Historical Tactics

[JasonC]

ACW is a dirt simple tactical system compared to the Napoleonic era.

In the ACW, a formation is expected to hold its front as long as it can line its front, and everyone fights in line, and the regiments go one right next to the other.

Since this means the firepower coming out of any given length of line is the same on both sides, there is little way of achieving any significant fire superiority at any given spot along the frontage. Nests of guns can, briefly, if the fighting gets very close to them - but since the line will move, that doesn't last long or matter all that much. The guns that try to contribute that way are taken or their crews shot down before they deliver much in way of fire.

You can get fire superiority by having a longer area of line around the enemies, which requires being wrapped around him. You can achieve that more readily at longer range than short - only dissolved atoms are easy to wrap around at short range and the enemy won't present those. So if you can get the enemy into a salient, you can e.g. mass guns half a mile away from them on 2-3 sides.

Mostly, though, you can control the loss rate by controlling the range - drive in to point blank and it will soar; stand off at artillery range and it will plummet.

If you want to make superior numbers tell, you either (1) wrap around by looking for any available flank or (2) drive the loss rate higher than the smaller force can stand by pushing the range down, and then outlast the enemy. Morale failure will make them run before they are all shot down, but if you make it hot enough and have a second rank to relieve your runners, and they don't, then you will break them. But only after a delay.

Like I said, dirt simple.

What people trained on later eras do not understand about it is the lined frontage phenomenon (meaning, concentration high enough it cannot be exceeded at all, wherever there is anybody). Because after high explosive shell fired over the horizon by steel breechloading artillery, it became impossible to use actually lined frontages - it was suicide by shellfire. The French tried such things still as late as 1870 and it got entire armies smashed in hours. Modern artillery forces infantry to spread out or dig in or both.

If they spread out enough, then you can defeat them locally by risking a superior density of forces. If they can get artillery on you fast enough you die; otherwise your thick forces beat their thin and you break into their positions. Armor makes this much easier because it is largely invulnerable to indirect arty (though it can lose combined arms etc), and faster to concentrate. That is what led to "blitzkrieg" tactics. There is nothing eternal or law of war about them. They depend on the enemy deliberately being far thinner than physical deployments allow, to avoid modern shellfire. The same thinness makes for extremely extended fronts that do not have flanks - again forcing the penetration by concentration approach. Once that is achieved flanks can be sought of course.

The modern reaction to all of that is defense in depth, which gets even thinner because the front to back dimension is used as well. Then the defense tries to react between the time the attack hits the thin front and the time it gets clear of the deep defended zone.

*All* of that is being driven by the inability to line the front to impenetrable levels, because modern fire arms make that suicide. For essentially the entire past before the late 19th century, it wasn't suicide. The driving innovation isn't machineguns or tanks or modern military thought, it is steel breechloading artillery firing high explosive over the horizon.

Back in the Napoleonic era, combined arms was intricate. The lined front single solution of the civil war era turned on rifles being the only weapon that mattered much, since artillery barely outranged them, and cavalry around them was suicidal. In the Napoleonic era in contrast, the effective range of musketry was so low it was by ACW standards only for close assault. Ranged fire combat was the preserve of artillery, supplemented to be sure by infantry in open order (on which more below). The ranges of infantry fire were so low that cavalry could close with them for actual melee.

In the 18th century, men fought in lined fronts with musket infantry anyway. They were vulnerable to cavalry if not in square. If in square, they were vulnerable to artillery. Thus what beat what in the paper scissors rock of combined arms fighting depended on the specific tactical formation the infantry (only) was in.

In the French revolutionary period and then in the Napoleonic period, the rise of open order for fire is the new discovery. Lined frontages look like they maximize firepower. But they also present the largest possible target to incoming enemy fire, nearly all of which was effectively unaimed. This means ten times the density of men gives 10 times the firepower but also 10 times the vulnerability. Net efficiency gain, zero. A thinner line of skirmishers or a full line of battle will bled each other equally fast, in hits per unit time. But the skirmishers can keep it up much much longer, because they are getting it from each ball fired being more likely to hit, not from throwing more of them.

The men carried 40 to 60 ball in their pouches. Battalion wagons might raise that to 50 to 75. All of that could be fired off in half an hour. Battles lasted all day. In other words, a line of battle can't afford to fire continually at peak rates of fire at dispersed clouds of skirmishers - they won't hit much and they will run out of ammo very rapidly. This was discovered by the irregular and undisciplined forces of the French revolution. And later systematized.

So, artillery murders infantry in square, infantry in open order beats infantry in line in sustained fire combat, cavalry annihilates infantry in open order. And of course infantry in square defeats cavalry effortlessly. Those are the key relations.

It leads to an elaborate combined arms dance with skeletons of formed infantry holding areas of ground, with clouds of skirmishers preceeding and screening them. Cavalry attack forces those clouds back into their supports and the formed into square. Artillery can hurt those once formed. Multiple ranks and relief of men that break because they are caught in the wrong formation or by the wrong enemy arm, are required. Getting this combined arms stuff right is more important on any given stretch of the frontage, than whether there is a salient to wrap around, or wide flanking movements.

Then the battle extends in time with many reserves kept sheltered behind the skeleton of formed infantry, like cards in a player's hand. When the enemy presents one threat or opens one opportunity, the right card is played from reserve to defeat him. He counters likewise. In all cases, units already committed lose cohesion, from losses, morale failure, facing an enemy they aren't designed to handle, and the like. The force breaks in pieces while the whole remains articulated and capable of presenting the right countermeasure, as long as there is a fresh reserve standing behind the frontage.

So battles are typically decided by the last reserve. It isn't about getting anywhere first with the most, it is about being the last man standing. The more weight a given subformation can carry before the enemy army manages to break it, the more of his reserves it consumes. As long as he has a coherent army with all arms at the ready, he can find the counter and break them. He just may spend so much doing it he won't still be a cohesive force for the next threat, or the next.

When instead somebody tries to play panzer division vs. supposedly thin infantry in the Napoleonic era, he discovers there isn't any. Anything he pushes en masse at the enemy at a chosen point, has a specific counter. The enemy puts up that counter and the break in attempt becomes a brawl, which may start favorable for reasons of concentration, but quickly turns for reasons of combined arms efficiency. I mean, you can try to break infantry in square by cavalry just using numbers and hitting again and again until you get lucky - but it doesn't work very well. And you will run out of cavalry brigades long before he runs of infantry battalions, trying it.

The weakness in some of the game systems is they allow a ridiculous level of "over coordination" for the big push attempts, beyond anything real commanders could achieve; they often get one or more of the combined arms relations wrong or just not strong enough; or there is a missing piece or buggy game subsystem that the players can exploit.

Examples - move and melee and move somebody else into the hole and melee and move somebody else up and shoot and move somebody else and set up a perfect counter defense - before the other guy is given the chance to move a muscle. Phasing was better because it imposed a more realistic lack of coordination before the other guy can react. Even better would be upping the movement cost of any hex a unit had walked over in the same turn ("wait your turn" fashion) - with suitable exceptions for road column out of a full turn's move from the enemy and the like. That is what I mean by an overcoordination issue.

For a combined arms match up misdone, open order should give no reduction in losses in melee, so a 75 man skirmish company actually trying to stand to a 450 man battalion column shouldn't have a prayer. But they should have the option to retreat before combat vs. infantry - the men walking at them aren't any faster, and it isn't actually anybody's turn, so legs aren't in cement while they come on. Meanwhile the firepower effect ought to be that it is 5 to 10 times as hard to hit them - but not if you stack a bunch of guys in open order (lol), which people do.

Ammo is broken for formed, meanwhile. Lines don't have any more ball in their pouches. All the games give them higher firepower to represent more men firing per unit time, which is fine. But the low ammo results should go up in direct proportion. A line firing should be 3 to 5 times as likely to get a "low ammo" result as a column, for example. That is an example of a buggy subsystem - the ammo stuff is tacked on as an afterthought and in one size fits all fashion, because the designers did not realize its importance for the way the men fought.

Put an army in line battalions in every hex trying to fire every turn, up against a skirmisher cloud with those changes, and the battalions will be out of ammo in an hour with the skirmishers barely noticing and able to keep firing back all day. "But, but, players would not understand and complain their infantry ran out of ammo way more than the historical battles report" - well yeah, because you aren't using them the way the historical forces *had to*.

So, getting "line means higher firepower per shot" correct, but not getting "lines get fewer of their shots all day", breaks the real tactical relationship involved. Players then want to exploit that gap, because their lines don't fire more rapidly, they just plain get to fire more (or "straighter").

Anyway...