Each general will require Coup d’Oeil (CdO) during the game. The number a general needs will depend upon their rank and the number of men they command.
Generals will be able to generate CdO each turn, with higher ranked generals able to generate more than lower ranks. Someone like Napoleon or Wellington for example would have more than Murat or Junot. They will also start with a number of CdO which they can use at the deployment point to have units on the tabletop at the beginning of the battle.
CdO can then be spent during the course of the game on certain events:
- Sending an ADC to a unit to activate and task it with taking and holding an objective.
- Bring reserves onto the battlefield with a purpose to take and hold an objective.
Generating CdO
There will be various ways to do so. A general will be able to generate so much CdO each turn, revealing units, holding objectives and routing enemy units from the table will also generate CdO. So let’s look at each of these in turn.
Revealing Units
Each time a friendly unit closes to within 20cm (roughly 1 kilometre at scale) of an enemy that unit will be revealed (perhaps 30cm if the unit is stationed on a hill with clear line of sight), this will generate CdO for the General. At present I will set this to 1 CdO per unit. With games of roughly 50,000 men on each side this should equate to around 50 CdO.
Holding Objectives
CdO awarded for holding objectives will depend upon the objective which are split into Primary or Secondary objectives. The figures for generation from these should also be relatively low, so let’s start out by saying that holding a Primary objective (being within 10cm) will generate 2 CdO, while a secondary objective will generate 1 CdO. Let’s assume a player holds half of the objectives during the course of the game (1.5 Primary and 1.5 Secondary), over 50 turns this would give him 225 CdO.
Routing Units
Each time a unit is reduced to 0 morale it is routed and flees the battlefield. This will obviously not be a regular occurrence and without having performed any in depth play testing as yet, it is hard to determine how many on average will flee. Therefore we will need a holding number in the meantime. Let’s assume at this stage that perhaps 20% of an enemy army will flee, using our assumption of 50,000 men per army that equates to 10,000 men (or 100 strength).
I don’t think it would be entirely fair to have the strength of the unit as the reward, I’d rather have a base number which can be adjusted later if needs be. At the moment let’s assume that each routed enemy generates 10 CdO.
So for CdO generation from other events we have:
| Event | CdO Gained |
| Revealed Unit | 1 CdO |
| Holding a Primary Objective | 2 CdO per turn |
| Holding a Secondary Objective | 1 CdO per turn |
| Routed Enemy Unit | 10 CdO per Unit |
Through these events a General commanding 50,000 men against an army of a similar size, should roughly gain 315 CdO. He has an army of roughly 50,000 men and therefore would need 500 CdO to activate his units. He therefore needs to be able to Generate an additional 185 CdO.
Game Sizes
However not every game will be at 50,000 men a side, some may be smaller and others slightly larger.
To calculate how many Coup d’Oeil points would be needed in a game our first point of call should be some historic information on army organisation during the time.
Some fantastic information can be found as always on Rodwargaming.
‘During the Napoleonic wars most nations had battalions whose established strength was between 700 to 1200 men, although the Austrians had some battalions which were slightly larger than this range. In practice however strength fell in the field so that the average effective battlefield strength of most battalions was some 600 men, although there were some significant variations. The battalion was the primary tactical unit in that although several battalions would co-operate in Brigades or Divisions, each battalion would normally manoeuvre and change formation separately. ‘
So if we use the basis that an average Battalion is 600-800 men at the moment
ARMY ORGANISATION
| Level | Men |
| Army | 1+ Corps |
| Corp | 2+ Divisions |
| Division | 2+ Brigades |
| Brigade | 2+ Battalions |
| Battalion | Roughly 600-800 men |
Brigade Strength (2-5 Battalions)
This is unlikely to be a game size, but this will help create the building blocks for larger games.
A Brigade would consist of between two to five battalions of 700 men, at the moment let’s assume this is an average at 3.5 battalions. In Clausewitz this would equate to an in-game strength of 24.5.
Division Level Game (2-5 Brigades) (Small Game)
This will likely by the smallest game size that Clausewitz would do. Using our building block from the previous section, we’ll assume that an average Brigade is roughly 24.5 Strength.
A Division will be made from 2-5 Brigades, so let’s use the average and plump at 3.5
If there are on average three Brigades to a Division each a strength 24.5, we would need to generate 85.75 points (24.5 x 3.5) for our Divisional Commander over the course of the game. So our basic maths once more is 85.75.5 / 50 = 1.715.
But we also have to factor in that other in our earlier calculations for holding objectives etc. We know that holding half the objectives for the entire game will generate 225 CdO. However for a divisional game we only need to generate 85 CdO. This suggests that perhaps for this size game there are too many objective, so let’s assume a Divisional Game will be 1 primary and 1 Secondary objective, this would equate to 75 CdO over the course of the game if an army held half.
We therefore need a further 10 CdO to be generated (85.75 – 75 = 10.75).
We also have the CdO generated from revealing enemy units, if they have a similar sized force we’re looking at 3.5 CdO (1 for each reveal), this brings us to 7.25 CdO to generate (10.75 – 3.5).
Perhaps a single of the enemies 3.5 units will be routed during the course of the game, giving us a further 10 CdO. That brings us to above our target by 2.75 CdO. But we’ll need some extra CdO so that our general can issue an order at the beginning of the game, therefore we’ll need to be able to add on our average Brigade strength of 24.5, this brings us to 21.75 CdO needed.
The simplest answer to this would be to allow a Divisional General to start the game with 25 CdO, however a Divisional General will be unable to generate CdO through the game, as they should be able to attain enough through good tactics to activate most of their other units.
Corp level Game (2-5 Divisions) (Medium Game)
This would more likely be a more common game size, with roughly 30,000 men a side a Corp Level General will need to raise around 300 CdO for their troops to be activated.
For the Corp Level Game, we may have two primary and two secondary objectives on the field, these would generate 150 CdO if a General held exactly half through the game.
With 3.5 Divisions each on average each with 3.5 Brigades, the revealed units would equate to a further 12 CdO.
This brings us to 162 CdO generated so far with a further 138 required as a minimum.
We also have the estimated 20% routed enemy at 10 CdO per unit. With an enemy army of roughly 12 units this would equate to perhaps 2 units, which would add a further 20 CdO. This brings our total to 182 CdO with an additional 118 required.
118 CdO over 50 turns would mean the player requires 2.36 per turn. So let’s say that a Corp level Commander can generate 3 CdO per turn as well as starting with 50 CdO so they may activate up to two units at the start. This gives us the following so far:
| General | Starting CdO | CdO Generated per Turn |
| Divisional (Small Game) | 25 | – |
| Corp (Medium Game) | 50 | 3 |
Army level Game (2+ Corps) (Large Game)
This brings us to our final category of game. We’re going to assume at this point that the largest game we can handle is 2 corps each of roughly 60,000 men. This breaks our game down into 600 that each General will need to create.
We already have 225 from half of the Primary and Secondary objectives (3 of each), and in terms of revealed units this would be roughly be twice that of the Corp Level Game at around 24 units a side for 24 CdO. This brings our total to 249 CdO out of 600 needed.
We also have routed 20% of the enemy units giving us an additional 50 CdO leaving us with 299 CdO.
Our General therefore needs to be able to generate 300 CdO over 50 turns meaning 6 CdO a turn. Plus the usual of being able to activate 4 units in this case means they should start with 100 CdO.
Our final general card is therefore:
| General | Starting CdO | CdO Generated per Turn |
| Divisional (Small Game) | 25 | – |
| Corp (Medium Game) | 50 | 3 |
| Army (Large Game) | 100 | 6 |
These are just preliminary thoughts and there are other points to consider:
- Light Cavalry – Spotting range of 30 cm instead of 20 cm to encourage their use in this role and avoid situations where units are revealing each other once they close to within 20cm.
- Units that fire revealing themselves, particularly in the case of Artillery.
- Units that move revealing themselves (possibly).
- Increasing the CdO generated per turn to avoid so much impact being placed on battlefield success to generate CdO, giving a player a chance who’s behind to catch up.
- Reduce CdO from Objectives to 1 CdO per turn for primary only and none for secondary.
- Named Generals being able to perform certain acts. Marshal Ney for example finding it cheaper to activate Cavalry Brigades. Napoleon and Wellington gaining more than average CdO each turn and so on.
