"Campaign 1814: Gathering of Eagles Notes" Topic

"The Campaign of 1814 in France remains one of those periods of history often skipped over. Historians and wargamers will play Leipzig and Waterloo but rarely will they consider Montmirial, Craonne and Paris. To be blunt the campaign is just not popular.

During the development of this computer simulation I grew to enjoy learning more about a campaign that I must admit that like many I had neglected. I now have the chronology
of the battles forever embedded in memory…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Those were my scenario design notes for the computer game "Campaign 1814: Gathering of Eagles" by John Tiller Software. Believe me it was a real learning experience.

French records were destroyed as the Allies advanced on Paris so the French formation strengths were probably the hardest part of the project.

Sadly I lost overlay images for the western half of the Brie Plateau that I was going to eventually build for an extended campaign. The current game covers all of the battles on the central and eastern sides of the plateau. I was just playing the Battle of Craonne last year with a fellow club member. :) My French took too many losses to the guns of the Russian army.

I loved working on the ten titles I did for JTS. The last game I did for JTS was the one of the 1806-07 Polish campaign. Very sad how many men died in the winter campaign. The French army had about 150,000 casualties … the Russians less …

I am currently working on updates for all of the games. Just so much fun going back over each title again.

Enjoy! More free downloads of the game materials can be found under the Napoleonic Battles series at the John Tiller Software website.

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

Hi Bill
Well that took me back a few years! I remember discussing on the old Talonsoft discussion forums about 1998 or so when you started looking at a conversion of Battlegrounds Waterloo, Prelude to Waterloo and Borodino to create an 1809 game!
Regards
Allan

Hi Allan – yes, that is eventually how I got to work with John Tiller. I was pinching myself for days back in late 1998 still wondering if it had really happened! That "Wagram module" was going to be posted for all to download but I was cautioned to not do that first by Jim Rose and then by John Tiller. 21 years later and here we are.

I played Napoleonic miniatures as a young man and really enjoyed it. First, a house set of rules called "Melee" at The Last Grenadier in Burbank and then Empire II and III as well as a really good set of house rules by a friend of mine. I also tried Column, Line and Square.

The latest set I have played were put together over the years by a group of guys that I had known in the "Melee group" put together. One of them has carried on the work and we played several games together when I was in the Los Angeles area. Mike posts on this forum and has a really good website about the games he hosts.

I learned a lot more about Napoleonics working on the games. Especially the uniforms. From the mainstream countries like France, England, Prussia, Austria and Russia to the obscure ones like The Kingdom of Sardinia and so on.

I especially like the Prussians and during production of the Leipzig-Bautzen-1814 games I got into finding images for the Freicorps and other irregular units. Dr. Summerfield's books were especially helpful.