Superior Bowmen

[RichardThompson]

If you go to the ranking section of this site and choose Army Ranking, Average Points per Game and only list those with 50 or more games:
http://www.slithdata.net/files/fog/rankings.html

The top six armies (out of 86) are:

1 Christian Nubian
2 Middle Hungarian
3 Seljuk Turk
4 Later Ottoman Turkish
5 Ghaznavid
6 Early Hungarian

These armies can all include lots of superior bowmen.

Bows should be made more expensive:

1 for poor foot
2 for average foot
3 for superior foot
4 for elite foot

3 for poor mounted
4 for average mounted
5 for superior mounted
6 for elite mounted

The cost of long-bowmen and perhaps other missiles would need to change as well.

Would this improve game balance?

[david53]

If you go to the ranking section of this site and choose Army Ranking, Average Points per Game and only list those with 50 or more games:
http://www.slithdata.net/files/fog/rankings.html

The top six armies (out of 86) are:

1 Christian Nubian
2 Middle Hungarian
3 Seljuk Turk
4 Later Ottoman Turkish
5 Ghaznavid
6 Early Hungarian

These armies can all include lots of superior bowmen.

Bows should be made more expensive:

1 for poor foot
2 for average foot
3 for superior foot
4 for elite foot

3 for poor mounted
4 for average mounted
5 for superior mounted
6 for elite mounted

The cost of long-bowmen and perhaps other missiles would need to change as well.

Would this improve game balance?

Not at all

[hammy]

The top six armies (out of 86) are:
1 Christian Nubian
2 Middle Hungarian
3 Seljuk Turk
4 Later Ottoman Turkish
5 Ghaznavid
6 Early Hungarian
These armies can all include lots of superior bowmen.

OK, I will accept that if you look at the criteria you have selected then these armies are the top 6 but as Christian Nubian is 16th on the list there could be an argument that you have picked your statistics to suit.

I would contend that while these armies can have superior bow not all of them do and in most of these cases the superior shooters are not actually the troops that do most of the shooting. My early and middle Hungarians for example normally have 12 bases of superior protected cavalry, I pick them because I want superior morale, not rerolling 1s on my shooting. To be honest rerolling 1s when you shoot does not make a lot of difference, what does make a difference is rerolling 1s in cohesion tests.

You could look at the ELO rankings of armies and you would find some of the same armies in the top 6 but you would also find those well known superior shooters the Swiss in third place which would seem to indicate a bit of a weakness in your plan.

You could argue that superior is too good, that might be more reasonable but not all the top armies on ELO are stuck full of superior troops.

[grahambriggs]

Superior MF with bow are good value. Ottomans normally take all of them. Christian Nubians rarely take their MF archers as average. And Persian Immortals are very good. Conversely, average and poor MF bow are not good value at all IMHO. Perhaps I just aven't worked out how to use them.

While mounted superior archers are good, they seem about right in terms of value.

[shadowdragon]

OK, I will accept that if you look at the criteria you have selected then these armies are the top 6 but as Christian Nubian is 16th on the list there could be an argument that you have picked your statistics to suit.

You could look at the ELO rankings of armies and you would find some of the same armies in the top 6 but you would also find those well known superior shooters the Swiss in third place which would seem to indicate a bit of a weakness in your plan.

I agree with hammy. There are four relevant options for ranking armies (ignoring popularity - but you could actually justify that as a relevant statistic too) which are ELO for all armies, average points score for all armies, ELO for armies with 50 or more games and average points for armies with 50 or more games. You don't get exactly the same results with all four statistics. Plus I think it's not appropriate to pick the top six because number seven doesn't fit the theory. Number seven, "Later Anglo-Irish", differs by 0.01 points (12.94 versus 12.95) with number six. Similarly, Santa Hermandad Nueva Castilian, Thracian, Ordonnance French and Hellenistic Greek aren't far behind either.

I'm not saying "superior bowmen" are too cheap or not, I haven't used them enough to form an opinion, but that's different from the use of stats issue raised by hammy.

[RichardThompson]

The top six armies (out of 86) are:
1 Christian Nubian
2 Middle Hungarian
3 Seljuk Turk
4 Later Ottoman Turkish
5 Ghaznavid
6 Early Hungarian
These armies can all include lots of superior bowmen.

OK, I will accept that if you look at the criteria you have selected then these armies are the top 6 but as Christian Nubian is 16th on the list there could be an argument that you have picked your statistics to suit.

I would contend that while these armies can have superior bow not all of them do and in most of these cases the superior shooters are not actually the troops that do most of the shooting. My early and middle Hungarians for example normally have 12 bases of superior protected cavalry, I pick them because I want superior morale, not rerolling 1s on my shooting. To be honest rerolling 1s when you shoot does not make a lot of difference, what does make a difference is rerolling 1s in cohesion tests.

You could look at the ELO rankings of armies and you would find some of the same armies in the top 6 but you would also find those well known superior shooters the Swiss in third place which would seem to indicate a bit of a weakness in your plan.

You could argue that superior is too good, that might be more reasonable but not all the top armies on ELO are stuck full of superior troops.

Restricting the list to armies with more than 50 games is good statistics. It reduces the impact of one good player is a themed tournament.

I realise there are several troop types that do well - Bowmen, HA knights, Pikes etc. but I can only tackle one target per post.

My suggestion would make Average Bowmen 1 Pt more expensive. ATM, Average LH Bow costs 8 points and LH JLS costs 7. Most wargamers would choose the LH Bow. Increasing their cost to 9 would make the decision a little harder.

My suggestion would make Superior Bowmen 2 points more expensive. Charging 8 points for a Christian Nubian instead of 6 would make them less dominant.

Superior bowmen get more benefit from being superior because they throw more dice and get hence get more re-rolls.

Consider 4 LH Bow shooting at 4 Armoured Cavalry. Average LH would hit 18/36 and trigger a CT 25% of the time. Superior LH would hit 21/36 and trigger a CT 34% of the time. Not a huge difference but probably worth the extra points.

[ethan]

I think the superior armoured cavalry types (both the lance and bow armed varieties) are about right.

I think the superior foot bow is pretty close, maybe the Nubians are a bit cheap, but I don't really see that as a huge issue. In particular, making these more expensive won't help the under-performers atm, it will just shift things around. Protected HF still won't be very popular...

[timmy1]

Ethan if all armoured cost 1 more and all superior cost 2 more, it might bring more Protected Average HF to the table.

[hammy]

Restricting the list to armies with more than 50 games is good statistics. It reduces the impact of one good player is a themed tournament.

I realise there are several troop types that do well - Bowmen, HA knights, Pikes etc. but I can only tackle one target per post.

Restricting the number of games is reasonable although 50 is quite a high number. Picking the average points per game rather than ELO could be considered to be selecting to 'prove' your point. Equally stopping at number 6 rather than number 5 or 10 is slightly selective.

My suggestion would make Average Bowmen 1 Pt more expensive. ATM, Average LH Bow costs 8 points and LH JLS costs 7. Most wargamers would choose the LH Bow. Increasing their cost to 9 would make the decision a little harder.

I am far fron convinced that bow is that much better than javelin. OK, it has extra range but IMO you have yet to prove that it is shooting that is winning games. I have played plenty of games where I have won without breaking or even fragmenting a BG through shooting.

My suggestion would make Superior Bowmen 2 points more expensive. Charging 8 points for a Christian Nubian instead of 6 would make them less dominant.

So you are saying that we need to make undrilled unprotected troops more expensive??? Christian Nubian is an army that at the moment seems to be doing quite well but it is also being used by good players. It may well be rated well in terms of overall results because it is actually hard to use and weak players try it, lose a lot and give up.

Superior bowmen get more benefit from being superior because they throw more dice and get hence get more re-rolls.

I suppose so but I don;t see that your suggestion would be a good fix. If anything a better way of doing things would be to make the quality a percentage change on the base cost of a base. That would make all capabilities a bit more expensive for superiors and cheaper for poor but I don;t think that is a good idea either.

Consider 4 LH Bow shooting at 4 Armoured Cavalry. Average LH would hit 18/36 and trigger a CT 25% of the time. Superior LH would hit 21/36 and trigger a CT 34% of the time. Not a huge difference but probably worth the extra points.

tell you what. I will bring an army using no bows at all and you can bring one using bows at your proposed costs.

[RichardThompson]

Restricting the list to armies with more than 50 games is good statistics. It reduces the impact of one good player is a themed tournament.

I realise there are several troop types that do well - Bowmen, HA knights, Pikes etc. but I can only tackle one target per post.

Restricting the number of games is reasonable although 50 is quite a high number. Picking the average points per game rather than ELO could be considered to be selecting to 'prove' your point. Equally stopping at number 6 rather than number 5 or 10 is slightly selective.

My suggestion would make Average Bowmen 1 Pt more expensive. ATM, Average LH Bow costs 8 points and LH JLS costs 7. Most wargamers would choose the LH Bow. Increasing their cost to 9 would make the decision a little harder.

I am far fron convinced that bow is that much better than javelin. OK, it has extra range but IMO you have yet to prove that it is shooting that is winning games. I have played plenty of games where I have won without breaking or even fragmenting a BG through shooting.

My suggestion would make Superior Bowmen 2 points more expensive. Charging 8 points for a Christian Nubian instead of 6 would make them less dominant.

So you are saying that we need to make undrilled unprotected troops more expensive??? Christian Nubian is an army that at the moment seems to be doing quite well but it is also being used by good players. It may well be rated well in terms of overall results because it is actually hard to use and weak players try it, lose a lot and give up.

Superior bowmen get more benefit from being superior because they throw more dice and get hence get more re-rolls.

I suppose so but I don;t see that your suggestion would be a good fix. If anything a better way of doing things would be to make the quality a percentage change on the base cost of a base. That would make all capabilities a bit more expensive for superiors and cheaper for poor but I don;t think that is a good idea either.

Consider 4 LH Bow shooting at 4 Armoured Cavalry. Average LH would hit 18/36 and trigger a CT 25% of the time. Superior LH would hit 21/36 and trigger a CT 34% of the time. Not a huge difference but probably worth the extra points.

tell you what. I will bring an army using no bows at all and you can bring one using bows at your proposed costs.

I picked 50 games because that was the only number available in the interface.

I did indeed choose to quote the PPG figure because it made my point cleanly. The top of ELO list contains many of the same armies so hardly disproves the point I am making.

As a general principal I would like to see the current 'Super troops' made a bit less cost effective so that some of the less competitive troops stand more of a chance.

I don't know if my suggestion is a good way to achieve this. It is probably pointless to talk about points until all the other changes have been decided upon. Changing the points would also involve changes to army lists which is a Very Bad Thing.

[hammy]

I picked 50 games because that was the only number available in the interface.

Fair enough

I did indeed choose to quote the PPG figure because it made my point cleanly. The top of ELO list contains many of the same armies so hardly disproves the point I am making.

But the top ELO also includes two armies with no superior shooters at all....

As a general principal I would like to see the current 'Super troops' made a bit less cost effective so that some of the less competitive troops stand more of a chance.

OK, what are the super troops then? I would strongly contend that being armed with a bow does not a super troop make.

I don't know if my suggestion is a good way to achieve this. It is probably pointless to talk about points until all the other changes have been decided upon. Changing the points would also involve changes to army lists which is a Very Bad Thing.

Changing points is fine. I almost never look at the points in the list books and I argued strongly against including them in the lists but at the meeting during the first beta tournament when points were decided as being vital for lists it was also stated that changing them was possible.

Essentially there are a number of reasons to change things and different ways to do it. Points is one and does not at least impact the historical 'accuracy' of the game. Changing things like the effectivenes of skirmisher shooting will change the dynamic of the game and significantly impact which armies are top of the pile. Changing the maneuver rules to cut down on the effectiveness of the swarm likewise.

FWIW if you were having this discussion 18 months ago it would not be Christian Nubian that was high on your target list. It would clearly be Dominate Roman. Things move in waves with armies counter armies etc. Also some armies tend to be used only by a few good players and good players seem to be able to do well with most armies. I have said this before in other threads but when I took Early Libyan (all unprotected undrilled medium foot) to a comp as a fill in I shocked myself to actually 'win' 5 out of 6 games and placed very respectably over the tournament.

[Robert241167]

Your tempting me Hammy !!!

Rob

[hammy]

Your tempting me Hammy !!!

Rob

But I could always moderate any comments......

I am looking for 'revenge' this weekend BTW

[Robert241167]

Hey you are only supposed to use your powers for good !!

My Ottomans look forward to testing your Hungarians out after missing them in the Celtic Cup !!

Rob

[ethan]

Ethan if all armoured cost 1 more and all superior cost 2 more, it might bring more Protected Average HF to the table.

23AP ghilman would cause other problems IMO. All point values are relative and given that we generally use 800 Ghilman costing as much as late m/edieval knights would'nt tend to lead to historicl looking armies.

[shadowdragon]

Restricting the list to armies with more than 50 games is good statistics. It reduces the impact of one good player is a themed tournament.

No, it's not good statistics. The number "50" was chosen because the ranking filter allows only the options of "all armies", "all armies with at least one game" and "armies with 50 or more". You have no idea if "25 or more games" would have been sufficient, "100 or more games" or even you can't control for the effects of "one good player". Agreed that "50 or more" is better than comparing with those armies with only a handful of games played, but if you look at the list of those armies with at least one game played, if you set the critirion with 40 games then number 2 on your list would "Late Dynastic Egyptian", which I suppose you could call a "superior bow" army since it has superior heavy chariots and a handful of superior Nubians, but in my view that would be stretching it a bit. (Average score for Late Dynastic = 13.57 and for Christian Nubian = 13.99.) Again, stopping at the "top 6" when there's hardly any difference - never mind a signficant difference - with number 7 on your list....that's not good statistical practice either.

But...having said that, there is merit in the argument that superior foot bowmen may be too cheap.

However, hammy is right about the rankings moving in waves. I did spend sometime using the database to look at not just the current scores (both average and ELO) and how they changed in time. If you do that you definitely see waves (i.e., FoG army rankings have not reached a stable level).

Philosophically I also can't say I support the princple of "reducing the dominance of any particular troops" unless it can be clearly demonstrated that it leads to bad historical results. Adjusting for tournaments should be via points or victory conditions. Hammy is again right in pointing out the temporal nature of "dominant troop types" in that a year ago it would have been how to reduce Dominate Roman swarms.

Sometimes I fear that we'll end up gluing our figures to checkers and treating every troop type the same.

[waldo]

I would contend that while these armies can have superior bow not all of them do and in most of these cases the superior shooters are not actually the troops that do most of the shooting. My early and middle Hungarians for example normally have 12 bases of superior protected cavalry, I pick them because I want superior morale, not rerolling 1s on my shooting. To be honest rerolling 1s when you shoot does not make a lot of difference, what does make a difference is rerolling 1s in cohesion tests.

That's the 'problem' with Christian Nubian. The archers are superior because they were good archers, yet making them superior makes them shoot better, fight better and improves their morale and manoeuvrability. All this because they were handy with a bow!

Walter

[hazelbark]

One point on the CN. The army really only works if:

1) people attack it head on
2) The generals are committed to fight at impact. Its not re-rolling the 1s that matters. Its re-rolling the 1s and 2s.

[shall]

Having used a few of these armies a lot I don't feel it is the Sup Bw themsleves that raise questions .. rather than the list has far too many in for the Christian Nubians. List perhaps would have been better with 0-24 superior and an equal no of average. Much more challenging to use then.

Don't really feel a rule issue on the matter if I am hoenst.

Si

[johno]

That's the 'problem' with Christian Nubian. The archers are superior because they were good archers, yet making them superior makes them shoot better, fight better and improves their morale and manoeuvrability. All this because they were handy with a bow!

Walter

Maybe what we need is a "Skilled Shooter" capability, costing perhaps 1 point. You could give it to Nubians in all their guises, some English longbows, Balearic slingers, and I dare say some others. Possibly allows them to shoot as though one quality grade better, but there might be some other mechanism that would work better. Giving them an automatic plus when shooting would be too much, of course.

Troops like Janissaries would continue to be graded superior, and gain the complete set of advantages Walter outlines above

Random thoughts from the bottom of my second bottle of Leffe Brun...