HPS NB vs. Battleground

[JasonC]

What makes for PB behavior in HPS vs. the older phased BG series is the freedom to interleave movement and combat to any degree of fine orchestration. PB isn't about movement allowances (which are player settable anyway) or roads. It is about piling up combat factors opposite an intended hole, then blowing and exploiting through said hole before the opponent is given any time to react. Then it becomes about tempo and moving a still concentrated fist through separated opponents. None of which happened in the Napoleonic era - the conditions for it did not exist.

And that is vastly worse in interleaved HPS than in phased BG.

The era reality was all formation types could line the frontage with loaded muskets and, regardless of density, inflict the same rate of casualties on the opponent as taken oneself, and higher if you were in better terrain. Overloading the frontage did not work because it just drove your own losses higher in direct proportion. Outlasting the enemy along a given frontage worked. Or making him vacate terrain by sustained and ranged artillery fire, that he choose not to stand under because infantry could not reply to it. But "breakthrough" by sheer local concentration and tempo never worked until armored vehicles appeared.

In the gunpowder era, all it did was drive the attempters loss rates to the ceiling. Everyone used deep formations of ranks and reliefs because those could always react and top off any threatened part of the defense long before the enemy could get through anything. Thus it took smart combined arms, long attrition outlasting operations, or turning wings, to decide Napoleonic battles. Just "hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle" then overstacking to infinity then moving the fist around as rapidly as possible - not remotely.