Foot Guards are elite infantry in Napoleon: Total War and The Peninsular Campaign.
Description[]
Foot guards are the best line infantry in the world; every man in their ranks knows it!
These men form a superbly disciplined killing machine: a regiment that can fire volley after volley without wavering under any kind of enemy assault. They can reload at speed, charge home with the bayonet and give a very good account of themselves in melee. Their competence and evident morale can inspire nearby troops to fight all the harder. However, like ordinary mortals in line regiments, the Guards will die under artillery bombardment, or if skirmishers start picking them off.
The Guards regiments are the oldest units in the British army but, in a typically British and contradictory way, they were raised by different sides in the Civil War! The Coldstream Guards were raised in 1650 part of the Republican Commonwealth’s New Model Army. The 1st Foot Guards were raised in exile to be Charles II’s bodyguard. The 1st Foot Guards became “Grenadier Guards” after Waterloo in 1815 because they had beaten the French Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard. In fact, they’d driven off another unit, but the honour and name stuck. As the older regiment, the Coldstreamers have the motto “Nulli Secundus” or “second to none”, but the old republicans are still second in the precedence lists after the royalist Grenadier Guards!The guard comprises of the biggest and bravest men of the Prussian army: an elite force indeed.
The Prussian obsession with military drill breeds incredibly disciplined troops, willing and able to follow any order. They are able to load and fire their weapons with an accuracy and speed few can match. Their discipline makes them a deadly foe, and the powerfully built men have an edge over other units in melee. However, these skills make them expensive to recruit, and they are as vulnerable as other men to artillery fire and the sniping of skirmishers.
The Prussian army underwent a series of important changes just before and during the Napoleonic era. Gone were the mercenary armies of the past, replaced by a true national army. In 1809 it was decided that a set standard for the movement of battalions was required. The idea of simply placing battalions in line was replaced with a more modern “chequer-board” formation. This was made up of three main elements, the skirmish line, the main battle line and the reserves. The size of these elements varied considerably from battle to battle.General Information[]
British Foot Guards are superb infantry, possessing excellent statistics across the board. No line infantry or elite infantry fielded by Prussia or Austria are quite as good, while Russian Life Guards of Foot hold the edge in charge bonuses but nothing else. Only French Old Guard are definitively better.
Like all guard units, Foot Guards serve the dual purpose of being exceptionally useful line infantry while serving to inspire nearby troops. While they don't do the job as well as generals--they lack the mobility of horses and their ability to rally or inspire--they are much more durable and their loss does not result in a sudden and potentially fatal morale dip for the rest of the army.
Within the British unit roster, Foot Guards are somewhat inferior to Coldstream Guards in several categories, and worse than the 42nd Foot (The Black Watch) in terms of charging characteristics but superior in most other ways. They hold the advantage over both, however, in having a higher regiment limit.
Prussian Foot Guards are unfortunately equal to or inferior all the other standard guards aside from French Young Guard. However, this is not to say that they are bad units, and they comfortably outclass any other non-guard line infantry. Prussia can also recruit the 8th Life Regiment, a cheaper and statistically inferior regiment of guards, to supplement its default guard roster.
In The Peninsular Campaign, Foot Guards are the best elite infantry in most regards among all factions, with unparalleled accuracy and reload skill. This gives Great Britain a considerable edge over the French (as well as all other factions).
Gallery[]
.jpg "Foot Guards (Peninsular Campaign).jpg (50 KB)")
