Combat Rules

[Ottoman]

Naval Orders and Movement

Navies in this era do not have speedy and reliable long distance communications ability. They also do not have radar and air search or even particularly powerful optical instruments (spyglasses are still low powered). Therefore in the entire 200 years between 1700 and 1900 there was exactly one sizeable naval battle that was in what would be called oceanic waters, and it involved the interception of a major convoy (the Glorious First of June).

Navies are organized into fleets and stations. Fleets can conduct defensive or offensive actions, while stations only carry out defensive actions. In peacetime all naval forces are assigned to stations.

Upon mobilization, a player organizes his forces into fleets and stations (which takes one season). Orders are given or changed on a seasonal basis.

Fighting

Each warship has an attack value. That is how many 1d6 it can roll to attack another ship. Attacks cannot be split up, so a battleships with an attack of 4 must concentrate all of its fire on one target. A 6 on a 1d6 is a major hit, resulting in the enemy target losing 1 point of defense (until repaired). If it is reduced to 0, the ship cannot move or shoot and is abandoned and sinks (a lot of the crew will live). If a single attack reduces it to below 0 (say a battleship with 4 dice gets 4 hits on a 1 defense cruiser for example or two battleships attack and hit the same enemy battleship), the ship is a catastrophic loss and has neglible survivors.

In addition, if a 6 results in a hit, the referee rolls again. A second 6 means that the target has taken a catastrophic hit immediately and is utterly destroyed (think magazine hit).

A ship that takes more than half damage has its speed and attack value reduced by -1 for each hit taken at the 50% mark or more.

Missions
Naval forces can conduct the following missions:

Patrol (station or fleet)- the squadrons assigned patrol a sea area and defend shipping from enemy naval forces and pirates.

escort (fleet only)- squadrons are assigned to escort a major convoy of Flota, Transports or merchant flotillas from point A to point B and then return.

make passage (fleet only)- squadrons pass through a sea area en route to another to conduct a mission but are subject to interception

blockade (fleet or station) - squadrons are assigned to blockade a specific section of coast or port.

Evade- (fleet only) - squadrons seek to evade the enemy in order to return to base, make passage, or move to another sea area to conduct a mission. These squadrons are subject to interception

Fleet in being (Station or Fleet)- squadrons remain in port, and can intercept enemies moving through an area if they so choose.

Seek Battle (Fleet only)- A fleet is ordered to find and engage and (hopefully) destroy an enemy fleet wherever it goes.

merchant flotas, flotillas and fishing fleets can only make passage.

Special note: Blockade
A blockade is usually conducted by several frigates and brigs, which remain on station, while a supporting fleet of battleships remains nearby ready to react should a fleet attempt to carry out any mission against the blockading squadron or squadrons or in the sea area it is patrolling. It is always assumed that barring orders to the contrary, that a fleet that is blockaded waits until bad weather or night to attempt to break out.

Naval Geography
For game purposes sea zones are referred to as either 'open sea' or 'coastal waters' and will be so listed.

Sea Lane Wars
You do not have to list the location in every sea zone your merchant traffic is transiting. For simplicity, you can say something like this

Sea Lane between North America and the British Isles
x number of merchant flotillas
x number of a,b,c warship types escorting those flotillas

same with commerce raiding
X number of a,b,c type warships to intercept shipping between North America and the British Isles.

Naval and merchant shipping automatically successfully evades interception in open sea. In coastal waters, naval and merchant units can attempt to evade, and have a 25% chance of doing so and making passage out of the sea zone. The oceans are really big after all

Interception
Naval forces can intercept any naval or merchant shipping that enters a sea zone if based in a port that borders the sea zone, or has been given the mission of 'patrol', 'blockade' or 'seek battle' in that sea zone.

Naming
Departments and Fleets are not known as the "First Fleet" in this era. They are either given the name of the commander (Nelsons fleet) or of the
area they are responsible for (West Indies Station or Channel Fleet)

For ship names, feel free to use historical names of any era, names from pop culture, or whatever else sounds reasonable. I am fairly flexible, but if a name irritates the hell out of me, that will be the ship whose number comes up when a random ship loss occurs.

[Ottoman]

How ground combat works:
This is still the age of battles, usually 1-3 days for the big ones, 1 day or less for the little ones. Campaigns are generally several battles. We don’t have to worry about air power, mechanized units or machine guns. But muskets and massed cannons are murderous, and later on we have rifled muskets, gatling guns, rifled artillery, and bolt action rifles.

Die rolls:
Units must roll their attack strength or less to inflict a hit on the enemy. A hit automatically shatters a unit.  The side with better generals, training or whomever the referee thinks is simply a better army gets a +1 to their attack values (the other side does not get this). Really bad armies get a -1 to their attack values (and yes, that means an attack value of 0 has no chance of inflicting damage). They also get a -1 if attacking TL3 in rugged, fortified or urban terrain.

Shattered units are considered present on the battlefield, but cannot fire back if attacked, and if hit, are eliminated completely.  

How battles work
All attacking units and defending units get a mutual attack phase. At that point the referee determines which side would want to break off the battle (using common sense, sometimes neither would). Surviving attacking units then can launch another attack, and another mutual fire with the defenders occurs.  Generally this is where reserves are committed.  

Special Circumstances:

Cavalry Charges
Cavalry and Lancers can attack a shattered brigade and automatically eliminate it if a defending army has had all of its units shattered. This is called pursuit, and why cavalry are to be feared.  You keep a reserve so that you have something to provide a rear guard in case of pursuit, or a heavy hitting force to maul the enemy if it is shattered.

Up until the mid 1840s, a decisive battle could be fought that eliminated an enemy army. This is why battles are risky and nations built fortifications on their frontiers to slow down the enemy or perhaps even stop him without having to risk the army in battle.  

Fighting Savages
Any TL3 unit attacked by a TL2.5 or lower unit gets a free fire phase prior to the mutual combat phase, but does not get the same benefit if attacking. The same applies if a 2.5 is attacking a TL 2. TL2 or lower units cannot have a firepower rating higher than 1 per brigade.  

Defending entrenchments, fortresses and forts
A fort or fortress unit, or an army that is entrenched, gets to free fire phase if attacked prior to the mutual combat phase.  Which is why attacking a dug in enemy force can be risky.  An entrenched army cannot move that season, which is why armies are often unwilling to entrench and usually only do so if conducting a siege or defending against a siege.

Casualties
Generally a brigade that is shattered takes 1,250  casualties. If a shattered unit is destroyed, it takes another 1,250 casualties, and the referee makes a decision on how many are likely prisoners (usually about 30% of the total, plus most of the wounded become prisoners too).

Marching about
Generally armies in this time period can move about 50 miles a week, half that in bad terrain like wilderness, hills, mountains or swamps. To figure routes, look at an appropriate map of the area and figure out which routes are likely to be taken. Figure that roughly 20,000 men take up an area roughly half days march in area. So a big army can be spread out in an area where it takes 1 or 2 days march to concentrate, sometimes more. Light infantry can ignore the penalties for wilderness, hills, mountains and swamps.

movement ratings for units are for referee purposes and really only relevant on a battlefield

Foraging
All Armies are assumed to be foraging when moving (see supply rules) .

Attrition
Casualties from skirmishing, accidents, and standard camp disease will result in 2 brigades for every 10 getting shattered each month. In high disease areas these effects are tripled.  

Regrouping
Shattered units may be regrouped. If you have 5 shattered brigades out of 12, you can combine 4 brigades to form 2 whole units, with the excess written off as providing replacements for all the other damaged units in the army that aren’t represented but are real nonetheless.

Always assume that generals regroup as soon as the battle is over.

Sieges  
Although less common than the previous centuries, they are still a fixture of 18th Century warfare and not uncommon in the 19th Century.  Sieges are usually lengthy, weeks at least, sometimes months and occasionally years.   Conducting a siege requires that at least one infantry brigade (not light, or horse troops) invest the target.  This requires that unit to entrench.   Each month of the siege, a die is rolled and on a 6 (1d6) the target surrenders (becomes demoralized, or food supplies fail for some reason, or disease is a problem).   On a 1 (1d6), a besieging unit takes a hit (so you might need more than one unit to conduct a siege), representing casualties from disease or poor morale causing desertions etc.   Each season the odds worsen for the besieged, so on the first month of the new season, on a 5 or 6, it surrenders, while they do not worsen for the besieging troops (still only take a loss on a 1).  You can indeed launch your siege in June (technically Spring) and in July (which is technically Summer) get an immediate bonus.  The siege is lifted if the besieging units are all shattered, or no unit is entrenched (and thus the investment is broken).  (a unit beseiged for 3 seasons thus surrenders on a 3,4,5 or 6, and automatically surrenders after 5 seasons)

You can always launch an assault, but this might be costly (or even too costly)  Engineers provide substantial benefits to besieging armies (see units thread).

Attrition and Status
Brigades start off at full strength, if shattered, they are reduced in strength to a brigade remnant, and are disrupted (unable to attack) for a few days (in other words, are out of action for the battle they are in). Once no longer disrupted, they either merge with other remnants to reconstitute a full brigade, or are reduced to a regiment.

If shattered again (say, during pursuit) or a regiment is shattered, if there are no other shattered regiments with which to reconstitute, the unit is destroyed.


Guards Units: At mod discretion, this designation gives a +1 to its combat value until it is shattered or peace comes and everyone falls back into lazy peacetime soldiering habits.   This represents units that are particularly effective due to leadership or simply just because they are a particularly tough group of men.  This adds a bit of flavor to the game.  Players should give these units names, even if they don't name any other units, again for color.

TL Difference Modification: Previous rules had it that TL 2 and below units could only hit on a 1. Considering we are now moving to a d10 system, that has been increased to hit on a 2.

Breadth of Combat: Brigades, upon scoring a hit, now shatter 1 brigade or 2 regiments. This is to help counteract the trend I was noticing of large numbers of low-quality regiments being able to overwhelm similar raw manpower armies of higher-quality units (i.e., 4 Inf brigades v 10 inf regiments are both 10,000 men, and the 4 inf brigades should have a real advantage because of their cannons, but they were often just being swarmed by the smaller units. If this doesn’t sufficiently address the problem, I may adjust up to 3 regiments.

[Ottoman]

General Supply requirements
Armies and Fleets are essentially mobile cities, and consume massive quantities of food.  

Supplying armies
A unit of 2,500 men will consume 360 tons of food a season, or 4 tons a day.  An army of 50,000 men will consume therefore 80 tons a day (7,200 tons a season) but the much larger problem is that this force will have approx 30,000 horses and oxen.  Feeding these animals will require therefore 58,000 tons of fodder in a season, or 645 tons a day, which is simply beyond the primitive transportation network of this period to handle if an army is moving.   Thus an army must have grazing land, which works out to be 600 acres a day (54,000 acres in the course of a season).  

In short, to feed itself, an army must disperse to smaller encampments that are widely spread out (in otherwords, split up into small towns), move constantly (in the process stripping its line of march of two thirds of its food and fodder supplies in the process), or once it stops moving, build up magazines (in effect factories) which can supply it once it stops moving.  These magazines must have access to adequate roads and rivers to move the required supplies.

Otherwise the Army starts suffering attrition, with its animals gradually stripping away (in effect cavalry, lancers and infantry are reduced to light infantry as all but the lightest artillery pieces are abandoned, and the horses die off).  

Stripping the land clean
If an army uses the same line of march twice, or another army follows the same line of march as its opponent, the land is stripped clean.  In addition to creating considerable (and in some cases, massive) hardship for the local civilians, this means that the land can only provide 1/3 of its previous bounty, and the pursuing army thus gets only half of the supply value of that land.   Which requires it to either move more slowly (as it has to spread out in order to enlarge the area for foraging) or suffer attrition from inadequate supply

The problem becomes more severe during winter, when fodder has to be provided as grazing is not available, or during sieges, when an army must remain in place.   As a general rule, Armies do not conduct winter campaigns unless there is no other choice.  Hence the reason armies go into winter quarters.  

If forced to campaign during winter, or if an army is conducting a seige, then during the second month it is out of supply.  It can be placed back into supply if within 50 miles of a magazine (or friendly fortress), or if it encamps.  

Encampment
An army that encamps cannot move, or launch attacks but may conduct seiges and defend itself.   In effect the army is sending out foraging parties, and relying on what transportation is available to move up fodder and food.  However, it still suffers attrition if more than one brigade is located within 20 miles of another brigade.  In peacetime this is why the Army is scattered about the entire country in garrison (making supply possible) and why armies frequently spread out and encamp during winter.  

the effects of being out of supply
An Army that is out of supply suffers 3 times the normal rate of attrition

It is highly recommended that players keep this in mind if they don't want to see their armies literally melt away even before they conduct the risky business of battle.  Also players will note that building magazines can be critical.

[Ottoman]

Supplying fleets
Navies of the day do not need fuel, which means in theory they can sail around for years at a time with only occasional stops to make minor repairs.  The wind after all is continually available, while wood can be found most anywhere and a ship has its crew who can do most of the work needed.

In practice however, this is not as easy as it looks.  Food storage is a problem, and most food and water goes bad after a few months even with proper care and adequate or even superior efforts to preserve it.  

Fleets therefore must put into port periodically to replenish supplies, or they can live off captured supplies taken from enemy ships (one naval or merchant unit will supply enough food to replenish one naval unit).   In some cases, navies can also be resupplied by merchant flotillas that provide a steady stream of food and water from home ports.  

For game purposes, a naval unit can stay at sea for 2 seasons before it must check for supply status.  It can be resupplied by a merchant flotilla, or it must make port.  It can immediately return to sea but this does mean that there are potential strategic effects (for example, if you are blockading an enemy port, if your fleet has to send ships home to replenish than that blockade is less tight, and potentially the enemy can slip away or even overwhelm the remaining blockaders).  

Scurvy is however the bigger problem.  A naval unit that remains at sea for a third season not only is living on short rations of bad food and worse water, but is suffering serious disease issues... particularly scurvy.   Each month of that season then it must make a check (50%) to determine whether the unit is disrupted.   A naval unit can suffer one disruption for every two levels of its defense rating before being eliminated (so big ships with big crews can remain at sea longer because they can absorb more casualties... although this is pretty hard on the survivors and worse on the rest).

Effects of disruption
Disrupted naval units have their attack and defense strengths halved (personnel casualties reducing the number of men who can shoot, and the number of men who can fix damage and sail the ship).  

Supplying naval facilities
Because of the primitive nature of land transportation, naval facilities must have a water supply line to a major city.  This can be river or canal but is usually coastal or even oceanic waters.   If no supply route exists, than a naval facility can only conduct repairs and cannot build ships.  If located in a major city a naval facility remains in supply as long as the major city does.

[Ottoman]

Ammunition
Notice that ammunition requirements are ignored.  That is because armies and navies simply do not shoot that much during a campaign.  They have enough on hand to fight a couple of battles, which is likely more than they will need during the course of that campaign.  Thus resupplying them rarely is a problem.  

Should it be necessary, than a special note or rule will be created for that campaign if multiple battles are fought.  

Naval depreciation
Wooden ships wear out, especially in tropical waters where marine organisms find wood to be delicious.  Naval units that operate in tropical waters suffer damage checks each season that they do so.  There is a 10% chance that a naval unit will suffer sufficient damage to become disabled and have to return to a naval facility for repairs.   A second check is made, and a 20% chance exists that the naval unit has been damaged beyond repair and is eliminated.

Copper bottoms solve this... about 70+ years from now.  Marine paint does even better... 140 years from game start.

The perils of the tropics
Land and Naval units that are from temperate countries suffer three times the rate of normal attrition when operating in the tropics due to disease vectors.  Yellow Fever and Malaria can fell whole ships crews and wipe out regiments .   Thus naval units check for disruption two seasons a year (Monsoon season in Asia and Africa, during Spring and Summer in the Americas), and Land units suffer three times the normal chance of being shattered by disease (check during the same months).  

Nearly half the men sent to the Caribbean or India died in the first year after arrival, and in some particularly hellish parts of the African coast, the chances of survival to retirement where less than 10% for a European well into the late 19th Century.

On the other hand, troops from the Tropics (or Desert / Dry Temperate) serving in Temperate regions must make attrition checks during the winter, and have three times the normal chance of being shattered.

Players will note when researching that campaigning in the tropics was very frequently limited to the times when it was relatively safe to do so.

Special Rules: Operating in the Wilderness
In Wilderness areas, the desert, arctic, or mountain regions, armies cannot forage.   Infantry, Cavalry, and Lancers cannot carry enough fodder to operate and are thus out of supply when operating in these regions except during spring if operating in the steppes (American Great Plains and various Praire regions count for this purpose).   As the desert, forest and arctic are not known for their vast expanses of grasslands, foraging for fodder is not possible in those areas.

Light Infantry, and fixed units like fortifications and forts however either can stockpile enough food, or carry enough to remain in supply to operate.  If able to trace a line of communications by water (river or canal or lake) back to a seaport, port or major city, these units remain in supply unless placed under seige.

2,500 men cannot hunt enough food to survive in the wild.. at least not for long.  

As natives as a general rule do not have ports, seaports or major cities, this means that native warriors can only fight for one season before they return home (disband).


Communications:

I will assume every colonial nation has a communications infrastructure in place to its various colonies.

From Europe
2 week Europe to North Africa (or Constantinople to its European and Middle Eastern territories) or one European capital to another in a neighboring state
3 weeks Moscow or Constantinople to outlying territories (such as Persia, Caucasus region)
or a European capital like Paris to somewhere like Warsaw or Constantinople
5 weeks to North America (including sending the courier to the port to take his dispatches across the sea)
5 weeks to the Caribbean
7 weeks to Brazil/Mexico/New Orleans or New Orleans to distant places like St Louis or Quebec to Chicago
10 weeks to South Africa or Buenos Aires
12 weeks to Peru/Chile
14 weeks to India or California/New Mexico
18 weeks to the Philippines/Dutch East Indies or Moscow to places like Omsk

Transports

Transport rules are now simplified. During wartime, you can transport units across the sea at a rate of 2 brigades per 1 commercial flotilla for a cost of 1. Instead of having to keep track of which flotilla you have in and out of service, just say which battlefleet it is being escorted by as it travels from point A to B (or none, if you want to risk it) and allocate that money in the budget.

Additionally, if you want to try to get away with transport on the cheap, you can transport light infantry regiments over normal naval vessels at a rate of 3,000 sailors per 1 regiment (so 3 BB1st, 4 BB2s, etc). This effectively acts as an extra contingent of marines on your ships, but could make the units extra susceptible to attrition on longer voyages--cramped conditions, low supplies of whatever stops you from getting scurvy, etc.

[Ottoman]

Foraging - armies always forage and loot, but if properly supplied they don't go out of their way to do so. Usually they stick to the easy to grap like small livestock, fences to burn for firewood, valuables left unhidden, and rarely do they rape. If properly supplied and reasonably disciplined. However, supply lines get overstretched, and sometimes the mission is more important than proper supply lines.

At that point, armies forage. When foraging, they remain in supply but at a cost of increasing attrition (checked every season instead of every two seasons) and at a higher rate (3 brigades for every 10 suffer shatter results) from desertion, irate locals killing them, accidents, and skirmishes with enemy skirmishers. For every 10,000 men foraging, there will reduce the resources of the territory they are marching through by .25 points for that year. This is casual foraging. (that damage is one time only for the year)

Deliberate foraging is also called scorched earth tactics. Attrition remains the same, but damage is inflict at the rate of .5 points for every 5,000 men for that year (that damage is inflicted every season).
Once an army reaches 50,000 in size, it can choose instead to reduce the tax base.... which means its burning barns, stealing most of the local domestic animals, burning or harvesting the fields, destroying mills and the like. At that point, 1 million people have no tax value for that year in the area affected (up to that number, if fewer live there than that don't suffer additional penalities) This also means a population loss during the winter of 10% of that population to starvation, exposure and disease. Their government can stop that by spending 1 point per million people to feed and house them during the winter.

In game terms, deliberate foraging eliminates the tax value of one WIF Europe hex in a season, or half a hex (in other words it takes two seasons to do it) in WIF Asia type hexes.

Sacking – the European laws of war forbid a sack if the city, fortress or fort surrenders without a fight or after offering pro forma honorable resistance or resistance ends when a breach is created. HOWEVER if the defenders refuse to surrender at that point, OR the city is taken by assault, then the attacking army gets 3 days of mayhem. Rape, pillage, slaughter, armed robbery, theft, arson and other horrors occur. That city then loses its resource value for up to 5 years, and the attacking army gets that in immediate income (the spoils of war as it were).

Cities on the WIF map are worth 2 points as a general rule, while certain cities are worth more. All capitals are worth 5 points, except for Rome, London, Stockholm, Vienna, and Costantinople, which are worth 10. The Chinese capital, should it be sacked, or Kyoto, would be worth 20 as would Mecca.
A sacked capital regains its value at .25 points a year until it is once again 'pretty'. Assuming of course the owner doesn't invest money in it again. Basically this means that the treasury, art, fine decorations, objects de art, fine furniture, banks and anything else you can think of have been stolen. Actually twice that much damage is done, but it is pilfered by the soldiers.

Deliberate Sacking- this is when a political point is being made, or intentional terror is intended. The city is destroyed, and reduced to 50% of its prewar size. The missing 50% are dead. Those that aren't dead fled but eventually make their way back. The city produces double its normal income from looting, plus provides no income for the owner from 5- 10 years. This needless to say will be considered a war crime, and the first instance reduces the prestige of the nation who did the atrocity is reduced by one. That prestige loss remains for until the referee determines otherwise. This kind of sack takes one month. The locals will fight back, so the army conducting the sack suffers normal attrition while doing so (2 brigades per 10 shattered) . There is a 50% chance it will shatter the national morale of the defending nation, in which case all units are considered shattered as men desert to go home and take care of families, or simply think the war is lost. It also has a 50% chance of creating 1 replacement unit for every 5 brigades remaining to the defender, as the population is thoroughly angered.

Destroying a city- as in conducting a Carthage. This literally destroys a city, and takes as season. 10% of the population escapes, the rest die. The city has to be rebuilt from scratch (place an outpost which eventually grows if you add things to it). The locals will fight back desperately, and inflict high attrition (4 brigades per 10 shattered). The city yields triple is normal sacking value. This is considered appalling by the civilized world, so take an immediate loss of two prestige levels. It also might just make the enemy surrender right then (50%, all units simply disintegrate as morale collapses) or enrage them (50% all units are considered elite for the remainder of the war when fighting the enemy who did this atrocity, plus 3 free replacement brigades per 10 brigades remaining).

You do war crimes at your peril. Its not just soft heartedness that created rules to war, but utility.

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