Moderators: hammy, philqw78, terrys, Slitherine Core, Field of Glory Design, Field of Glory Moderators
That doesn't count anyway - it was just supressing a revoltnikgaukroger wrote:dave_r wrote:Was that before or after they had burnt the Persian Capital to the ground?nikgaukroger wrote: Assuming you ignore the defeats of the Ionian Greeks.
Irrelevant to your question - plus it was Sardis, a regional centre, not the capital
It would appear that the Greeks, notably Themistocles, weren't quite as confident as you are that the Persian army was rubbish!dave_r wrote: They only beat the Lydians because they disbanded their army for winter and then got surprised when the Persians didn't.
The Persian empire was mainly a victory for organisation, political and diplomacy ability rather than military conflict. The fact they could muster a massive army was usually enough to bully their neighbours into submission. When it actually fought it usually performed poorly.
The fact they never beat the Greeks (except at Thermopylae) perhaps says it all.
pyruse wrote:Average by the time the empire fell, yes.
Like every other empire, in fact. They always start out superior and end up average, or even poor if nobody pushes them over first.
I'm sure Alexander wouldn't have lost to the Romans, but his successors did.
You're really just arguing for the sake of it, aren't you?
It's far from clear whether Alexander would have lost to the Third Reich. Certainly not in an ego-based system.pyruse wrote:Average by the time the empire fell, yes.
Like every other empire, in fact. They always start out superior and end up average, or even poor if nobody pushes them over first.
I'm sure Alexander wouldn't have lost to the Romans, but his successors did.
It seems to be an inevitable side effect of a unit based system. Element based systems bring their own, different, side effects.AlanYork wrote:What I hate about FoG is multiple complex combats where you get units that don't line up, some are disordered so lose dice but some aren't, some files are missing back ranks so have different POAs to their friends next door, then you've got to work out who did what damage to who afterwards......
It's OK to do it once but when you're doing it repeatedly during the game it can turn into an arithmetic test with wargames figures and it isn't my idea of fun.
What the answer would be should the authors wish to change it, frankly I don't know which irritates me a little as it's perhaps a little unfair to criticise without putting forward possible solutions.
Personally, I don't think it's that difficult but then again I rarely get the opportunity of actually getting stuck in as most players prefer to play FOG as a non-contact sport.AlanYork wrote:What I hate about FoG is multiple complex combats where you get units that don't line up, some are disordered so lose dice but some aren't, some files are missing back ranks so have different POAs to their friends next door, then you've got to work out who did what damage to who afterwards......
It's OK to do it once but when you're doing it repeatedly during the game it can turn into an arithmetic test with wargames figures and it isn't my idea of fun.
What the answer would be should the authors wish to change it, frankly I don't know which irritates me a little as it's perhaps a little unfair to criticise without putting forward possible solutions.
I don't think it's inevitable, Impetus is a unit based system and doesn't have this problem. To be fair though I have only read Impetus and have yet to play a game, when I do they might be brilliant but then again they might be awful.rbodleyscott wrote:It seems to be an inevitable side effect of a unit based system. Element based systems bring their own, different, side effects.AlanYork wrote:What I hate about FoG is multiple complex combats where you get units that don't line up, some are disordered so lose dice but some aren't, some files are missing back ranks so have different POAs to their friends next door, then you've got to work out who did what damage to who afterwards......
It's OK to do it once but when you're doing it repeatedly during the game it can turn into an arithmetic test with wargames figures and it isn't my idea of fun.
What the answer would be should the authors wish to change it, frankly I don't know which irritates me a little as it's perhaps a little unfair to criticise without putting forward possible solutions.
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Then you might as well not have units made up of multiple bases and just go back to an element sytem like DBA. The big advantage of units consisting of multiple bases is that you can vary the formations and sizes of the units, thus having different frontages.pyruse wrote:One way to get rid of all the alignment/overlap problems is to mandate that all units have the same frontage.
Then you can say they always line up.
See Neil Thomas' AMW rules, or Phil Sabin's Strategos for examples of unit based rules with no complications to do with funny angles, overlaps, etc.
I certainly don't dispute you Julian, but I have to say the game is played very differently along the Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas circuit. I have run my army as Alan (LH heavy list), Cimmerian, Skythian and Saka and only about 1/3 of the games were indecisive. On the occasions the game timed out with minimal losses, one of more of the following occurred: one or both players were new; the army was new to the player; there was a mismatch with LH versus heavy foot which were deployed defensively.jlopez wrote: ...My beef with FOG and other similar rulesets is with the victory conditions. Since you get points for killing enemy BGs and preserving your own, gameplay is biased towards taking as few risks as possible unless you have a massive advantage. My experience is that it often makes for dull, inconclusive games. The 5 point bonus for routing the enemy is usually not enough of an incentive for both players to actually go for it and try to win the game not when that might put at risk the 10 points they already have for their own army. ... For lack of players in the vicinity I only play wargames at competitions and I'm no longer prepared to dedicate weekends and money to a ruleset which doesn't force players to actively seek a victory at all costs. ... Julian
Sane? Well that eliminates entire Centuries. Or to paraphrase from the move "ZULU" That's daft then who would run to fight a battle.azrael86 wrote: Well, compared to themselves, no, but most sane rulers understood that regularly losing a lot of peasants wasn't a good idea as you need peasants to sow crops, shoe horses, etc. Possibly some steppe armies were less bothered, the Mongols in china being a case in point.
Impetus from memory essentially does away with conforming and it averages out the combat strenght of all units to pretty much a single number.AlanYork wrote:I don't think it's inevitable, Impetus is a unit based system and doesn't have this problem. To be fair though I have only read Impetus and have yet to play a game, when I do they might be brilliant but then again they might be awful.
Despite the complexity of some combats I feel that FoG bringing units back into Ancients games is overall a good thing.
There you go you tournament tiger already trying to twist the rules.hammy wrote:
I have finally managed to fight my way through the rules (it took a lot of attempts) and am happy to try them out but would like to play someone who knows them as I have found what I think may be a number of rather 'interesting' situations from reading the rules and I want to see if other are aware of them or if I have misread the rules.
Absolutelyhazelbark wrote:There you go you tournament tiger already trying to twist the rules.hammy wrote:
I have finally managed to fight my way through the rules (it took a lot of attempts) and am happy to try them out but would like to play someone who knows them as I have found what I think may be a number of rather 'interesting' situations from reading the rules and I want to see if other are aware of them or if I have misread the rules.
