User Guide

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As combat progresses and casualties are sus-
tained, these values will gradually decline. If an
army is involved in combat at month’s end, it
will not receive the usual reinforcements from
your national manpower pool.
Now we come to the tricky part: explaining
exactly how combat is resolved. We describe
this in detail for those who are interested; how-
ever, it is not essential to understand the exact
mechanics, provided that you have a general
idea of the concepts.
Combat Resolution
Fire and Shock Phases
Combats occur over a period of days, with a
total duration of several weeks being not at all
uncommon. They are divided into two differ-
ent phases: a “fire” phase and a “shock” phase.
Each phase lasts for five days, and as combat
proceeds, the phases alternate back and forth
until one side is declared the victor. Combat
begins with a fire phase that lasts for five days,
then advances to a shock phase that also lasts
for five days before cycling back to begin an-
other five-day fire phase. This will continue
until one side breaks or is eliminated.
Each day, the invading army makes one
attack against the enemy, at which point the
enemy then makes a counter-attack. The type
of attack is determined by the current phase,
being either a “fire” attack or a “shock” at-
tack. This means that for the first five days of
a combat, the armies will be exchanging fire
attacks, and for the subsequent five days they
will be making a shock attack. Fire attacks rep-
resent the use of ranged weapons such as bows,
muskets, and artillery. Shock attacks represent
hand-to-hand combat where the equipment in-
volved is swords, pikes, bayonets, lances, and
other such weapons. The results of these at-
tacks will determine the amount of casualty
damage that each side inflicts on the other. In
the “real world”, each day of battle would in-
clude both types of exchanges, but for simplici-
ty’s sake we have used this alternating five-day
cycle to avoid rapid shifts between attacks in a
game where a day passes rapidly.
In addition to the daily casualty toll, each
side also inflicts a certain amount of “morale”
damage to the other, reducing its willingness
to continue fighting. This damage occurs dur-
ing both the fire and shock phases of battle. If
a side’s morale drops too low, its soldiers will
break and run and the army will be forced to
retreat.
Regiment Combat Characteristics
If you look at a regiment’s combat characteris-
tics, you will see that each regiment has specif-
ic offensive and defensive values for fire, shock,
and morale damage. During the portion of the
day when a side is attacking, its regiments will
inflict casualties based on a comparison of its
offensive fire or shock value to its target’s de-
fensive fire or shock value. Fire values are used
on days during the fire phase, and shock values
are used during the shock phase. It will also
damage the morale of its enemy based on a
comparison of its offensive morale value to its
target’s defensive morale value.
If you are the invading army, you will get
to make an attack at the beginning of the day
using your regiments’ offensive values which
are compared to the enemy’s defensive values.
Later in the day, the enemy conducts a series
of counterattacks which compare its regiments’
offensive values to your regiments’ defensive
values. Once both sides have had their turn to
attack, the day’s combat will end.
There are two other combat characteristics
of a regiment which come into play during bat-
tle: unit morale and manoeuvrability. The unit
morale is its willingness to fight, and is deter-
mined by your land technology level and your
current army maintenance setting. Any morale
damage the regiment receives is subtracted
from its unit morale. If the morale drops too
low, it will stop fighting, turn tail, and run.
The manoeuvre value is used to determine
exactly which enemy regiment each of your regi-
ments is able to attack. Each time a side attacks,