Age of Belisarius - historical and design scenario questions

[GenNikolaj]

After coming to the conclusion that I lack some critical knowledge about the era (being a fan of Graves I knew "Count Belisarius" and "Anekdota", but that's all) I decided to go through the whole Procopius, especially De Bello.

Now, while Procopius was writing in a heavy stilised and, let's call it "entertaining", way, he did have competence to describe military affairs, and here go my questions:

1. Since AoB is the first DLC with 6 scenarios instead of 10 I wonder what is the reasoning behind choosing specific engagements and cutting out the others (other than "resources ran out"). Ommiting Ad Decimum seems odd to me, but I do imagine that showing the combination of psychological terror put on Gelimer combined with roman army exploiting the critical chokepoint could be difficult engine-wise (as would be the siege of Rome). Nevertheless the critical defeat suffer by Belisarius at Callinicum is absent, as is the whole campaign against Wittiges.

2. What is the reasoning behind cutting the Bucelarii bow skill by 50%? I do imagine that Procopius and Graves exaggerate their nigh-epic skill with a bow, but combined with their darts and gruelling training they should be able to kill on a distance to full extent (with darts being used defensively as is the case with Comitatenses), even with the lance and sword attached. Same goes with the Heruli, who should, to my knowledge, use bows.

3. Shouldn't the Vandal and Gothic armies be able to field more than 90% noble cavalry? While Vandals were filthy rich aristocracy, Theudahad and Wittiges forces used a lot of warband-style infantry, if I understand the sources correctly.

[Paul59]

I am away from home at the moment, so it is difficult to give a complete answer, but I will do my best:

1) We felt that Ad Decimum was an unsuitable battle for FOG2 due to the wide dispersal of the forces of both sides. The battle falls into 4 distinct stages across a very large area. It would be extremely difficult to balance, especially in MP. The other main battle in the campaign against the Vandals (Tricamarum) was a much more suitable battle for a scenario.

We already had one Byzantine v Sassanid scenario, Dara, so did not want to do another with Callinicum. When a DLC is limited to only 6 Epic battles, we try to showcase as many different armies as possible, while including at least some of the most famous battles of the period.

I could not find any suitable battles from Belisarius campaign against Wittiges, and there was an interesting and well known battle from Narses campaign against the Ostrogoths (Taginae) that deserved to be covered instead. I am not sure if the Belisarius campaign covers the Wittiges campaign.

I will leave it to RBS to answer your other questions.

Cheers


Paul

[rbodleyscott]

It is a general principle of the FOG game system (tabletop and computer versions) that non-light troops can never have a full shooting capability as well as a full impact and melee effect.

This is partly based on Byzantine manuals that say that although the ideal was to have every man in a unit fully trained with lance and bow, in practice this proved impossible to achieve.

Also previous wargames rules that allowed such combinations resulted in a desperate search to "prove" that a favourite army should have all three capabilities, and resulted in the armies that did not have the magic combos being severely neglected by players.

Rather than have this dubiously historical arms race for the different army lists, we stick to the principle above, which is at least supported by later Byzantine practice, despite their ideal being that all the men should be skilled with all of the weapons. This applies even if the men did in fact all carry all of the weapons, as the possession of a weapon does not automatically convey the capability if the men are not particularly skilled with it.

Similarly many armoured horse archers from other nations carried lances, but they don't get the lancers capability if history suggests that their favoured tactic was horse archery.

The Strategikon makes it clear that Byzantine cavalry were primarily lancers - the tactical doctrine being to charge as soon as they were close enough to the enemy, with archers shooting as the unit charged, rather than attempting to engage in prolonged archery.