and the composition of those forces!) are available to them. The referees will have a separate thread to discuss this, while both sides will have a thread of their own to discuss their strategy before making their opening moves in the main thread, which will evolve into various scenarios, be they pre-battle scouting, skirmirshing and disruption or the events of the main clash.

The flow of the scenario, for quick reference, is as follows.

1) The referees, having been agreed upon, go away, research the scenario and give an overview of the battlefield, the positions of both armies prior to arriving on the battlefield, the background to the battle and the information available to both sets of commanders prior to the battle’s start.

2) A scouting scenario is played out in the main thread if appropriate, with both sides trying to ascertain the other sides whereabouts (if unknown) and, more crucially, their disposition and exact location (the scouts may be disturbing an ambush laid the night before.)

3) Both sides go away to their respective threads and plan out their strategy together. Once they agree, one player from both sides summarise their battle plan into a single post, and then both sides declare their initial approach, their planned deployment and their rough battle strategy in the main thread. (Note; players are not to use information that their commanders would not know to their sides advantage; just because one side plans to ambush the other and has declared it doesn’t mean the other side knows that is what will happen! They may suspect it however. It is up to the referees to determine if that suspicion is reasonable. Use common sense.) Referees offer feedback and offer criticism as to whether or not the plan is plausible based on what the commanders could actually have known at the time.

4) A play-through of deployment is conducted in post-by-post style. Both sides can deploy skirmishers at this point, and an exchange of missiles/skirmirsh may ensue. This occurs until…

5) One side declares they are deployed and declares an advance. This happens whether or not the other side is ready for them! Both sides may have declared they are deployed, but the battle scenario only begins to play out once one side advances. Alternatively, the referees may have declared that both sides have "blundered into one another" so to speak, and declare the battle has effectively started regardless of the organisation of both sides, for example both sides may have blundered into one another in heavy fog or something. At this point a battle scenario is played out in full post-by-post, with the referees determining the results of melees.

6) Once one side is driven from the field and the last combat ends, both sides determine their next moves in the campaign. The loser attempts to reorganise and make the best of a bad situation, while the victor attempts to capitalise on the victory as best they can.

7) The thread is open for general discussion by all parties. It may need to be moved to off-topic after a while, or closed and a new one opened as people may want to set up another scenario!

So with that, any interest to help me organise a play-through of the battle of Cannae? Any volunteers to play? Or would anyone like to see a different scenario? Note that certain battles fought along a long front may require modifications to the basic structure; a battle in the 1st world war would have been planned weeks or even months in advance. I'd recommend a pre-industrial era battle to start off with, as this is complicated enough (it requires four threads!) as it is. But it is an interesting simulation potentially.

Of course, this structure requires mod approval; we may have to improvise and just use one thread, or two threads, a planning and discussion thread and a battle or event thread, with players just agreeing not to use information gathered in the information thread in their planning. The thread structure is to maintain tidiness and minimise confusion and cross-talk between the three elements, not to mention avoid cluttering up the thread in which the manoevering and battling is actually taking place!
 
Last edited:
If possible, I would absolutely LOVE to partake in this. This is an awesome idea overall.

Other battles that might work (for later battles) are Austerlitz, Gettysburg, Cynoscephalae, Leuthen, and Hohenfriedberg.
 
Last edited:
I would definitely like to participate in this
 
Right, I've appealed for moderator approval and we now have enough players to form our teams. (More can continue to join until the action actually starts). Can we have two additional people to be our referees?

We're doing this for the first time, so I suggest a fairly simple, one-day battle to start off with. So I wouldn't recommend Gettysberg. For the sake of speed of agreement, I've carved it down to a choice between a battle in the Roman era, the medieval era, the Sengoku Jidai period of Japan or the early modern period (European theatre or American Civil War/Revolution.) What takes peoples fancy? I maintain my suggestion of the Roman era, as I'd like to do Cannae. This is because it is a well known battle that is relatively simple to set up.

EDIT: The idea is that once we have an idea about what era people are most interested in, we can move onto selecting a battle within that era.
 
Last edited:
Excellent! We need one more... what era would you like to referee, given the chance?
 
I don't consider myself educated enough to be a ref, however, I would like to play, if possible.
 
I'll play.
 
Maybe instead of using threads we could use IRC to communicate among teams. It's quicker and means less threads on Paradox.
 
Maybe instead of using threads we could use IRC to communicate among teams. It's quicker and means less threads on Paradox.

Good idea. How would we set it up?
 
Maybe instead of using threads we could use IRC to communicate among teams. It's quicker and means less threads on Paradox.

Also, there's less of a chance of fighting whether or not one team made it's move because it knew what the other one did and not because the historical figure knew it.

Doesn't have to be IRC though. It can be any IM service, also Paradox PMs or email.
 
We can do it through PM. Everyone know how to send messages to multiple users?

EDIT: No we don't have our three judges, I'm an idiot who counted someone twice.

Well we need to decide on a battle, and then decide who is going to be on which team. Early Modern era (with a view towards 30 years war and Napoleonic Warfare) seems to be a popular pick right now and Austerlitz doesn't seem too formidable so would everyone be fine with doing Austerlitz?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Austerlitz Link to wikipedia article on the subject.

Ack, how do I get this to show up without the address itself in blue ink?
 
Ehm, I'd suggest something pre-gunpowder for a starter, simply as it will be easier to set up and run. Also, I think there are probably smaller and easier battles to do than Austerlitz, I think it would be good to start small.
 
I would prefer to start with Cannae but I'm ok with this to.