Winter Sale: Choices

[Sir John Cope]

I wonder what scale you mean when you refer to 'tactical options'?  for instance, Waterloo, in that title, starts with all the forces arranged as at the start of that battle. As French, however, you still have a choice not to go straight ahead into the Allied lines, but to try to go down the left, past Hougoumont. Takes a long time to shift everyone to do this, but it's possible. Most titles leave room for 'tactical' options like this whilst keeping the historical starting arrangements.

Of the titles I have, however, Leipzig, I think, has the scenarios with the longest lead-in times, if you see what I mean. Where the scenarios start a long way before the battle day 'starting points' and thus leave you room to set up elsewhere, after a longer preparation period. But these are huge scale, I feel. You have a lot of marching of individual units to do before you will get anywhere.

Smaller scale, the bigger battles in both Peninsula titles give scenarios where you start out well before the historical set ups on the day. Meaning a few hours before. Which is sometimes enough to make decisions of the sort you crave, I think. The larger Salamanca scenario, for example, leaves the French a lot of options as to where to strike, and leaves the Allies uncomfortably guessing as to where that will be, because there's a lot of ground to cover. The French 'could' assemble and strike along the north of the river, or follow the line of the river just south of its course, or go deeper, as happened historically (they were actually trying to completely by-pass the Allies initially). Or a mix of these. Most titles have options of this sort in a few bigger battles at least.

Hi and thanks for the feedback. You'll see above I refer to grand tactical options. That isn't a term with a precise and generally agreed definition, but in this context I take it to mean maneuver prior to the commitment of my corps d'armee to deployment for battle - the decision which of course constituted the greater part of the role of Napoleon and his counterparts.  

I don't have much info to go on (which is why I'm here asking) but this screenshot seems to suggest that even in the largest 1815 scenarios the armies begin already deployed and in the presence of the enemy: 

https://johntillersoftware.com/Napoleoni...rloo_5.png  

So I would conclude that Waterloo does not offer much scope for grand tactics, but only tactical decisions such as the example you offered (outflank Hougoumont or straight ahead). 

Leipzig gets some other recommendations, and I'll take a look at the Penninsular titles as well. 

One practical question re: "a lot of marching of individual units": I've read through this forum enough to know that there are some significant differences (like automatic defensive fire) between the PzC series and the Nap titles, so do the latter have the Immediate AI Orders function (alt-rightclick) for moving by division, or is it necessary to literally move by individual unit?  

Thanks again.