combat resolution? Non comprende!

[Morbio]

I think the comment above to 'plan for the worst' while 'hoping for the best' is good advice and should actually appear ingame. In other words, to avoid repetitions of this thread, the game needs to come clean and let newbies know how to play it. No buyer of electronic games should have to consult forums to learn how to play their game, much less be obliged to purchase 'the rules' - it should be a complete package. Yes?

Fully agree.

[IainMcNeil]

It's true that some things have changed because of the digital adaption. Casualty rates completely different because they are much more ganular on the tabletop. You either lose a base or not (representing about 25% of your battle group strength) when you get a hit. The chance of losing a base is 16.6% per hit. So 3 hits is a 50% chance.

This means the digital version can much better deal with the gradual errosion of battlegroups. The % damage may be off but if we change it there could be serious balance issues. We can certainly have a look at it. Maybe we should make each category have less variance and not overlap. E.g. 1 hit should not go to a max % that is above 2 hits min %. We've already used randonmess to determine the hits so no need to use it again to determine the spread to such a large degree.

[Polkovnik]

Seems to me that, underneath the accessible, smooth, game design (rightly praised) is a whole other game based on table-top rules that newbies like me are unfamiliar with. Not sure I would have bought the game in the first place if I'd known all this.

I thought it was always made very clear that the Digital version was based on the tabletop version.

This is from the Slitherine website, about the FOG Digitial :
"Based on the popular Field of Glory tabletop wargaming system from Slitherine, the PC version takes care of all the calculations and measurements and just leaves you to make the important and fun decisions."

Seems pretty clear to me.

[hidde]

We've already used randonmess to determine the hits so no need to use it again to determine the spread to such a large degree.

That sounds like music to my ear

[TheGrayMouser]

It's true that some things have changed because of the digital adaption. Casualty rates completely different because they are much more ganular on the tabletop. You either lose a base or not (representing about 25% of your battle group strength) when you get a hit. The chance of losing a base is 16.6% per hit. So 3 hits is a 50% chance.

This means the digital version can much better deal with the gradual errosion of battlegroups. The % damage may be off but if we change it there could be serious balance issues. We can certainly have a look at it. Maybe we should make each category have less variance and not overlap. E.g. 1 hit should not go to a max % that is above 2 hits min %. We've already used randonmess to determine the hits so no need to use it again to determine the spread to such a large degree.

I do agree the gradual erosion is very fitting for PC game that can take advantage of such tings. Also I think reducing the overlap might help a lot. In the % chart ranges there are 6-7 % overlaps from scoring one hit higher which likly gives the "wild" results players note, as opposed to the actual range bands in isolation.


**I think the missle % ranges are fine as they are.

[Javolenus]

In answer to Polkovnik, I bought FOG from Amazon UK, and here are the technical details from Amazon:

- Game play that allows key decisions to decide the results of historical battles.
- Single and 2 player head to head modes as well with an internet based multi-player system. The system is truly revolutionary and takes all the hassle out of multiplayer gaming.
- 141 different battle group types with the system with almost limitless ability to modify their individual behaviour in the game.
- Comprehensive scenario builder is included. There are graphics for 11 different terrain types with western European and arid settings.
- Play as Achaean League, Carthage, Caledonians, Gaul, Germanic Tribes, Macedonians, Spartacus Slave Revolt, Romans or even Romans vs. Romans at Pharsalus.

To be fair, Amazon do make a passing reference to tabletop wargaming in the product notes, but my point is that every impression is given that it's the player's decisions that will affect the outcome, not luck or random dice results. The Amazon product notes also state that the game is very easy for newcomers to pick up. But if that were the case, I wouldn't have felt the need to start this thread . . .

[TheGrayMouser]

I suspect many new players see the example in the first post as three attacks (I did) but this from the "manual" needs to be kept in mind:

A battle group retains the die roll from its initial impact combat in a single player turn, and uses that same die roll in all subsequent cohesion tests from losing an impact combat in a single player turn.

This is one of the things that drives me crazy in this game. I can attack with one BG, or six, and if the initial die roll is crap, I shouldn't even bother. That is to say, I don't bother, after the first attack with a crappy die roll, I divert the other five BGs to some other attack, which is totally gamey. In my view, numerical supremacy, even vast numerical supremacy and surrounding a unit on six sides, is not adequately rewarded in this game.

If luck was a significant factor, then the best players would lose a lot more.

You are suggesting that luck is not a significant factor in this game? Just because some players do better than others does not mean that luck is not a factor. Look at poker or any number of other games to see that some players are simply better than others notwithstanding the fact that luck figures into the game. I've said before that with FoG, I think that you could decide combat with a coin flip and some players would still be better than others, because it is not simply a matter of combats, but dispositions, troops selection, BG positioning, etc.

Hey 76mm, remember the premise of impact combat is that its the point of contact between the front rank troopers amd possibly a few moments of jostling immedietly thereafter. #s of men deeper in the ranks or even overlapping flanks don’t contribute.

I don’t know if you own any of the TW games but if you do try this as a way of illustrating. Make a battle w one unit of 100 men and have the opposition be 2 units of 100 men , alighn them so the 2 are over lapping equally and then charge em in… Watch the combat for the ist 10 seconds or so and you will see only the front rank of the single unit are fighting an equal # of front rankes in the 2 oppsoing units so 100vs 100 despite the fact that one side has twice as many men… Now once the units start to jostle, the two units will start to wrap aroun the single unit contributing to the combat and will gain an advantage via #’s…. The PC FOG does reflect this, or course visually and mechanic wise it is forced to do so in discreet phases, impact and melee.

Now what you are discribing is a cinundrum w ANY turn based game , which is sequence. If units had an enormous advantge from #s alone I feel it would ad to gamyness. Do you really feel a unit in reality would allow it to be surrounded on 4 or even 6 sides (assuming infantry vs infantry) No it would pull back but the turn based squence makes it very easy to surround units in such a manner. Again, this is not a fault with FOG but an issue in all turn based games. I feel FOG does mitigate tby how the impact phase is handled, but then #’s do count in melee so you can have your cake and it it too.

Also , the dice roll is only retained for Cohesion tests , not combat rolls…

[stockwellpete]

This means the digital version can much better deal with the gradual errosion of battlegroups. The % damage may be off but if we change it there could be serious balance issues. We can certainly have a look at it. Maybe we should make each category have less variance and not overlap. E.g. 1 hit should not go to a max % that is above 2 hits min %. We've already used randonmess to determine the hits so no need to use it again to determine the spread to such a large degree.

That would be smashing if you could look at this again, Iain. The table that hidde has put on shows overlaps across 2(!) levels of hits, so as it stands a unit can lose 9% strength suffering 1, 2 or 3 hits or a unit can lose 18% suffering 3, 4 or 5 hits - and that does seem very odd to me. If the overlap could be removed without upsetting the balance of the game (just off the top of my head I can't think why it would) then I think that might go along way towards addressing this issue once and for all. I do know people who have stopped playing over this issue and it is a shame because there is a lot about the game that they like. Thanks for taking the time to discuss all this with us.

[cothyso]

We had looong discussions about this gameplay results randomness, but I'm afraid we're beating a dead horse. If it would have been changed, it should have been in the game already.

I also do believe than one of the biggest influence factors are the wide-range & overlapping resulted combat casualties %s. The are also lots of other factors which doesn't feel right (take for example the missing flank impact PoA). Actually, the most important one is FoG having the combat results based on casualties %, instead on morale (which was actually the case with ancient combat: until the break point, in most of the cases the combat casualties would not exceed 5%), which is not even modeled at al in FoG, but that's another discussion.

Also, everything we know regarding the outcome of various troops confrontation results are actually statistically based. There were rabble troops beating the crap out of heavy armored troops, but those results were rare exceptions, cases not occurring so often as in FoG's combat results.

Also, the manual update, as I've said countless times before, is a MUST. Is no longer an optional thing, and no no-time-to-do-it excuses can make up for the confusion the lack of such a up-to-date documentation enflowers into the minds of newbies and veterans alike.

PS: Javolenus, the best way to learn is to have a look in the AAR sections at some commented battles, and also picking up the training games offered by some of the veterans in here which kindly offered their help. And, of course, lots of practice

[stockwellpete]

We had looong discussions about this gameplay results randomness, but I'm afraid we're beating a dead horse.

I disagree. FOG is still a relatively new game and it is obvious that the developers do listen to what the players are saying about it. Let's hope that they do re-visit this subject and eventually decide to modify how combat resolution is calculated.

[jamespcrowley]

This means the digital version can much better deal with the gradual errosion of battlegroups. The % damage may be off but if we change it there could be serious balance issues. We can certainly have a look at it. Maybe we should make each category have less variance and not overlap. E.g. 1 hit should not go to a max % that is above 2 hits min %. We've already used randonmess to determine the hits so no need to use it again to determine the spread to such a large degree.

Excellent! This could go a long way to put a damper on the excessively wide spread of results. I think if this is addressed and some effort is expended in providing a better manual, what is already a fine game system, will be a great one.

[Chock]

Whilst I agree with the people who said in response to my point that it was a very different world back when ancient battles were fought, and cavalry might indeed have gone chasing off after routed enemies, that nevertheless wasn't really the point of what I was saying, rather I was commenting on the fact that it always happens, with any unit, and since that is the case, it rather makes the notion of statistics such as 'well drilled' somewhat meaningless in the same way that statistics such as 'well equipped' become pointless with such a seemingly far too common possibility of ass-kicking by much lesser-equipped troops thanks to a rather suspect dice roll.

Field of Glory offers us the chance to play at being commanders in the field, but as we know, short of a few banner or trumpet signals from a commander atop a hill, often the army commander's job was to decide on a tactic at the start of the action whilst everyone was still lined up, since there were no radios and such to micromanage a battle once under way, which meant that having troops behave in the way one would expect was important. It also means that in order to allow us to play at directing a battle, games such as Field of Glory, Tin Soldiers, Total War, Legion Arena etc, must also let us jump into the shoes of the individual unit commanders - the, lieutenants, captains, centurions and optios - and direct those 'in the moment' when they in reality might not really have been able to be directed by their overall commander, but would still have been under the command of someone on the spot. This is where having troops behave as per one would expect from their unit descriptions and the statistics pertaining to this become important, otherwise it lessens the relevance of such statistics and traits considerably.

Some of you might be familiar with the system of control in Legion Arena, whereby orders to units can be delayed somewhat by means of a timer in order to simulate the lengthy relaying of commands to units in a battle. Being real-time command, Legions Arena is a different type of game to Fields of Glory of course, but that system nevertheless demonstrates an intelligent approach to simulating a problem for battlefield commanders in ancient times, and one which you can work with, by contrast, how can you work with simulated armies that are often uncontrollable and don't perform as one might reasonably hope based on an examination of their statistics?

The whole point of wanting to simulate being a military commander is to 'know your men' 'know your enemy' and to know the strengths, and indeed weaknesses of these, so that you can enjoy making tactical decisions in order to see how you'd stack up against the brilliance of Julius Caeasar, Alexander, Patton or whoever. But when you instead have to think about compensating for overly-random outcomes and poor follow on reactions to victorious initial engagements, then you're are into trying to herd cats, being far too concerned with many potential weaknesses as opposed to exploiting your strengths.

Don't get me wrong here. I do think Field of Glory has merit, I've got the books for my TT armies as well as the digital version, and my shelving groans under the weight of Osprey books on everything from Jagdstaffel Boelcke to the Battle of Potiers, what is more, I'll be right at the head of the queue when the digital version of Legions Triumphant becomes available, but that doesn't mean I am willing to blindly accept the poorer aspects of FoG digital, nor to ignore the suggestion that there are several things which could quite obviously be improved considerably.

Al

[deeter]

Excellent news that the developers are will to take another look at casualties. Fixing that, together with the coming map selection for initiative, are two of my biggest complaints about FoG PC.

Deeter

[batesmotel]

It's true that some things have changed because of the digital adaption. Casualty rates completely different because they are much more ganular on the tabletop. You either lose a base or not (representing about 25% of your battle group strength) when you get a hit. The chance of losing a base is 16.6% per hit. So 3 hits is a 50% chance.

This means the digital version can much better deal with the gradual errosion of battlegroups. The % damage may be off but if we change it there could be serious balance issues. We can certainly have a look at it. Maybe we should make each category have less variance and not overlap. E.g. 1 hit should not go to a max % that is above 2 hits min %. We've already used randonmess to determine the hits so no need to use it again to determine the spread to such a large degree.

I think that the average rate of losses in digital FOG should be approximately the same as it is in FOG TT. Since combat is based on modelling each BG as effectively a 4 base BG, we can use a BG which has received 3 hits as an example. On the TT, if the 3 hits were not suffered by a BG receiving more hits than it received in combat, then the BG has a 1/6 chance of suffering 25% casualties, e.g. the average loss would be 4.16% of the BG. Currently the FOG PC result for 3 hits in this situation is 5.5%, which is significantly higher than the TT. For a BG which received more hits than it received in combat and suffered 3 hits, the TT average loss would be 1/2*25%, or 12.5%. For FOG PC, the average loss is 13.5% which again is higher than the TT. So regardless of the variation in casualties received in FOG TT, the overall casualty rate is definitely higher than FOG TT, especially when additional attrition is included for less than 3 hits where there is no possibility for a base loss in FOG TT.

Based on this I think consideration should be given to lowering the overall casualty rates in FOG PC in addition to deciding whether or not the range for a given number of hits should be narrowed.

Chris

[TheGrayMouser]

@ Chock

That was well spoken, sir, even though I don’t agree with all your points

What I found intersting is how you brought up player control. I think turn based games in general, FOG in particular attracts a more mature crowd, one that cut their teeth with army men, then war boadgames and or miniatures and finally turned based pc games.. What all these have in common is the actual sence of control of picking up a peice and moving it where you want it. I think many players feel that loss of control in a reatime game, no matter how realism oriented it is… So ironically we sence the lack of realism in turn based borg movement of our troopies and want to add layers of control on top of that , whether it be phazes, leader activation rules etc al.

Now I don’t agree that cavalry always chasing routers is random, it the opposite, very predictable

I tend to agree that the translation of drilled /undrilled didn’t make it into the pc with as much effect as maybe it should. I have added to my wishlist of a new unit attribute called impetuoisty which would govern a units liklyhood to anarchy (and maybe even follow routers) vs the concept of drilled. That way you can have impetious yet drilled Swiss pikes, drilled and stolid hoplites and foaming at the mouth Gauls (impetuous and undrilled )

[TheGrayMouser]

@ Bates

as Iain pointed out there is concern for unbalancing the game if % casualties are changed too much, so I sence a very slow, conservative aproach from Hexwar regarding any such changes

I think the biggest threat is that certain armies that already are quite powerful yet at the same time are the most susceptable to actual % men lost, will become overpowered. Those armies of course are the quite numerious pike heavy armies, and to a lessor extent spear armies (although protected holites could use a boost , armoured ones cetainly don’t )

[TimW]

FOG in particular attracts a more mature crowd, one that cut their teeth with army men, then war boadgames and or miniatures and finally turned based pc games..

That would describe my background quite well - apart from I've also played real-time computer games since the early 90s (Commodore Amiga A1200 then PC). I'd actually welcome a good (i.e. historically accurate) real-time ancients/medieval game - think Take Command 2nd Manassas or Norbsoft's more recent Gettysburg game. Slitherine are already part way there with Great Battles Medieval; combine that graphical and real-time approach with better historical "roots" (and no elements of role-playing to "upgrade" your army) plus a better AI and that could really be something.

Now I don’t agree that cavalry always chasing routers is random, it the opposite, very predictable

I agree. Get shock horsemen charging and it seems to have been very difficult to get them back in hand in any period or any geographical area. I do wonder if javelin-armed cavalry (e.g. Roman auxiliaries) who would seem to have at least partially fought by missile-power (though at very close range indeed) have been as likely to behave like this.

Impetuosity should also have its limits. 300 well-drilled foot running out of a phalanx in pursuit of a few hundred enemies while the bulk of the enemy force is present, close by and still effective strikes me as unlikely - not to mention a unit of my velites which routed some Carthaginian javelinmen. Not only did the velites pursue (understandable), they pursued straight into close combat with the waiting spears of a unit of citizen spearmen who proceeded to cut the velites to pieces. I strongly suspect that historically, even if the velites commander had lost control of his troops, their own sense of self-preservation would have been enough to stop them getting into a brawl with a vastly superior enemy - who they would, under other circumstances, probably refuse to charge even if ordered to do so.

The idea of adding an "impetuosity" factor strikes me as potentially a good one. Some "crack" units (superior or better) were incredibly well disciplined, others less so. What does concern me though is that with 300 men/BG pursuits and anarchy charges result in the disintegration of an army into a horde in a way that didn't happen in real life. To take one example - the Swiss were notorious for their tendency to simply head for the enemy at high speed, but I've yet to see a historical source suggesting they did this by way of a bunch of individual companies (which is what 300 men represents in that period) breaking off from each pike-block as the urge took them. Maybe this is a function of the role command plays (or doesn't play) in FoG PC vs FoG TT with FoG PC's smaller units acting in the way the TT's (much larger in terms of numbers of men) battle groups do leading to unhistorical pursuits?

Maybe not only the victor should pursue, but a test be used to see if friendly units adjacent to the victor also move forward after the defeated enemy? Kind of an infectious pursuit similar to infectious rout/cohesion loss if you see what I mean. Anarchy charges may also make more sense if treated similarly - instead of e.g. 300 Swiss pike throwing themselves at the enemy, the entire kiel (or a substantial part of it) acts together (as the unit it is).

[hidde]

@ Bates

as Iain pointed out there is concern for unbalancing the game if % casualties are changed too much, so I sence a very slow, conservative aproach from Hexwar regarding any such changes

I think the biggest threat is that certain armies that already are quite powerful yet at the same time are the most susceptable to actual % men lost, will become overpowered. Those armies of course are the quite numerious pike heavy armies, and to a lessor extent spear armies (although protected holites could use a boost , armoured ones cetainly don’t )

Is there not almost a consensus that horde armies are too powerful as it is? Making the pikes, legionaries etc last longer could be a way to deal with that.
They wouldn't fight better but the fact they can hold out longer if they pass cohesion tests would offset the horde effect so to speak.
We don't want the balance to tip the other way though, I'll agree. But very much worth testing in my opinion.

[TheGrayMouser]

@ Bates

as Iain pointed out there is concern for unbalancing the game if % casualties are changed too much, so I sence a very slow, conservative aproach from Hexwar regarding any such changes

I think the biggest threat is that certain armies that already are quite powerful yet at the same time are the most susceptable to actual % men lost, will become overpowered. Those armies of course are the quite numerious pike heavy armies, and to a lessor extent spear armies (although protected holites could use a boost , armoured ones cetainly don’t )

Is there not almost a consensus that horde armies are too powerful as it is? Making the pikes, legionaries etc last longer could be a way to deal with that.
They wouldn't fight better but the fact they can hold out longer if they pass cohesion tests would offset the horde effect so to speak.
We don't want the balance to tip the other way though, I'll agree. But very much worth testing in my opinion.

Oh I agree, I hope they do look into and test away for balance. For me though i think one thing the game does spectacularly , is the balance between pike and legion, i would hate to see that altered and or unbalanced

[TheGrayMouser]

@ TimW

I like your idea of cascading anarchy, but because of sequencing in this game would be difficult to implement unless we had some phases introduced (which would be cool but unlikly)
Or it could be coupled with some ideas other players had regarding introducing an additional layer of leaders would command small formations.