[Consim-l] Craonne Replay & Review (really long!)

[John Best]

Dear Wargamers,
Well, I'm playing catch-up again.  We've been talking about a game that
appeared in the Book of Sandhurst Wargames (I think that's the title) edited
by Paddy Griffith.  I was under some misunderstanding about the nature of
the book, which Markus helped me with:

JB:>>>  Does the book come with
>> >   counters
>> >   and maps?
>
Markus:> Yes to both, and in full colour.  The Craonne map is particularly
pleasant to
> behold.

I've since seen a picture of the map, and here I'd like to give a shout out
and thanks to Dave Kohr who posted a link to the Boardgame Geek site for
this book.  The Craonne map seemed pretty nice looking to me too; at least
on my screen it had a very pleasant "hand-drawn" quality to it (it's
definitely not from the Redmond Simonsen SPI map-of-the-day genre).

And then we started to discuss some elements of the model and the design.  I
hope in what follows I do not come across as trying to say that I'm "right"
about any of this, or that there are some choices that are particularly
"right".  Instead, what I hope to show in my writing here is that all
wargame designers face choices in using the elements of hex'n'counter
wargames (those elements including choices of unit size, hex scale, and time
length) to depict the elements of the battle, the campaign or whatever it is
they are trying to show us.  And the choices they make necessarily constrain
the elements of their "story" as they wish to tell it.  Anyway, to get
started, I raised some questions about what might be happening in the
"Melee" phase in Craonne.  I've left a lot of my comments and Markus' very
thoughtful response here for context, and I'll try to label them so that
readers can keep track of who said what.  Ok let's have a good discussion:

JB:
>> >
>> >   It's a little hard to visualize what the "Melee" result means in
>> > actual
>> >   Napoleonic terms.  I get the idea that, once engaged in firing, a
>> > unit of
>> >   sufficient size seems to have been  kind of "stuck" in its place in
>> > the
>> >   battleline until something dramatic happens.  But generally once
>> > units
>> >   were engaged in sustained firing, the casualty rates went up, and
>> > when
>> >   that happened, something dramatic (like morale failure) would ensue
>> > pretty
>> >   quickly.  The implication in Craonne is that the lethality of the
>> > units
>> >   actually decreases when they are pinned, as would occur in the Melee
>> >   results, if I'm understanding Markus' depiction correctly (which I
>> > may not
>> >   be).  Short fom: I like the idea of units "locked in combat" after an
>> >   assault, but I couldn't quite see what was being simulated in the
>> > Melee
>> >   result.
>
Markus:
> Actually, I would rather agree with the Craonne view, although I think it
> represents something else than ongoing wild hacking and slashing as the
> name might suggest.  I am a believer in the recently more and more often
> voiced theory that engaging in extended firefights (as opposed to extended
> artillery bombardments for softening up) was not really sought after in
> the Napoleonic era, rather it more frequently resulted from stalled
> assaults.
>
> A typical model of a Napoleonic according to that belief system is that
> the attackers go in, and then possibly one side or the other breaks and
> runs, in which case we have a quick decision that may be more or less
> bloody depending on how many are cut down while running.  But there is a
> good possibility that neither side breaks, because the attackers can't
> quite muster the will to close, or perhaps their lower level leaders
> can't, and settle down to firing at the defenders in which case a
> firefight results.  But a property of that is that, as the firefight is
> prolonged, the casualty rate does not go up, but goes down as rate of
> fire, visibility, and order on both sides are reduced.  So the highest
> losses would happen right at the start but again if there is no decision
> then both sides can pretty much continue to take potshots at each other
> for hours.  The classic example for this is the French right wing at
> Waterloo, where it seems that after the failure of the big attacks not
> much happend for the rest of the day until Ziethen's men broke the French
> line right at the angle.  But at that time (when the battle had been going
> on for hours - this was after the attack of the Guard had failed), both
> sides there were still plinking away at each other with muskets at (for
> muskets) long range.
>
> So, the fact that *nothing* happens after the first clash unless
> reinforcements come in may be a bit harsh - I could certainly see a
> colonel saying after a couple of hours "this is no good, I'm just losing a
> trickle of men constantly, let's fall back", so you could get the
> occasional movement. But overall, I think the "quick decision or static
> outcome" is not a bad model.
>
> From that perspective of course, the name "Melee" is a bit of a misnomer,
> since clearly there's no close-in-fighting going on, it's just the units
> hanging on and not deciding much over time.  "Engaged" might be a better
> term.
>
Ok, you can see Markus (and I think we all do this) using his knowledge of
the Napoleonic era to visualize what the game (Craonne)  is giving him in
order to
understand the meaning of a result and by doing so, "help the game along",
that is, help make the game work on its own terms.  After reading his
explanation, I can certainly buy this visualization, meaning, I can see it
happening too.  And I agree with Markus on a number of other points as well.
For example, Markus and I agree that "Melee" might not be the best term to
describe the status of the situation.  It's not like the old La Battaille
system, where Melee I think was supposed to mean "at bayonnet point" or
something to that effect.  I also agree with Markus, and I think there is
some consensus among military historians, that the prolonged, highly-lethal
firefight was not something that a commander wanted to have.  Here is a
book:
Riehn, R. (1990). 1812: Napoleon's russian campaign. New York: McGraw-Hill.
In Chapter 7, Riehn presents the reasons why commanders did not want the
prolonged fire fight in the proximal zone, with the main one being that
soldiers would stop listening to the commands to fire.  And when that
happened, the rate of fire could no longer be controlled.  (It should also
be stated that despite the fact that commanders did not want this to occur,
it still sometimes did occur regardless, for reasons that the commander may
not have had control over).  When this loss of control happened, the rate of
fire by the
unit (theoretically now) could go in two directions: up or down.  "Down"
seems to be what the Craonne designer wants us to see.  The unit is still
engaged in the proximal zone, but there is no tactical decision, and the
casualty rate stays relatively low.  Is it valid?  Sure.  But the rate could
also sometimes go up in these situations, and when it does, you get some of
the most chilling accounts in all the Napoleonic era.  There are some unit
reports for
example, where you can read about formed units blazing away at each other
for an
hour (such as at Ligny brook) at distances that shrank to (get this), 15
yards in some
cases.  If the morale doesn't crack, then both sides just whittle each other
down to nothing.  This really isn't a criticism of the Craonne model, which
I think is the more probable outcome anyway.  Like I said at the outset, the
designer must make some choices.  But let's consider the assault concept in
a little more detail; I think there are some other considerations to discuss
here.
     In J. Keegan's famous book, The Face of Battle, he details the "fight
or flight" response that units have when they engage in the enemy.
Basically, neither side wants the other to get close, because to do so
generally increases the lethality.  That's why most infantry assaults were
decisive one way or another: either the attacking unit was "shot down" (like
the French Guards at Waterloo) or the defending unit retreated or broke.
But, barring some other circumstances, when the assault occurs, neither side
wants to remain for long in that proximal zone (let's say within 100 meters
of the enemy).   My own spin on this to compare the mechanics of the
Napoleonic assault to the metaphor of a compression spring.  The spring does
not like to be compressed (the unit does not want to go forward to the
enemy).  Under pressure the spring will be compressed (the unit will
attempt to obey an order to advance), but it requires continued pressure
(from the leader perhaps) to say compressed.  If the assault works for the
attacker, the spring can uncompress and relax itself by advancing (because
the defender has been driven off).  But if the assault doesn't work to do
that, and I think the success of the assault is generally pretty apparent
within a few minutes in the proximal zone, then the spring wants to
uncompress itself by going backward, where it came from, to the restoration
of its apparent safety.
     Craonne (the game) could be making a similar statement, and that's why
the pinned unit values are lower that the assault values.  Here are two
processes, both of which I think are consistent with the model in Craonne.
Under one view, the assaulting unit fails to close enough to force a
decision; it stays proximal to the defending unit however, exchanges
nonintensive, relatively nonthreatening fire and is stuck in place until the
higher level commander realizes he has to throw another punch to get the
unit released.   Here's another outcome:  It's not that the unit has failed
to close with the enemy, but that the unit has closed, not gotten a result,
and has "already" gone back, in the context of a single turn (40 minutes in
Craonne, which is plenty of time for these processes to unfold).  Now the
lower values of the pinned units are the result of the distance involved
between them:  the assaulting unit has retreated out of the proximal zone.
But let's add one other element to the mix, and then I promise I'll try to
summarize and wrap this up.  The final element that I want to talk about is
the size of the hex.  Where I'm headed is the argument that, if the hex size
was much bigger than this 100 meters or so, then the "uncompressing spring"
has plenty of room to get to the "back" of the hex, where, for all practical
purposes, it is no longer engaged with the enemy.  Under this view, I would
argue that the units in Craonne should not be pinned in place following the
assault.  If they are now 300 yards away from the enemy line (the size of
the hex in Craonne), in my view, they are no longer committed to any
particular battle with a defending unit.  They might be in bad shape (morale
wise or casualty wise), and in no way ready to assault again for a while.
     Ok, I'll try to summarize what I think I've learned from the
discussion.  In Craonne, the designer's point of view seems to be what I'm
going to call the "ultimately ballistic" argument:  You launch your units in
an attack and they land on their target with some force (or not), but once
launched they're stuck at the forward edge of the battle line until they
either win or slowly dissipate themselves.  That might be an inaccurate
characterization of the game (which I've never played, although I've
recently gone fishing on Ebay for the book--haven't hooked one yet).  As a
model of the Napoleonic battlefield, I think it's a valid story, and it
might be exactly the right story about Craonne (the battle).  Just for the
sake of full disclosure, I think I have a point of view too (but, again, I
think there are a lot of "right" points of view).  Anyway, my own point of
view might be something like "losers are not stuck":  You launch your units
in an attack and they penetrate or bounce off.  As long they are
penetrating, they keep going until they're "gone".  If they bounce off, you
get them back again, but they may not be worth much to you.  Well, if you
read all this, thank you very much for your patience.  Markus, thanks for
responding to my post; it's really fun to talk about what the games can
show, and what they might actually be telling us.  To those celebrating it,
Merry Christmas!, and thanks for reading.
John Best
jlbest at advancenet.net
Currently playing: Playing one for Redmond, part 3, "Arnhem"










> [Now, someone could come back and say "so is the old NLB CRT which has
> rather bloodless outcomes at the middle columns not a good model of this
> style of combat after all"?  To which the answer is, no, since these
> columns in my opinion significantly undervalue the potential of the
> attacker to get a decision even at 1:1 or 1.1:1 odds or something similar.
> The commanders of the time rarely though in odds, and in Craonne, although
> it has odds, generally anything from 1:1 up is something where a commander
> won't feel bad about attacking.  The other aspect is that the NLB CRT
> instead institutes lots of retreats which lead to bloodless pushing back
> and forth, and that is nonsense. If there is pushing, then in general
> there'll be losses.  If both sides settle down to very slow attrition,
> there will also not be much movement. And if losses happen they happen
> exclusively by locking in ZOCs, whereas Craonne nicely shows that a solid
> attack can evaporate, i.e., rout, a defender directly.]
>
>> > >   A defender in good terrain simply adds the pinned combat value to
>> > > the
>> > >   value he's fighting with, clean and simple.
>> > >
>> > >   Defending cavalry checks if it has defeated the stalemate by a
>> > >   countercharge that would force the attacker to retreat. Artillery
>> > > can
>> > >   bombard for up 7 hexes away, using its pinned value for fire beyond
>> > > 1
>> > >   hex range.
>> >
>> >   I like both ideas:  If you are infantry and you approach enemy
>> > infantry in
>> >   good terrain, you should get shot up.  And I also think that cavalry
>> > "held
>> >   ground" against infantry on the Napoleonic battlefield by constantly
>> >   threatening, or implying, that it could charge.  At least, this is my
>> >   reading of how Napoleon held his right flank at Ligny for example
>> > with
>> >   Pajol's corps against Prussian infantry.
>
> Agreed.
>
>> > >   Total French losses: 6 units, 54 SP (36Inf, 18Cav)
>> > >   Total Russian losses: 13 units, 66SP (42Inf, 12Cav, 12Art)
>> > >
>> > >
>> >   I wondered about the unit scale, and hex scale (it looks like the
>> > turn
>> >   length is a somewhat unusual 40 minutes; I wondered if that turn
>> > length
>> >   was done theoretically, or from an effect standpoint (ie, "We wanted
>> > the
>> >   game to be ten turns long, and the battle was 7 hours long, so do the
>> >   math").  I wondered if the scale was maybe regimental (Russian
>> > regiments
>> >   were numerically smaller than French, and it looks like that is
>> > reflected
>> >   in the average unpinned combat strength of the units).
>
> You could actually be correct, I did not pull out any of my sources to
> check.
>
>> >   Based on the
>> >   artillery bombardment distance (7 hexes--that's big); that might
>> > suggest
>> >   that the hex scale is a pretty small 100 meters or so.  That's an
>> >   interesting mix.
>
> I think it's more like 300 meters, so the range is rather long (but
> acceptable as an abstraction).
>
> I agree that the time scale is rather odd (similar to the 35 or 35
> minutes, I forget how much, that the 3W Abensberg/Eckmuehl had, which was
> regimental).  I do assume that this is based on some assumption on the
> command cycles of the era, but there's nothing in the notes to check.
> Thanks for your comments, insightful and appreciated as always!
>
> Markus
>
> Last 3 games played: The Legend Begins, Magenta, Ogre
> ---------------
> http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/user/mst/games/ ---------------
> "Bakayaro! Bakayaro!"  ("Stupid Bastards!  Stupid Bastards!") -- Admiral
> Aritomo Goto's last words to his staff, October 11, 1942
>
>