Where do I go to complain about an Army List?

[jimudon]

I have played over 70 games in the last 6 months or so, mainly as the Byzantines. it seems completely, utterly and totally impossible to beat an opponent especially historical ones. It is unbelievable that a Byzantine army could not win a few battles. Please no smart asses, saying it is not the Army list but my playing skill. Out of that many game surely one can win a few.

So who at slitherine do I complain too? Whoever created the army list for Byzantines, all four periods in DAF, did a piss pore job. It is though the Byzantine or really East Roman Empire, I get tried of saying Byzantine, could not fight there way out of a wet paper bag. The East Roman Empire lasted 600 years. They clearly had some military abilities. I understand not all the East Roman Empire military abilities can be expressed in a tactical war game, for example diplomacy, spying, assassination, etc. the intrigue, for which the East Roman Empire was known, hence the low status the East Roman Empire was held by Western Europe.

[stockwellpete]

It is a good question, Jim. I have similar feelings about the Ottoman Turks inasmuch as I believe they are poorly represented in FOG at the moment. There is a part of the Table-Top forum where you can express your ideas . . .

viewforum.php?f=53

If you go to page 3 you will see my thread about the Turks there. I didn't feel the whole process was too satisfactory though as some of the posters seemed to be irritated that I was questioning the "sacred lists" (I now call these people the Table-Top Taliban ). Other posters were much more open and we had quite a good discussion in the end. I also had a good discussion there about the Medieval Welsh. But I don't know if it had any impact at all really.

Generally the lists are very well-researched and they make a reasonable attempt at portraying each of the armies, but once you start going into the detail of the individual armies then you can find some discrepancies and problems. For example, the Ottoman horse in the game are all archer/sword with no lances so they can be bullied off the battlefield by Serbian or Hungarian knights. The reason given for this depiction of the Ottomans is that the lance was a secondary weapon and therefore does not fit the way in which the FOG system works. The Ottoman horse did have lances, of course, particularly the east European part of their army - the Anatolian part tended to be more traditional horse archers, so I think the FOG depiction is just wrong. Another example where the DAG lists can be improved, in my opinion, are the barbarian armies that eventually overran the Western Roman empire.

I am not sure how we can progress these sorts of discussions though unless the authors of the lists are prepared to engage directly in an open-minded discussion that might end up with some changes being made.

[ianiow]

I think part of the problem lies in the fact that 'bow armed cavalry' perform poorly in PC FOG due to the nature of the hex system. On the tabletop game they are considered one of the more powerful troop types. So the guys on the other boards will not be interested so much in your argements. Also there is a huge imbalance between 'average cavalry/knights' and 'superior cavalry/knights' which affects the Byzies.

The computer rules are currently being rewritten and soon we will be able to have direct imput into where we want this game to go. So hang on in there and be ready to argue your case for a better East Empire!

[batesmotel]

One problem with the Byzantines and Ottomans is that the PC games tend to be the equivalent of iugger games than are normally played with the TT rules. Try playing the Byzantines and Ottomans at 350 or 400 points (equivalent of 700-800 TT points) and I think you will find that they perform much better both because there is relatively more room for the mounted troops to maneuver and because you will bump into fewer of the troop type limits. Once the opposing army can easily have troops fmro one edge of the map to the other without any exposde flnaks, these armies become much less effective.

One significant difference from the TT rules that affects both these armies is that missile fire in the TT rules occurs for both sides in each player turn. Combined with this is that it is easier to recover from cohesion loss in the PC version because the TT rules require that a commander be with a BG in order for it to recover cohesion. So overall missile fire is less effective in the PC version for causing cohesion loss to soften up the enemy for an attack. As partial compensation for reduction in cohesion effects in the PC version, casualties from missile fire are cumalative so that over the long run casualties from bow fire tend to be higher than in the PC version than for the TT. This is another area where playing smaller games allows for more missile fire to be resolved due to a greater ratio of space to troops before a battle is decided than larger point games do.

Chris

[archita]

the most lamer army of field of glory is catalan company

[FedeM]

I hate them....

[Turk1964]

I agree play Cav type armies with 350-400pt and you will get a much bigger game.A lot of new players go for huge 1000pt Cav armies and really theres nowhere to manouver.Skilled players do well with bigger armies but beginers are far better of to play 400-500 pt armies i feel.

[flatsix518]

I've had pretty good success with the Early Byzantine. I'm 4-1-4 with them against a mix of players.