Pike and Shot

[Cyrano]

Point taken...at the moment, it hasn't driven far enough away for me to make me angry or declare it not to be a TYW game...like I say, it has things to like and is based on a pretty good system.  RBS has been closely involved in development and I am a bit surprised he let the ranges head out has long as they have, but it's not like they're WWII artillery hits.  As I say, they're disruptive not destructive.  I certainly can't make any such demand, but I'm withholding my own judgment pending final candidate.

And, for the record, I loathe N:TW.  There's an example of a game where I couldn't suspend the disbelief I was asked to suspend.

Best,

Jim
"Cyrano"
:/7)

[MengJiao]

-- how many TYW games you think we're going to get?

    If I understand correctly, part of the attraction of this representation of battles in the 1490-1650 range is that it somehow covers the peculiarities of that period -- when there were armies with lots of pikes and muskets AND (at least in the earlier part of the period)
swordsmen who could slice up pike formations.  No matter how you look at it, that is asking a lot of a fairly simple game system.

    So I think, as a gamer, I'm willing to accept the probable fact that some things cannot be represented in a fairly simple game system.
It's not so much a question of how little interest there is in the period, but of how a gaming system can be set up to model such things at
all.  If the answer is that current gaming systems really don't work well for the period, then there's not much reason to play them even if
they are few and far-between.

[Cyrano]

I think we're agreeing more than not.

Certainly one ought not slap plume-festooned flat caps and slashed sleeves on GIs and call them Landsknechts.  FoG generally is an abstracted system and some of those abstractions were inevitably going to show round in Pike and Shot.  How much abstraction each is willing to tolerate is, naturally, a matter of taste.

I've always thought it remarkable, given my own biases, that ancients gaming has received such better treatment than the early modern era...wherein, I suppose I should divulge, I pursued my Ph.D.  Maybe I just want to cut the little beggar some slack before declaring it a failure.

Best,

Jim
"Cyrano"
:/7)

[Gusington]

Cyrano you may want to try this mod for Medieval 2: Total War called For King and Country:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?804-For-King-or-Country-The-English-Civil-War

It's been around for years and is set around the English Civil War. Not the Thirty Years' War but a similar era, and this mod is quite beloved.

[Bletchley_Geek]

  Alas, I think you are all too right about this.  It's just hard to make the Thirty-years-war as popular as WWII, though for sheer bloody primitive horror they are probably in the same horrible ballpark.
  This is one reason I generally prefer WWII games over other games -- WWII is well-documented (as is the Thirty-years war) and if shown in a roughly realistic way -- a bloody mess, but a bloody mess that is comprehensible at least by convention.  The Thirty-years war if shown realistically would be an extraordinary bloodbath -- so much so that armies declined pretty rapidly over the course of the war in terms of actual combat power (vs say -- troops in garrisons that could not really go anywhere).  Muskets may have been inaccurate, but at 50 paces with twice the muzzle velocity of an American Civil war rifled musket, firing into a dense formation -- they were pure murder.

I don't think I can agree with rating them as being "pure murder". Firearms in that period were used mostly because of their effects on the morale of the men in the rank and file of the target formation. Even if not killing anyone, the whizz of those things flying fast past people heads was something to reckon with. It was not until Maurice of Nassau and, later Gustavus Adolphus, that it was realized that the most effective mode of employment of fire arms was to establish fire superiority with mass volleys following each other as quickly as possible, with no aiming at specific targets, before charging at the enemy with cold steel.

Take into account that regiments - or their counterparts in armies organizing along Spanish lines - used very deep formations, commonly about 16 ranks deep. Even if musket balls could probably kill one or two guys standing behind each other, given that 1) they were wildly inaccurate, firers rarely aimed at specific targets, and after one massed volley visibility well came down to naught due to the powder smoke ,2) misfires were very common and 3) most importantly, reloading one those matchlock muskets could well take 2 minutes, running some simple numbers show that they couldn't kill many people within, say, 20 minutes.

They did a lot of noise though, and indeed, scared shitless those standing next or nearby the odd person killed by them or close to their trajectory. What usually happened is that casualties were concentrated on the ranks closer to the enemy (naturally, and note that in a 16 ranks deep formation it means that only about 1/16th of the force strength are actually elligible to become targets), and the men nearby tried to, driven by instinct, to huddle together or try to hide behind other men. This had a most peculiar effect on formations: under massed fire, these "shrank" as the ranks and files started to get "undressed" - that is, mixed up. Such formations were critically impaired when it was necessary to change facing to meet threats on the flanks, or to do any maneuver at all. This is very similar to the notion of "pinning" that you can find on World War 2 tactics.

The true limit of musket fire lethality wasn't accuracy, but actually rates of fire. That's what changed during the 19th century - there was a very modest improvement of accuracy but a huge increase in ROF. Think of this as the difference between having 100 guys firing 100 bullets every minute, and those same guys firing 200 bullets every minute. If both forces fire with very poor accuracy - that is, very low probability to hit a target per shot - the later is much, much more lethal. Eventually rates of fire were so high, that saturating a given area with fires very quickly was feasible. This lead in due time to the kind of open order tactics that have been the norm since World War One.

As soon as it became obvious that the enemy formation was starting to "shrink", the attacking force commander would try to cajole his men into a cheer and a charge. When successful - this wasn't a given - the mere sight of the enemy advancing with determination was often enough to provoke many men in the defending unit to break ranks and get away. This eventually would result on the defending force to rout and devolve into an aimless, panicked mob. Most of the casualties in the battlefield happened during these routs, very much like in the time of the Ancients, when the pursuer butchers men who are alone or aren't capable of defending themselves.

Gustavus Adolphus' major contribution was to further develop Maurice's ideas about weight and continuity of fires. Always looking for the shock effect of massed volleys, using shallower formations with much wider frontage and, most importantly, in close cooperation with the cavalry to create a credible threat to formations already crumbling. This also allowed for oblique fire, which was more effective than frontal fire because you'd be firing on an almost 'enfiladed' target (it was easier to get right the elevation of the musket to avoid the fire overshooting or falling short). Even if such firing system was noticeably more lethal, it was still far from being capable of obliterating forces.

And of course, the technical problems regarding reloading and lack of visibility remained, and their Imperial opponents learnt quick enough how to exploit pauses in massed fires or when these degenerated into what the Germans called "hedge firing" as men get tired, stressed and confusion increases within the unit. Or alternatively, pre-empting the Swedish employment of cavalry, engaging it first (this was, in my opinion, the deciding factor in the Battle of Lutzen). When the former happened, the disruptive effect of fires decreased, and Swedish formations were very vulnerable to well-timed infantry or cavalry charges that would find relatively speaking easier to break through the thinner Swedish formations. When the later happened, the more effective Swedish fires weren't up to scratch to decide the matter.

Some authors argue that Gustavus Adolphus tactics' weren't adopted immediately by everyone because it became apparent that the matchlock musket reload times made formations fragile and exposed. No major European army adopted Dutch or Swedish tactics until the 1680s, basically because of the introduction of the bayonet, which enabled infantry formations to defend themselves while unable to fire. And even then, most notably the French, still used very deep formations and firing systems not too different different from those used by the musketeers at Rocroi until the 1750s.

[Sir Slash]

I'll vouch for King and Country as a great M2TW mod though it's been a long time ago I played it and can't remember a lot of detail. But I remember liking it a lot. As an alternative, you could just play a standard "Late Era Campaign". I think you can do this with vanilla, if not then plenty of other mods add the option. I use the Darthmod.

[DennisS]

I see that this game will be released on 10/17. How long until it is also released on steam?

[Cyrano]

Steam store showing it as a simultaneous release, i.e., they'll have it October 17, 2014.

Best,

Jim
"Cyrano"
:/7)

[LongBlade]

Great summary, Bletchley. Thanks!

[Philippe]

I think there are a couple of things you have to keep in mind when thinking about musket fire in the 17th century.

There just couldn't have been that much of it, and our modern notions of laying down curtains of fire to blow an enemy away by the sheer volume of lead thrown down range simply doesn't apply.

As already mentioned, it wasn't aimed.  Certain kinds of light troops (jaegers and chasseurs, which means the same thing in their respective languages) started experimenting with aimed fire in the 18th century, but even in Napoleon's day there wasn't much of it.

Musketeers didn't load their weapons from scratch on the battlefield.  There was already too much going on with their hands, which often included holding a long stake to prop their musket on and/or a slow burning fuze which had to stay lit for the entire battle.  Musketeers kept their amunition in pre-measured cartridges which were slung across their chests on bandoleers.  The cartridge box (and paper or parchement cartridge casing) didn't come into use until the 18th century -- the bandoleer had as many individual cartidges as could be easily slung across your chest, usually about a dozen because of the clumsy large containers they came in.  That's not a whole lot of lead going down-range during an entire battle.

But it gets worse.

Our concept of massed fire doesn't really apply to that period.  Musketeers might be arranged eight or so rows deep, with relatively wide lanes between each row (two or three was the norm in Napoleon's day).  There were different drills depending on whether the formation was inching forwards, inching backwards, or standing still while it was firing.  But basically what would happen is that everybody -- perhaps an eighth of the formation, depending on it's depth -- would point their muskets in the general direction of a designated enemy and stick their burning fuzes in their firing pans. They would then turn, walk into the empty lane, turn again, and trundle down the lane to the back of the formation, turn again, walk to the back of the row, and then start reloading.  That was the closest they came to a massed volley.  It would take quite a few minutes for everybody in the formation to get around to firing, if they ever did, and that's probably why there were so few rounds on their bandoleers.  The good news, though, is the rate of fire was probably so low (compared to eighteenth century musket fire) that there were fewer misfires.

Keep in mind that an infantry unit almost always consisted of three parts: a big pike formation in the center, and two smaller blocks of muskets attached to either flank.  So even in the lucky circumstance in which you managed to get both musket blocks to fire together, the effect is still nothing like an eighteenth century volley because the lead simply isn't going to be travelling forward all down the line -- only down parts of it.  The block of pikes in the center of each formation was there because pikes were the main event and did most of the serious dismounted fighting.  When cavalry threatened (usually trotting or walking forwards unless they were Swedish), the musket blocks on the flanks of each formation would disolve and the musketeers would hide in or behind the pikemen. The most fashionable thing to read in military circles of the day were illustrated Greek and Roman treatises on Macedonian phalanx tactics (which may explain why Asclepiodotus survived to modern times).   

Did I mention that apart from Gustavus Adolfus and Swedish leather cannon, artillery basically didn't move during a battle (too heavy) and was crewed with civilian contractors?

And that's why I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that Slitherine's game portrays 17th century warfare in anything but the costumes.

[MengJiao]

I think there are a couple of things you have to keep in mind when thinking about musket fire in the 17th century.

There just couldn't have been that much of it, and our modern notions of laying down curtains of fire to blow an enemy away by the sheer volume of lead thrown down range simply doesn't apply.

As already mentioned, it wasn't aimed.  Certain kinds of light troops (jaegers and chasseurs, which means the same thing in their respective languages) started experimenting with aimed fire in the 18th century, but even in Napoleon's day there wasn't much of it.

Musketeers didn't load their weapons from scratch on the battlefield.  There was already too much going on with their hands, which often included holding a long stake to prop their musket on and/or a slow burning fuze which had to stay lit for the entire battle.  Musketeers kept their amunition in pre-measured cartridges which were slung across their chests on bandoleers.  The cartridge box (and paper or parchement cartridge casing) didn't come into use until the 18th century -- the bandoleer had as many individual cartidges as could be easily slung across your chest, usually about a dozen because of the clumsy large containers they came in.  That's not a whole lot of lead going down-range during an entire battle.

But it gets worse.

Our concept of massed fire doesn't really apply to that period.  Musketeers might be arranged eight or so rows deep, with relatively wide lanes between each row (two or three was the norm in Napoleon's day).  There were different drills depending on whether the formation was inching forwards, inching backwards, or standing still while it was firing.  But basically what would happen is that everybody -- perhaps an eighth of the formation, depending on it's depth -- would point their muskets in the general direction of a designated enemy and stick their burning fuzes in their firing pans. They would then turn, walk into the empty lane, turn again, and trundle down the lane to the back of the formation, turn again, walk to the back of the row, and then start reloading.  That was the closest they came to a massed volley.  It would take quite a few minutes for everybody in the formation to get around to firing, if they ever did, and that's probably why there were so few rounds on their bandoleers.  The good news, though, is the rate of fire was probably so low (compared to eighteenth century musket fire) that there were fewer misfires.

Keep in mind that an infantry unit almost always consisted of three parts: a big pike formation in the center, and two smaller blocks of muskets attached to either flank.  So even in the lucky circumstance in which you managed to get both musket blocks to fire together, the effect is still nothing like an eighteenth century volley because the lead simply isn't going to be travelling forward all down the line -- only down parts of it.  The block of pikes in the center of each formation was there because pikes were the main event and did most of the serious dismounted fighting.  When cavalry threatened (usually trotting or walking forwards unless they were Swedish), the musket blocks on the flanks of each formation would disolve and the musketeers would hide in or behind the pikemen. The most fashionable thing to read in military circles of the day were illustrated Greek and Roman treatises on Macedonian phalanx tactics (which may explain why Asclepiodotus survived to modern times).   

Did I mention that apart from Gustavus Adolfus and Swedish leather cannon, artillery basically didn't move during a battle (too heavy) and was crewed with civilian contractors?

And that's why I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that Slitherine's game portrays 17th century warfare in anything but the costumes.

More recent research suggests a number of slight modifications to the standard view of the Military revolution.  For example, the famous leather guns of the Swedes were more antique than innovative and anyway were not much used by the Swedes.

In addition, Peter Wilson (Europe's Tragedy) and Ben Hull (the Musket and Pike games) think that musketry was relatively effective and that matchlocks were relatively reliable.  We know that during the 30-years war the loses when infantry fought infantry were pretty big and all armies steadily increased their muskets and steadily reduced their pikes.  Plus musketry was what made entrenchments a common tactic and made it very costly to assault entrenchements.

My quarrel with this version of Pike and Shot is that there was nothing generic about such things as musketry between 1490 and 1650 and a more interesting system would make it possible to tease out these changes and developments.

[bobarossa]

I think the basic problem is that Slitherine does light wargames and we're the kind of crowd that enjoys WITE and DC Case Blue.

[magnus]

 I quite agree that historically the game leaves something to be desired.

However, with almost all PC wargames one must suspend belief to some degree, sometimes greatly sometimes not.

Take Panzer General and all of it's children. I detest them with every fiber in my soul, but they are the greatest selling wargames by far. To me they are just rock, paper and scissors done differently.

I cannot for some reason wrap my historically bent mind around them.

From what I have seen, I can deal with it in Pike and shot.

It probably has to do with the fact that it is the only game in town. There is HPS's Musket and Pike, but it does not come with any scenarios after the 16th century. It is a good game though.

[bobarossa]

  It probably has to do with the fact that it is the only game in town. There is HPS's Musket and Pike, but it does not come with any scenarios after the 16th century. It is a good game though.

No one has tried comparing it to The Renaissance yet.  I have it somewhere but only played one scenario.  I recall being very disappointed in the AI throwing units at me piecemeal and never playing it again.  If I could find the CD, I'd check into the range of muskets in that game (100 meters/hex). 

[Micha]

  It probably has to do with the fact that it is the only game in town.

Not the only one ! On my Website stands a free Peg mod about the 30 years war with 10 Scenarios.
It works as standalone.
For win 8 start it in win xp Service pack 3 mod.
Ist old graphic but some People told me they like it but also some dont like it.
Here for download;
www.peoplesgeneral.de