Cruel Necessity - Solo English Civil War Game

[SteveD64]

Just picked up Cruel Necessity, a solitaire board game on the English Civil War where you play the Parliament side. Anybody else familiar with it?

It might be interesting to play out the battles against the AI in P&S instead of resolving them with die rolls in the board game. I haven't figured out a system yet to transport the battles into P&S but it might interesting to come up with one. Also, the battle results are Major Victory, Victory, Draw and Defeat which the player would somehow have to figure out by the P&S results.

Anyway, just curious if anybody else has run into this game.

[OldGiants]

I'm the opposite. I have played a lot of Cruel Necessity this year, and that got me interested in Pike and Shot.

I had the same thought as you, however in CN you are the Roundheads and the P&S campaign is Royalist, so I do not see a way to incorporate the two until there is a Parliamentarian campaign.

I need a Roundhead version since I loathe the notion of royalty and need to lop off the king's head as my reward in the final battle.

[Miletus]

I'm the opposite. I have played a lot of Cruel Necessity this year, and that got me interested in Pike and Shot.

I had the same thought as you, however in CN you are the Roundheads and the P&S campaign is Royalist, so I do not see a way to incorporate the two until there is a Parliamentarian campaign.

I need a Roundhead version since I loathe the notion of royalty and need to lop off the king's head as my reward in the final battle.

I admire the cut of your jib, Sir! Off with his head!!!

[rbodleyscott]

You can play skirmish mode battles from either side. I am guessing that Steve was planning to do this rather than use the historical scenarios.

You can set the size of forces to non-standard values in the Advanced tab in skirmish mode.

[Miletus]

Talking of Skirmish mode battles Richard, is there a way to set up a cavalry v cavalry skirmish? I haven't managed to do that yet and I was thinking that it would make for some nice small scale fights perhaps, eg ECW "encounter" fights?

TIA!

[SteveD64]

You can play skirmish mode battles from either side. I am guessing that Steve was planning to do this rather than use the historical scenarios.

You can set the size of forces to non-standard values in the Advanced tab in skirmish mode.

Yes, you have it correct.

[rbodleyscott]

Talking of Skirmish mode battles Richard, is there a way to set up a cavalry v cavalry skirmish?

This can be done fairly easily by adding cavalry only (or mostly cavalry) army list variants to the ArmyList.txt file. Although there is already a Royalist raiding force variant list which is mostly cavalry.

We advise you not to edit your main game installation.

You can make a clone of the campaign using the Editor by selecting the option to make a new campaign as a copy of one of the vanilla campaigns. This will be stored in MyDocuments/My Games/Campaigns/NameofCampaign. You can then change the name of the campaign displayed in the campaign menu by changing the text for IDS_CAMPAIGN_NAME in text1.txt in the cloned campaign folder.

The English Civil War and Italian Wars campaign folders already contain ArmyList.txt files that you can edit. The TYW ArmyList.txt is in /PikeandShot/Core. Make a copy of that to your cloned TYW Campaign and you can safely edit it there.

[Miletus]

Brilliant, thankyou!

[SteveD64]

Some thoughts on converting battles from Cruel Necessity (CN) to P&S: For those that aren't familiar with CN, it uses a card draw system to drive a narrative. Occasionally you'll draw a card that forces you to play a simple battle out on the battle mat. The forces are more or less random- you draw counters to fill spots on the wings (cavalry) and the middle (foot). Each counter has a strength point and that counter will battle its opposite number on the tactical display.

To convert this into a battle in P&S simply total the strength points on each side and multiply it by a number (say 100) to give you points to buy troops in skirmish mode. So if I draw a total of 20 strength points for my Parliament side that would mean 2000 points to buy troops in P&S. Simple enough.

However not every battle was that large. By varying the multiplier you can vary the size of the P&S battle so as not to fight the same size battle over and over. Here's something you can do: Every card that forces you to fight a battle is also linked to a historical battle, so the card will say “The Battle of Marston Moor” (you are not actually fighting Marston Moor, the battle is more or less random, the name is there for flavor). That battle name can give you the size of the battle in P&S. Here are some ideas for the various multipliers for the battle cards:

Adwalton Moor
-x75
Edgehill
-x100
Braddock Down
-x75
Turnham Green
-x100
Cheriton
-x50
Marston Moor
-x100
Stratton
-x50

So if you draw the Cheriton Battle Card, you would randomly draw your combat units as usual, total them and multiply it by 50 to get your troop strength in P&S.

There are also random events that occur during battles- most of these simply add strength points to you or your enemies total and can be used as they normally would. Only one, Forlorn Fire, cannot be used and should be discarded before play.

The level of battle victory in CN does not coincide with P&S. CN has four levels for the battle result: Major Victory, Victory, Draw & Loss. P&S has two: Win or Lose.

To get a draw in CN via P&S, you and the AI would not be able to achieve auto victory by the end of the battle. This is usually considered a loss for the player in P&S (I think) but for the sake of CN it's a draw. Draws in CN have a negative effect on the player so playing for a draw is not a good strategy.

I was thinking that victories in large P&S battles (those with a x100 multiplier) would automatically be considered Major Victories in CN. Smaller battles would automatically be considered as simple Victories (unless you won by a certain turn number, so if you were playing a 20 turn game and won by turn 14 it would considered a Major Victory? I don't know, still mulling that over.)

Anyway, those are some ideas. Would like to hear any ideas from others.

[SteveD64]

BTW, I have not actually playtested any of this. It's just brainstorming right now.

[OldGiants]

BTW, I have not actually playtested any of this. It's just brainstorming right now.

And an excellent brainstorm it is.

[SteveD64]

Why thank you