Manouvering on the Map

    Campaign turns are weekly. There are eight weeks in a campaign season. As you are operating in an undeveloped countryside you will have to plan your entire campaign season from the start, minor variations to take advantage of/recover from tactical situations are allowed but are very limited. All-mounted forces will be given more leeway to follow-up or retreat.

     You will find the map divided into areas. Your troops will move from area to area each week; infantry moving two areas under normal circumstances, cavalry moving three. You may force-march once every third week but this will incur serious attrition. Your campaign plan with consist of downloading your local map, saving it as a PNG or BMP file, and then drawing on it in Paint or some equivalent program.

     You will mark your intended path and any significant actions you intend to undertake (bridge-building, sieges etc). Against nomadic opponents you are allowed to write orders such as "Pursue enemy contact" but under all other circumstances you are moving in a known direction with a stated objective.; "Advance to Khartoum and lift the siege". Random circumstances may speed or retard your movements (you find the path particularly easy, the weather is better than expected, would speed your march, on the other hand dry wells or an unexpected patch of marshy ground would slow things down).

     As a picture is worth a thousand words I will illustrate this idea. The orders are as follows; "The army will march north on the west side to the Yellow River, crossing the river above the city of Pie Wie and then march south on the east side of the river to lay siege to the city of Pie Wie. The Naval units will provide close inshore support and protect the bridging operation. They will then undertake to bombard the city as the commander of the land forces requests".

 

this shows my old colony from the Daftrica campaign, 

the bright green line is the land force, the orange line is the naval units

     As can be seen, the land forces will march across open countryside for three spaces, construct a temporary bridge to gain access to the eastern shore and the attack the city from the north. The red dotted lines indicate the areas marched through. Thus, the troops will march for a week (two areas), spend a half-week marching and a half-week beginning to bridge the river (one area and beginning an engineering operation)  finish the bridge and march one area (a half-week each) and then march south and invest the city (the balance of the campaign season). Enough time was left to accomplish the mission (we hope!) and to deal with unexpected developments.

     Following this format will allow us to complete a campaign season in one longish gaming session for each player and will help create a unified idea of the campaign in the player's mind. It will also commit players to a plan of action and prevent opportunistic changes based on out-of-sequence knowledge of the results of another player's battles.