A hybrid approach

Yet another mappe approach to the kriegspeil approach.

This one 'borrowed' directly from DBA.

I have used this system successfully before for a 7-years war campaign game that was played out with 6 players and using three different game tables spread over the Vancouver-Coquitlam area (in Canada, BC), the nation controllers were spread from Comox (on Vancouver Island some 200 miles away) to the two local players running the busy tables. For tabletop battles we were using both 25mm and 15mm armies of different players, although the rules for the tabletop actions were the same (Age of Reason) there was no need for this to be so.

As it was historically, we allowed only the Prussian player (taking on 'old fritz' persona naturally!) to command his army 'in person'. All others were commanded by able players at the table and they were given either general instructions (such as the Austrian commander whom was stuck with the crazy general order of 'do not loose more than 20% of the troops and you may not surrender any artillery!'; to the Russian commander whom arrived to support the Austrian at one point and was told 'fight only if you are attacked first', which left to him the choice of going in close to the action or not, which he chose to, was then attacked and then faught like a banshee and basically one the game with only 1/3 of the total troops under his command!)

The system works like this:

For each major nation, there are three principal 'cities', one is the 'capitol'.
For each major nation they get to have one field army (comprised of acceptable units - in proportions as they would have had historically), that is divisible into 12 'portions' (this part will make sense later).
Only MARITIME NATIONS (marked with the ships wheel) may cross the sea areas unhindered. The NON-MARITIME NATIONS must roll to cross safely, failure brining about losses, first applied to cavalry units (horses are very susceptible to sea-sickness etc in such operations), then to artillery (in a bad situtation the men can swim, guns sink FAST!), then to infantry.
Ultimately we can bring out more details to this as needed for our games.

At any one time the field army may only be in ONE location (named on the map).

The 'turns' are Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Movement happens during the Spring, Summer and Autumn turns, where the field army may move up to two spaces, unless it meets enemies or neutral terrain that it does not have permission to cross.

IF the field army meets a location of the enemy it either starts a seige or will be met by the opposing force (resulting in a tabletop battle).
Seiges are handled by simple die roll: 1d6= 5,6 sack the city 4, 3, 2, or 1 then the 'seige' forces suffer 1/12th reductions. For every season that the siege continues the chance of sacking goes up by one. Thus after a spring and summer seige if it continues into the fall and there is no army in the city the chance of that seige working on the fall turn is 6, 5, 4, 3 = sack the city; 1 or 2, the siege fails and the beseiging army takes yet another 1/12th (original strength) losses, meaning that failure after three straight turns of seige will cause 3/12ths or 1/4 losses to the army outside the city walls.

IF the enemy field army is in the city under seige then the chance goes down by one, but if the siege works and the city is sacked, then the field army stuck in the city gets wiped out with 100% losses.

No battles or seiges can continue through the winter when rest and recovery happen.

For each city controlled 1/12th of the strength of the field army is recovered.
This means that, say one player 'captured' an enemy city after the three turns of seige, taking no other losses over the year, then that army would have lost 2/12ths over the siege (losing 1/12th each of spring and summer seasons). The player would control 4 cities, allowing 4/12ths recovery, meaning that the army in the spring turn the next year would be at full strength.

At the end of the Winter turn the location of the army is given to all players, as the 'winter quarters' would be found out by spies over that winter. Then the Spring moves begin again.

There are more details, but essentially so long as we can all agree on the army compsitions (based on some sort of historical norms, which are published in a number of reputable documents and in a number of rules sets) then a 'starting position' can be achieved.

Of course I should like to do the 7-years war again, but I am also willing to put together something more 'limited' to start with that would take place in a 'smaller corner' of the continent.

Perhaps the 'great northern war'?

OR an imaginary conflict taking place along a disputed set of borders or regions in our Urope?

Thoughts anyone?