Scenario evaluations

[deeter]

With the release of the Battle Pack on top of the many official and unofficial scenarios out there, it might be useful to create a rating system. Since early on, Hexwar has shown little discretion over which to include or exclude. As a result, some famous battles have really poor scenarios created for them. Magnesia comes to mind.

Having played a couple of Battle Pack scenarios, things haven't changed. Meggido is smallish and very imbalanced even in mirrored games against a human, while Raphia is quite large and well-researched. A recent tournament attempt to play through them all in sequence failed in part becuase of this imbalance.

So, is anyone interested in rating the official scenarios? We could post a list of all in chronological order and players could vote on each. These could be rated on MP balance, vs. AI, quality of play and historical accuracy using say one to four stars and then averaged based on all player's input.

Some scenarios are real gems while others are not worth playing. A rating system might make more people want to play historical battles instead of DAG all them time, and that would be a good thing.

Deeter

[davouthojo]

massina_nz has done a great job of reviewing scenarios on the wiki

http://fog-pc-wiki.wikispaces.com/Scenarios

Feel free to go in and add your own comments!
I'm limited by technology on this one - I dont know how to set up a "vote" rating for each scenario, or create a better search...happy to try out if someone can help....

[Old_Warrior]

Just a note on some of his reviews: they are based on his own impression of what the icons should be for units. I was told by Keith Martin-Smith to use the icons that went with the DAG armies of the period for the scenarios I used. Thus for the scenarios in the Decline and Fall module the Byzantine army actually is using icons from an earlier module release. Check it out. Open up the XML file for that army and trace the icon folder path. You will find that they go back to an earlier module - Triumphant Legions I believe. That is because Dara is before the Early Byzantine dates set in the DAG listing. And the same for the battles of that campaign.

I corrected any other errors I made (LH being cavalry) in a later release of the scenario. If Slitherine did not include it in the update - not my fault.

The battles are matters of HISTORY and play balance is neither here nor there. Waterloo was not a balanced battle but folks continually try and win as the French anyway. The FoG game itself cannot capture the issues of command properly that occurred at these battles. Folks are able to move units as THEY desire and to them the idea of unit anarchy (which prevailed after first contact) is to them verbotten. They like to be able to micromanage their units and by God do not let any scenario designer or programmer get in their way. (see my thread on the commanders which I posted a few days back)

If you want to remove units from the Persian army at Dara - go ahead. That would balance it but you would not have the Battle of Dara. You would have a variant of the battle. I did that for Ankara - in the historical version the Turcomen allies turned on their masters. In the variant they remain loyal.

But I was told by Keith to use the icons that were for the army of the PERIOD of time for the battle. Thus in Dara the Byzantine cavalry were not of the Early Byzantine army of the D&F module DAG army but from their PROPER period army. Dara being in that period of time before the cavalry changed to a different configuration.

Folks are welcome to copy the scenario from the game folder and edit it as a custom scenario and change it to their heart's content. Nothing of Ancient history is terribly certain as some archeologist is always digging up something to dispute the traditional historical record.

Case in point: at Austerlitz it was assumed that the Russian grenadiers were wearing the newer style shako. In fact an archeologist dug up the mitre of the early period and commented that there were so many of them that he felt that the changeover had not occurred in time for the battle. And many ancient battle sites, Dara being a good example, have been found to have occurred in a different location. If anything he should have read up on the battle first before labeling the icons as incorrect. The same for the other battles he reviewed where he says that the icons are wrong.

[Aryaman]

With the release of the Battle Pack on top of the many official and unofficial scenarios out there, it might be useful to create a rating system. Since early on, Hexwar has shown little discretion over which to include or exclude. As a result, some famous battles have really poor scenarios created for them. Magnesia comes to mind.


Deeter

Would you care to ellaborate? I would be happy to listen to your suggestion to improve it.

[keyth]

One thing to bear in mind is that some scenarios were written before 'upgrades' to the core software, so neither take them into account nor advise on their use (double moves, fog of war, evade stance, etc.). For example, the Towton version that I put together just doesn't work with double moves because the relief cavalry will always arrive on time with double moves.