Historical Improvement Mod 1.0 - Campaign Bautzen

[Christian Hecht]

Gentlemen,
here a little contribution to improve our beloved Napoleonic Battles series.
Feedback or comments are welcome, please post them here or PM me.


From the readme:
This is the initial release of HIM 1.0 - Campaign Bautzen, it focuses on the OOBs, specifically on the quality levels and weapons that are in need of correction in some spots. It is based on patch version 4.04 and is still compatible with the current 4.06 as no changes to OOB files were made.
To install just copy the .oob files into the "OOBs" folder of your Campaign Bautzen installation, if getting asked to overwrite just confirm.
In this mod is also a the folder "ORIGINAL OOBs 4.04", it contains the original OOBs just in case you want to switch back.

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Changes
French & Allies:
- French line regiments 134 to 156 have the quality aligned to C and the weapon type to aligned M what is the standard musket. Exception is 4/134 listed in 3 OOBs, afaik the original regiment only had two bat. and the entries for the 4/134 are either a typo or a newly raised bat., that is why it keeps a D quality rating & the M weapon type.
Reason:
All regiments from Cohorts of the National Guard(135-156) had trained since early 1812, so they likely had the training to keep up with an average unit. Consider too that 11 of them received battle honors at Lutzen/Bautzen, many for both battles, so they had also the moral to keep up with average unit. The performance they should in the Spring Campaign is unlikely to be achieve in the game if the ratings are not even up to the Russians, not to speak of the even better rated Prussians.
Note that Line regiment 134 was formed from the Garde de Paris and that had been raised in 1802, a unit that had higher requirements then regular line units and was made up of former military personal.
Another reason is that the D ratings and conscript muskets seem to have been carried over from Campaign Leipzig and are based on the overall corps performance there. But these values can't be carried back to Bautzen. All should been rated & equipped equally as anything else doesn't seem to make sense.

- Saxon Zastrow cuirassier regiment rated down to A.
Reason:
With A+ Saxon cuirassier regiments are rated like 1809, problem is that the Zastrow cuirassiers went to Russia and participated heavily in the Battle of Borodino, after the retreat from Russia it had to be rebuild. Different is the Leib regiment that didn't participate in the Russian campaign and stayed home. So the rating of the Leib regiment seems OK but that of the Zastrow cuirassiers not, even if we say that it was rebuild also from remnants of the Garde du Corps that went to Russia too, it were surely too few men to form a unit of quality similar to the Leib regiment. You already see this as the regiment has squadrons of around 100men while the Leib regiment has them around 150 men. So they scratched together what they had, and that is surely not on the level of the Leib regiment.

- Saxon Guard Grenadier regiment rated up to A.
Reason:
Was not participating in the Russian campaign and stayed home. Like its counter part in the cavalry should retain a high rating.

- Saxon Jäger company rated up to B.
Reason:
Was not participating in the Russian campaign and stayed home. Should be rated better then the normal light Saxon infantry.

Prussians:
- 3rd Prussian Infantry battalions rated down to C.
Infantry battalions(III bats. that have the reserve infantry uniform) are lowered to C. This is because the Prussian infantry battalions were expanded in size. After the defeat of 1806 a Prussian infantry regiment was shrunk to 2 Grenadier-, 8 Musketier- & 4 Füsilierkompagnien, each with 150 men. That would give a bat. of around 600 men, looking at the OOB you usually see a strength of well beyond close to 800. That fits to the order of the King to enlarge the bat. of the infantry. Assuming that Krumper reservist were taking for this and not raw recruits, it is more then questionable what was left make make these 3rd musketier battalions. Even when saying they were also filled by Krumper reservist the quality of these have nothing in common with regular trained infantry. The Krumper system is here just the beginning of the system that the Germans had at the start of WW1, and even there the reserve units are rated a level lower.

Russians:
- Russian cavalry ratings adjusted.
18 dragoon regiment converted to other types and should be similar rated as the dragoons. This results in the following adjustments:
Cuirassiers Pskof and Starodoub rated down to C.
Uhlans Tchougouiev rated up to B, it was converted already in 1808.
Arasmass Uhlans is a unit is question as there seems to be no such unit but only the Arasmass Jägers, is the name or unit type wrong?

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Topics to be considered
French & Allies:
- Some Legere also some line regiments, possibly the 13th or 23rd who seems to have been neither in Spain nor Russia, and still have their regimental guns, could have different ratings and may be rated up to C above the D quality of many reformed infantry units. But at least a regimental history is needed to see the state they were really in because one has to ask why they were neither in Spain nor Russia. There are examples of units that seem to have been in a rather bad state despite being not dedicated to active field duty.


Prussians:
- Generally a question is whether the normal fusilier, genadier & musketier bats. should all be lowered one level because of the overall bat. expansion. Their size was set to about 600 men after the defeat of 1806. But the King order the enlargement of them in late 1812 or early 1813 what resulted in companies of about 200 men, that is 33% more. Does that justify a lower rating?

- With the enlargement of the regular infantry, even up to adding some 3rd bat. to some regular regiments, the question comes up of what men the reserve battalions were composed of. There were not that many Krumper reservists and if they had been used to enlarge the regular units the reserve units might only some if any at all, so an unknown amount of the men might be recruits. Besides this there must be a reason why so few(on all 5 bat.) have reached the field army in time for Bautzen if they only had to call up enough Krumper reservists. In the light of this is a C rating justified?

- Now there is also a question regarding the light Prussian infantry, it seems rather strange to have all the Fusiliers rated A on the level of Grenadiers while even the best light Infantry(The East Prussian Jäger Bat. and the Sliesien Schützen) are only rated B, even if these two use rifles instead of muskets. So should the Fusiliers be rated lower or the East Prussian Jäger and the Sliesien Schützen higher?


Russians:
- Russian infantry regiments are usually down to a single battalion but in the Autumn most are back to 2 bat. but are still rated at C. It seems strange that the manpower doubled(if not more) but the quality level was kept.
On the other had there seems to have been massive recruitment in 1812 so if they didn't get to the field armies for the Spring campaign there is the good chance that solid trained recruits filled the units for the Autumn campaign and by that kept the quality levels.

[Pepe Botijo]

Very, very interesting!

Does is affect to the game balance in some way?
Is there any plan to mod other napoleonic titles?

[Christian Hecht]

Sorry for the late reply.
I would say that with some French & Saxon units getting better and a few Russian & Prussian units getting lower rated, there is a slight shift towards France but that only means the ratings go closer to a historical correct rating.

I still consider an adjustment for the French in the way of applying a +1 fanatical modifier, so that the quality would be set for the Cohorts of the National Guard at D but the moral at C. This is because it seems that the training was not completely up to the level of a regular army unit, but the moral was without at least on army level if not more because this simply proved with their good performance in the early 1813 campaign.
Along with that I might also reconsider the points I noted and change some more values for the Prussian infantry because there is a chance for a negative effect because of the quick enlargement of the Prussian units.


Other mods?
Yes, I recognized after comparing quality levels of various games that adjustments are needed for some of them to get an overall logic relation between the various forces that can also be compared over all titles.
Austerlitz is an example, we all know that from 1805 to 1809 France exceptional Grand Armee declined because of the many campaigns and the the changes of 1808 made to the French army. Austria learned from 1805 had rose in quality in 1809. That lead to an overall even quality between France and Austria in 1809.

Yet we have to see that the ratings in 1805 don't differ much, so were is the French decline and where is the Austrian rise?
It is unfortunate that neither neither the 2,5 years at the channel camps are consider for many units of the Grand Armee, nor the fact that the Austrian army had decline in all aspects since the war of the 2nd coalition and had many drastic changes right before the campaign. Both points mean that a lot French units get better ratings while most Austrian get lower ratings. The overall ranking in Army quality for Austerlitz should be 1st France, 2nd Russia, 3rd Austria. Currently there is besides some special units a general even quality level of all armies, and that what is simply wrong for 1805.