PARADES

• The best way to ascertain the situation of your own army is to line it up in front of you and look at it. Poke it. You can go to the parade page and see the exact status of every unit at that time in your location.
• Parades do not take any time and are not representing any sort of action or activity. It is just looking out your window.
• The images shown in a parade are only graphic representations of the approximate strength of the unit. Each time it shows up on a tabletop battlefield, its strength will be randomly generated (based upon its strength and type)
• On the Headquarters page, you will be informed of every allied unit at your location as well as the location of all of your units if they are within one road leg of your location.

• Units belonging to another player do not parade for you, even if you are Napoleon!

• Based upon the Administrative rating of the headquarters, Corps commanders may send status reports by courier back to their higher command.
• The status reports will mention the exact location (as of the time of writing) of each of the Corps' units and their strength. It will mention if there is fatigue.

• There is currently no method implemented to allow you to ask for a status report form a Corps commander. It is on the things-to-do list.
• Status reports will always be a day or two old.
• Administrative level of your commanders can be seen on the Corps Logistics page

CORRESPONDENCE HISTORY

• All the correspondence from you and to you is maintained and available to you in your headquarters. It is very useful for keeping track of what orders you sent when and where seemingly lost units last reported from.
• Correspondence can be deleted as desired through the administration navigation.
• In the Correspondence pages, the paperwork can be sorted in various ways

• Deleting an order has no effect on what the unit has for its order. You would only be deleting your records of it.
• One day I will add a page that will allow you to pick a specific unit and show all correspondence that pertains to that unit. That day has not yet come.

PIQUET REPORTS

• Cavalry and Mixed divisions can be assigned to put out cavalry screens toward a specified adjacent town
• Offensively, piquets will inform their division if there is any enemy in that town and that division will send off a courier report at first available opportunity. These couriers do not go through the Corps but direct to the higher command.
• Two opposing piquets that meet on the road will always bounce, reporting back that they encountered opposing piquets. Piquets therefore are a useful defensive/screening tool also.
• When you send piquets to scout a town, your opponent will know that it has been scouted and will send back reports saying that enemy cavalry was seen screening from their town of origin.

• If looking to properly screen a town, you may require several divisions capable of performing piquet duty so that they can cover multiple road approaches.
• If you order a Corps to have its divisions put out cavalry piquets, do not expect brilliant AI on its selection of roads to piquet. Off hand, I believe it chooses randomly for each division each turn.
• Cavalry screens will be seen so while they provide information, they also surrender some.
• Reports from piquets will not be entirely precise or accurate.

• When troops contact one another they will send back reports by courier.
• Small encounters will automatically generate results by the system.
• Larger encounters will alert one player on each side to determine if this fight can be resolved automatically or if the players both agree to fight it out using miniatures. So although your character is not near the battle, you will gain some insight into the situation that might be several days away from you.
• A hard-core player can select a proxy to manage their battles for them. In this case, they would not be informed that a battle was occurring (unless they were there) and the other player would make choices for them, allowing them to maintain their 'realistic' ignorance.
• If a fight is automatically generated, one side may end up retreating. It will retreat, if possible, toward its center of communications but if it cannot, one can see how easy it might be to lose units when they run off in semi-random directions.
• Reports are generated after battles are fought and sent by courier to the higher commands.

• The System will provide a general assessment of your opponent's forces, allowing you to determine if the fight is worth playing out.
• There is a wide gulf in strength between a Fresh division and a battered one. You will not be aware of the strength of the enemy divisions, only the numbers.

• The game will stop when two players have agreed to resolve a moderate or larger sized battle on the tabletop.
• If your character is at a battle, you will be given information for it. The system is designed to have each side have a leader for the battle but it is hard to test all the permutations so anticipate that this will need some fudging if things get complicated.
• When a miniatures game ends, the retreating player should oblige his opponent with an indication of his retreat path and then stick to it when the battle results are uploaded to the game system. That said, it would not be unreasonable to play with a few paths due to road congestion and other considerations.

• It is unreasonable to expect people to not gather for a miniature battle and talk about the campaign and the situation. That's part of the fun. A hard-core player may choose to not participate if their character is not at a battle but it certainly wouldn't be expected behaviour.
• Players will not know what reinforcements might be coming before the game. 
• Keep in mind that a battle is being fought during the day that has mostly already been resolved. You are caught in time. Any orders sent once the game freezes will be resolved and sent after the battle is decided and simultaneous with retreats.

• Each day, each unit will check a random city within two legs of it for possible enemy activity or traces. If it finds something, it will generate a rumour.
• If a player will receive no rumours on a given day, the system will generate a grand strategy rumour which will give some information about other players anywhere in the world.

• Rumours are always one day late
• Rumours are random so do not replace the value of piquets.
• A small number of rumours may be false. Guesses of troops amounts may be quite wild

• Troops cannot occupy a wide enough front to give reasonable strategic intelligence. Spies are the method available to allow you to determine general long distance movements of the enemy.
• Spies may be placed in any town, city, or fortress in the game.
• Spies may be placed in your own cities also. It may be the only means of determining if the enemy has done some brazen ,wide flanking manoeuvre.
• The enemy will not know if they are sighted by a spy.

• Each spy costs 3 points each but there is no limit on how many spies you may have.
• Spies can be discredited and their points immediately refunded
• Multiple spies could be put into the same location but they don't talk so would all report the same things and all be destroyed if their conditions were all met. You could put one to watch for 2 divisions and one to watch for 7 though, for example.
• Spies will take 2-3 days to get into position once obtained.
• Once the conditions of a spy are met, they will leave the town and come running to you to report in. It will take them 2-3 days to arrive and then will spend 2-3 days returning to their post.

• A vital method of intelligence that should not be overlooked is communicating with other players on your own side. Do not assume that they know what you know.
• Messages can be sent to one another allied players and there is no practical limit to the number of couriers that you can send.
• It is my belief that the art of sharing information and coordinating will be what allows victory in the chaos of this sort of campaign system. 

• Yes, in theory, you can simply talk to one another and exchange information. Messages are in place for those wishing to play with full fog-of-war in the spirit of the game.
• Remember that you will need to establish and maintain lines of communications to allow efficient communications with your team-mates.

NEWS REPORTS

• News reports will be generated and delivered the instant that a nation is conquered or when the neutrality of a nation is violated.
• Nations are conquered by detaching a garrison in the city so it is safe to assume that by the time you receive word of the conquest, they have been there for a couple of days.
• Neutral nations are brought into the war as allies of the other side if any city in a neutral is entered.

• Be alert to the movements of your own troops and the dangers that might come about by them accidentally entering a neutral power. If the shortest route (or road congestion) requires that they cross into neutral territory then they will.

LINES OF COMMUNICATIONS

• By checking on your lines of communications, you can determine instantly if the line is not functioning between two points on the map. Usually this is due to enemy control of enough towns in between nodes to block movement (or control of a node itself). You cannot know for certain why it is broken but it is a way to get instant information about distant goings on.

• The system will not alert you when a Line of Communication is broken. You will need to check them form time to time.
• The system will give you this information because it is too frustrating otherwise. It is possible to quietly map out vast and temporary lines of communication designed solely as trip wires to see when the enemy has crossed them. This would be considered unsporting. Use the information gained form a real and viable line being broken but do not abuse the mechanics.

• Sometimes, due to either the fog of war or the frustrations inherent in computer games, units can become lost so that you have no way to find them.
• If your units get separated from their Corps or any lines of Communication, they will appear on the mechanics page as lost units. It will not give their location but they show up there because no courier can currently hope to find them.
• A lost unit can be recalled back to its depot and suffer strength hits for doing so.
• Couriers that cannot find their destination for 3 days will appear as lost couriers. They can be destroyed and you will know that the message was not delivered.
• Lost couriers and lost units can also possibly be sorted out by reconfiguring your lines of communication.

• Sometimes units will be reported as lost which are exactly where they are supposed to be. Their problem may not be that they are lost but perhaps their line of Communication is broken. You should not feel obliged to summon home all lost units.
• Like lines of communications, lost unit teleporting could be abused. On the one hand though it may feel cheap to pull your units home to safety but on the other it is only the curmudgeonly broken mechanics of the game that prevent the soldiers from doing the smart thing on their own.
• Couriers sent by units addressed to the player or from unit to unit will never appear as lost couriers. They will putter about in the system forever.

CONFUSION REPORTS

• If a unit cannot move toward its destination for some reason, it is supposed to send a courier informing its commander as to the reason why.
• One common reason is that the roads were all too congested. It should be anticipated that they will try again the next day. This is useful though for allowing you to track that some units might be a day behind schedule.
• Another reason for not moving is that the unit cannot find its destination for various reasons. In this case, it will remain in place. 

• Confusion reports are sent by courier so it may be several days before you find out that you sent a unit to a city that was not the one you intended it to go to.
• Road congestion can create unforeseen delays. Suppose that you expected a unit to simply take the shortest route to a city one leg away. If the road was too congested and they found an open route that was three legs long, they will arrive 2 days later than expected. Generally, when sending large numbers of troops down a road, allow them plenty of time to get themselves sorted out at the destination.

• Intelligence from ships is immediate. You can see what a squadron sees in the naval organization table
• Ships in ports/harbours will report if that port is garrisoned and if enemy are assembling squadrons there.
• Land garrisons will report if enemy ships sail into the harbour of a port that the garrison is in.
• Troops disembarking on enemy soil will generate a global news report.

• The only time that you can see for certain who controls a sea is if there was recently a naval engagement there. On the Naval Orders page, there is a summary of the status of all seas where battles were recently fought.
• Estimates of enemy squadrons in a sea zone are incomplete and they may not be aware of all in the sea zone.
• Engaged fleets can only report what they have engaged and this will be accurate.