Invading and Defending: Terrain types

[mike_bennett]

I am concerned that some less than ideal parts of DBM may be coming through in choosing type of terrain/area were the battle occurs.

E.g just because the attacker chooses to come through the forested area, why does the defender have to come in and oppose him there. Scorched earth and drop back to better terrain/more knackerred opponent/choosen defensive position was non uncommon. eg golden Horde ruled Russia, but they did it from the neighbouring steppes, not in the forests.

I thought generally defenders (and for that matter nearly mirror image criterea for attackers) only fought if:
They were confident of winning
They had found a good defensive position that suited them
opponent physically trapped/forced them too
Ego/political/army morale forced them too
A specific objective (e.g. capital) had to be held (and there might be non of these in the region the attacker chooses to move through initially)
etc.


PS coastline rules better than DBM, but
If the river/WW was big I would just deploy my battle line further over, not find I had less space to it, since more of the table has a WW/Rv

Why is river/coastline always parallel to direction of march. Even if the attacker chooses to come parallel to a river, why must the defender oppose the line of march at 90 egrees. Crossing the "T" or other oblique approaches could easily force the battle lines away from being perpendicular to any river/waterwat

[IainMcNeil]

Yes good point, we're still working on the terrain rules and will try to avoid the issues of DBM.

At one point we did have the idea that if an attacker had any terrain types of the defender they had to choose these as a priorty, though in practice we foudn this a bit complex so dropped it out.

We also felt that it was unusual for a defender to use a scorched earth policy and not try and stop an attacker as soon as possible.

We're also considering a campaign supliment that would allow for more comprehensive weather, terrain, general etc factors.