User Guide

104
penalty if the combat takes place on a battle-
field that contains either forest, marsh, or hills.
A -2 penalty is applied on a mountainous bat-
tlefield.
River-Crossing Modifier
An invading army that crosses a river receives
a -1 modifier to all of its attacks. This penalty
will apply if the movement arrow of the army
intersects a river that is located on the prov-
ince’s border or anywhere within the province
that the battle is taking place. It does not apply
if the army crossed a river in the province from
which it originated.
Making an Attack
When it is your side’s turn to attack, each of
your regiments will attempt to target one of the
enemy’s regiments. It then makes two checks:
• Its offensive fire or offensive shock value
(depending on the phase) is added to the
die roll and its general's corresponding
attribute is added. This is then reduced
by any terrain or river crossing modifiers,
and finally, the defensive fire or defensive
shock value of its target is subtracted from
the total. Any result greater than zero will
cause casualty damage to the target regi-
ment.
• It also checks to see if it inflicts any mo
-
rale damage by adding the die roll to its of-
fensive morale characteristic, then adding
the leader's attribute modifier, and then
subtracting any terrain and river-crossing
modifiers. Finally, it subtracts the target's
defensive morale characteristic. Again, any
result greater than zero will cause the en-
emy to lose a bit of morale.
Remember that each regiment on each side has
one opportunity to attack each day, and may
also be forced to defend itself if targeted by an
enemy regiment. It is not at all uncommon for
more than one regiment on one side to attack
the same regiment on the opposing side, so it is
possible that one of your regiments might need
to defend itself several times in the same day of
combat. An invading army has the slight ad-
vantage of attacking first each day but it also
has the disadvantage of being the only side to
receive terrain or river-crossing penalties.
Calculating Casualty Damage
Any time that a regiment’s fire or shock attack
results in a positive value, it inflicts some cas-
ualty damage to the targeted enemy regiment.
There is a special “combat resolution table”
used by the game, where the result of the attack
is looked up on the table to determine a per-
centage amount of damage it will inflict. This
percentage value is the percent of its own cur-
rent strength that it will inflict as casualties on
its enemy. The casualties are then multiplied by
its country’s land technology modifier for the
type of attack and the type of regiment, and ap-
plied against the target regiment’s strength.
The combat resolution tables and land tech-
nology casualty modifiers are not displayed in
the game or included in this manual. For the
insatiably curious, you may find them in the
“\common” folder of the game’s root directory.
You should expect the casualty levels to in-
crease as your land technology level rises, and
of course it should go without saying that the
higher the result in your combat check, the
greater the damage you will do.
Calculating Morale Damage
There is a similar combat resolution table used
to determine the morale damage inflicted on
a target. This, too, is modified by your land
technology level but is not affected by your
regiment’s current strength. Once the morale
damage has been deducted, the game checks to
see if the enemy has sufficient morale remain-
ing to continue fighting. If it drops too low, the
regiment will break and begin to flee from the
battle. It will no longer make any attacks, al-
though it may still be targeted by the enemy.
Leadership Casualties
If a side sustains any casualty damage, there is
a very small chance that the commanding gen-