"Campaign Movement Rates" Topic

Hi guys,

Curious question here, what campaign movement rates do you use in your campaigns? what ratio's do you use for Infantry as against Cavalry and wagons etc ?

Do you consider Infantry campaigns speed allowances to be not too far behind that of Cavalry or do you think Cavalry should have a distinct speed advantage over a period of time vs. Infantry speeds?

These questions have come up in our group because we use Bruce Quarrie's speed allowances which one of the guys totally disagrees with. Do you guys have similar problems and how did you over come them?

I look forward to your replies,

Regards,
Shane

I don't think that cavalry should get any significant campaign speed advantage as they still require baggage (generally) and require increased foraging time. That would be for general use. What cavalry can do, I expect, is force march much faster (but fatigue just as quickly if not faster?).

The other advantage that cavalry gives in campaign movement is increased awareness locally.

As malcolm says, there is a difference between operational movement and tactical movement. A cavalry division is going to be just as encumbered with guns and baggage as an infantry division so not vastly faster operationally, they also take up huge amounts of road space. A cavalry regiment operating indepedantly is obviously going to be somewhat faster.

I'll have to dig out some march tables though, I've got some late nineteenth century ones at home.

Shane,

In doing research for a 1900 game I came arcoss a article about miles. Every goverment even every city had its own mile length. The viennia mile is like 1.8 regular miles and the french mile is like 1.1 of the British so ajust the chart. In every campain the Austrins out march the French at some point (usally after a defeat) Movement is about the same for all armies.

Lord Ghee

Campaign is more about supplies I think.
You need to herd cattle along rich valleys or have a big river floating down supplies to keep you going easily.
There was a big problem with getting enough forage for the oxen pulling the ammo carts for Wellington in India – related well in Fortescue. This made the force almost grind to a halt.

Cavalry don't need that much ammo though. So irregular cavalry are somewhat more free to roam around in defiance of logistics than their musket toting, canon supported foot sloggers.

I seem to remember 10 miles per day is a historic average from BC through to WW2.
A forced march left behind personnel, heavy weapons, and it would seem ammo resupply. So the worse the terrain and the longer the march the less effective the force is going to be when it gets there.
Over a short stretch it may well be that Cavalry are less effected than infantry or artillery – over a longer stretch once the horses start getting damaged it seems more likely they are affected worse than infantry.

To misquote the ACW General, "Getting there fastest with mostest knackered".

I came across this:

From the Officers' Manual, by Major James A. Moss, 24th U.S. Infantry, April 1917:

"The average march for infantry is from 15 to 20 miles a day; for cavalry, from 20 to 25, and for artillery from 15 to 25."

That is for out of contact marching, and I would be very surprised to see Napoleonic division or corps sized formations maintianing these absolute rates day after day. The main thing is the relative difference – cavalry are faster, but not by much.

The other thing with horses is feed (oats etc are a much more efficient way of feeding them than letting them graze, but needs wagons and dumps) and the supply of remounts (who also need feeding). Without remounts or decent grub the horses will get exhausted and die – well, they'll do that anyway, but they'll die a lot faster. The British regarded a 92% casualty rate amongst their horses as a 'success' in the Boer War. So by all means charge your cavalry along at 100 miles a day, but the troopers will curse you as they'll be walking after a few days.

Shane, if you want chapter and verse on Napoleonic movement rates then the Kriegsspiel rules are what you need. They give lots of other details too, such as building pontoon bridges and the likes.

I have found them irreplaceable for any campaigns I have run, right up to modern stuff.

I'm not sure if you want "historical detailed" or generalized wargame campaign info.

For example, if you were implementing a campaign based on accounting for detail, you would have to consider many factors (not just a daily average). Assembly time, size of unit, size and location of trains, road type, quality, size, and condition, marching in "open" column (or closer to enemy and more "closed up"), weather (wind, precip, temp--heat requires more and longer breaks), any slopes, bottlenecks, troop condition (fed, rested,) and experience (inured to marching), animal condition, etc. etc. [I have pages and pages of these factors in my notes].

If you use "averages" make sure that you consider the unit size (a brigade will average more distance than a division and a division more than a corps). Is the route known? Is there an advance guard? How much baggage is accompanying?

Stragglers, breakdowns accounted for?

Map availability and quality? Staff ability (for planning and executing the march)? Intelligence about roads (from cavalry screens/recon, etc.)?

How much prior movement along the roads? Has the area already been "ransacked" by previous columns that moved through?

Logistical arrangements (for troops and animals; water, food, fodder, ammunition, spare parts, equipment, clothing (such as shoes for worn shoes))?

I'm only scratching the surface of campaign movement.

Depending on the level of detail that you want to simulate--you will have to adjust averages accordingly (i.e. account for variations without necessarily considering specific details for every marching unit).

It is an interesting subject (one of my research interests). The details are important for studying campaigns (and such details are neglected by many historians and wargamers because they think that logistics is "boring" and it is all about the "battle."). We do not have "setpiece" battles any more because they tend to ignore many factors that lead up to the battle which we consider a vital part of the situational and command context.

Those rates sound consistent with what I've read of the ACW. Cavalry can travel much faster than infantry for short spurts, but can't keep it up long. Veteran infantry can just keep going, and going, day after day.

toofatlardiers,

I agree, I do think I need to get a copy of those rules indeed. It is something we as a group keep thinking about lately.

Lest,

Yes, all of what you say is very relevant, I agree totally, however, the campaign scale I designed was to draw up 8 maps of Europe all connected together on a massive table which spanned 6 feet north to south and about 12 feet east to west. From Norway down to the north coast of Africa and the tip of the west coast of the Peninsula across to beyond Moscow. Each grid square is 15mmx15mm equal to approx 10 miles across a square.

Our campaign movement was based on a FULL week so armies were travelling anywhere up to maybe 100 miles or more in one turn. Without going into deep detail into the system I developed we did have complete lines of communications and supplies set out, depots and fortifications along the lines and Road and cross country movement.

Basically we said the Road movement was depicted by "main" roads which were well laid out, wide and used as proper highways between most major cities depicted with thick black lines to represent these roads between the cities. Cross Country movement was considered as ALL other squares on the map other than those with these main roads. We did not draw minor or secondary roads simply because the map would have been a nightmare of interconnecting spiders webs of these roads so it was easy to just say, "Cross Country Movement".

We did also have in play a novel Attrition rule system I developed for campaign strategic consumption which was worked out through a detailed matrix of degrees of Attrition which were modified by equally detailed factors.

The problem was I used Bruce Quarrie's Campaign movement rates as 1/ I grew up with Bruce's rules and 2/ these rules were the only detailed set I could find. He did have Cavalry, especially Light Cavalry moving at very extensive distances in a Weekly turn which one of my players totally disagrees with and refuses to play a campaign if these movement rates are used.

So my task is to discuss it here and find out 1/ If Quarrie was right off the mark and 2/ Find out what some of you guys have done and see if my focus on Quarrie is ill founded…

Regards,
Shane

I played a PBM Napoleonic campaign for seven years(!) which used 2 week turns and IIRC 16km hexes. You _could_ move armies fairly quickly, but they'd be eaten alive by attrition if you did. Cavalry detachments could roam fairly freely though, as you'd expect. The rules used very much 1980s style bottom up bean counting so how accurate they were, I'm not sure.

I'm not sure Bruce Quarries rules were designed to scale up to such a grandiose project – something like Kreigspiel or the 1896 British Aremy Wargame have the actual movement rates large formations were capable of. Alternatively you could look at something like AHGCs 'War & Peace' which covers similar ground albeit with month long turns (IIRC, they may have been shorter). Even something like Van Crefelds 'Supplying War' covers operational movement rates for major formations in a strategic context.

Shane
You should check out the board games by Kevin Zucker, he does a brilliant job representing campaigns. He also has some very useful mechanics to show attrition on the march etc. A simple and easy way of generating campaigns with all the details that I want in a campaign without getting bogged down.
William

I would suggest the old Empire Campaign System. While you would likely want to strip out some of the paperwork, I was fond of the concept that everyone basically marched at the same rate but some armies required more administrative time to get together, and it took a corps longer than a division which took longer than a brigade to get moving. So the bigger the formation to get into motion the longer it took. Reasoning being you don't want to be spread out and potentially defeated in detail. So in the huge 1809 campaign I refereed the French *typically* got more hours of marching in during a day than the Austrians (but not always). It seemed to satisfy everyone.

Michael

Thanks for the heads up on Zucker, I might give him a look see. Also, funnily enough, I do own the Empire Campaign system, I might take a re-look at that one also me thinks.

Regards,
Shane

Shane go with Zuck, he has covered 1796-97 Italy, 1805, 1806, 1807, 1809, 1812, 1813, 1814 and 1815. Some are avalable while other out of print but do pop up on ebay.
Check here napoleongames.com
William

Most campaign movement will be by road so the width of the road and the state of the road will have a bearing on the movement rate. Well paved roads like the main road to Brussels in the Waterloo campagn were rare. Earthen roads will problematic when wet and delay the march.

Then there is the length of the column on the road. If the column is 9km long and moving at 3km/hr then it will take 3 hours to pass a given point (eg a bridge or defile). It also means that if the column starts in town A and finishes the march concentrated in town B then the last units will leave town A some 3 hours after the first unit has left town A. This takes three hours out of the marching day.

Marching by multiple roads helps by keeping the individual columns shorter but there are often points on the road network where the roads converge such as bridges, routes through broken terrain or fortified towns.

Another consideration is the effect of slow terrain. For cavalry and artillery and the train the march rate will have to drop to a walk when moving uphill. The deceleration of the lead cavalry from the trot (or trot/walk) down to the walk will cause bunching of the following units or will cause them to close up their intervals. This causes some time loss or extends the marching day contributing to fatigue. When the lead units can pick up speed again (on the flat or downhill) they will either leave the ascending units behind or have to restrain their pace until normal intervals have been re-established.

Mike: Good point about the affects of hills on columns. This is one reason why large formations cannot move as fast as small ones, or individuals.