Troop Quality

The third axis of troop characteristics is quality - this is a combination of moral confidence, unit cohesion, including esprit de corps, and level of training.  All (or almost all, anyway) wargaming rules reflect this in some way, often by sorting different units into categories such as "raw", "trained", "veteran" etc.  Throne and Altar does it with a numeric rating, which unlike Altar of Freedom varies between units.

I mentioned in an earlier article that AoF represents degradation of unit effectiveness, including casualties, by means of "fatigue" points.  In AoF, if a brigade accumulates more than four such points it breaks.  Once enough brigades have broken, the entire army breaks and the battle is lost.  This number (the army break point) is known in advance, and is calculated based on the scenario designer's judgement of the general state of enthusiasm of the army

This is a very simple and effective mechanism, but again not subtle enough, in my view, to represent Napoleonic war.  At minimum, we need to recognise a spectrum of levels of moral quality, with militia and fresh conscripts at one end of the spectrum and Old Guard grenadiers at the other end, rather than all units being the same.

TaA uses the same fatigue mechanism as AoF, with fatigue points assigned in much the same way.  The first difference from AoF is that not all units break on acquiring a fifth fatigue point.  Units are assigned a "resilience" number, ranging from 3 to 6, representing the number of fatigue points that can be sustained before breaking.  The maximum of 6 points sustainable makes it convenient to represent fatigue by a die placed on or behind a unit base showing the appropriate number of spots.

To further differentiate better quality units from lesser ones, all units are allowed a "saving throw" when broken outright by a combat result.  This does not apply to units broken by accumulation of fatigue, but only to those suffering a "BROKEN" result.  If the unit's commander can, on a 1d6, roll a number between the unit's current fatigue level and its resilience, the brigade does not break, but is driven back fatigued.

The army break point is calculated, in TaA, by adding up all of the brigade resilience numbers, as well as all the strength modifiers.  The result is then discounted by a factor dependent on the army's overall state.

Starting in January with the Friedland scenario I am introducing a further wrinkle that I hope will introduce a little more realism while not being unduly burdensome on players.  This is the granting of resilience levels to divisions and corps as well as to brigades.  Again, the resilience of a division or corps is simply the sum of its component brigades, and when that number of brigades has been broken the higher-level unit is not "broken", but "demoralised".  This has the effect of giving an additional, permanent, level of fatigue to all remaining member brigades, which may in turn cause further breakages.  

Effects of Fatigue

Fresh troops fight better than "fatigued" ones - bear in mind that fatigue represents not only tiredness but casualties, fear, loss of cohesion, ammunition depletion and so on.  This degradation is represented by a number of bonuses and penalties in the game.  The first paragraph below is identical to AoF, while the rest are specific to TaA.

Fresh troops receive no bonus for their freshness when shooting, but suffer a -1 penalty once they have any fatigue.  In close combat it is worse - a -1 penalty for each level of fatigue.

Cavalry fighting against unfatigued infantry suffers a -1 penalty, but against infantry carrying more fatigue than the cavalry gains a bonus for every point of difference.  This rewards keeping cavalry in reserve to mop up disordered infantry rather than flinging it against fresh troops.

As fatigue increases the size of the window between it and resilience narrows, making it harder to avoid being broken.

Fatigued troops are increasingly reluctant to close with the enemy, suffering a 1" movement penalty per fatigue point when moving toward a known enemy.