What did they go for in the end?

[Eques]

Just deciding whether to go for v2. Could anyone summarise on my key points of interest:

Is shooting more or less potent or the same?

Is impact support shooting still at minus 1?

What changes did they make to skirmishers?

What changes did they make to crossbow?

What can undrilled now do that they couldn't?

What can drilled not now do that they could?

What poa does legionaries now have against tribe foot?

Who would you bet on between 6 bases of raw legion vs 8 of average trib foot?

[batesmotel]

There is a fairly complete list of changes on the Slitherine site. As a quick summary for your questions:

1) Shooting less effective for skirmishers and cavalry in a single rank due to effective range reduced to 3 MU. Protected and Unprotected cavalry now les vulnerable to shooting.
2) -1 PoA for support shooting dropped.
3) Reduced effective range is biggest change.
4) Crossbow is about the same. (I don't use them so may have missed something.)
5) Not much change for other undrilled but skirmishers now must be within 4 MU to count as close. Still 6 MU for battle troops.
6) 2 MU reduction in movement for turn 90 and move will make it harder to dash out of the way. Affects all cavalry, skirmishers and drilled foot.
7) Superior legionaries with SSword will now melee tribal foot at +POA due to reduction in armour effect to prevent one better level of armour from giving a final ++PoA.
Ignoring the difference in maneuverability, I might well have bet on tribal foot in V1. The Raw Legionaries don't get SSword so are only at a +PoA for armour anyway. This is the same in V2 but the drilled legionaries are a bit less maneuverable.

You should also keep an eye out for V2 battle reports which are slowly starting to appear.

Chris

[marty]

crossbow hits armoured and protected mounted not in one rank on a 3.

Martin

[Eques]

Well most of those changes seem reasonable, sensible, moderate and historically justifiable.

I don't see what the reasons were for fiddling with support shooting. Removing the - PoA would seem to give these troops a rather large, unfair and unhistorical advantage over their heavier opponents, further compounded by the changes to Armour. Historically, of course, support shooters would be at a disadvantage as they wouldn't be able to see their target and they would be operating in the chaotic conditions of a ferocious charge.

Slightly sceptical about making crossbows better. Nothing wrong IMO with having weapons and troop types available that are a bit rubbish. Is there any practical differences between them and longbow now? Because if not that would just be silly.

"Ignoring the difference in maneuverability, I might well have bet on tribal foot in V1. The Raw Legionaries don't get SSword so are only at a +PoA for armour anyway"

I wish they had found another way to address the Roman problem. Legionaries really were remarkably excellent soldiers and it was good to see that reflected in the game mechanics. I would have gone for making them more expensive and limiting them to 4 bases per BG.

The "better armour" change also affects other interactions eg Greeks versus Persians. The actual events of Marathon and Plataea were practically the living embodiment of a ++Melee, or even Impact, PoA.

[Eques]

What changes did they make to Knights and Cataphractii?

[bahdahbum]

Legionaries really were remarkably excellent soldiers and it was good to see that reflected in the game mechanics

Yet they lost many battles as well . It's the roman organisation on the whole that did the trick .

Manoeuvrability is now very different . You really have to read it and try it to understand .

Not that much change for Cataphracts and KN except manoeuvrability if undrilled and armoured KN who moves 5 MU

[Eques]

Legionaries really were remarkably excellent soldiers and it was good to see that reflected in the game mechanics

Yet they lost many battles as well .

A jaw droppingly small amount in the 650 years from 400BC to 250AD. During which time they were at war a lot.

[Jilu]

hmmm Dacians? did the Romans have it that easy?
The lost legions in germany?
The troops they lost in Gaul while not comanded by cesar?
390 BC ? gallics storming Rome?

ok i know i know i am unfair to these poor Romans, ok i agree but let us not forget we only have the Roman texts ... no Gallic/Dacian/iberic/German texts (except maybe for the sigfried story)

[Eques]

Oh they lost battles, but at an astonishingly small ratio considering how long they were around. And a lot of the losses were down to treachery, ambush or Rome's weird dual command system. Or were suffered by small auxiliary forces caught off guard by a revolt.

[madaxeman]

Oh they lost battles, but at an astonishingly small ratio considering how long they were around. And a lot of the losses were down to treachery, ambush or Rome's weird dual command system. Or were suffered by small auxiliary forces caught off guard by a revolt.

Is there a bug currently in the message board that means we are currently getting repeats of posts from previous threads reappearing in threads that are supposedly started as discussions about V2.0 ?

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I'm pretty sure I've read some (if not all) of these posts by Eques (the ones where he states that he believes that Romans were good enough to be worth a ++POA) on numerous previous occasions - and I also seem to have a strong recollection of numerous posts from practically everyone else on the forum responding and disagreeing - usually either on the basis of game balance or with some vaguely historical-sounding stuff about logistics and organisation.

Can someone have a look in the back end please and see if they can fix this recurring-post bug, as I feel that I've read all I need to about the Skilled Swordsman debate, and it is now almost as much a piece of ancient history as the actual Roman Empire was....

Otherwise maybe we need a new sub-forum for discussions on the subject of "I honestly believe the Romans really were that good"

[Eques]

Otherwise maybe we need a new sub-forum for discussions on the subject of "I honestly believe the Romans really were that good"

Well that's not too outrageous a statement considering the history.

It would be ludicrous to say it about the Spanish or the Persians. Or the Gauls for that matter.

But to mock someone for saying it about the Romans speaks of too slavish an adherence to trendy revisionism.

[grahambriggs]

Otherwise maybe we need a new sub-forum for discussions on the subject of "I honestly believe the Romans really were that good"

Well that's not too outrageous a statement considering the history.

It would be ludicrous to say it about the Spanish or the Persians. Or the Gauls for that matter.

But to mock someone for saying it about the Romans speaks of too slavish an adherence to trendy revisionism.

I think his point Eques is that we have had this discussion several times and it has become a bit tired. You have one view, some don't share it. And clearly the authors felt, with some justification in my view, that a ++ against barbarian foot didn't allow for the battles where the Romans lost.

There's also the issue that "won most of their battles vs barbarian foot" does not mean they need a ++ to do so. Usually, a single POA is all you need to beat the enemy. Anyway, we'll see now the rules are out. If we see Romans consistently slapped around they table by war bands we'll know it's broken. If a decent Roman general wins but with a loty of hard fighting that'll be about right.

How odd that you think that the Persians weren't good? They swept all before them and created a vast empire. In the West they defeated Medes, Babylonians, Lydians, Egyptian and the Greeks of the Eastern Aegean. In the East, they extended as far as India.They came to grief against the Western Greeks in terrain where their cavalry was of little use, and their infantry proved inferior to hoplites (well, except for routing what may have been a thin centre at Marathon).

[ShrubMiK]

>But to mock someone for saying it about the Romans speaks of too slavish an adherence to trendy revisionism.

Perhaps if you didn't spend so much time insulting the people in this forum and claiming all sorts of unsubstantiated things about their motivations you might get a better response.

Also actually appearing to listen to contrary views and engage in proper debate and analysis rather than apparently endlessly repeating what looks like "the rules have changed and they were a perfect reflection of history so now they must be broken" without any offered justification other than "but the Romans were good!" and "all their defeats were because the dog ate their homework!" might help.

And bear in mind I'm not even particularly a fan of FoG...

[ValentinianVictor]

As a Late Roman fanboy myself I would be the first to admit that there were a number of defeats at the hands of the 'barbarians' that were not down to darstardly deeds such as ambushes etc. I suspect if you looked at the entire course of Roman history and totted up the known victories and defeats then it probably evens out. The big advantage to the Romans was their ability to recover from a defeat due to the vastly superior logistical and recruitment system.

[grahambriggs]

I don't see what the reasons were for fiddling with support shooting. Removing the - PoA would seem to give these troops a rather large, unfair and unhistorical advantage over their heavier opponents, further compounded by the changes to Armour. Historically, of course, support shooters would be at a disadvantage as they wouldn't be able to see their target and they would be operating in the chaotic conditions of a ferocious charge.

From my recollections of the beta testing, the reasons for the changes to support shooting were to improve the performance of 'normal' MF archers - protected or unprotected average MF bow only. This troop type was only usually seen in v1 if compulsory because they were a lost unit waiting to happen, so often they were not used in the battle line. And yet there were a fair number of them historically. Removing the -1 isn't too big an effect for these guys. It means a 12 base unit will do one more hit at impact only.

[bahdahbum]

Historically, of course, support shooters would be at a disadvantage as they wouldn't be able to see their target and they would be operating in the chaotic conditions of a ferocious charge.

Well yes but the idea is that the shower of arrows is not meant to kill the individual soldier but to disrupt the unit . So precision is not what was asked for . Just : shoot as many arrows you can against that big unit in front of our friends ...

[mbsparta]

Persian spara against protected hoplites under V1 tended to result in hoplite victories. But the Pesian cavalry and the effective use of Immortals was always a complication for the Greeks to deal with. The Spara might have been "scrarificed" ... but Persians were no walk over.

I worry about the V2 change to this historic match up. Often the balance between history and a fun game is prettty delicate. I hope that we haven't lost some historical value simply because no one is using Spara in a tournament.

Mike B

[grahambriggs]

Persian spara against protected hoplites under V1 tended to result in hoplite victories. But the Pesian cavalry and the effective use of Immortals was always a complication for the Greeks to deal with. The Spara might have been "scrarificed" ... but Persians were no walk over.

I worry about the V2 change to this historic match up. Often the balance between history and a fun game is prettty delicate. I hope that we haven't lost some historical value simply because no one is using Spara in a tournament.

Mike B

I would have thought that the historic match up would be armoured hoplites, not protected. But I wouldn't worry too much - for protected hoplites the only change is that they take an extra hit per 6 base frontages at impact only. And they get the advantage of deploying further in, moving faster therough the Persian skirmishers, and the Immortals are hampered in manouver.

[Eques]

I suspect if you looked at the entire course of Roman history and totted up the known victories and defeats then it probably evens out.

Oh come on!

[pyruse]

If you think that statement is outrageous, its no wonder you are having problems having a sensible discussion.
I suspect the Romans lost more battles than they won - but they won more wars than they lost.