Skirmishing

[Gersen]

For me intuitively, skirmishing does not feel quite right in the game as it stands. It could be the way I am playing it, or it could be the combat mechanics. It boils down to the ease with which they are caught by MF and HF.

Examples:

I find that too often I send my javelinmen against a line of MF or HF, they need to close to within 2 hexes, and typically 33% won't evade in time, and bang, there go a bunch of break points.

This even happens when you try LH with bows, though to a slightly lesser extent. I am currently playing Skythians agains Spartans, you would have thought those horse would run rings round the foot, but you can't close without one or two getting caught, and bang - there go another 4 BP .

The problem is exacerbated with these light troops being largely undrilled. So you can't manually evade, run back a few hexes and then turn ready for the next turn. In this case, you spend the next turn turning round, and by then you are back to square one with the choice of shooting at the advancing enemy and hoping you evade or running away again.

It just does not feel right. I have in my minds eye, skirmishers being largely cheap, fast, lightly protected units, drilled sufficiently well to close to within firing range, chuck your missiles and then scarper to the next safe position. By and large you shouldn't be caught by lumbering phalanxes. You deal with skirmishers by sending in the cavalry or using other skirmishers.

Thoughts and advice welcome.

[76mm]

I completely agree. LF is caught far too easily by HF and MF, and once caught, cannot disengage. A bunch of javelinmen can't disengage from a phalanx? Frankly I don't get it. Between this aspect, and the fact that the javelinmen count as much toward victory as that phalanx, mean that battles can be virtually decided before the main lines even engage. I recently lost a battle which ended with my main forces having suffered only light losses.

I can probably be accused of mishandling my light troops, but IMO handling them correctly in this game is as much or more about mastering gamey, rather than realistic, tactics.

[deadtorius]

Lights used to be uncatchable prior to one of the recent patches. It used to be they would just run from any thing that approached them. Now you can pin them down by moving a unit so the lights would be in the moved units ZOC, and then charge them with something. They turn and they are pinned and get caught.
It used to be everyone complained they couldn't be caught. Guess there is no happy medium. If you keep them close to your own main battle line that should keep the enemy from being able to pin them down without putting one of their units in dangerous position to die.
Move them up to keep your opponent from getting double moves them try keeping them within 2 hexes of your own line, that should keep them safe from being pinned and if charged they can bugger off behind something big and nasty on your side.
Masses of LH would be a bit more of a problem, I havent tried a mass LH army for a while so not sure what to say about them.

[76mm]

Now you can pin them down by moving a unit so the lights would be in the moved units ZOC, and then charge them with something. They turn and they are pinned and get caught.

But let's talk reality here...does it make sense that HF can regularly catch LF, and then the LF can't disengage? I would say "no". And this makes javelins essentially useless, if not a liability--in my experience, if you keep them within two hexes of your main line, more often than not they get squished between the two lines.

[Gersen]

more often than not they get squished between the two lines.

That's another thing that bugs me. Though not just in the game, but how it really worked out. What happened to skirmishers when the two battlelines closed? Did they get 'squished', or did they filter through the ranks of their heavies?

As it stands, I see skirmishers (javelinmen in particular) as liabilities, and tend to use the minimum required in the army lists, putting them on the flanks, stopping double moves or out of the way somewhere. ie Gamey tactics.

[pantherboy]

I suspect you guys are mishandling your lights as anything you describe doesn't happen to me. Lights with a clear path of retreat never get caught by heavies though a very small risk exists with MF while cavalry and LH can run them down. If you deploy bodies of men behind your lights then they'll just pass through them to the rear. Sometimes they'll get trapped if you are charged at from an oblique angle and the troops they need to retire through have too much depth and such stop in front of the body rather than be given excessive extra movement. Ultimately the lights are difficult to catch if handled well but the current trend is to move something into their rear arc and then charge from the front catching them. I see no problem with this as the player chose to place their lights in such a dangerous position.

[76mm]

Lights with a clear path of retreat never get caught by heavies though a very small risk exists with MF while cavalry and LH can run them down. If you deploy bodies of men behind your lights then they'll just pass through them to the rear.

hmmm, this has not been my experience, although maybe I'm missing something. LF with room to run behind them get caught fairly frequently by HF/MF, and LF sometimes gets pinned against troops behind them. I will try to pay more attention to specifics in future battles.

[CheerfullyInsane]

I have arguably the least experience of anyone in here, but I find very few problems with using LFs (javelins or no).

While they may be undrilled, a little creativity with the movement path, usually gets them pointing the right way.
As my platoon commander used to say: "If it looks silly, but works; it isn't silly."

The only times my LF gets caught is if I do something moronic with them, making them vulnerable to being surrounded by ZOCs for instance.
Otherwise they usually only get caught if they first evade, and *then* get charged a second time.
In other words, if you push 'em out too far in front of your main line, you risk losing them.

As for their inability to retreat behind ones own HF, I've only seen that occur if there's a double line in the path of retreat.
If the LF doesn't have enough movement points to make it through both lines, they get stuck.
And squished.......Or rather, shish-kebabed.

Same problem I have with cavalry.......Always get over-eager, and they pursue some poor sod right into a group of enemy cataphracts who stand there grinning evilly. I suspect even their horses are smirking........
Ah well, live and learn.

CheerfullyInsane

[vonbert]

I agree with the main point of this post, how hard is to make effective/historical use of skirmishing tactics within FOG rules.
But is also true that if the Skythians the author is using against Spartans would have been able to run near, fire, then retreat a bit, to begin it again turn after turn, without never be catched .. anybody would then be playing with Skythians.. :p

Sure there is something to adjust ,as it is true what was stated.. also.. maybe i'm a newbie of FOG (but not of wargames) , but my first MP battle has been between my Egyptians and Spartans.

guess who won ?
:p

not me.. but that is not the point,
sure i was a non expert player against one with some more experience, but i felt my line of spearman in cotton-skirt and cardboard shields was a bit too light to face those greek panzers !
But this can/should be balanced by numbers, while in reality i didnt felt that my line was SOOOO bigger or thicker then his.. on the reverse he got 2 lines of hoplite.. me maybe 2.5 ..
can you figure a knife in the butter ?

mmhh.. so my question is.. are there already established KILLER ARMIES ?
Someone said to me that spartan are very often used..

and , connecting with the origin of this post, maybe, the balance in number/cost of some type of troops shell be corrected..especially the cost of heavy vs lights,

maybe , i hope, the slitherine guys will check the results of our battles on MP, emending with relative players capabilities, and after some 1.000 -2.000 battles.. try to desume statistically:
why spartans win 70% of their battles while Skythians only 30 % ?

Then.. if that proportion is felt is correct to be that way..ok.
But this then shell be stated in order of battles near the title/name: ie : ( this Army statistically win just 20% of their battles ).. wanna play it ?

Here again the historical point of view dont match exactly the gamers pov, from a gamer point of view each army shell be able to win 50% of their battles in average, but from historical point of view somemone can also say that Spartan would have won 100% of the times against Egyptians..

I dunno the design filosophy under this point of the game.
And sure each army can be more effective against some other, while being more weak against others..

anyway... is true that having the log of our battles at disposal, when the data collected will be large enough, someone could then start a good analysis and apart from stating: "Army no° NN of the book BB is the better of the world" .. could then ask
"but.. is not that this army is the most powerful, cause their troops are cheaper then what should be ?"

Anyway.. i'm the last one arrived here.. so i just speak as it comes.. i know i shell listen more !

final idea..
(BALANCING VICTORIES vs POWER OF AN ARMY)
maybe, when will be stated statistically that egyptians can win 33%, spartan 60%, roman 65%, of their battles, and this is felt to be correct (as Spartan WERE that time stronger) .. thus..
in MP on the server, let's give different value , with points or i dunno, to different victories, i mean.. winning with an army that won 70% of their games.. will give just 30% of victory points for a hypotetical ranking.. while winning with an army that is stated to won only 20% would give you 80% of maximum victory point available.
This way players would be encouraged to try to use also weaker armies to try to collect more victory points if they are good enough and lucky to win a battle with them..

on the reverse maybe players with more experience can tell me that all armies have same % of victories.. ( but..intuitively it dont seem to me to work that way)

[TheGrayMouser]

Well. i speak from myselft but I dont want the game to be "balanced" so that if i play Romans I can only look fwrd to winning 65% of my battles because that is what research shows they won historically. (or only getting 65% of the credit)

Remember the dag allows you to play unhistoric engagements (and yes even two lists that are in the same year range are unhistoric as there is no operational/strategic layer) , based off an AP point system.

The fact is the Romans never fought Sparta when Sparta was in its prime , 5th century?

And if they had, well imho the Romans still would have won because the Spartans could field maybe 4000 hoplites where as even at this ealry stage the Romans could have fielded 4-5 as many troops for a battle....

Anyways i have beaten the Spartans more often than I have lost to them, I have beaten the Swiss more often than I have lost to them as well, but that isnt really a good indicater as i personally dont find people using those armies with the frequency that many posts would indicate.

Sure ., some armies will have a very tough time against others barring getting a terriagn advantage but that is the nature of things

[deadtorius]

I am not sure there is a perfect killer army. I have been beaten badly by certain armies tried them myself and gotten beaten again. If you want a killer army use the same army over and over and you will learn how to build it, deploy it and what to do and not to do with it. Then your experience with it will make it a killer army. I do better with some armies that I use often than other armies that I dabble with.

As for how the lights would pass through formed troops, somewhere on the FOG TT forum there was a post that linked to a history TV series where some guy would train people to fight in the dark ages or medieval era. I watched a dark ages episode and the heavies would literally move their shields to their sides making alleyways in the lines that the lights would run through, then swing the shields back front and close up the shield wall again.
On the TT lights can pass through other troops, but non-light foot can not pass through lights vountarily. Shock foot can fail a cohesion test and burst through their lights, just can't charge through them voluntarily. The PC game removed that restriction which is why you can move through your lights. I believe it was a game play decision and not a historical based one decision.

[vonbert]

Well "TheGrayMouser" .. surely what i said is based mainly on the fact that i have not yet such great experience/numbers of battles with FOG to figure out for real how much the game is balanced vs historical.
But what you report on beating spartans many times or Swiss is encouraging.
I just said about killer-armies cause is a definition i heard since long time reading about DBM system or other wargame rules used in many competitions .. so i was imagining that deriving from some tabletop rules, also FOG could have some armies stronger then other.
Sure then, the terrain is another key.. probably in history weaker armies had always tried to fight a battle in the terrain they felt more confident to be.. maybe this choice is a bit limited in FOW as battlefield cant be choosen in high details .

Anyway.. i do love this game !
The simplicity of the interface and interaction is amazing compared to what a decade of pc-wargames had designed before.. just thinking of the top botton bar in some HPS games.. maybe 25-30 icon bottons ! :p
That kind of old-way-interfaces surely made a lot of newbie to the hobby to run away stating.. "to complex for me .."

in the end i dont agree with you on the balancing victory point system imagined before..
Win a fotball game with brazil against korea.. is not the same thing as winning with korea against brazil..

so.. Sir TheGrayMouser.. let's choose an "expansion-addon" .. 2 armies.. and let's the battlefield decide who is right !

[gavril]

I really agree with Gersen on this, as the chap on the other side of the battlefield for the Spartans v Skythians battle. It should have been an interesting match-up (I posted details of which army I was using btw when I issued the challenge - it wasn't an ambush!!!). But even as a newbie player all I had to do was advance my Spartans towards Gersen's LH with a reasonable degree of care to rout the whole lot off the battlefield as they evaded, and/or catch other LH units in the rear. Would a 'historical' encounter have been anything like that? Nope. I love the game, but some aspects of it, as I'm getting to know it, are a bit disappointing. I thought it would be a difficult game - how could my Spartans heavies possibly catch the LH. But no, not how it worked out at all.

[TheGrayMouser]

Well "TheGrayMouser" .. surely what i said is based mainly on the fact that i have not yet such great experience/numbers of battles with FOG to figure out for real how much the game is balanced vs historical.
But what you report on beating spartans many times or Swiss is encouraging.
I just said about killer-armies cause is a definition i heard since long time reading about DBM system or other wargame rules used in many competitions .. so i was imagining that deriving from some tabletop rules, also FOG could have some armies stronger then other.
Sure then, the terrain is another key.. probably in history weaker armies had always tried to fight a battle in the terrain they felt more confident to be.. maybe this choice is a bit limited in FOW as battlefield cant be choosen in high details .

Anyway.. i do love this game !
The simplicity of the interface and interaction is amazing compared to what a decade of pc-wargames had designed before.. just thinking of the top botton bar in some HPS games.. maybe 25-30 icon bottons ! :p
That kind of old-way-interfaces surely made a lot of newbie to the hobby to run away stating.. "to complex for me .."

in the end i dont agree with you on the balancing victory point system imagined before..
Win a fotball game with brazil against korea.. is not the same thing as winning with korea against brazil..

so.. Sir TheGrayMouser.. let's choose an "expansion-addon" .. 2 armies.. and let's the battlefield decide who is right !

Well, i have no idea how many battles i have completed, but i doudt i have even scratched the surface in army vs army combos in individual books , let alone book to book!

My point about Swiss and Spartans is that they can be beaten, not that i am so good that i can slapp them round with ease!

Sure soccer matches do not indicate that a nation can defeat another in a war!
Not sure which balancing theory are you refering too.... My own thoughts are that the game as created by Slitherine is about armies maching up on a purchase system (ap's) and thus , in theory two players have a reasonable chance of winning, assuming all other things are euqal and both players know how to effectively use the armies....

Reality? No way , not in a point based system, nor with the battles disconnected from a larger strategic operational concerns, so i stand by a list should NOT be better than another simply because it won more in history... Unless you want to revise the game and have the size of you army based on the population of adult males being capable of being under arms during a certain date, establish where exactly the battle happened so that the # of theoretical men each side could sustain in that environment before the battle happned(and it would be different for each side) could be determined etc etc etc
That being said someone mentioned Scythians vs Sparta
I dont think in a PITCHED battle the Scythians would do well, howver the reality is if the Scythians ever penetrated to Spartan lands it would be simply raiding and NOT there to engage a phalanx
If Sparta ever put together a punitive expedition into the steppes, well, the Syths could harrass and pepper them indefinataly over the course of weeks or months until they withdrew or were destroyed
Realistic but certainly impossible to portray in a game that is 100% tactical.


Anyway , i do enjoy the system as well, for realism though, at least in terms of relative power between two historic armies, the scenario editor is likly the place to recreate those, not the point based system in the dags

I am up for a game anytime, pm me a password and what armies and I'll get going tonite, cheers

[deeter]

Skirmishing has gotten both better and worse in recent versions, and will probably stay weird antil the promised ability to set aggression levels becomes available. That said, there are some points in this thread that should be addressed.

LTs cost the same break points as other troops to discourage squandering their lives. These units are composed of men just like HF. Picking off the light parts of a heavy army is a valid way to win a battle, I think. So, take care of your lights. Don't put jav troops way out in front without a good reason. Horss archers never need to be caught by HF or MF if you keep them at 4 hexes range. These things don't sound too ahistorical.

On another note, a do believe there are several killer armies (Bosporans, Swiss and now early Greeks/Spartans) that consitantly win without much regard to the general's skill. But that is more a matter or army matchup and terrain than inherent advantages. I suspect an armored Greek army could drive Bosporans off the map, while Bosporans would blow away protected, smaller Swiss armies, etc.

Deeter

[TheGrayMouser]

That an excellant point deeter and basically is what i was trying to say in terms of relative realism...

What was a "typical" Roman army say vs a typical Swiss army?? hard to say but you could argue maybe 20000 vs 6000 respectivley.. Romans vs Cont Brits? 20k vs 8 k (what Henry had at Ajincourt

"realistically" the romans would bowl over both those armies....

How would the Roman vs British encounter look without an AP system?
Well based on 300 men per unit, the Brits would maybe have 20 bg's of archers, 10 of dismounted MAA... The romans, well, 40 bg's of legions and another 30 of light foot, plus another 10-20 of aux troops....
Yikes, historical(assuming time machines) in terms "typical" armies yet who would ever want to play such a battle?

[76mm]

LTs cost the same break points as other troops to discourage squandering their lives. These units are composed of men just like HF.

I don't agree with this point...somehow I doubt Darius gave a damn how many of his massed levies or javelinmen survived a battle, as long as his bodyguard did! Other armies were probably more concerned about the fate of individuals, but only to a certain extent.

Moreover, except when they were facing cav, the fate of overpowered LF was presumably to simply run away, not be slaughtered by the phalanx or legion. Certainly the javelinmen themselves wanted to live as much as anybody, but this simply means that they would run away more quickly if threatened, not that they should be caught and slaughtered by MF and HF (and thus count as breakpoints).

[batesmotel]

I really agree with Gersen on this, as the chap on the other side of the battlefield for the Spartans v Skythians battle. It should have been an interesting match-up (I posted details of which army I was using btw when I issued the challenge - it wasn't an ambush!!!). But even as a newbie player all I had to do was advance my Spartans towards Gersen's LH with a reasonable degree of care to rout the whole lot off the battlefield as they evaded, and/or catch other LH units in the rear. Would a 'historical' encounter have been anything like that? Nope. I love the game, but some aspects of it, as I'm getting to know it, are a bit disappointing. I thought it would be a difficult game - how could my Spartans heavies possibly catch the LH. But no, not how it worked out at all.

To win this battle, the Scythians basically need to be able to get behind the Spartans rather than just getting herded in front of a wall of hoplites. One critical factor in this is whether the number of points you use in the game. The battle is likely to be more interesting at 450 points than 400 (40x 30 vs 30x30 map) or at 650 than 600 (50x30 vs 40x30). One other thing you might want to try is the Saka list versus the Skythian since that does give the Skythians som e lancers. (The Saka list also corresponds to the post 300 BC version of the TT Skythian list so is not really representative of only the Saka tribes. If using the list to represent later Skythians rather than Saka, the cataphract lancers should not be used, only the armoured.)

Chris

[vonbert]

@TheGrayMouser

My own thoughts are that the game as created by Slitherine is about armies maching up on a purchase system (ap's) and thus , in theory two players have a reasonable chance of winning (..) Unless you want to revise the game and have the size of you army based on the population of adult males being capable of being under arms during a certain date, establish where exactly the battle happened (..)

well i was just thinking :
-any purchase system can have some defect.. as anything is perfectible.
-as we play MP on slitherin server they will soon will have data about thousands of battles of hundreds armies , who battled , who won, and with what % of break.
- so, will be nice imho, to have at least on the server a TAB showing, armies ranking maybe, ie. sparta battled 100 times and won 60%, roman battled 200 and won 130 as 65%, gallic did 50 games and won 10 (20% ) . A little info that may give a taste of how much popular an army is and how much "powerful" is in FOG terms.

I can be wrong.. and data can be against me.. but i bet a beer that after many many games there will show differences in % of victories.. and thus we can imagine that this differencies are not casual but underlying some real differences of equilibrium (? balance ?) of the AP system. (Some stats test could tell if this data-differencies are significative )

- I mean.. in theory numbers can be stastistically significative, so if after 100000000 battles, spartan would win 80% of their games.. well.. i suppose we can at last state: "wow.. spartan are though and strong ! ".. Obviously spartan can be beaten, sometimes.
ah..
and im sure that if tonite i would use spartan against you.. i can lose also with them !

So, this are just ideas in freedom, after having thoughs to the previous fact, i said myself:
if the AP balance will remains the same , and if slitherine want to keep PM games searching for armies balance in battles , then a balance system for victory points could be used, victory points not used in the game.. but showed also under the previous "ranking" tab i was thinking of..
ranking - armies (games, %victory )
ranking- players ( games, %victory, etc)

any battle you won, you get victory points in that FOG-world-ranking.. AND .. this VP you would get could be balanced by some factors : ie the ratio of %break point in the battle, and (my original suggestion) by the fact that if you had battle with any army stated to win 80% of the games.. you would get some less victory point that if you wan win a "weak" army..
just to have this "player ranking" trying to be as much fair as possible..

BUT
as this "player ranking" dont exist (?) .. i'm speaking of nothing !

all of this was coming from this doubt.. "would i choose an army to fight.. if i know that they often/always loose ? "

then.. winning is just a variable part of the pleasure of gaming, so the balance problem , if exist, is not so important anyway..
(until we dont start to BET money on battles )

aw..ok i ll pm you TheGrayMouser !

[TheGrayMouser]

It is good that money is not involved


I find i really enjoy playing armies that are the red headed step children, it is surprising what you can do with them!

Of course, expcept likly for a handfull of players who dont make mistakes, it is often what your opponent fails to do that gives one a victory, not what you actually do.... Just my 2 cents

Hmm Spartans , the pressue is now on, look fwrd to the game sir!