Napoleon's Triumph

Napoleon's Triumph is a sequel to Bonaparte at Marengo. The basic design of the pieces, map, and the game mechanics all come from that earlier game. Bonaparte at Marengo was a successful design, and a sequel was an obvious thing to do. The choice of Austerlitz as a subject was driven by the attraction of designing a wargame that was simple, large, and fast-playing, attributes that I didn't think had ever been successfully combined in a wargame. Austerlitz may have been a larger battle than Marengo, but it was also a shorter one. Even if the new game would need double the number of pieces, it would need only half the number of turns. These two differences seemed likely to cancel each other out, resulting in a game that was twice the size of its predecessor, but with roughly the same playing time. While combining a large size and a short playing time was the main design goal, it was not the only one. Any craftsman hopes to improve on his previous work, and so did I here. One particular area targeted for improvement was command and control. Bonaparte at Marengo had only very abstracted command rules; the goal for the new game was to make changes that would result in a richer simulation of this aspect of Napoleonic warfare. The initial plan was to put corps designations on the pieces and add a few corps integrity rules to the game. This idea was attractive from a complexity point of view, but unfortunately, it didn't work. The corps designations slowed down setting up the game, screwed up limited intelligence by giving away too much information when revealed, and most importantly didn't give any real sense that the armies were made of eight or nine corps instead of fifty or sixty brigades and regiments. After a long period of deliberation and sulking, I finally decided to add command pieces to the game. This worked very well and gave the game a strong "two-level command" feel: when looking at the entire battlefield, players think like army commanders and make decisions about corps; when looking at local situations, players think like corps commanders and make decisions about regiments and brigades (which generally correspond to pieces). Although this approach solved the problem it was supposed to solve (and I think that players of Bonaparte at Marengo will find it the most striking and pervasive difference in how the two games play), it was not a decision without cost. First, the amount of time it took to work out the command rules and do the physical design, prototyping, and costing of the command pieces blew the game's production schedule. Second, adding commanders required two full sections of rules and blew the game's complexity budget. On top of this, command was not the only problem encountered in adapting the rules for Bonaparte at Marengo to Austerlitz. A second major problem was the way combat worked. Marengo did not have the clashes of large forces that characterized Austerlitz, and the assault rules proved too lightweight. They resolved assaults quickly, but for high unit densities they worked poorly: they tilted the advantage too heavily to the defense, were not violent enough, and had too few decision points to be interesting. The obvious solution was to beef up the assault rules, but the complexity budget was already under severe stress from the command problem, and it was clear that something had to give: I either needed to give up altogether on the complexity goals for the game or I needed to make deep cuts in complexity elsewhere. As a general observation, it is easy to fix design problems by adding rules, but cutting rules is very hard work; the old comment "I'm sorry this letter is so long, but I did not have time to write a short one" applies even more strongly to rules writing than to writing in general. Game rules hang together as an interlocking system: cuts send ripples through the rest of the game, requiring changes elsewhere. Making a lot of cuts sends ripples everywhere and it becomes very hard to even see what you're doing anymore; cuts to reduce complexity can often create so many problems in other areas that the rules to fix them can actually add more complexity back than the original cuts saved. It took a long time, but finally a new combat system was devised. The new system reduced complexity by collapsing the three forms of attack in Bonaparte at Marengo (maneuver, bombardment, and assault) together to form a unified combat system. While anyone who has played Bonaparte at Marengo will recognize the relatedness of the systems, the changes are too extensive to be considered a mere modification of the old system and amount to a whole new system of combat resolution. While the new system does cut enough complexity from the game to bring the design as a whole back within its complexity budget, what particularly pleases me about it is that it adds a new quality that I really wanted for the game. An early design mantra for the new game was "Less Chess, more Poker." One thing I like about Bonaparte at Marengo is that it is an intensely cerebral game, but I really wanted Napoleon's Triumph to test players' nerves as well as their intellects. The new combat system has this character because it is extremely violent: defeat in a single attack can cripple an entire corps. To increase your chance of winning in combat, you can commit more forces, but the more you commit in order to win, the greater the disaster if you lose. In Bonaparte at Marengo, a careful and calculating approach could eliminate most risk, but in Napoleon's Triumph , players will often just have to steady their nerves and commit, knowing full well that the results can be calamitous. While the changes to the command and combat rules might have been made adapting the game system for any large Napoleonic battle, there was also a major design problem specific to the battle of Austerlitz. The essential core of the historical battle of Austerlitz is that it was a trap sprung by Napoleon. He concealed his strength and intentions and lured the Allied army into attacking him. Simulating this in a game, however, is very difficult. While victory conditions can be made that force the Allies to attack, it is highly unlikely that such an attack will succeed and therefore highly unlikely that the Allied player will win. At the same time, if the victory conditions do not force the Allies to attack and allow them to win by standing on the defensive, the result just doesn't feel like Austerlitz. This problem puzzled me for a long time. A seeming endless series of ideas (variable victory conditions, secret victory conditions, random victory conditions, etc.) were tried, but they all failed. It was only through the development of victory conditions that changed when the French reinforcements arrived that the problem was finally solved. This system forces the Allies to attempt an attack, but once the French bring on their reinforcements (thereby springing Napoleon's trap), the Allies get much easier victory conditions and just have to hang on to win. Before closing there are two last things I want to discuss – the 1 December scenario and the team play option. The 1 December scenario allows players to start the game on the day before the battle. Although it can take longer to play, I think the 1 December scenario is in many ways more interesting than the 2 December scenario: it has more maneuver and there are more lines of play available for both sides. In pre-publication feedback, I have seen a certain prejudice against the 1 December scenario on the grounds that it is "hypothetical" while the 2 December scenario is "historical", but I think this is unfounded: both are equally historical and equally hypothetical. They both take a historical situation as it existed at a particular time and let players explore the hypothetical might-have-beens from there. The team play option was never a part of the original design conception, and was only added at the very end of the design process. Part of the motive was that while Bonaparte at Marengo had a good solitaire version, a solitaire solution for Napoleon's Triumph has been elusive. On the other hand, I think that Napoleon's Triumph adapts well to team play. While I know that many gamers have difficulty in finding even one opponent, I do hope that folks will be able at some point to give this entertaining option a try. Bowen Simmons