How much should we know ahead of time?

[SnakeEyes]

Ah! But we are not the commanders that were there at the time. To rein act the scenario we would have to move our units as they moved their units. This though is not about rein acting the scenario but using our skill to win in game terms, under game rules.

As a commander you would have a good idea of where the initial forces are in the vicinity of the battle. On this basis there is no harm in looking at the scenario with fog of war off and manual for both sides. This would give you realistic historically available knowledge.

Once you both start moving your troops with fog of war on you will have no idea who is where.

Historically the defender will have chosen his defensive position and the attacker will have formed his troop to attack according to his battle plan. These are the starting positions in the game. Whichever side was the historical loser obviously got something wrong. Even if his error was being there in the first place :-) Our job is to either reverse or reinforce history.

The defender may decide to move his defensive position which would put your carefully planned attack in disarray. The attacker could go off at a completely different tangent and ruin your carefully planned defense.

The fixed number of turns in a scenario is there for a very good reason I suppose. It forces a result in a historical time scale which may have been important at the time. But I wonder if some scenario's could be more fun if the combatants had the opportunity to mutually agree to add a day to the battle. This decision to be made at the end of the natural end of battle. Then if maneuvering had led to the opposing forces not having come to full contact the battle could still be played to a satisfactory conclusion? Just a thought.

Tony