"Random Troop ratings" Topic

The rules I am converting to Napoleonics contain a random rating scheme.

My version has Skirmishers, Line, Cuirassier, heavy Cac light Cav, foot artiller, Horse artillery. d10, 0 is LOW, and Low is good. Troops can be Veteran, Average, Raw

Any one what to put up some suggested tables/ranges so I can compare with my personal views prejudices

eg Ruritainia Line 0-3 Vet, 4-8 Ave, 9 Raw

you might want to split these tables up between professional armies and lower such as this :

Professional (usually smaller in size)
0-3 Elite
4-5 Veteran
6-7 Trained
8-9 Green

Conscripted (usually nationalistic and larger in size)
0-1 Elite
2-3 Veteran
4-6 Trained
7-9 Green

When designing the size of the forces you might tend to make Professional armies smaller in numbers of units but overall they will be more elite.

You could also have a modifier to the dice roll of +1 or -1 for an individual army in a particular year. For example the British army would be professional with the following :

British Army : Professional Army
1801-1808 no modifier
1809-1811 -1 modifier
1812-1814 -2 modifier
1815 no modifier

French Army : Conscripted Army
1800-1807 -2 modifier
1808-1809 -1 modifier
1810-1812 no modifier
1813-1814 +2 modifier
1815 -1 modifier

Prussian Army : See below
1806-1807 no modifier (Professional Army)
1808-1812 no modifier (Conscripted Army)
1813-1814 +1 modifier
1815 no modifier

Russian Army : Conscripted Army
1800-1809 no modifier
1810-1812 +1 modifier
1813-1815 +2 modifier

Austrian Army : Professional Army
1800-1808 +1 modifier
1909-1812 no modifier
1813-1815 +1 modifier (Conscripted Army)

These tables are probably all wrong and need extensive tweaking but you see what I am getting at. You could go to much more detail or even change the dice from a D10 to a D12, 2D6 or even a D100 roll etc…

Regards,
Shane

Thanks Shane- haven't got time to look at these too closely at the moment, but there is some interesting stuff there. The original rules are for the Crimea, but I'm in a campaign for Italian reunification. At the start of each battle Sunjester and I roll for troop quality on forces that are as close to the historical Orbat as he can get them. My Garibaldini tend to be fewer, with poorer weapons, but many Vets and no poor, where he has a lot of poor troops. Makes for some very interesting games

interesting no one else has added to this thread, I would be interested deeply as to other ideas on this and what others might have done.

Shane

What I do is [if useing OOBs] then I just take the stats from history. If I don't have any OOBs then I would still have a good guess of what verterancy level the troops are since I use historical scenarios. On your note about being biased, I am the same way. I always think the French are better than the Austrians, lol. Even though in the 1805 campaigne that is true, later years it can be disputed whether military leadership really saved the French.

That option is always there, but what I want is a way to generate two quick pick up armies for a 2 hour friday night game. In the example I gave above for the Risorgimento, the tables are skewed so I tend to get better troops, but by no means certain- we don't know exactly how good our force are until the start of the game.

In fact, I suppose the option is not to roll for quality until you need to know (since in this game better troops get more actions), marching down the road and then rolling a '9' for quality to find you don't have enough actions to change into line could be… interesting.

I'm always curious exactly how people rate troops. in fact I am going to start a new thread on it

We use variable morale for armies where performance varied widely. The Spanish are one example. Their morale can range from par with the French and Brits to militia. The owning player doesn't know the unit's morale until they either test morale or engage in combat. The resulting morale level is used for the remainder of the battle. The degree of variability changes with time so that Spanish units tend to get better as the wars progress.

I stole the idea from an old set of AmRev rules that used variable morale for the American militia.