A few thoughts after 20 or so games

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markm
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A few thoughts after 20 or so games

Post by markm »

After about 20 games of FoG I think I am begining to get a grip of the meta game.

In general I am very happy with how the game plays/flows and other than the tweaking we are doing to the rules I only have one area where there is some concren.

This is with troop pointing. Specifically Elite and Poor troops.

LF Avg UnP Jav costs 4 pts. The same but Poor costs 2. No problem here with a 50% discount.

But when we get to better troops eg. Armoured Roman Legionaries - HF, Arm, Drilled, SSM, IF, the average costs 11 and the Poor 9, or an 18% discount - not so good for the Poor.

I think that the problem lies with the Cost of Capabilities Table which takes no account of the value by grade of troops. A bow is worth 'more' to a Superior troop type than to a Poor troop type, and is even worse with mutliple armed troop types.

A possible solution would be to have a graded cost in the CoCC chart, but the points system is not granular enough to cope with that. You could double all points costs to increase granularity but we are probably too far down the road for that.

On the up-side, everyone faces the same issues, and if Good Poor troops (you know what I mean) are not value for money then no one will use them in any quantity.

Anyway, just my food for thought, and if it's the only problem I can think of, then someone, somewhere must be doing a decent job!
rogerg
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Post by rogerg »

We have discussed this one before. I tend to agree with you, I would rather see the better equipped poor troops be under priced than the other way round. However, this is a very difficult one to get correct. The only real proof of how this works is the competition armies. It will be interesting to see what turns up at the Roll Call competition.

It is apparent that the authors have done a lot of work on the lists, so we may be too far down the line to change anything. On the positive side, the game is now at a stage where this is our concern and not the actual play rules. A game of DBM last night was a nice reminder of how much I want to be playing more FoG in the future.
nikgaukroger
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Post by nikgaukroger »

Regarding the lists points costs shouldn't be too difficult to change until quite late in the process I would think as they are unlikely to affect the format and layout of the lists.
rbodleyscott
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Post by rbodleyscott »

rogerg wrote:I tend to agree with you, I would rather see the better equipped poor troops be under priced than the other way round.
I disagree. One of the complaints about DBM 3.0/3.1 was that it encouraged "wall of crap" armies.

Well equipped poor troops should be an Achilles heel. Fielding such troops frequently led to disaster because they promised more than they could deliver.

I would submit, however, that they were relatively uncommon because:
a) the goverment would try to avoid spending lots of money on equipment for crap troops.
b) possession of good equipment would be a morale boost in itself, and in the case of troops supplying their own equipment would be an indication of a reasonable level of military preparedness.

Hence the points system should encourage badly equipped poor troops, and discourage well-equipped poor troops. Thus badly equipped poor troops should be "correctly" cost-effective, and well-equipped poor troops should be slightly less than cost-effective.

This, of course, is only a point of view, but nevertheless one with a certain logic behind it, even if some may not agree with it.
shall
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Post by shall »

To take a slightly different tack on everything....

At the end of the day the points system should ecnourage all troops t be of interest to suitably minded character and balanc the pwoer of the game.

What I can say is that in testing so far the points levels now make me think twice about everything on the list and I am designing armies more around HOW THEY WILL WORK AS AN ARMY rather than seeing troops who are either a bargain or to be avoidee.

This - after we have all play tested a fair bit - is the acid test of whether it works:

1) Does it keep armies broadly equal in clout

AND

2) Does it encourage variety of troops types and armies


The last 2 iteration of the points ahve got me to a persoanl yes on both of these - and in fact I am trying out walls of poor spearmen and bowmn at present - when combined with a few punch unit they seem rather resilient - alebit a bit scary to table

Si
neilhammond
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Post by neilhammond »

shall wrote:The last 2 iteration of the points ahve got me to a persoanl yes on both of these - and in fact I am trying out walls of poor spearmen and bowmn at present - when combined with a few punch unit they seem rather resilient - alebit a bit scary to table

Si
Yes, I used a biblical army last Tuesday with three poor units. Its a bit sad to have to reroll those 6's, but very satisfying when you roll a lot of 5's.

Neil
rbodleyscott
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Post by rbodleyscott »

neilhammond wrote:
shall wrote:The last 2 iteration of the points ahve got me to a persoanl yes on both of these - and in fact I am trying out walls of poor spearmen and bowmn at present - when combined with a few punch unit they seem rather resilient - alebit a bit scary to table

Si
Yes, I used a biblical army last Tuesday with three poor units. Its a bit sad to have to reroll those 6's, but very satisfying when you roll a lot of 5's.

Neil
My Francs archers shot a few chickens yesterday. (And missed a few too).
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