Design Commentary for the Expanded Operational Possibilities Chart

This is the design commentary for my expanded operational possibilities chart for Empires in Arms. My web page also provides access to further Empires in Arms material. It's pure chrome, light entertainment at a minimum cost. It shouldn't take any longer to use than the regular chart, it may or may not be any more interesting.

The core of this table is copied from the standard one, but the following changes have been made:

A typographical error has been corrected in the "Escalated Assault" versus "Cordon" across a river table. The old table made no sense, apparently the correction appeared in a General.

The procedure for resolving "Outflank" versus "Outflank" has been changed. A die roll of 1-3 represents a turning battle where outflanks were on opposite wings, 4-6 represents a meeting engagement between the flanking forces. The standard rules seem to assume that the outflanks will always come in on different sides, at least that's my guess.

I've made a couple of changes to distinguish the "escalated" chits from their non-escalated alternatives. In the standard rules these chits have almost the same effect, and the choice of which to use is more a matter of aesthetics and personal style than tactics.
- It has been made harder to withdraw against an "Escalated Assault". This makes escalated assault useful and withdrawal more difficult.
- The problem is that this makes the ordinary "Assault" chit useless, so I've penalised "Escalated Assault" slightly by making "Assault" beat "Escalated Counterattack" and "Escalated Assault" lose to "Counterattack". This latter change is inspired by the idea that the "Escalated" options imply attacking with limited preparation: if a properly organised assault runs into a deranged horde, the horde suffers.

North Africans have been given a minor advantage in desert.

Some new attacking chits have been introduced.
- "Envelop" is a simultaneous outflank on both flanks. It's harder to do than outflank, with only a slightly better payoff, on the other hand it does beat an outflank.
- "Advance" is a very slow, cautious move forward, retaining cohesion to resist an expected counterattack. Basically an attacker's version of "Defend".

Some new defensive chits have been introduced.
- "Counterechelon" is simply a counterattack in echelon.
- "Flexible Defence" is a defensive equivalent of probe, maintaining a large reserve and attempting to determine enemy intentions before it is committed.
- "Envelop" has the same meaning as for the attacker.

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