HPS Simulations Blog

The long delay in Napoleonic releases has finally been closed with the release of Campaign Austerlitz. I was out of town this weekend so I missed poisting the press release for this game, so I'll move right along to posting other details.

Scenario Designer Notes for Campaign Austerlitz

Dedication: This game is dedicated to the following late, great Napoleonic historians: David Chandler, Gunther Rothenberg and Christopher Duffy all of whom were giants of their trade.

Austerlitz was probably the greatest victory of Napoleon's career. Not only had he correctly guessed the enemy plans but even during some of the confusion of the battle his genius at having his army massed at the right point gave him the victory that his troops so rightly deserved.

Work on this game began back in August of 2005. I had to decide on the scope of the game and how much of the campaign I could include and the result is that along with the Ulm, Danube and Moravian portions of the War of the Third Coalition there is also a campaign in Italy as well as an alternate history campaign in England.

The sources I used for the game were numerous. Scott Bowden's work on the campaign had an abundance of order of battle info as did Robert Goetz's work. C.A. Sapherson's little pamphlets on the Austrian, Russian and Prussian armies were extremely helpful as well. Mr. Goetz corresponded with me concerning some of the portion of his order of battle. He was very helpful in setting me straight on a couple of points which helped the historical Battle of Austerlitz to take shape.

Paco Palomo did a huge amount of the Austerlitz order of battle critique with me. Without him I never would have 'got it right.' We poured over the order of battle for a couple of weeks in 2008 and finally put down on cyber paper one that seemed to be the best of Bowden's and Goetz' OBs.

A note on the Austerlitz OB is in order. First, there was the ageless belief that the Russians outnumbered the French by about ten thousand to twelve thousand men. Then Scott Bowden's work set the record straight. Along came Robert Goetz with his work and the Russian numbers were corrected to the point that I now feel that what the gamer has is the most accurate depiction of the battle that the wargaming community possesses. There may be inaccuracies but they are minor at best.

Putting together the overall order of battle for 1805 posed a significant challenge. Sapherson had a good order of battle for the Austrians. From George Nafziger' OBs and Bowden's book on the campaign I was able to piece together the French and their allies. The British and Prussian order of battles do not pretend to be the end of all ends on the subject but are more of a representation of what their armies could field. Scant material exists on the British Home Army of 1805. I was greatly aided by members of my Playtest team in assembling a list of regiments that served in or around England at this time. The Prussian army of 1805 as mobilized was a
difficult challenge as no organization of the divisions or brigades or who commanded them could be found. The order of battle for the Prussians fortunately can be changed in future updates if I so choose to do so.

The maps were compiled based on modern topographical data and period drawings as well as those within the works cited in the Bibliography. David Guegan (Scenario Designer for Panzer Campaigns: France '40) did the map editor work for the large Piave-Pordenone map. I sent him two paper maps along with scanned versions to use as overlays. His schedule was such that he
could only finish the western half and a chunk of the eastern half but his work really aided me in freeing up my time to work on other work on the project. A big thanks to you David!

The maps for Caldiero were based on period black and white maps. They were rough to work with at best and I am glad that I didn't have to do that much mapping with that source.

The maps for Swabia were based on digital maps I possess of that region as well as period maps. Easy to cut and paste from the digital map program and splice together into a larger map I used them as an overlay in the map editor. The entire Ulm Campaign map was assembled in about a month's time.

Maps for portions of Bavaria, Austria and Moravia came from Campaign Eckmühl and Wagram. The other maps were based on either digital maps I had or black and white period maps or those from Google Earth. The large Moravian map in particular was probably one of the more difficult I have done in the series. I was not able to use a digital program but had to scan in paper maps or use Google Earth at one point.

Finally, the UK maps were created based on digital topographical data from Anquet's series of fine map sets of the UK. While the geography and homes have changed some in over 200 years the English countryside is still a throwback to the days of Wellington and Napoleon. Andy Barnes put together a very nice Eagle Has Landed - invasion of England add-on module for Campaign Eckmuhl that I purchased for use in this game. His Canterbury map only needed minor corrections for the map labels. I went with a different order of battle and changed the
scenario he has designed as well as divide up the original design into two separate actions.
Adding on the other scenarios finished off that campaign.

Campaign Jena-Auerstaedt introduced a ten minute turn to the series which met with some opposition but general acceptance by many who noted that it helped eliminate much of the blitz actions of opposing players. This has been retained in Campaign Austerlitz but fifteen minute versions of the scenarios are included and will continue to be developed and included in future updates or on the HPS website under their downloads section.

More to come...