Romans

[Lamachus435]

FoG does not cover the pushing effects, nor the disorder while pursuing or moving. If you want a really realistic depiction of what happened, you need a more powerful phalanx at impact and to some extent in melee, but there should be lots of more conditionants to the phalanx too like being more prone to disorder even in what FoG considers open ground.

It is impossible to portray such gradual disintegration of the phalanx in FOG, as the game puts all lines of the Roman battle order into one unit, therefore the use of tactical reserves by the Romans and consequently their superiority over phalanx formation have to be represented in abstract way as modifier or something.

[dave_r]

The bunnies are out of the woodwork on this one...

[shadowdragon]

3) "Traditional" Roman armies are difficult to play well for poorer / less experienced players.

Perhaps, but there are others equally (or more) difficult armies for these players, I would say Seleucids can be one of these, and they don't show so bad in the ELO Ranking.



Either that's a contradiction in logic or you will have to define by what it means to "play well".

You tell me, it was you who used first the term.

Sorry, what I meant is that if less experienced players don't do as well with Roman armies compared to Seleucid armies then by definition it's more difficult army. The question is why? On the other hand if you say they are "equally difficult to play" then you'll have to explain how you came to that conclusion. That contraction or need to define is not inherent in my statement.

[shadowdragon]

You seem to forget some other pike armies, like early successor (5 gold, 4 silver, 6 bronze), or out of period the Swiss (5 gold, 3 silver, 5 bronze).

I don't really have the time to go dig statistics that fit my beliefs, forgeting other that is not so favourable and calling other people speculators.

I opened the thread to draw attention to what for me is a problem in FOG, for me it is finished.

I did not include Early Successor since none of the top 20 players had chosen this army. I didn't include the Swiss since it's a very different army to the Macedonian / Successor armies - from a different period; and my intention was to examine a potential difference between the use of Successor type armies and traditional Roman armies - not between pike armies in general and "traditional" Roman armies - by the top players. I could have done a lot more with less effort if I had the data in electronic form, but I don't and this was the quickest, easiest thing for me to do with the time I had.

Also, I did not call you a speculator. I did point out that guessing why other people have chosen their armies, without asking them, is speculation. It cannot be otherwise.

Finally, I did not question your original thesis, only the use of the statistics, which was not originally brought up by you, if I recall. I don't have a particular belief and no need to dig out statistics to fit my non-beliefs. However, as someone who's been a professional analyst for a long, long time, I do have strong views on the use of data. My only point was to demonstrate that there is information in the data that is suggestive of the contrary view. As I stated up front, the overall rankings ARE consistent with your theory, but that this cannot be said with, from a statistical sense, high confidence. That should be okay and should still allow a rationale discourse on the subject.

You seem to be frustrated....I might be wrong, but if not that's okay we all get frustrated at times.

[shadowdragon]

The bunnies are out of the woodwork on this one...

Where are the carrots?

[Strategos69]

FoG does not cover the pushing effects, nor the disorder while pursuing or moving. If you want a really realistic depiction of what happened, you need a more powerful phalanx at impact and to some extent in melee, but there should be lots of more conditionants to the phalanx too like being more prone to disorder even in what FoG considers open ground.

It is impossible to portray such gradual disintegration of the phalanx in FOG, as the game puts all lines of the Roman battle order into one unit, therefore the use of tactical reserves by the Romans and consequently their superiority over phalanx formation have to be represented in abstract way as modifier or something.

Yeap, that is what I said: FoG does not cover it and it seems to me that in the overall the interaction is about right for the wrong reasons, which is not a major issue as long as the interactions are acceptable. Any changes in the interactions should change many other things of the basics of the game. And them we would be talking about a different game (and I am not implying that game would be worse).

[Lamachus435]

Yeap, that is what I said: FoG does not cover it and it seems to me that in the overall the interaction is about right for the wrong reasons

So the basic question is whether this interaction is about right now even for the wrong reasons, as it seems that quite a few people believe that the results of combat between individual units of legionaries and pikemen tend to be ahistorical (i.e. that the Roman battle order is inferior to the phalanx or at least does not have any meaningful superiority over it, while, at the same time, from the tournament player's point of view, the legionaries are noticeably worse than the pikemen when facing mounted troops).

[elysiumsolutions@fsmail.n]

I am a bit confused by the logic of this thread. The argument seems to be that against their historical opponents the Romans did very well. However, looking at their results in competition against non-historical opponents they dont do well. Therefore, the rules need to change.

Against historical opponents they are very tough. Skilled swords murder barbarians and the match up vs the phalanx is imho well modelled. In a themed competition they would be very popular. They are so effective vs barbarians that it is one of the reasons nobody plays barbarians.

They do not have long pointy sticks so one would imagine they would have been unhappy facing medieval knights and indeed they did have problems with cataphracts which are the closest contempory equivelant.

I dont see a need for change.

Paul longmore

[Strategos69]

So the basic question is whether this interaction is about right now even for the wrong reasons, as it seems that quite a few people believe that the results of combat between individual units of legionaries and pikemen tend to be ahistorical (i.e. that the Roman battle order is inferior to the phalanx or at least does not have any meaningful superiority over it, while, at the same time, from the tournament player's point of view, the legionaries are noticeably worse than the pikemen when facing mounted troops).

I am not certain if I got your point. I was trying to say that legions changed over time and that is how we should look at them. If we do so, we will find that when pikes won, they have an advantage against legions and viceversa. Examples:
- Pyrrhus against legions (average protected): You would have a block of eight pikes (four deep) and six hastati 3 wide for equal points. They are even at impact; in melee (if nothing happens in impact) pikes would be with a net ++ but with two dice less. If we calculate the expected results that means an expected average of 2 hits for the legionaries and 2+2/3 for the pikes. Given that pikes won most of those battles, they have a slight advantage, but they can lose if they are not lucky (as they did in Beneventum).
- Succesors: most of those legions should be armoured and some of them superior (ten pike bases against 6 legionaries bases). Case 1 (protected, superior): legions are in advantage at impact (rerolls); in melee, provided that nothing happened before, pikes are still at 2+2/3 hits whereas legions rise to 2+1/3 hits for the rerolls (I hope my Maths are ok). This means that legions have an overall advantage over pikes, but they can still be broken by pikes, the impact and the first melee being key. In this case the extra 2 bases can't be used effectively by the pikes, but to cover loses.
This can be done with the several combinations of possible legions, but in the overall I think it captures the idea that legions will win the day when they did so historically. And here we did not take into account the superior mobility of legions compared to phalanx.

In my opinion after reading some historical accounts of battles between legions and pikes, results were given by other effects, like terrain, gaps appearing in the line, etc but FoG produces quite similar results without taking them into account. I can't hardley beleive that the pila can account for those results but the PoA for impact foot balances things (even if unbelieavable since the legionaries usually did not take the advantage first). In game terms as the expected results are those we could expect and if it works and that is ok, but not really for the right reasons.

[Lamachus435]

Given that pikes won most of those battles, they have a slight advantage, but they can lose if they are not lucky (as they did in Beneventum).

But Pikes did not win these battles - Elephants and cavalry did (and Pyrrhus was rated by Hannibal as one of the Great Captains as we know).
Given somewhat confused nature of our sources (and battles themselves) it is often hard to determine the exact reason for every Roman victory, but Polybius, who had first-hand knowledge of the Roman and Macedonian tactics as well as access to contemporary sources, apparently thought that legions should win every time even without help from terrain, cavalry etc. Probably, he overstates his case but still...

I believe, that the very first post of this topic sums up advantages and disadvantages of the legionaries and pikemen quite nicely.

[shadowdragon]

Apologies but I did not notice that the results for the doubles games for each player were below the ELO graph for single games, so I missed some games for the top 20 players. Here are the results for both singles and doubles games played by the top 20 players with the Swiss as well. Make of it what you will....

Macedonian and Successor Armies
59 games : 4 X Later Ptolemaic, 22 X Alexandrian Macedonian, 20 X Later Seleucid, 7 X Graeco-Bactrian, 10 X Early Successor
17 Tournaments – placement:
Later Ptolemaic: 1 X 4th
Alexandrian Macedonian: 2 X 1st, 2 X 3rd, 1 X 5th, 1 X 7th
Later Seleucid: 2 X 1st, 1 X 3rd, 1 X 4th, 1 X 7th, 1 X 8th
Graeco-Bactrian: 1 X 8th
Early Successor: 1 X 1st, 1 X 3rd, 1 X 4th
Average Placement = 3.76

Traditional Roman
40 games: 7 X Early Republican, 4 X Mid-Republican, 29 X Late Republican
10 Tournaments – placement:
ERR = 1 X 1st, 1 X 2nd place
MRR = 1 X 7th
LRR = 5 X 1st place; 1 X 3rd place, 1 X 12th place
Average Placement = 3.00

Swiss
23 games
5 Tournaments – placement: 3 X 1st, 2 X 2nd
Average Placement = 1.40

One interesting statistic is that the top 20 players have played 1183 games (counting each double as 1/2 game), which is 7% of the total, but out of 1042 players they are only 1.9% which means they play 3.6 X as many games as the average.

[hammy]

22 games Alexandrian Macedonian: 2 X 1st, 2 X 3rd, 1 X 5th, 1 X 7th
29 games Late Republican 5 X 1st place; 1 X 3rd place, 1 X 12th place
23 games Swiss 3 X 1st, 2 X 2nd

Both LRR and Swiss look pretty good to me.
Alexandrian is not as good as either.

That would tend to suggest that if you go with pikes you need to have superior ones.

That said if you included Ian Speed's Britcon performance as evidence of Pike being good you should scrub it from the record as he had absolutely no pike in his army.

One interesting statistic is that the top 20 players have played 1183 games (counting each double as 1/2 game), which is 7% of the total, but out of 1042 players they are only 1.9% which means they play 3.6 X as many games as the average.

At the moment that is partly down to the ELO rankings having yet to fully bed in. A lot of players have rankings graphs that are still showing a steady upward trend and the more games they play the higher their rating will get.

[shadowdragon]

22 games Alexandrian Macedonian: 2 X 1st, 2 X 3rd, 1 X 5th, 1 X 7th
29 games Late Republican 5 X 1st place; 1 X 3rd place, 1 X 12th place
23 games Swiss 3 X 1st, 2 X 2nd

Both LRR and Swiss look pretty good to me.

That said if you included Ian Speed's Britcon performance as evidence of Pike being good you should scrub it from the record as he had absolutely no pike in his army.

Ah! A fellow data nut.

Ian's Britcon performance accounts for 6 games and one 1st place for the Swiss, but then again, we don't know what was in all the other entries either. Although it is hard to have a MRR army without legions.

[hammy]

22 games Alexandrian Macedonian: 2 X 1st, 2 X 3rd, 1 X 5th, 1 X 7th
29 games Late Republican 5 X 1st place; 1 X 3rd place, 1 X 12th place
23 games Swiss 3 X 1st, 2 X 2nd

Both LRR and Swiss look pretty good to me.

That said if you included Ian Speed's Britcon performance as evidence of Pike being good you should scrub it from the record as he had absolutely no pike in his army.

Ah! A fellow data nut.

Ian's Britcon performance accounts for 6 games and one 1st place for the Swiss, but then again, we don't know what was in all the other entries either. Although it is hard to have a MRR army without legions.

It would be difficult to have a LRR army with no legions.

It would definitley seem that from looking at the performance of top players with Romans and Pikes though that Romans are perfectly capable of handling themselves in the right situation. I suspect that a good chunk of those results are in 25mm though.

[shadowdragon]

Ian's Britcon performance accounts for 6 games and one 1st place for the Swiss, but then again, we don't know what was in all the other entries either. Although it is hard to have a MRR army without legions.

It would be difficult to have a LRR army with no legions.

It would definitley seem that from looking at the performance of top players with Romans and Pikes though that Romans are perfectly capable of handling themselves in the right situation. I suspect that a good chunk of those results are in 25mm though.

Sorry about not including the LRR. Of course, the must have legions. In terms of how few legionnaires (excluding velites) one could field, at 800 pts, one could have as few as 12 bases (2-3 BG) for an LRR army but you need at least twice that just for hastati & principes for an MRR army. That's based on spending the maximum number of points on other troop types.

If what you say about 25mm is true, then Roman's doing well is a question of table size which has been discussed elsewhere.

[DavidT]

It would definitley seem that from looking at the performance of top players with Romans and Pikes though that Romans are perfectly capable of handling themselves in the right situation. I suspect that a good chunk of those results are in 25mm though.

Being responsible for 4 of the 10 placings for Traditional Roman Army results in the top 20 statistics, I can confirm that these 4 were with 15mm armies.

[Strategos69]

I am rescuing this topic because I have a question about Romans. As far as I know, hastati and principes can't interpenetrate when fleeing through triarii without making them drop a level. Shouldn't that be allowed in a historical basis? Wouldn't it be the same at least for Marian and Imperial legions? It is not a line relief, but definetely an encouragement to deploy legions in several lines as they were historically and also a way to improve legions against phalanxes.

[LambertSimnel]

I am rescuing this topic because I have a question about Romans. As far as I know, hastati and principes can't interpenetrate when fleeing through triarii without making them drop a level. Shouldn't that be allowed in a historical basis? Wouldn't it be the same at least for Marian and Imperial legions? It is not a line relief, but definetely an encouragement to deploy legions in several lines as they were historically and also a way to improve legions against phalanxes.

You may not be able to interpenetrate, but if you put your triarii behind the junction of 2 front line units, fleeing hastati/principes can (if I read the rules correctly) shift sideways to avoid the routing through the triarii

[Strategos69]

You may not be able to interpenetrate, but if you put your triarii behind the junction of 2 front line units, fleeing hastati/principes can (if I read the rules correctly) shift sideways to avoid the routing through the triarii

That's true, it is the old story about supporting BG's in column. But I can't see why that historical movement could not be allowed when the rules have a mechanism to depict it. In fact, it would be more interesting for Marian Romans so that they can have a very effective second line.

[mbsparta]

What I would like is to see measures taken to make Republican and Early Imperial Romans more competitive, so that they are playable in a tournment, using legionnaries as they're main strike arm, not a swarm of auxilias.

The Republican and Imperial Roman legionarii are perfectly competitive, the issue with the Dom Rom swarm is that the auxilia are too useful for a number of reasons. The right way to rectify this is to address the issues around the auxilia not to apply a spurious boost to the legionarii.

If I were doing a refight of the major battles of the Romans against the Hellenistic armies I'd always put my money on the Romans. The reality of the fight is that Superior legiones have the advantage at Impact over the Average phalanx (these being, I think, the correct ratings for most of these battles) and if the phalanx drops a cohesion level it is toast. If the impact does not result in a cohesion drop for the phalanx the Romans are at a disadvantage, however, their better quality is usually enough to keep them going in a touch fight until the phalanx does lose a round and cohesion, at which point they cut through the phalanx.

IMO it is a nicely judged interaction which reflects the history rather well.

We must all being playing different versions of FoG. I have a Mid-Republican army, 2x Late Republican Armies and a Principate army. We/I play all four extensively almost always against historical opponents. With the exception of the Roman Skilled-Swords ability to crush barbarians, I believe that FoG, by far, captures the Roman army better than any rule system. Pike armies are a challange, as they should be. A frontal attack against steady pike is a loosing effort for the Romans, as it should be. Nik is 100% on target with his comments.

Tournaments are a terrible way to measure the historic results of rules and armes. The ability of the player coupled with lucky or unlucky dice determine the winner in most every tournament type game I play. Be careful what you do to the Romans in 2.0. They work perfectly in 1.0.

Mike B