"How Much Detail Is Too Much?" Topic

I was looking at my lovingly painted French voltigeurs the other day and reflecting that, in many rulesets, their battlefield contribution is largely abstracted away. They end up as little more than yellow-plumed eye candy decorating the front of a battalion.

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Now, I understand the trade-off. Giving skirmishers a meaningful tabletop role usually comes at the cost of extra time, extra mechanisms, and extra complexity. Every detail we choose to model has a price.

Which got me wondering about granularity in Napoleonic wargaming generally.

One of the fascinating things about the period is the sheer range of detail available in different rulesets.

At one end are games where a battalion is essentially a combat value with a frontage. At the other are rules that track ammunition expenditure, formation changes, skirmisher screens, gun types, fatigue, staff officers, and a host of other factors.

Most of us probably draw the line somewhere in between.

So what level of granularity do you enjoy, and where do you think diminishing returns set in?

Are there details that genuinely improve your games by creating better historical decisions? Conversely, are there mechanisms that add complexity without adding much insight or enjoyment?

Examples might include:

Ammunition tracking
Casualty accounting
Brigade and divisional command systems
Detailed artillery procedures
Formation changes
Skirmisher management
Morale and fatigue states
Weather and terrain effects
National characteristics

Do you prefer rules that model these factors explicitly, or rules that assume they are already baked into combat and command outcomes?

And has your preference changed over time? Many gamers seem to migrate either toward greater detail in pursuit of historical flavour, or toward simpler systems that let them fight larger battles and actually finish a game in an evening.

Where do you sit on the granularity spectrum?

Surely it depends on the command level being represented? One thing that mystified me about Bowden's "Chef de Battalion" rules was the lack of ammunition tracking and casualties to subordinate leaders. In a game where a player would likely only command a single battalion, or at most a regiment, these seemed to me essential things to model. But conversely at the army level where my chief interest lies, many of your listed details must be abstracted if the game is to be finished in a reasonable time (not to mention being the sort of factors that an army or corps commander could not monitor, at least until after nightfall when the unit returns start to come in).

12 layers of morale class is … dumb.
Veteran vs regular vs crack bs elite???
Nope.
Oh, and conscript vs Landwehr vs militia?
Again, nope.

Except for the "detailed artillery procedures" our rules have them all. Only the ammo supply is a paper tick off system….10 RS and two case bombardments for most nations. They rest is all tracked by specific miniature placement or movements or colored chits under the commander base.

I'm with Eumelus. You track different things commanding a brigade than commanding an army. That said, I try hard to avoid bookkeeping (meaning largely ammo rules) and I dislike more than three quality levels for a troop type.

As to quality level, 12 is entirely too many. But for me, three is too little (Militia, Trained, Regular, Veteran, Elite). YMMV

Maybe every wargame has two simulations running simultaneously: one of the battle, using the chosen rule set, and one of the period's appearance. The voltigeurs, for example, may contribute little to the mechanics, but they contribute a great deal to the table's Napoleonic character.

My preferred quality level is 3. From The Sword and the aflame.
"British" includes "good regulars". I am not convinced that Highlanders, Guards or Grenadiers were significantly better. If not convinced, tweak it.
"Egyptian" includes lower quality Regulars.
"Boers" includes militia.
For Natives, I use "Shooty", "Chargers" and a mix. They aren't differentiated to morale quality.

+1 Eumelus

If the commander I play would not worry about it, it should not be in the rules. Ammo for example. If I am a corps commander there is a command infrastructure that takes care of that for me. Now you may say my corps was undersupplied in a given scenario and have some kind of rule for my overall ammo supply. But we should not be rolling for out of supply battalions. More like a negative to my shooting as I get lower and lower in ammo.

As a grand tactical person I agree with Extra Crispy – for example, deciding what the angle of shot from a Panzer IV F2 on the side armour of a T-34 is just not my cup of tea – but, hey, there are lots of folks who like that and more power to them – the level of detail should be what you like to game with

I introduced General d'Armee 2 to my gaming group recently. The skirmish screen plays an important role in the game which is battalion level so usually you have a division on the table. While the voltigeurs would see action my group felt that the rules were too granular with a steep learning curve.

It's no longer play, more like a day at the office with too many modifiers, record keeping, charts, etc. I am still just a kid when it comes to little soldiers. Basic details for me based on old school style rules. Elites, regulars, militia.

One of my "Reflections on Wargaming" essays addresses the question of granularity:
link
I echo the general point several have made already, that the appropriate degree of detail depends on the command level being represented.

On the particular point about ammo: I'd like to cite the case of the battle of Temesvar in 1849 (not a Napoleonic battle, but fought with essentially Napoleonic weapons and tactics). General Bem had just taken over command of the Hungarian army. During the battle, he found that his predecessor, Dembinski, had sent away the army ammunition reserve (as he intended to retreat), so the Hungarian artillery ran out of ammo mid-battle. More a scenario special rule than a general rule matter, but does show that an army commander can care about ammo.

I am going against the grain here. Victory is frequently less a result of brilliance at the top, and more the competent or even inspired execution of that brilliance at lower levels. Great plans can be undone by poor execution by a subordinate. Bad plans or poor supervision can be offset by the performance of underlings or their units. So why let these lower level functions be automatically decided by random dice throws?

I get that if a game is 12 turns long so many lower level decisions may be condensed into a single turn, some of which are being done in response to decisions by the opponent in that same turn time frame, as to make it impractical to duplicate this lower level activity. Still if a move represents a sufficiently short time frame I think it shortchanges things not to force players to consider what formation a battalion should take or when it should open fire.

I'm working on my own rule set and it is a reflection of my 25 years as a reenactment battalion commander. I have a very good idea of what is and is not possible for large bodies of close-order troops to do under (simulated) combat conditions. So stuff like formation changes and maneuvering under fire are included. I'm also trying to include rules for skirmishers which encompass the importance of them during this period without burdening the players with too much detail. It is a challenge :)

Bill N, I agree that execution is very often more important than the mere issuance of the plan. But the question, for me, is "how much knowledge of, and control over, events at this level of command would this commander actually have had?" Waterloo was arguably lost because of mismanaged attacks by D'Erlon's and Reille's corps – but what could Napoleon have done about that?

You left out counting the number of horses left in your batteries and what type of wound your general took.

Very amusing, OC.
As you'd know, these extremes do appear in some rule sets:

Counting Horse Casualties in Artillery Batteries: This is a direct nod to old-school Napoleonic wargaming rules (such as early editions of Empire or WRG Horse and Musket). In those systems, artillery units (batteries) actually lost operational efficiency, movement speed, or could be abandoned entirely if the individual horses pulling the limbers were targeted and killed. I remember you had to track exactly how many horses were left in each battery.

Specific General Wound Types: This references systems with hyper-detailed casualty charts.
Johnny Reb (American Civil War) I believe featured charts where a leader didn't just take a "wound"—a d100 roll would determine if they were "grazed in the left shoulder," "suffered a broken leg," or were "carried off the field with a flesh wound," impacting their command radius or ability to rally troops differently.

Bit too granular for me.

I like the idea of 'hyper-detailed casualty charts' for the players' own characters and their immediate entourage/staff or any subordinate commander with whom they are conferring at the moment when he is hit. Real commanders would notice such casualties – remember Uxbridge and Wellington at Waterloo: "I've lost my leg, by God!" "By God, sir, so you have." – and might be temporarily distracted by them. It also adds detail to the narrative of the battle for AARs.