Solo Alexander Campaign

[bloodphoenix]

Some of this information duplicates a recent post under "Single Player", but I wanted to give more detail.
As I said over on that thread:

"Multi-player online is where this game really shines. But that can involve waiting (sometimes days) for your opponent to play a turn. Sometimes its nice to just set down and play out a whole battle in an hour or so, and get the feel of momentum building. For that matter, one of the things this game lacks is any kind of ranking system in the game postings...so until you memorize the names of the players who are um...beyond your ability?...a relative novice can encounter many one-sided battles with masters. If you tweak the game balance, playing against the AI can be good practice."

"I've actually played a series of games recently against the AI that have been very enjoyable, based on a "Solo Alexander Campaign" that I found on a wargame blog online."

Many of you who have been war-gamers long enough will remember the days before computers made games like this possible, and before there was even lousy A.I. opponents. There were times when opponents just weren't available, and war-gamers who were unwilling to let their hobby gather dust had to be very ingenious in coming up with methods of solitaire play. It would never replace a human opponent of course, but it could be entertaining. As much as matches with my fellow humans appeal to the social and competitive parts of me, when I want some quiet time to myself, I do still enjoy single-player games if I give the computer enough advantage to make it interesting. I also have a decided preference for some sort of campaign to give context to the battles I fight, even if only in an abstract sense.

What I've been using lately, and recommend to anyone who feels similar, is this simple Solo Alexander Campaign, originally designed for DBA but easily adapted. http://balagan.info/alexander-the-great ... mment-2831

Someday I may try to incorporate all the rules he outlines there, for random events and such, but so far I've just been using the opponent list as a battle generator. Not every DBA army that it lists is actually present in FoG Digital, and you can handle that however you like.
I've simply played against each opponent in turn, not "invading" the next one until I conquer the present adversary with a sufficiently crushing victory. To off-set the lackluster abilities of the AI, when I go into the army designer, I pick the point level based on the size battle I want, and then simply don’t spend all the points before I save the army. For my first test run, I built a 600 point Alexandrian army with only 500 points worth of units. The computer, of course, spends a full 600 on whichever army I select as my opponent. Based on the outcome so far, I'm likely going to increase the differential to 200, and you should feel free to use whatever level makes it interesting for you. (I say this fully realizing that for some of the game's expert players, no matter how large a handicap you give the computer, for you it will feel like shooting pigeons in a barrel).

Since I'm trying to recreate a historic campaign, when choosing units I try to be historically accurate, which also adds to the challenge by avoiding the "min/maxing" you so often see in player-vs-player matches. (How many of us have played an ancient era match and found that the enemy army is composed entirely of the best cavalry and heavy infantry they can buy, with not a peltast in sight?) I treat Alexander, naturally, as an Inspired Commander commanding an elite unit of Companions. Wanting to preserve the historic feel, I play him the way he behaved in battle, leading from the front with often reckless courage. As a result, since FoG has rules for Generals being killed, he sometimes dies! If he is killed in battle (which I treat as “wounded” to keep the campaign going!) or his unit is eliminated or routed, I treat the battle as a loss for the Macedonians regardless of rout point totals. If you want to play the campaign as written, and want the extra challenge, if Alexander dies the campaign ends: you lose - game over!

The resulting battles have very much the right feel for a game from Alexander’s campaigns, and are unlike any you see with equal-point matches with a human player.. The Macedonian army will tend to be small anyway, as its high-quality units are individually more expensive, when you then give the A.I. additional points, it becomes very much a battle of quality vs quantity, and a real challenge to stem the enemy tide with your smaller force, making desperate holding actions on parts of the field while you concentrate elsewhere to turn a flank and crush the enemy. The mediocre command abilities of the computer don't seem out of place, given how outmatched many of his opponents were. If you wrote an after-action report of these battles, they would SOUND like a description of one of Alexander's victories over an army that outnumbered him many times over. And yet, they are not total cake-walks.

I hope someone gets some enjoyment from this suggestion!

[Miletus]

The solo Alexander campaign is an excellent piece of work and a great resource for providing a framework for FoG battles!
This link will take you to the article that was one of the inspirations that the author drew on for his Alexander campaign (see also the comments in the discussion section, which contain more ideas and links):

http://solowargamer.wordpress.com/2010/ ... g-part-ii/

Cheers,
Miletus