pessa00 | 11 Aug 2016 8:09 p.m. PST |
Now we've established I'm an ol' school heretic (according to certain enthusiasts and rule designers on this forum) I wonder if anyone here knows much about maps? I was reading my John H. Gill, and trying to get a grip on the size of each town/village and the area they occupy, etc (1 inch being 32 yards in my particular rules), for conversion to my wargames table. Sitting there with my ruler and looking and the various shapes Gill has drawn to represent said towns/villages. In this case the Eggmuhl map on Page 96 of With Eagles to Glory, working on the assumption he has attempted to match the actual size of the village with the ground scale on his map. Here is my question: In map drawing parlance, would the area drawn represent only the main built-up area of the town, just the significant concentrations of the town proper (the ‘main street' if you will), or would it be the entire local area including outbuildings, orchards, gardens on the outskirts of town, the closer outlying farms etc? Where would a cartographer draw the line? If you see what I'm driving at, the difference could be considerable on the wargames table.. depending on which of the above it is… |
forwardmarchstudios | 11 Aug 2016 9:10 p.m. PST |
Does the same book cover Wagram? If so, check out mapire and zoom down on the village of Wagram and compare that period, military topo map to the way he did Eckmuhl. And yes, depending on how its drawn a BUA may cover a much larger area than just the buildings. All the little gardens, fences, groves and windbreaks could be just as much an impediment as the buildings themselves. EDIT: I am also a ground scale obsessive. 1809in3mm.blogspot.com/?m=1 |
Editor in Chief Bill | 11 Aug 2016 9:11 p.m. PST |
I would suggest trying to get a period map of the area. |
pessa00 | 11 Aug 2016 9:35 p.m. PST |
Period map is a good idea Bill. Not always possible though, sometimes you just have to go on general principles and make it up :) |
robert piepenbrink | 11 Aug 2016 9:37 p.m. PST |
Can't speak for the cartographer but back in the Cold War, I did tactical terrain analysis for money. They used to train us in terms of tanks. You started paying attention when the trees were too thick to be knocked over without exposing the thin armor, the slopes were too steep for a ready climb and the buildings were fairly sturdy. If I were doing a terrain overlay for the Napoleonic Wars, the BUA would start where a skirmisher was safe from formed cavalry. From what I used to see of south German villages, you'd be talking gardens with hedges, fences or walls--maybe 15 meters max out from the inhabited buildings. Ten meters might be a better bet. |
pessa00 | 11 Aug 2016 9:38 p.m. PST |
"If so, check out mapire and zoom down on the village of Wagram and compare that period, military topo map to the way he did Eckmuhl." Really good idea FMS – a way to create a baseline for whatever maps you happen to be working with. Nice blog too. |
Sparta | 12 Aug 2016 1:16 a.m. PST |
In the 1813 campaign, most of the smaller villages where often up 800-1000 meters by 300 which includes the enclosures around the willage. If you discount the enclosures the length is often the same, but they get narrower. Most games underrepresent the size of villages. |
pessa00 | 12 Aug 2016 1:47 a.m. PST |
"Most games underrepresent the size of villages." It's interesting you make that point Sparta. In a way, it's the premise I've been trying to prove. Years ago, I cold never work out why built-up areas played such an insignificant role in our games. Reading the history, almost all the built-up areas on major battlefields turned in to highly contested bloodbaths. But in our games we simply ignored em. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion, not only were we not putting enough villages and towns on for our on-off games, they weren't big enough by half when considering the ground scale. As I get back into napoleonics (and rebuild my terrain in 28mm) I reckon now is the time to consider such matters. |
Sparta | 12 Aug 2016 3:44 a.m. PST |
I think we are on the same page. You can see my lutzen setup I posted recently, they are actually quite small compared to many build up areas. I think the ability of rules to handle town combat in a sensible way is also crucial.
|
davbenbak | 12 Aug 2016 5:19 a.m. PST |
pessa00, The computer moderated rules "Carnage & Glory II" might be a good fit for you are they take exact measurements and unit frontages into account. Of course you can take or leave any level of detail you see fit when you play but it is there if wanted. |
tshryock | 12 Aug 2016 6:51 a.m. PST |
800x300 meters comes out to about 35(!) inches x 12 inches in a ground scale of 1 inch = 25 yards -- assuming I did the math right. If the 800x300 estimate is accurate, my villages are typically about 1/3 the size they should be for my battalion-level games. I guess one way to do it on the tabletop would be to use buildings as the "core" of the village and some sort of hedge or other area marker to denote the boundary of the entire built-up area. |
davbenbak | 12 Aug 2016 7:01 a.m. PST |
Another great point. I use about the same scale and my buildings measure about 1 inch square meaning that they could hold about 100 men (though my two story house is roughly 2500 sq. ft. and I wouldn't want 100 people in it all at once). I place them within an outline of the actual town boundry. |
Dark Eyed Warrior 69a | 12 Aug 2016 7:16 a.m. PST |
Nice to see folk care about ground scale once again. DEW |
Glenn Pearce | 12 Aug 2016 7:20 a.m. PST |
Hello pessa00! "In map drawing parlance, would the area drawn represent only the main built-up area of the town, just the significant concentrations of the town proper (the ‘main street' if you will), or would it be the entire local area including outbuildings, orchards, gardens on the outskirts of town, the closer outlying farms etc?" A proper map would just be the boundary of the town (town limits). It's not likely that his map would have gone into that exact detail. So what actual reference he chose, only he knows. Regardless even if he was meticulous, I don't think most wargame suitable maps are. It would be extremely difficult to ever establish the exact boundaries of every town on a battlefield. Even if you can your actual lay of the land will probably be just as elusive. I think that without trying to drive yourself crazy your best option is to simply work with the best map that you can obtain and accept it as your bible for setting up your game. Once you have done that put your creative talents to work and add in any closer outlying farms that you think might have been there. Keeping in mind that your really only trying to add in features that could have been relevant to the actual battle. "Where would a cartographer draw the line?" I think that would vary from project to project. "(1 inch being 32 yards in my particular rules), for conversion to my wargames table" and using 28mm are going to be bigger hurdles for you than the actual size of towns. At that scale a single building 1 inch square is probably too big. So when you plop down a single 28mm building your probably covering a village already, maybe more. Some historical chateaus in 28mm cover the ground scale of a small city. So the elephant in the room is not the actual size of the towns, but the scale of your buildings. Our hobby is all about compromises so I think you simply have to get as close as you can to the size of the towns that you want to represent with the material that your able to obtain and then work with the buildings that you have to get as close to that footprint as you can. I game in 6mm and it's still very difficult to get the balance of buildings and towns in scale with the actual battle. I hope this has helped you in some way. Best regards, Glenn |
McLaddie | 12 Aug 2016 7:57 a.m. PST |
"Where would a cartographer draw the line?"I think that would vary from project to project. Yes! Maps can be just as misleading as any book in what they represent. And the mapmaker, like a writer, has his own focus and purpose for drawing the map. And again, there are the physical issues: How do you get all the information on the map in a legible fashion? That can require a lot of 'fudging.' And that isn't counting the variance in information they are working off of. In other words, you have the same problems with maps as you do with any primary or secondary source. |
jeffreyw3 | 12 Aug 2016 8:18 a.m. PST |
McLaddie-- Yeah, I found that out trying to work through maps for a Shevardino project I hope to get off the ground some day. The important stuff is usually spot on, but other things…not so much. I don't want to sound argumentative, but I'm thinking that at 1:1152 you're already so far out that there really aren't that many small details to sweat. Doronino at 32 yards per inch would just be a small blip, but at a much smaller scale, you can factor in the layout, houses, elevation changes, stream, trees, etc. that made it difficult to fight over for Napoleonic troops. Up to you. As a thread hijack, I wanted to say that I really appreciate forwardmarch's work, as his pictures are really the only ones I've seen that resemble the troop-to-space ratios I would expect. Contrast the link above with the recent pictures of a (very nicely done, btw) 28mm Utitsa battle where there are more troops than empty terrain showing. Keep plugging, forwardmarch! |
pessa00 | 12 Aug 2016 10:23 a.m. PST |
Thanks for the responses everyone. Some very good points raised here. Glenn, I know what you mean about the size of the buildings in 28. It was another factor in my first starting to consider this. I have a model of La Haye St that's HUGE! It'll only hit the table in one piece to represent large towns/small cities. The rest of the time, broken into sections. But to refer to the above comment by Sparta and Tshryock, concerning the 800-1000x300 metre village, there's actually still some room to work. 1000m is 31 inches in my scale which is quite a large footprint to add detail. But the very small villages I expect will be represented with a single small building. I think overall it's getting the approximate area right that's most important. |
Mike the Analyst | 12 Aug 2016 10:45 a.m. PST |
One think you can consider is having smaller scale buildings than the figure scale so 20mm buildings for 28mm figures and so on. For Belgium 1815 you have the Siborne maps and the Ferraris maps link see maps 78 and 79 for waterloo. |
miniMo | 12 Aug 2016 11:44 a.m. PST |
You might also wish to adjust your adjustments based on cultural differences. Villages in Bavaria for instance are a tight cluster of houses, with all the farm fields surrounding the social center. The boundaries of the village proper are cropped pretty tight to the outer perimeter of houses. Take the randomly selected village of Konzenberg for example: link |
pessa00 | 12 Aug 2016 11:54 a.m. PST |
Great link Mike. Dead handy. I did consider going down a scale re the buildings but I want to use em for skirmish level WW2 as well. Guys inside buildings, etc… |
forwardmarchstudios | 12 Aug 2016 12:07 p.m. PST |
pessa00 and jeffreyw3- thanks! Wait until you see the rules I'm working on. Hopefully I'll get a spare moment to post them soon. They're completely different from anything that I've seen out there before. I don't know if I'm going to have a lot of time to develop them any time soon, so I may just give away the basic concepts on my blog and let other people use them as they see fit. Open source war game rules! Hijack over :) |
14Bore | 12 Aug 2016 12:49 p.m. PST |
I did day 1 of Gettysburg but used my Napoleoic armies. But Imade a scale map ( at least close enough) of the streets of Gettysburg out of a single sheet of brown construction paper. I had a hard time getting building models in the blocks. Gettysburg is a fairly large town. |
attilathepun47 | 12 Aug 2016 4:58 p.m. PST |
@pessa00, I cannot address your original question about Gill's map, but I too care very much about ground scale. As far as I am concerned, anyone who uses rules that ignore ground scale is just pushing toy soldiers around a visually impressive playground. If that offends anybody--tough! I think one factor that gets people in trouble trying to simulate combat in towns and villages is the question of building scale mentioned above. Except for 1:1 skirmish gaming, a building in the same physical scale as your figures inevitably takes up way too much space to represent just one building. No other miniature model on the table represents just one; each miniature soldier represents a certain number of actual soldiers, and each artillery piece, limber, etc. likewise represents several real pieces of equipment. So why should building models be any different? Each one should represent several actual buildings. Consequently, people should forget about such questions as how many figures have access to a door or window to shoot from. My own solution is to simply use building models as markers and for eye appeal. When any become involved in actual combat, I remove them temporarily from the table and rely on a paper layout in proper ground scale of the village or town taped to the table as a guide for the actual fighting. Of course the accuracy of this plan goes back to the problem of detailed sources that started this thread. I know my approach would not appeal to those who place aesthetics over realism of simulation, but you can't have everything. If anyone has a better solution, by all means let us hear it. How you handle the combat obviously depends on the rules in use. About all I can say here is that I think that, if the rules are any good, then it should be a costly proposition for the attacker to oust defenders, many of whom, obviously, are going to be behind hard cover. I think the difficulty the French had with Hougomont and La Haye Sainte at Waterloo speaks sufficiently to the truth of that. |
pessa00 | 12 Aug 2016 5:14 p.m. PST |
Well said attilathepun47. I agree with you 100% on all points. Yeah the rules I play, a building represents a "built up area" so the building very much is a representational thing. It's the ground occupied by the building that matters. I'd be interested to know how many effectives people feel would usually occupy these built up areas? Men/yards? My rules state 'one battalion per building.' A completely ridiculous standard as building are all different sizes and you don't know what sized buildings the authors were using to make a comparison, and therefore a ground scale (not to mention battalion sizes vary radically). davbenbak has mentioned his formula of 100 men/square inch above. Be interesting to see if that's about the norm.. |
McLaddie | 12 Aug 2016 8:19 p.m. PST |
It's the ground occupied by the building that matters. That is true for anything on the table including the unit bases. I have built building areas for towns where the units that can occupy the BUA have spaces on them for that. The number of buildings are just for looks. Any individual building all by their lonesome are also for looks only. Another problem with areas like the Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte is that it is difficult to bring more attackers to bear than there are defenders in the buildings, so attacks are more often than not 1:1. The French attacked the Hougoumont several times, but never with more than @2,000 at a time because that was all the space there was… and that is how many Allied troops occupied the chateau most of the time. |
Lion in the Stars | 12 Aug 2016 10:18 p.m. PST |
If you wander over to Forward March Studio's blog, he's commenting on the groundscale (and actual size) of his tabletop:
So, lots to explain here. First, it's very abstracted, especially the BUAs. In the game I envision these would be treated more like nodes that are occupied or assaulted instead of measured spaces (if that makes sense). Likewise, the foliage that surrounds the BUAs wouldn't affect movement, although all the other foliage and woods would be used to calculate things like artillery shooting and vision. If you look closely you can see all the hills, and if not they'll be apparent in the other pictures. They're subtle so they don't swallow up the figures but they're really key to the table top situation (as they should be!).
As far as ground scale goes, this is the complete opposite of my previous tactical project. This is way bigger but it still holds to my idea that ground and time scales need to work together. In this project 20mm= 300m. So 60mm= 900m and 1' = 4500m. The board above is 6' x 4', so 27km by 18km. 16.2 miles x 10.8 miles. 160 square miles. Out in the western US, that 160 square miles is roughly 32x21 single-family farmsteads. Total population of maybe 4000. |
attilathepun47 | 12 Aug 2016 10:24 p.m. PST |
pessa00, Nice to know I am still on the same page with somebody! Well, the number of defenders that can occupy a built-up area on a tabletop obviously depends on the rules in use and its definitions of ground scale and figure ratio (if any). If the two are in a reasonaby correct balance, then the maximum number of defenders allowable would be the number that physically fit within the boundaries of the town or village. However, an intelligent gamer would not want to jam in troops beyond enough to fully man the perimeter, plus a reasonable size reserve force. And here I am speaking of a paper plan representing the size of the area, nothing to do with building models. Personally, I still use quite old rules and 15mm scale, so I can't give a meaningful answer in terms of simple measurement, if you are gaming in 25 to 28mm (or larger scale). Yes McLaddie, you are perfectly correct that what applies to buildings also applies to bases (or anything else on the table). A big problem is the current vogue for basing figures two or three ranks deep per stand. Yes, it LOOKS more authentic, but it is another case of letting aesthetics take precedence over realistic simulation. It is easy enough to make the unit frontage correspond in scale to the width an actual company or battalion occupied, but the depth is always exaggerated greatly, even where (as in the rules I use) a company stand has only one rank of figures. When you have two or three ranks, the problem is multiplied. And this bears directly on the question of how many defenders can occupy a built-up area, or any other area, for that matter. Within a small village, it may be physically impossible for the miniature unit to fit in depth within the defined boundaries, whereas a real unit of the same strength might easily fit within the real village. It also becomes grossly distorted when using troops in column formation, as a unit following a column utilising such ill-advised basing is necessarily going to be much further back than it would have been in reality--and this has serious tactical consequences. Now, moving on to the matter raised by McLaddie about the number of attackers that can be brought to bear, I think it is true that at any given moment it would not be possible for attackers to greatly outnumber the defenders, unless a place had an inadequate garrison to begin with. To prevail against a determined defense, I think the attacker had to be able to isolate the built-up area sufficiently to prevent its steady reinforcement; then throw in fresh units until it wore down the defenders or they ran out of ammunition (as finally happened at La Haye Sainte). However, there may have also been a couple morale factors in play as well, working against the defenders. If the attackers succeeded in driving supporting units back from the flanks of the built-up area, then even though the defenders, under good cover, might actually have remained pretty secure for a long time, I can see where the sense of envelopment might have unnerved them. A long time back, when such discussions still took place in print, I read an analysis that suggested as much. I think it was by Professor Paddy Griffith, for whatever that may be worth. The other factor mentioned was that line troops were used to fighting in close order, and in contact with the rest of their unit, but that is obviously not fully possible when fighting in a built-up area, so there would always have been a lot of confusion and uncertaintly--fertile soil for sudden panic. Of course, that applies to attackers as well. |
Sparta | 13 Aug 2016 9:45 a.m. PST |
"Now, moving on to the matter raised by McLaddie about the number of attackers that can be brought to bear, I think it is true that at any given moment it would not be possible for attackers to greatly outnumber the defenders, unless a place had an inadequate garrison to begin with. To prevail against a determined defense, I think the attacker had to be able to isolate the built-up area sufficiently to prevent its steady reinforcement; then throw in fresh units until it wore down the defenders or they ran out of ammunition (as finally happened at La Haye Sainte). However, there may have also been a couple morale factors in play as well, working against the defenders. If the attackers succeeded in driving supporting units back from the flanks of the built-up area, then even though the defenders, under good cover, might actually have remained pretty secure for a long time, I can see where the sense of envelopment might have unnerved them. A long time back, when such discussions still took place in print, I read an analysis that suggested as much. I think it was by Professor Paddy Griffith, for whatever that may be worth. The other factor mentioned was that line troops were used to fighting in close order, and in contact with the rest of their unit, but that is obviously not fully possible when fighting in a built-up area, so there would always have been a lot of confusion and uncertaintly--fertile soil for sudden panic. Of course, that applies to attackers as well" I think you summed up completely the essence of fighting in BUA. Our rules have tried to do exactly what you described here! |
Whirlwind | 13 Aug 2016 10:41 a.m. PST |
Some interesting points here on this subject: TMP link |
attilathepun47 | 13 Aug 2016 12:53 p.m. PST |
Whirlwind, Thanks for the link to the thread from 2013. I was not on line at that particular time, so never saw it before. Some very interesting points were indeed raised--and it was refreshingly free from the vitriolic bickering into which so many discussions here seem to degenerate. It seems pretty clear that the handling of combat in built-up areas is a weak point in a great many sets of wargaming rules. Also that many gamers have a weak grasp of what actually took place in such situations. |
pessa00 | 13 Aug 2016 1:42 p.m. PST |
Yep thanks for the link Whirlwind. Some interesting perspectives there. |
Extra Crispy | 13 Aug 2016 6:19 p.m. PST |
One of the big issues with the BUA is that the term covers a WIDE variety of different areas. Consider a Russian village made up primarily of single story, small structures versus a densely packed, labyrinth like Spanish village. Then you have to consider walled villages whether with serious fortress like walls, or just tall garden walls. Stone versus log versus wood. That's a lot of ground (literally) for a set of combat rules to cover. |
McLaddie | 13 Aug 2016 8:37 p.m. PST |
That's a lot of ground (literally) for a set of combat rules to cover. EC: Maybe. The rules I am putting together have BUAs with varied movement through them as well as the combat benefits. Densely packed 'labyrinths' still after four basic elements: movement, organization, fire and close combat. They are already issues covered by any rules. It is must a matter of how the BUA influences each. |