Fighting in Built Up Area

Spanish infantry attack French held town

We have been experimenting with fine tuning our rules for attacking built up areas.

We have one rule for fighting at the edge of the town, and a second for fighting inside.   Each village or town section has one brigade as a garrison.   Only one enemy brigade is allowed to fight inside the area at any time.  So the problem was fighting to get inside the area.

The garrison has a big advantage over the attacker, which can be reduced by casualties to the garrison.   However it is very difficult to inflict casualties, either by artillery or skirmish fire.

We allow one brigade to attack each side of the town, but that proved difficult to do.   Villages are one felt square, towns two and cities three.   Where there is more than one section, it is only possible to attack three of the four sides.   And to do so the whole town had to be surrounded by the attacker.   We decided to allow two brigades to attack each side of the town.  

The outcome is decided by rolling 2D6.   The garrison get plus 2.   Both get plus for A class troops, minus for C Class or casualties.  

We now added plus one for outnumbering the garrison by at least two to one.   This reduced their advantage to plus one before the dice throw.

Each attacking brigade fight one round of combat.   Casualties are not taken into account until all combats have been resolved.

Our latest battle involved four Spanish brigades (all C class) attacking a town section defended by one French brigade (B class).   This involved fighting four combats.   The garrison lost 50% casualties and routed.   One Spanish brigade lost 30% casualties and also routed.   A second lost 20% casualties, but pass morale.   The remaining two each lost 10% casualties, and also passed their morale.

So the Spanish took the town section.   But in doing so they lost 2800 men.   The French lost 2000 men.

We are quite pleased with this outcome.  

The Spanish will now have to decide to put one brigade into the town section as a garrison.   All of their brigades have casualties, so they will select one of the two with only 10% casualties.

If the French have a reserve brigade in support of the town they can contest the occupation.    They will have had to test their morale because of the routed garrison.  Providing that they pass they can enter the town at the same time as the Spanish brigade.   Both will then fight a melee, with no garrison advantage to either side.   It is likely that the French will win.

If both sides have reserves they can contest the town for as long as the reserves last.   Neither side will get a garrison advantage until they have reached the far edge of the town section, and held it for one move.