Battle of Lake Trasimene

[like_the_fish]

Has anyone successfully managed to win as the Carthaginians in this scenario? The battle was historically a Roman massacre but with the current setup the Roman player has more than enough time to organise a strong defence especially with streams guarding his flanks. The hillsides were forested and the Carthaginians attacked the unsuspecting Romans who were in march column giving them very little time to organise themselves. A simple fix for this would be to make the Romans start disorganised or even fragmented simulating them marching in single file, this way a much more uncertain realistic game could be had as the commanders rush around trying to rally the troops and form an effective defence.

Nick

[CharlesRobinson]

No, I have never won this one as the Carthaginians. Another option is to simply change the skill level by dropping it by one - average becomes poor, superior becomes average. This represents them being unprepared for the attack. Just an idea.

[JMass]

I tried and I won against an advantaged AI , however I think it is near impossible to win against a valid human opponent...

[pantherboy]

I have played the scenario once as the Carthaginian versus a human opponent and won though it was a close run battle. It was one of my first games and I didn't realise how brittle Carthaginian spear blocks were so I had regretted commiting them. It nearly cost me the battle. But I was immediately able to see the might of the Roman contingent so I played it 3 more times as the Roman with each battle being a total rout for Carthage. There doesn't seem to be any element of surprise which is one of the factors that were in the favor of Carthage. How about altering the deployment zone so that Carthage starts closer and connect on the first move before the Romans can immediately turn forming an impregnable battle line.

[wulfen]

I've played it twice as the Romans now, first time against the AI and just finished playing a human opponent. On both occasions Rome won quite comfortably. I think the problem is that the Carthaginians start too far away and thus don't really have that element of surprise that occurred in the real battle. In the historical encounter the Romans were forced to fight in isolated packets, whereas in this scenario its not that difficult to form a decent line of battle and use the streams to your advantage, causing the Carthaginians to enter combat already disordered.

Also, and I hope I'm not mistaken here, wasn't the Carthaginian cavalry on their right flank supposed to vastly outnumber the Romans' in this particular battle?

Otherwise the game plays very nicely and this is the only real 'glitch' I've encountered so far.

[keithmartinsmith]

The key in the real battle was that Hannibal was the better general. We could add a surprise rule but whats the point as then the Romans would always lose. We could downgrade the quality of the Roman troops but they were generally very good. If any one has a

better

OB then I would be keen to read it.

The Carthaginians have one big advantage. Strike first and and fast and the Romans have no space to run to. So no change to rally routers and those same units keep routing through friends with all the cohesion effects.

Cannae is on the way but what chance should Hannibal have against a reasonable general?

Thanks
Keith

[wulfen]

I agree with you up to a point here. The Carthaginians have little chance to strike first if the Roman general knows what he's doing.

Part of the problem is also the nature of this particular battle itself. Lake Trasimene and Carrhae are 2 unusual battles as regards deployment. FoG does a BRILLIANT job in representing your typical ancients battle where you have 2 opponents facing off against each other, battle lines ready and deployed etc.

These 2 particular battles put up peculiar deployments which the nature of the rules struggles a bit to cope with. The panic experienced by the Roman legionairres as their column of march was attacked at Trasimene, or the terrible thirst and fatigue faced by the ones at Carrhae are very difficult to represent in a wargame. As someone else has suggested, maybe have the Romans start disrupted or fragmented is the best the current rules can represent them with. Else having the Romans disadvantaged is another option.

Mind, this is not a rant or critique of the games rules, I love this game and am on the process of starting to play the tabletop version as well. My point is just that these 2 battles are 'unusual' and in a tabletop environment would I can see players coming up with their own set of houserules to represent it. Of course, in a computer game this is more difficult as you can't (or at least it's very difficult) to set up specific situations for each scenario.

[CharlesRobinson]

What I use for scenario's like this (if needed) is bringing the units rank down by one, Elite become Superior, Superior become Average, and Average becomes Poor. This works well to both represent surprise and fatigue in certain scenerio's. It is often not needed though if the map and unit placement is set up properly. For this scenerio, I do think that the Romans have to much time to react. Just some thoughts.

[keithmartinsmith]

And at least you can edit the scenarios to tets new OB's described by copying them from program files\... to the my documents folder\...

Keith

[IanB3406]

I won this against a human opponent using the free set up - however I think the player I was playing didn't get that part as I don't believe he changed his deployment. Also - on the free set up the Cartho's can't change the deployment completely as they can't redeploy as far forward. I basically flooded one side of the board with Carthos and cracked a couple of the lead roman units early.....and forced the other Romans to charge up hill before their flanks were rolled. I'm not sure if I could duplicate this against a more experienced opponent though......The Carthoginian spearmen maybe should be superior instead of average I feel,.......it still gives the edge to the legions but not so severe.

[JocaRamiro]

it would be good to check this against a map, but I agree with those that suspect the topography is off. It seems to me the Carthegenians should be closer, and the hills should be closer to the lake.

[Morbio]

I too have struggled as the Carthaginians, but I've only been playing a few days. However, even with this limited experience I think the Carthaginans are up against it when compared to the historical result. Most of the points have been covered in previous posts:

The Carthagians start too far away to be able to strike before the Romans are organised, with the exception of the rear of the marching column... and the advantage soon disappears after routing a couple of the Roman cavalry, at which point the danger is for the Carthaginians to get their cavalry trapped against walls of Legionaries.

I also think the Carthagians spearmen at the head of the column perform poorly against the Romans (maybe that's my tactical fault) and the heavy Carthagians in the middle fall too quickly too (again, maybe my fault).

Finally, the last problem is that routed Roman units run into the lake, and stay there as an 'R' unit, unless they rally and then they come back into play . I've seen this twice, both times it has been where the little streams meet the lake.

[deadtorius]

Romans have secret submerged galleys that sneak up and rally them in the lake

Actually I have managed a win versus the AI and against a human opponent as Carthage. Not an easy task either way. I find its is best to let the spears engage at the head of the Roman column then bring in the Gauls once the Romans are occupied or its a slaughter fest against Carthage. Stay on the hills in the middle seems to work not too badly, if the Spanish sally forth it seems death is their only reward. The cav battle out in the rear usually seems to go to the Romans but if you hold them up from helping further up the line well thats the best one can hope for I guess.

[tofman04]

Actually I managed to win like carthagians against romans in multiplayer games two times (last was carthagians-me 22/33, romans 27/27) but is not my favorite to play against human opponents. Is much easier playing like romans.

[gcbisset]

Im actually going to do an edited scenario today for Trasimene. The main problem is that Field of Glory does not (yet?) have a march column formation. A unit in march column takes up a huge amount of road, probably 4 times what it does in line (ancient lines being usually 8 men deep, and march columns 2 men wide). So even if you said the Romans had time to fall into line at Trasimene (which many probably did not), you would represent them as one formed unit separated by 3 empty hexes before the next unit. You would need a map 4 times wider to represent this as well.

Another way to go would be to represent the whole Roman army in skirmish or other loose order, but you would still need a big map.

I actually dont know if it is possible to start the romans as Fragmented, which I think would be correct morale wise.

All the above would apply to Teutoberger wald, and many other ambush scenarios as well (if you have to fight the romans, its probably the best way to go!)

Ive been gaming a lot of Hannibalic battles lately, and it seems to me in this scenario the numbers are off. I have seen figures that the battle involved 50,000 Carthaginians (heavy on gauls) vs 40,000 Romans. Many of the Ponic cav and light troops seem missing. Also the author has included (I think) the Roman cavalry detachment from a second army that was wiped out the next day or shortly thereafter.

However kudos to the author for realizing that Latin allies are equiped and organized exactly like Roman legionaries, they are just not Roman citizens and cant vote for the senate. Even most later Imperial Auxilia were indistinguishable from Roman citizen legionairies without checking their ID/service records!

[kilroy1]

I actually dont know if it is possible to start the romans as Fragmented, which I think would be correct morale wise.

It is possible to start the Romans as Disrupted or Fragmented.

viewtopic.php?t=15079


kilroy

[gcbisset]

So how do you set troops to disrupted or fragmented in the editor? Or do you use notepad or something like that?

George

[welk]

Hi, Kilroy

Please, have you seen my Private message about signification of some other parameters in the concerned files ?

ceu=
f=
etc

I am curious about them

[PDiFolco]

I was surprised also by the balance ... which is the opposite of the real battle !
Romans were surprised and on the march, making them Disrupted at start would make the situation more realistic.
Also I found the Carthaginians units quite bad compared to Romans ... yet they beat them repeatedly ! The famous Phalanx and the feared Numidians are pretty crap in the game imho. To the contrary the universally second rate Roman Cavalry is good ...

[Morbio]

I can't help feelthe Carthaginian units are worse than the should be in a number of battles, particularly against the Romans. Either that, or Hannibal was far more gifted a general than I..... oh, OK - I've just answered my own question!