A question of Fatigue.

[madcam2us]

Hello,

Still struggling with Med Knights and their ability in open settings.

Played another game last night where the knights steam-rolled their way to victory. 1 BG took on 3 BGs of lance armed cav in succession. Yes, if I had the time/space, I should have worked the flanks. But that is not always possible and the die rolls were not kind. However, where does FoG introduce fatigue? Meaning, I was feeding fresh BG into a combat vs a BG of knights that was fighting every round.

Not a question of feeding the BGs in piecemeal. I set up the attack following echelon waves, which should be a viable tactic, IMO. But due to being down a POA in impact and subsequent melees, the knights 50/50 chance of hitting more than offset the numbers issues at 1/3 the chance to hit.

Same game saw another 2 BGs of knights roll into 2 - 12xHF, IF/Sw with general. Again, some of the dice favored the knights early on, but we saw the knights bounce 3 times without losing any of their impetus.

Was fatigue ever playtested?

In the AAR, we thought perhaps troops depending on the charge (shock-troops) should have some penalty (fatigue) when fighting over prolonged periods of time. Something like:

Armored mounted troops that charge 2x in succession must pass a cohesion test or become disordered prior to the 2nd charge.

Troops receiving a charge whilst engaged in combat currently have no penalty and negates a proven tactic of the echelon attack. We thought perhaps introducing a disorder factor might be in order...

Something like: troops engaged in combat that receive a charge must pass a cohesion test or become disordered for impact.

We thought it shouldn't be automatic that the two devolve as there are probably many examples that discount the above.

Thoughts?

Madcam.

[philqw78]

Record keeping and rule complications. 7th edition/Warrior did/do it. They weren't very popular. The odds should mean that they eventually will lose, sometimes, even often they don't

[dave_r]

It was tried in seventh and didn't work.

Too complicated to try and maintain balance with historical accurateness - During the crusades the knights carried out a forced march where they effectively were permanently charging - can't be simulated if you bring fatigue in. Historically they charged all day which is exactly what fatigue prevents.

It makes skirmisher armies too powerful as the Knights just sit there and recover whilst getting peppered with arrows which is exactly what they didn't do.

Can I suggest you re-think your tactics with regards to dealing with knights?

Cavalry should (and indeed did) get beaten by knights historically - why would you expect this to be different in FoG? Don't fight them, if you find your self in the position where you have to then you perhaps need to try a skirmisher screen or choose different terrain - Knights don't like open spaces where people can get behind them / around them. So take open ground as terrain? Use the inherent advantages Cavalry have against Knights - i.e. their manoever capability.

Heavy Foot (i.e. offensive spearmen or pikemen) are very capable of dealing with knights - use these, rather than inferior mounted. Impact Foot Swordsmen shouldn't be able to deal with knights, they are evens at impact and minus at melee. Knights often reformed to re-charge which is exactly what the break off move simulates - they didn't hang around to get involved in an protracted melee as that negated a lot of their advantages.

Instead of trying to invent rules to enable Cavalry to beat Knights perhaps it is worth saying that Cavaly shouldn't be used against Knights as they will lose - so use something else?

[madcam2us]

Hi Dave,

Always agree tactic's are important. And I'm still trying to sort 'em out. In a straight fight, Knights SHOULD win. However, they still do with 3:1 odds against? Perhaps it was freakish with the cav/kn fight we had, but an echelon attack by a fresh group whilst the knights are engaged is not rewarded. IMO, this is not correct. Numbers should tell eventually, and while in melee things are all messy, but at impact one would assume the lance armed cav hitting an engaged BG of Kights would cause some serious damage.

NOt all armies get the off/def spearman. And that is my issue. In period, Med Knights have all the enemies one would expect with all the tools capable of dealing with them. Out of period I'm not sold. I was playing Feoderati Roman. The BGs of HF were 12 strong with a TC leading the way. I even had 2x BG of LH in the rear attempting to pepper the knights and ready for the charge, but the foot just weren't able to hang on.

I understand you to say knights fought all day without a decrease in their ability to do so. I say introducing "fatigue" by having to take a cohesion test if they want to charge 2x in a row is not all that difficult to add. It would still allow those knights to charge all day as you say they did historically. However, it also makes it possible they just got tuckered out underneath all that heavy armor and the whippin about the battlefield.

Madcam

[stecal]

If by "charging all day" you mean walking forward in a tight formation with sporadic periods of activity I'll buy it, otherwise I call BS. No way the riders or the horse had the stamina.

I think fatigue and attrition would be best represented by removing the +2 modifier to the winners's death rolls. It is very frustrating to cause 2 hits every turn but lose combat and the winners never suffer. One rule I always liked from Napoleons Battles was that the winner always took a single fig loss in any combat. Eventually they melt away after continous combat.

[rogerg]

The intended level of simulation is not one BG to one unit. Rather, a BG represents several units. A cavalry attack in echelon might be the mode of operation of units of a single BG. Whether they use it, or how effective it is, gets accounted for in the dice rolls of the BG.
When a second BG hits the overlapping knights, the assumption is that fresh knight units from the BG charge into the newly arriving cavalry units in the second BG.

On the table it may look like single units are engaged. Some of the manouvres necessary for the game to work can reinforce that impression. However, the area occupied by a stationary melee between two opposing BG is repesenting a lot of low level movement where the army commander can only hope that everyone is carrying out their combat drill correctly. The outcome of the fight is the level he (the player) is concerned with.

There have been similar comments with regard to Roman infantry exchanging lines in melee. This is all assumed in the combat strength of the BG. As the army commander in FoG, a player operates above the level of commanding individual units. He is moving whole wings into position.

[bobm]

Assuming you're all in two ranks, wouldn't you have been better joining the fight alongside your first unit, thereby having more dice to get your 5's and 6's? Also why are the knights automatically up one in melee? Are they also better armoured than you?

[ethan]

Hi Dave,

Always agree tactic's are important. And I'm still trying to sort 'em out. In a straight fight, Knights SHOULD win. However, they still do with 3:1 odds against?

From your initial description it sounds to me like it hit one after the other. If instead you had hit two squarely with the third maneuvering onto the knights flanks, even after the knights had routed one or both other Cv groups I think the Cv would have won.

One of the tough calls in FoG to make is use a "spare" BG to provide an overlap or maneuver onto the flanks for a deadly flank charge. I have seen it go both ways as to what is right.

[vercingetorix]

It seems to me that keeping a record of fatigue would make the game really complicated?

just my opinion

[Ghaznavid]

Always agree tactic's are important. And I'm still trying to sort 'em out. In a straight fight, Knights SHOULD win. However, they still do with 3:1 odds against? Perhaps it was freakish with the cav/kn fight we had, but an echelon attack by a fresh group whilst the knights are engaged is not rewarded. IMO, this is not correct. Numbers should tell eventually, and while in melee things are all messy, but at impact one would assume the lance armed cav hitting an engaged BG of Kights would cause some serious damage.

NOt all armies get the off/def spearman. And that is my issue. In period, Med Knights have all the enemies one would expect with all the tools capable of dealing with them. Out of period I'm not sold. I was playing Feoderati Roman. The BGs of HF were 12 strong with a TC leading the way. I even had 2x BG of LH in the rear attempting to pepper the knights and ready for the charge, but the foot just weren't able to hang on.

Odd, if anything I found Kn rather weak vs. HF so far. If the foot lack spear or pike you may beat them but all to often you loose a base in the process and if the foot stays steady (not that unlikely if they got a general and rear support) the knights are instantly in trouble. If the foot is spearmen things are looking grim from the onset and pikes... well that's simply suicidal.

Same with your cavalry fights unless the Cv currently engaged with the Kn is already more dead then alive feeding in additional BGs until you have 3 times the numbers should wear the knights down. So either you roll abysmal or you allowed the Kn to engage you more or less piecemeal.

[madcam2us]

My Cav were 2x2 so I did have equal dice to his, 2 BGs to his one, except for becoming Disrupted with the first.

@Ethan - I attempted to work the flanks but the two BGs that were frontal, didn't fight very well and the combats were over before I was able to complete the flanking movement. The dice were unkind, but that has happened all too often with my Cv/Kn interaction.

@Vercingetorix - "Fatigue" is easily recorded. If they fail the cohesion test, they go disorderd. They recover disordered in the normal way, but they have to charge in that condition.

@Ghaznavid - The initial BG of Cav failed its charge test. In impact it lost and went disrupted, then failed the death roll. In the melee phase, the 2nd BG went to overlap whilst the 3rd worked around the flank. After the melee, the first BG lost again, rolled with modifier's 2 and went broken, the second lost its melee and went disrupted and failed its death roll. To top it off, had to test for seeing routed friends and failed that!

Obviously some pants! filled dice, but the concept of echelon charge, or feeding BG into the melee is sound. My fatigue query is more for the combat vs the HF when 4+ rounds of charging by the knights doing minimal damage (only drops in cohesion) but still fresh enough to continue again and again. Thinking it over now, I'd be more than willing to say ANY BG involved in combat more than 2x in a row would have to test to avoid disorder (fatigue).

Madcam.

[hammy]

In my experience knights charging heavy foot more than once seldom end up as a shiny new BG. The knights either lose cohesion or lose bases. One way or the other they are depleted.

I know that fatigue was not part of the game when I started playtesting a couple of years back. I do remember 7th edition where you kept track of fatigue for every unit and once you had accumulated 5 fatigure that was it for hard charging troops. I hated recording the stuff.

For me the abstraction of fatigue, diruption etc. all into cohesion works well almost all the time.

[madaxeman]

@Ethan - I attempted to work the flanks but the two BGs that were frontal, didn't fight very well and the combats were over before I was able to complete the flanking movement.
(snip)
Obviously some pants! filled dice, but the concept of echelon charge, or feeding BG into the melee is sound.
Madcam.

I've found feeding extra units into an existing melee - or getting to flank an existing melee - in FoG to be very difficult, and often very risky (or, put another way, its definately not a "sound" concept in FoG!!). If your supporting (ie overlap providing) troops aren't in and fighting right from the outset of the combat there will always be 2-4 or more rounds of fighting taking place before they get there as either

a/ Enemy charges in, impact combat, melee combat, you charge in (2 rounds)
b/ Your initial charge, impact, melee, enemy phase melee, your supporting charge in (3)
or, even worse
c/ enemy charges in, impact, melee, you move up your supporters into charge range (another melee), enemy melee again, you charge in the new unit (4 rounds)

..in which time your initial BG may well have broken - or won. But if you want to throw more stuff in there, its probably not because you are well set to win....

The other thing I have seen is that feeding in additional units to a combat isnt actually going to do much to help those of your own troops already committed. The key mechanic in FoG is that its important whether your unit loses, not if its opponents lose, nor even if your "side" wins overall in a big multi-unit combat. Doing more hits to an enemy unit by adding in an overlap unit isn't going to help your already committed units "not lose" unless it blocks bases who were previously overlapping you - or your new unit charges in and damages the enemy cohesion at impact. So, moving into an overlap position in the movement phase is often a bit of a mugs game to be honest as it will make no odds to those units of your side already fighting

I've actually found you are often better off running away from combats your guys are losing, so as to avoid the cohesion test for broken friends, rather than trying to help them by joining in the fray !!

The obvious answer of course is not to get caught not in a battle line at any time !!

[SirGarnet]

Penalizing engaged BGs for being engaged from the front would simply foster minimum size BGs and encourage "taggng" larger BGs at one ends with just one base width to set up the next charge on the rest of the BG. Not a good rules idea to encourage that.

Echelon attacks with successive Impacts on the enemy front to inflict cohesion losses do make sense IF you have the Impact advantage (or even if you are better in Impact than in Melee). It can make sense to charge frontally to soak up overlaps adversely affecting friendlies in Melee, but that's to stave off defeat due to the friendlies being in that situation in the first place.

Engaged BGs do suffer from being fixed in place and unable to do anything to prevent a charge on their flank, though their friends might contest the attempt. Even if uncontested, flank charges usually take forethought one to three turns ahead of time. Even charging into the flank of pursuers requires positioning in anticipation of the situation. It's not the easiest thing to manage except perhaps on the end of the enemy line.

___________________________
Fatigue is tiresome.

[flameberge]

The intended level of simulation is not one BG to one unit. Rather, a BG represents several units. A cavalry attack in echelon might be the mode of operation of units of a single BG. Whether they use it, or how effective it is, gets accounted for in the dice rolls of the BG.
When a second BG hits the overlapping knights, the assumption is that fresh knight units from the BG charge into the newly arriving cavalry units in the second BG.

On the table it may look like single units are engaged. Some of the manouvres necessary for the game to work can reinforce that impression. However, the area occupied by a stationary melee between two opposing BG is repesenting a lot of low level movement where the army commander can only hope that everyone is carrying out their combat drill correctly. The outcome of the fight is the level he (the player) is concerned with.

There have been similar comments with regard to Roman infantry exchanging lines in melee. This is all assumed in the combat strength of the BG. As the army commander in FoG, a player operates above the level of commanding individual units. He is moving whole wings into position.

I think this post sums it up pretty well. One BG does not represent 1 unit and so like rogerg said, fresh troops might be fighting every new charge while the exhausted troops are resting.

[IanB3406]

Face it Jeske. These Patsies of yours have fallen from greatness. They will not only get hammered by medievals but by any other decent Roman army as well. They are the Mound Builders of FOG.



Ian

[madaxeman]

Echelon attacks with successive Impacts on the enemy front to inflict cohesion losses do make sense IF you have the Impact advantage (or even if you are better in Impact than in Melee).

Im still skeptical about this.

For each round of "impact" where you may have the advantage there will be 2 rounds of "melee" where you may not, and where you will be overlapped (as otherwise there are no enemy bases available to charge at!).

Much better to slam the whole lot in first thing IMO

[petedalby]

Much better to slam the whole lot in first thing IMO

I agree. Big Impact BG plus Commander equals maximum threat!

Pete

[madcam2us]

Face it Jeske. These Patsies of yours have fallen from greatness. They will not only get hammered by medievals but by any other decent Roman army as well. They are the Mound Builders of FOG.



Ian

Yea, but you'd still be hard pressed to compete with 'em!

Obviously the authors are as anti-R*m@n as the other was pro!

C'mon! Just because they were the army that lost the empire, doesn't mean they should suck so bad!

Madcam

[paulcummins]

FOG anti roman?

not convinced by that - Elite, armoured, Impact Foot, Superior Swordsman (a POA seemingly only there for Romans)?