Commander ratings

[borner]

Our group always felt Wellington was under-rated as a "3", and Davout at a "2" in the number of corps they could control. We had an option increasing each by +1.

[anarchyintheuk]

ORIGINAL: DCWhitworth

ORIGINAL: Jagdtiger14

I have to agree with DC here. Besides Kutusov, Suverov of course was at least as good as Napy, and it is one of the surprising stories in history as to why Alexander would be so jealous and stupid to retire him...not to mention some other country not hiring his @ss!!!

It's a not uncommon theme throughout history. Countries have often failed to employ their most talented commanders for political reasons.

A classic example from the Napoleonic era is the Waterloo campaign. Napoleon employed Ney and Grouchy as his wing commanders. He left probably his best Marshal, Davout, in charge of the reserve forces around Paris and used a commander with huge experience of fighting the British (Soult) as his chief of staff, a job he had no prior experience of. The likely explanation of this is that he felt politically insecure and couldn't afford to let anyone else get the glory for the forthcoming campaign.

I can't agree with your assessment that Suvarov was 'at least as good as Napoleon'. In my opinion the only person on a par with Napoleon in history was Scipio Africanus.

Random comments:

Napoleon would have been better served by switching the wing commanders.

I think he felt that he had no choice but to put Davout in charge of his War Department/Commander of the Reserves. Davout was an excellent administrator, not too corrupt and completely loyal (demonstrated by his defense of Hamburg); qualities not found in the rest of the Marshallate. It was unfortunate for Napoleon that those qualities also kept Davout off the battlefield.

The reasoning behind Soult as chief-of-staff will forever remain mysterious. D'Erlon had served in that capacity a couple of times. Probably Napoleon thought the position must be filled by a Marshal.

Looking at the list of Marshals it seems that Suchet and St. Cyr were viable candidates for Minister of War or chief of staff, unless Napoleon thought they weren't senior enough or had enough clout to be obeyed by either the bureaucracy or the other Marshals.

I do take your point about Napoleon not wanting to share credit/glory. He never seemed to warm up to Davout (who also seemed to be a bit of a cold fish). He was also underutilized in the 1813 campaign.

I'd throw Alexander on the list, but that's the subject for another thread.

[Jagdtiger14]

I can't agree with your assessment that Suvarov was 'at least as good as Napoleon'. In my opinion the only person on a par with Napoleon in history was Scipio Africanus.
[/quote]

Not only do I think Suvarov as good or better than Napy(Suvarov never lost a battle and served in various climates, terrain, and opponents), but I can think of a few other comanders better or on a par with Napy and SA. I think EiA underates Suvarov...should be a 5.5.5, possibly a 5.5.6 considering the small size of Russian units. I would have to do some research on this first though.
C

[Xikar]

I must agree, first, with other forum posters that too many leaders were left out. I loved the game "war and peace" from avalon hill because it represented nearly 3 times as many leaders as does empire in arms (but unfortunately war and peace isn't available in a PC version).
 
Secondly, I also agree with many that Charles was overrated.. why? look at posterity.... historical facts.... and just overall conventional wisdom. Napoleon has, many times, been described as "one of the best generals in military history". This is done for a reason. Very few leaders should come close to him in terms of ratings (perhaps Wellington, and I don't say this because of waterloo but the entire spanish penninsula campaign). The Archduke Charles of Austria? well, other than historical buffs and napoleonic gamers, who has ever heard of him? there is a reason for this.
 
For those saying that the leadership ratings were implimented for game balance.. well, I think if that were true, than it's a disgrace. No such twisting of ratings should have been made for "game balance", because the facts and events imply a balance of historical incidents anyway. Napoleon lost, ultimately, but NOT due to tactical blunders so much as many other outstanding factors. The game should have been implimented to reflect historical facts and the outcome of the overall game should be influenced by strategical and logistic victories and defeats by choices of the players.... just like choices of the leaders of the times in the early 19th century.
 
Of course this is my two cents worth, nothing more.

[jnier]

ORIGINAL: DCWhitworth

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

This guy's takes are interesting, many of you might have seen this before:

http://eia.xnetz.com/rules/eiafaq.txt

Just do a search for "Leader Ratings" (6.2.12)

But I disagree with their assessment of Ney, they knock down his tactical rating because "he was not very solid with larger formations ". Isn't that what the tactical maximum rating is for ?

I agree that Ney is overrated. He was an excellent corp commander, but not an excellant commander when operating independently. And the ratings (I beleive) are supposed to reflect the ability of a commander when functioning independently. And that also point out one of weaknesses of the EIA commander system...they do not emphasize the importance of subordinate commanders.

[fvianello]

The duke of Brunswick is also severely underrated. He was able to manage effectively as many as 8 corps, without that influencing his standard tactical inability.

[borner]

This seems to be a debate in every group I have personally played in. The best arguments I have seen was from a Group in San Antonio.  The argument was that Wellington should be a 5-5-4, and Davout 4-5-3/4. They were clearly great commanders, but never really had the chance to show what they could do with a large army. As for Charles being too highly thought of, It's hard to look good when Nappy is always on the other side of the musket/

[Dave_T]

ORIGINAL: HanBarca

The duke of Brunswick is also severely underrated. He was able to manage effectively as many as 8 corps, without that influencing his standard tactical inability.

Don't forget the Prussian "corps" system wasn't the same as the French. A Prussian Corps was the same as a French Division due to the fact a Prussian "Brigade" was infact 1 regiment.

[Dave_T]

ORIGINAL: borner

This seems to be a debate in every group I have personally played in. The best arguments I have seen was from a Group in San Antonio. The argument was that Wellington should be a 5-5-4, and Davout 4-5-3/4. They were clearly great commanders, but never really had the chance to show what they could do with a large army. As for Charles being too highly thought of, It's hard to look good when Nappy is always on the other side of the musket/

Wellington had experince commanding large armies in India. The problem was in Europe he didn't trust his subordinates and would personally give orders to Divisions in a battle, cutting across the chain of command. This would reflect in his diminished ability to command larger formations due to the fact he's almst micromanaging his army.

[DCWhitworth]

ORIGINAL: Dave_T

ORIGINAL: borner

This seems to be a debate in every group I have personally played in. The best arguments I have seen was from a Group in San Antonio. The argument was that Wellington should be a 5-5-4, and Davout 4-5-3/4. They were clearly great commanders, but never really had the chance to show what they could do with a large army. As for Charles being too highly thought of, It's hard to look good when Nappy is always on the other side of the musket/

Wellington had experince commanding large armies in India. The problem was in Europe he didn't trust his subordinates and would personally give orders to Divisions in a battle, cutting across the chain of command. This would reflect in his diminished ability to command larger formations due to the fact he's almst micromanaging his army.

Actually that reflects the fact that the British army of the period didn't really adopt the corps system that everyone else used. Technically the largest unit of the army was the division.

In fact in 1805 *only* the French were using the Corps system, all the other armies used divisions which was cumbersome because it *forced* the commanders to micromanage their army division by division and was also inflexible.

Once the French had beaten everyone, helped by their flexible corps system, everyone else caught on and adopted it. The British however, never having lost to the French, didn't see the need to change.

[arundle]

Don't forget though, the British never adopted that many continental policies. Most continental armies used large and tight 'blocks' of men to march slowly forward (called an attack column, introduced by the Napoleoinc French), designed to help keep up the moral of the mostly conscripted French army as well as try and break the moral of an opposing army through sheer number of troops. Unfortunatly, this hindered their firing ability (only 2 men could fire from each side).

Britian always fought in 2 stright lines. This allowed them, with their expert musket drill training, to lay down volley after volley agaisnt advancing blocks, and thier superior training and drilling resulted in them not running from such large infantry blocks. Using this tactic (especially if they could hit a flank), the British army didn't actually need large numbers of men, and could still decimate much larger infantry blocks, as they could bring all of their men to fire. Eventually, the column was eventually stopped by its own fallen soldiers. This allowed the small British army to defeat such larger forces.

To bring this back to the topic before we get too far into discussing Napolionic army tactics: I think the problem here is that Wellington's ability would be okay, if this (the above) was taken more into consideration. Unfortunatly, apart from their high moral, the British don't have too many other brilliant combat modifiers, to my knowledge. This does mean that when a smaller army should be quite effective for them (espcecilly on the defensive) they still use exactly the same charts as all of the other continetal armies (not saying that whole new charts are needed), despite the difference in tactics, blunting this effectiveness in the game.

[DCWhitworth]

I agree with you in principle although I must quibble with the details.

The columnular formations adopted by the French allowed them to move *quickly* not slowly. Lines move much more slowly - it's much easier to keep in formation if you are following someone that if you are side by side with them.

The reason the French adopted this system was not so much because of morale but because their levee en masse troops didn't have the training to fight in line effectively.

Again everyone else adopted it because the French beat them with it. The British, not having lost to the French, stuck to their linear formations. Their highly trained army could use them effectively so they saw no need to change.

[arundle]

That makes sense, thanks for clearing it up. I think it was a mixture of lack of training and poor general moral of conscipt troops that made the French adopt the column idea, as it was quite effective at negating both. (Being in the middle of such a large number of troops would make almost anyone feel a little bit more confident).

Also, by marching slowly, I meant more in battle. I beleive the principle was to march toward the enemy, slow enough to keep the formation tight (which could still be quite speedy), but without generally stopping, which made the attack quicker in turn (correct me if I'm wrong on this point). Also, for troop movement, such an idea would allow troops to move at faster rates.

I completly agree with the point about the British: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". I did mean to imply that above, but I didn't actually put it in; my mistake.