Category Archives: Scenarios

What 18th and 19th Century Battles Would You Like to Receive with General Staff?

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We have decided to reward backers of General Staff on Kickstarter with thirty (yes, thirty!) battles / scenarios for the General Staff Wargaming System. They can be any battle, skirmish or detail of a battle (think the Peach Orchard at Gettysburg, for example). The only restrictions are they should be battles with a limit of about thirty units per side (the map just gets too crowded with more than 60 units running around) and there should be two superior levels of command (e. g. if we were to do Gettysburg there would be the  Army Commander and the Corps Commanders with divisions being the units represented on the map).

Let your imagination run wild! What battles, scenarios or skirmishes would you like to see? Please post in the comment section below, or use this handy Contact Us email form or write to me directly at Ezra [at] RiverviewAI.com

Screen capture of a scenario using a map of Trenton and General Washington’s Continental Army. Click to enlarge.

 

 

Creating Victory Conditions in General Staff

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The General Staff Wargaming System provides users with the tools to create scenarios of their own design. These scenarios can be historical battles or they can be ‘what if’ scenarios (e.g. what if Custer had brought Gatling guns to the Little Big Horn or what if Robert E. Lee fought Wellington). To determine the victor of these scenarios or battles we need to have a predetermined set of Victory Conditions. Below is a screen shot of the Edit Scenario Victory Conditions screen:

The Victory Point editing screen in the General Staff Scenario Editor. Click to enlarge.

And below is a screen shot of the self-checking error function for setting Victory Points:

General Staff automatically checks for impossible victory conditions. Click to enlarge.

The General Staff Wargaming System is designed to give maximum flexibility to the scenario designer. It fully supports creating scenarios from 18th and 19th century armies and any map.

How to Edit Unit Speeds in General Staff

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We recently had a series of very spirited discussions about the speed of units in various formations and across different terrain types during the Napoleonic Era in the Facebook Wargaming groups. A number of people were very kind to forward documents, tables and charts that had estimates of unit speeds. But, one thing that quickly became apparent was there was quite a bit of disagreement about, “how fast could a unit march,” in the 19th century.

Furthermore, we hadn’t even begun to talk about battles that took place in bad weather (the battles of Stone’s River and Fort Donnelson during the American Civil War come to mind).

The solution, obviously, was to allow the user (the scenario designer) to have complete control over these values. Consequently, we’ve added a very easy to use utility to facilitate editing and displaying unit speeds in various formations across different terrains.

Below is a video we created that demonstrates these utilities:

How to Add Scale to Created Maps

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One of the many interesting features in the General Staff Wargaming System is the ability to import maps from old atlases or from the internet. While we intend to film a complete instructional video (we’re thinking of including a set of instructional videos explaining how to use the Army Editor, Map Editor and Scenario Editor) we thought we would first share a sneak peek of how to import a map from an old atlas.

An integral part of my office library, a well-worn volume of “The Official Military Atlas of the Civil War”

The “The Official Military Atlas of the Civil War” is one of my favorite books and, like many Grognards, I have dreamed about maneuvering units across these famous maps. I recently realized that I now had all the tools to do exactly that with the General Staff Wargaming System.  First I scanned the map I wanted (the First Bull Run / Manassas battlefield) using an inexpensive flat-bed scanner attached to an ink-jet printer. Then I imported it into the General Staff Map Editor using the built-in feature.

Next, measure the distance between two key geographic points on the map using your trusty Rock Island Arsenal Museum & Gift Shop souvenir plastic ruler.

Measure the distance between key geographic features using a ruler.

Next look up the scale of the map at the bottom:

The scale of this map is 2,000 feet to the inch.

Use Google to do the math (yes, this is actually a programming assignment that is often assigned to first semester college students in CS1).

Three inches = 6,000 feet. Convert to meters.

Just learned that the reprint of the Official Atlas of the Civil War was printed 10% smaller than the original so 3 inches actually equal 5,400 feet!

Next, select the ‘Add Map Scale’ feature in the General Staff Map Editor.

Select the ‘Add Map Scale’ menu item.

Click and drag a line on the map between the same two key geographic features that you previously measured and enter the length in meters:

Enter the length of the line you just drew on the map in meters.

And – voila! – General Staff automatically calculates the map scale:

General Staff calculates and displays the scale of the map you just imported.

General Staff Features

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General Staff is a direct descendant of the UMS seies which featured a suite of tools that allowed the user to create new maps, armies and scenarios. Our recent survey indicated that 73% of respondents felt that it was either ‘very important’ or ‘somewhat important’ for General Staff to have these abilities, too. Below is a flow chart of the five modules that make up General Staff:

Flow chart of General Staff. From the main screen the user can either create a new map, create a new army, combine a map and two armies into a new scenario or play a previously created scenario. Click to enlarge.

Flow chart of General Staff. From the main screen the user can either create a new map, create a new army, combine a map and two armies into a new scenario or play a previously created scenario. Click to enlarge.

From the Main Menu the user can select:

The Create Map Module

This module provides all the tools that a user needs to create detailed, authentic-looking maps. The are numerous tiles that represent the eight different terrains (field, water, swamp, city, woods, bridge, road, fort). Additionally, the user can sculpt hills and ridges with the AI automatically adding ‘splash contours’. Rivers and roads are added using a Bézier curve tool.

After the map is completed the user can select the amount of ‘dirtying’ (map folds, coffee stains, age stains, etc.) to be added to the map.

The Create Army Module

Armies can be in either an hierarchical format (see below) or a flat format. A flat format is a data structure without layers of commanders. Next week we will be running a user survey to find if you have a preference for hierarchical or flat army unit structures.

Screen shot from UMS II: Nations at War showing a hierarchical army structure. There are four levels of command in this army structure: Army Group, Army, Corps and Division. Click to enlarge.

The original UMS had a flat army structure while UMS II had a hierarchical unit structure.  For both systems an intuitive click and drag interface is provided for quickly creating, editing and saving armies.

Available unit types include: heavy and light infantry, heavy and light cavalry and heavy and light (horse) artillery. Headquarters and courier units are provided for hierarchical army structures.

Create Scenario Module

In the Create Scenario Module a user can combine any two previously created armies with a previously created map to create a new scenario. Mix and match to your heart’s content! The Napoleonic Imperial Guard against the Army of the Potomac’s First Army Corps on the Gettysburg battlefield! The battle of Marengo re-fought with Russian and Austrian troops! Obviously, you can also create historically accurate scenarios, too.