FOG Campaigns

[SRW1962]

Can anyone suggest good board games that can be used as a basis for FOGPC campaigns.

I am currently using Hannibal - Rome vs Carthage by Valley Games (formerly by Avalon HIll), this is a great game which to base a campaign on and needs little or no conversion at all.

I also plan to use Druid by West End Games as a basis for Boudicca's revolt against Rome in 61 A.D. Again, this is an easy game to use with little or no conversion needed.

I also plan to use Kingmaker by Avalon Hill as a basis for a Wars of the Roses campaign once Storm of arrows is released again another great game and easy to convert for use with FOG.

I would be grateful to hear other suggestions and comments about this.

[TheGrayMouser]

BTW are you looking for a boardgame so you can conduct a solo campaign or are you actually going to have live human players?

Since you mention Avalon Hill games I'm guessing you are looking for a lot more detailed game, but I'll mention the only boardgame I can think of in this era : Conquest of the Empire (basically Axis and Allies but Roman empire style)

I have been trying to find a PC strategic level game that I could use as a basis to be able to resolve FOG tactical combat.
So far i have had to discount many possible games as they either dont have Hotseat or dont allow saved games to be edited which would be necesary to "upload" causalties played out on FOG, otherwise Legion or Chariots of War would have been good choices...
Actually I was thinking about using Medieval TW II as a solo campaign medium once SOA comes out
You can play in hotseat, all the bean counting economics , populations etc are there in game... All one would need to do is edit the units in game to equate to the FOG lists , devise a means to carry out diplomacy, ie some kind of "probability matrix" as after all it will be a solo campaign and walah, solo campaign ready to go !

[SRW1962]

I am looking to do multiplayer campaigns with human opponents.

I have looked at Conquest of the Empire on Board Game Geek and it looks good, so I will look into buying a copy.

I also have the excellent Blood Royale which will serve as a backdrop for a general Europe wide Medieval campaign.

I would love to get something on Ceasars Gallic Wars or the Macedonian Successors, old S&T magazine was a good source for such games, but of late a lot of older games have been re-packaged and released, so hopefully something will turn up.

[pipfromslitherine]

It's something that interests me. Wouldn't people find the pace of the strategy level too slow given the time to play out an online game? Or would it not be an issue?

Couldn't a dragging battle gum up the whole map, as you wouldn't really be able to attack when someone was already fighting on a territory.

Or am I perhaps being to ambitious, and some kind of branching campaign would work? That is, rather than having a Risk-style game, you'd play out games and it would take you to different battles depending upon who won? The only issue there would be less replay value.

It has been mentioned a number of times - what exactly would people like to see in something to support this kind of play?

Cheers

Pip

[Gunjin]

I remember a book I purchased back in the 70's Which laid out idea's for running campaigns for tabletop battles. It was brilliant and I used a lot of the ideas in the book to run campiagns with my friends. It occurred to me that you could take most of the idea's in the book and run a paper based campaign by email with the battles being fought in FOG. I dug the book out from my attic and have checked to see if its still in print. Guys your in luck. Here is the info:-

DONALD FEATHERSTONE'S WARGAMING CAMPAIGNS

Curry, J. (ed.)

Donald Featherstone's War Game Campaigns was the first wargaming book to deal with the art of creating a series of related battles and linking them into campaigns for the modern enthusiast. This book covered straightforward methods of setting up and running such campaigns. It deals with topics ranging from map making, to attrition to the issue of smaller forces delaying larger ones. Included are twenty-one examples of wargaming campaigns, covering periods from the Dark Ages to World War II. Each campaign was specially chosen by Don to illustrate different aspects of such games and options for the wargamer to consider. This book was originally published under the title of 'War Game Campaigns'. The book contained 29 chapters including: Strategic Napoleonic War-gaming, Refighting the Peninsular War, The Viking Raid, A Napoleonic Corps Campaign, Boer Revolt, Landing in Force (1944), Guards v Grenadiers (1944).

John Curry 2008 Reprint ISBN 978-1-4092-8266-2 Paperback 227 pages b/w ills, diagrams

I hope this helps some of you.

[petergarnett]

I remember it well

[honestabe]

[quote="pipfromslitherine"]It's something that interests me. Wouldn't people find the pace of the strategy level too slow given the time to play out an online game? Or would it not be an issue?

Couldn't a dragging battle gum up the whole map, as you wouldn't really be able to attack when someone was already fighting on a territory.

Or am I perhaps being to ambitious, and some kind of branching campaign would work? That is, rather than having a Risk-style game, you'd play out games and it would take you to different battles depending upon who won? The only issue there would be less replay value.

It has been mentioned a number of times - what exactly would people like to see in something to support this kind of play?

Cheers

Pip[/quote]
I would be interested in a campaign type game ala Axis & Allies style with the OPTION to play out the battles and army sizes based on number of units in the provinces.

[TheGrayMouser]

It's something that interests me. Wouldn't people find the pace of the strategy level too slow given the time to play out an online game? Or would it not be an issue?

Couldn't a dragging battle gum up the whole map, as you wouldn't really be able to attack when someone was already fighting on a territory.

Or am I perhaps being to ambitious, and some kind of branching campaign would work? That is, rather than having a Risk-style game, you'd play out games and it would take you to different battles depending upon who won? The only issue there would be less replay value.

It has been mentioned a number of times - what exactly would people like to see in something to support this kind of play?

Cheers

Pip

I cant speak for all players but my interest would be a campaign game on a strategic map that allows diplomacy etc, perhaps some limited operational decisions , logistics and of course resolving the tactical battles out using the FOG engine...

Without a dedicated game to do this I think that some things could be done to help players do this using boardgames or third party sofware:
*after a battle a way to export the results of a battle listing each unit and its stats at the end of the battle: ie men left, routed, destroyed etc this could be printable for referance
*a way to snap saved armies into the scenario editor for easier creation of battles to be resolved in a campaign

speaking of software, what would be really cool is if a game engine like Troy, Chariots o War or even the new Eygpt game would allow battles to be resolved using a tp method ie when a battle is to be resolved in one of those games you have the choice to either fight the battle in the normal way for that game or resolve the fight on your own (ie using FOG) and then simply manually apply the results
There are several Napoleonic pc games that have this, I belive Empire In Arms is one of them

[Lysimachos]

First of all, in my opinion, as a minimal step, it would be great to give players the choice to issue challenges against a determined enemy army (i.e. Seleucids (my army) vs Ptolemaics), so avoiding battles in wich someone is not interested (when I play the Romans everybody always takes the parthians and when I hide my army I sometimes have to play battles of Numidians vs Pontics that are totally unrealistic!).
Just with this little feature everybody would then have the possibility to create his own paper campaign at home paying the battles in MP fashion.
Better still would be to have a series of predefined linked battles, divided in scenarios with different goals to meet, that could be played one after the other if the preeceding results have been achieved (for example a Seleucid campaign divided in various scenarios, as Seleucus I, Antiochus the Great, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, each having a certain number of battle and a specific score to achieve, as 2 battles won on 3).

[MesaDon]

reading some of the posts myconcern would be overcomplicating a game that at present you can dive right in on and have a chance to be competative. Too many rules etc. has killed many a boardgame and others in the past.

[SRW1962]

It's interesting to see some of the replies and ideas generated here.

My intention is to play hotseat games or against the AI which can be played in a hour or less, I hadn't really thought about the email games, however these could be good if they can be resolved in a week or less.

The idea of having a pc campaign system had not occurred to me, but it would be great if there was one.

I was thinking of buying Legion Gold and seeing if there was some elements of that I could convert for use as a board game (I am an artist by trade, so easy to paint maps design cards etc.), I also have chariots of war which I would use as a basis for a Sumerian campaign once the appropriate FOGPC add on was released.

Lots of ideas and plenty of food for thought.

[SirGarnet]

A campaign system would ideally offer the choice of automatic resolution or insertion of results as you say, which might be from FOGPC (no reason why that should not be direct from FOGPC results), from FOGTT, or from any other method so long as the player can translate it into the right terms.

While a real campaign is fun, there is also something to be said for "campaign" generators that simply create a series of linked battles each flowing from the other.

The ability to name units and track combat records and battle honors is also easy and valuable for creating player attachment to troops in computer games, but also facilitates the use of campaign software to mediate FOGTT battles.

[MesaDon]

I do like the idea of "campaign generation" has this gives infinite play as no two compaigns would be the same. Just don't muck up the rules and destroy ease of play.

[Ironclad]

A campaign utilising FOG for tactical battles is a great idea. Its worthwhile looking at the FOG table top forum - historical scenarios to see some of the thoughts and links that gamers there have have come up with.

My preference would be one where each player controls a country or group of territories on a decent sized map with plenty of room for expansion incorporating diplomatic and economic development as well as military build ups and declines. Rather than having to mod up ways of amending unit strengths to reflect battle losses, attrition, reinforcements etc it would be really neat if slitherine could produce a package (another expansion?) that would allow this to be done with ease through an interface. Would there be enough demand to make this commercially viable, I wonder?

[SRW1962]

Whilst I really do like the idea of a computer generated system, I don't feel that it has to necessarily interact with FOG other than to give a basis for a game and then take the result of such game, FOG itself would and should remain unchanged. The idea of battlehonours and unit strength losses are not actually needed for the most part as such things can be done either in the senario editor or simply through troop choices in some armies. Only the more organised armies would (Romans etc.) would really bother with such things, most tribal based armies would be lucky to have any sort of organisation at all, nevermind battlehonours.

A stand alone system would be best in the long run, either as a PC based game or as a paper based game. I am using readily available games for most of my TT & PC campaigns with relevant adjustments, and where I cannot find suitable games (as for my wallachian vs ottoman campaign) I will make the game from scratch using a system 'borrowed' from another game.

Linked battles are another option, but from experience they can lack the interest that a full blown campaign has to offer, although they do have their merits, especially for ease of setup etc.

I seem to remember that I have a copy of 'Mighty Empires' by Games Workshop, from memory I recall that the system itself was easy to setup and use and made for some good DBA campaigns a long time ago, this sort of system could be adapted to make a campaign generation system.

[Paisley]

I'd quite like to see a simple system. One could have a randomly generated number of provinces, each with its own terrain density that would provide appropriate DAG battlemaps.

A small campaign might have six provinces. Three home provinces for each player (with terrain density chosen by the owning player) and three border provinces (half way house between the chosen terrain density of each player). One could allow the players a set number of points (with a given maximum for any single army of say 800 points) and allow them to divide their points between armies appropriately, one army to each home territory. Movement would be from territory to territory.

Now while attrition was a factor in every campaign, I'm not convinced of its merits in a simple system. So I'd just say that a defeated army takes a certain number of turns to 'regrow' in its initial home province and cannot do so if that province is held by the enemy. And a victorious army is restored to full strength after a single turn.

Bigger campaigns simply have more provinces - and in fact three or more players could fight a campaign, allowing for alliances and the like.


The other thing that could be worked in to the above or could stand alone and allow more abstract campaigning, is to assign each player a war-chest. Say 100 talents to start. Fielding an 500 point army (were that deemed the maximum size for teh campaign) might cost 25 talents. Winning a battle might net you say 40 talents in loot and tribute gained from captured cities in the wake of the battle. Losing a battle would gain you nothing. Thus if you lose four batles in a row, you're treasury is empty and your men desert (this might do well for a Successor campaign). Again it would allow multiple participants to play and have an eventual winner. I'd have thought it simple to set up too, and as I say, you could build it into a less abstract 'territory' campaign by assigning each territory a revenue that the holding player gets to raise his armies (but again, there would have to be a set maximum on points available to be fielded in any given battle as lopsided battles wouldn't be much fun ).

[petergarnett]

For me the appeal of a campaign where battles are resolved using FoG PC is:-

1) you know which army you face & have a great system to resolve the battles
2) battles may not be of equal points per side
3) you know the purpose of the battle & it's consequences and therefore play to suit, i.e. if I lose this one I lose talents / territory etc.
4) diplomacy adds a whole new dimension of positive dealings with others and, often more fun, dirty deals!

If there was a simple campaign system offered (in the absense of any official system) how many of you would take part?

[keyth]

For me the appeal of a campaign where battles are resolved using FoG PC is:-

1) you know which army you face & have a great system to resolve the battles
2) battles may not be of equal points per side
3) you know the purpose of the battle & it's consequences and therefore play to suit, i.e. if I lose this one I lose talents / territory etc.
4) diplomacy adds a whole new dimension of positive dealings with others and, often more fun, dirty deals!

If there was a simple campaign system offered (in the absense of any official system) how many of you would take part?

Dirty, underhand diplomacy and the option for unbalanced DAG battles would be awesome.

Cheers,

Keyth

[ianiow]

If there was a simple campaign system offered (in the absense of any official system) how many of you would take part?

Count me in!

I haven't played a wargames campaign for about 15 years when Bog Shopes ran a play-by-mail medieval campaign using Richard Bodley-Scott's PBM Umpire http://www.byzant.demon.co.uk/pbmump.htm

That was a terrific little system, and adaptable to TT wargames as I recall.

[TheGrayMouser]

For me the appeal of a campaign where battles are resolved using FoG PC is:-

1) you know which army you face & have a great system to resolve the battles
2) battles may not be of equal points per side
3) you know the purpose of the battle & it's consequences and therefore play to suit, i.e. if I lose this one I lose talents / territory etc.
4) diplomacy adds a whole new dimension of positive dealings with others and, often more fun, dirty deals!

If there was a simple campaign system offered (in the absense of any official system) how many of you would take part?

I certainly would!

Dirty, underhand diplomacy and the option for unbalanced DAG battles would be awesome.

Cheers,

Keyth

Concur!