Realistic Army Composition

[Faenaris]

I have just downloaded the mod and played a custom battle and HOTDOGS, I'm loving it. Slower battles, musket fire, cavalry that isn't all-powerful ... Yummie! Great job, AlphaDelta!

Anyhow, now I started a campaign just to check out the recruitment and all (since I have work to do before I can play some more). I know that recruitment consists of regiments, but I wonder how an army would exactly look like? Let's take Ralph Hopton's regiment of Foote as an example:

5 pikemen units
5 musketeers
2 cavalry units
2 artillery units
1 general (Ralph Hopton)

Would that be an "accurate" army/regiment? Or was there no template for an regiment and was there a lot of variation between regiments? I have no knowledge whatsoever regarding the English Civil War, but I would like to play as realistic as possible. I'm learning about the commanders too (at least, I will tonight), but the army-composition thing is something that's important to me.

[AlphaDelta]

As I understand it, cavalry regiments were seperate to infantry regiments.

An infantry regiment was about 10 or 11 companies, each company had around 100 men. A company would be made up of either 2 pikes for every 1 musket, 1 pike for every 1 musket, or 1 pike for every 2 muskets, depending on whether it was early, mid or late in the first civil war.

A cavalry regiment had about 500 men and was made up of about 7 or 8 'troops' of 60-80 cavalrymen.

Artillery is an interesting one. I did some maths on this a while ago and I worked out that there was about 1 artillery piece for every 4 or 5 hundred men on the field. 1 piece in around 300 men for the NMA.

So a regiment could have 2 pieces I guess.

Regarding Hopton:

Realising that the militia was unlikely to fight outside Cornwall, Hopton began recruiting a volunteer army of five regiments of foot and 500 horse with the intention of marching into Devon. By November 1642, Hopton's cavalry were raiding across the River Tamar.

Now I'm not sure whether he was joined by a cavalry commander, I would need to read some more. If we presume his regiments were full strength, then there would be 10 men for every 1 horse. That is a very high inf:cav ratio for the ECW. There was normally a fair amount more cav than this.

In your examlpe, if you are playing on large unit sizes, 5 muskets, 5 pikes (1,200 men) would represent 1 regiment almost perfectly. Adding 2 troops of cav (120) would provide a similar ratio of inf:cav as Hopton had. Artillery I am not sure about right now.

Cheers

[Point Blank]

I can't answer your question, but have been playing the mod for a few days now and some small advice I can give is to enter battle with the historical formations that the game assigns, rather than alter them too much. It makes it much more challenging. My initial inclination was to line up all my musketeers in a wide line, with pikemen close behind, rather than the 'checkerboard' formations used by default. The AI really proves to be quite a capable opponent in the slower-paced battles in this mod.

[Antagonist]

Another good "house rule" for realism (which really applies to any TW battle, but seems particularly appropriate here) is to try to limit the degree to which you pause and micro-manage your forces (ie. giving all troops detailed, continuous orders on where to move and how to deploy to maximize their effectiveness) In reality it was not possible for the general to give detailed instructions instantly to all units on the battlefield, which was why communications, discipline and the initiative and ability of individual officers was often a crucial factor. TW AI isn't really reliable enough for you to basically set up your positions and then sit back and watch the battle unfold, but if you want a more realistic outcome you should try and limit your tweaking and ordering after the initial deployment phase, particularly with cavalry.

It's obviously a huge temptation after sweeping away an enemy wing with your own horse to immediately order a turn and charge of the infantry's rear, but if you refrain from doing that, at least for a while, you'll get a taste of the kind of problems that plagued real battles. If it's frustrating to see the perfect chance to smash the enemy in a single manuever slip away, well, imagine how Charles felt at Edgehill watching that very thing happen.

...of course, that might be a little too hardcore, just my two cents.

Antagonist

[Faenaris]

@ AlphaDelta: Thanks for the information. I'll do some more reading regarding the other commanders in the mod to see what their infantry/cavalry ratio was. But I'm a footslogger-fan and I think I'll keep the ratio that Hopton used. Also interesting to read that multiple regiments were raised by the same commander. I might confine a commander to one regiment (medieval 2 stack) just to give the AI some advantage. Unless the AI actually whoops me aplenty, then I might be forced to reconsider.

@Point Blank: I too would have spread out my muskets to two/three lines, but I gave the default line up a go just to see how effective the musketeers were. The rotating system worked pretty well, so I'm gonna keep the five/six rank musket-company. Maybe four-ranks, will see how well the AI performs and whether I need overwhelming fire-support. Cheers for the info btw.

@Antagonist: Thanks for the heads-up. I already try to play this way. Not easy and I regularly find myself 'cheating' and returning the cavalry to the fray. I'm gonna try again with this mod. I already use the pause-button a lot less and although it has frustrated me on occasions, in the overall scheme, it is much more enjoyable and realistic.

[Anibal at portas]

my idea of a realistic regiment o brigade composition:
fairfax regiment:
1 general unit.
4 units pikes.
4 units mosketers.
2 units cavalry.
1 dragon unit.
2 units artillery.
if the general is very important for example manchester 2 regiment or 1 brigade.
is correct and historical this alphabeta?.helpme
i want play in historical parametres.
iam playing in huge units,thanks.

[AlphaDelta]

is correct and historical this alphabeta?.helpme
i want play in historical parametres,thanks.

At Edgehill the Royalists had around 9000 foot, 2500 horse, about 800 dragoons and 16 guns. That's roughly 1.75 guns and 270 horse to each infantry regiment of 1000 men. That gives a ratio of 1 cav to 3.6 men and 1 gun to 562 men.

Your army being about 4/5ths of a foote regiment, you should be looking at 1.4 guns per regiment. Right now you have 4 guns per regiment, so I would swap one of your artillery units for a cavalry unit. That would give you a decent ratio of foote:horse:guns:dragoons.

Cheers

[Anibal at portas]

thanks.

[leonn]

edgehill should not be used as a guide to the composition of later armys,as there were alsorts of wierd and wonderfull combinations of troops present there.two or more light guns were attatched to individual regts on both sides to varying degrees,including especially on the parliament side small multibarreled guns which fired grapeshot.infantry regts varied massivly in composition,very rarely achieving the ideal 2-1 ratio.which is what makes this period so facinating.