Effect of Generals- statistical study

[LDiCesare]

Also experience and effectiveness changes all the calculations made in the first post. Without general, an unit with +4 to minimum roll (i.e. +2 experience and 2 effectiveness, nothing to write a book about) has ... 50% chance to have a 10.

That's not at all what's implied by the manual. The manual says the +4 minimal roll implies a re-roll, if so the range would be 5-10 with a standard distribution so 16.6[6]% of rolling 10.
If you say that the +4 is actually added to the roll and then capped at 10, it changes everything regarding experience; so what's the actual behavior?
The one you described, or the one in the manual?

[PDiFolco]

Why the "It's strong (implied too strong), lets nerf it, because obviously not historical? "

There are not shortage of examples in history, from antiquity to modern day where a good general is just instrumental to victory. And the reverse. A bad general, even leading a large body of troop, can be soundly beaten.

Also experience and effectiveness changes all the calculations made in the first post. Without general, an unit with +4 to minimum roll (i.e. +2 experience and 2 effectiveness, nothing to write a book about) has ... 50% chance to have a 10.

So please revise with that in mind.

Sure... problem is not that they're powerful, but rather that there's too much difference between a mostly useless 0* general and a 1*. Plus their stats are random and you don't necessarily get a balanced pool.
But it's a minor quibble for this hugely excellent game

[PDiFolco]

Also experience and effectiveness changes all the calculations made in the first post. Without general, an unit with +4 to minimum roll (i.e. +2 experience and 2 effectiveness, nothing to write a book about) has ... 50% chance to have a 10.

That's not at all what's implied by the manual. The manual says the +4 minimal roll implies a re-roll, if so the range would be 5-10 with a standard distribution so 16.6[6]% of rolling 10.
If you say that the +4 is actually added to the roll and then capped at 10, it changes everything regarding experience; so what's the actual behavior?
The one you described, or the one in the manual?

They're 2 effects
Experience/freshness give a bonus to att/def which is the same as if it were applied to the roll
And it gives a reroll low die ability changing the 1-10 range to 4-10 for example (it's not a floor to one roll, you reroll until score is higher)
So indeed a +3 advantage is more or less the same than having a 2* general, but it's more random.

[ledo]

In overall result (win/loss) I'm pretty happy with it, but I would like more damage to enemy troops in some winning engagements. Some damage taken when the result is close but in your favour would be good, so a good general will likely beat a bad general all else equal, but can be worn down over multiple engagements if not properly replenished.

It runs me the wrong way when you have too many battles Ina row with minimal or no damage, regardless of general skill if the terrain and troop counts arent horribly imbalanced.

[ReneTS]

I like that you never know if you will have a good general, and have to be careful about losing your good ones is a battle. More traits both good and bad, is what I am hoping will be added at some point.

[loki100]

...

It runs me the wrong way when you have too many battles Ina row with minimal or no damage, regardless of general skill if the terrain and troop counts arent horribly imbalanced.

I think of those engagements as typical of the relatively major skirmishers that occured as two major armies came close to each other and tested out options/looked for an advantage. So yes, they are indecisive in themselves, but the balance of losses starts to tilt the wider campaign one way or the other

[ledo]

...

It runs me the wrong way when you have too many battles Ina row with minimal or no damage, regardless of general skill if the terrain and troop counts arent horribly imbalanced.

I think of those engagements as typical of the relatively major skirmishers that occured as two major armies came close to each other and tested out options/looked for an advantage. So yes, they are indecisive in themselves, but the balance of losses starts to tilt the wider campaign one way or the other

Well with lopsided troop numbers that's fine to me, but when I wipe out 10-12 units without taking more than a few effectiveness point losses, I feel it's a little bit too much. If the enemy is disadvantaged they might either retreat from the field, losing some of their troops but not all, and less than if they stood and fought. If the enemy decides to stand and fight, then the attacking should still take somewhat significant losses in most cases. It should be pretty rare to take no (or almost no) losses battle after battle, an army should be worn down by consistent fighting even in winning engagements, unless it stops to rest and regroup.

[MoLAoS]

...

It runs me the wrong way when you have too many battles Ina row with minimal or no damage, regardless of general skill if the terrain and troop counts arent horribly imbalanced.

I think of those engagements as typical of the relatively major skirmishers that occured as two major armies came close to each other and tested out options/looked for an advantage. So yes, they are indecisive in themselves, but the balance of losses starts to tilt the wider campaign one way or the other

Well with lopsided troop numbers that's fine to me, but when I wipe out 10-12 units without taking more than a few effectiveness point losses, I feel it's a little bit too much. If the enemy is disadvantaged they might either retreat from the field, losing some of their troops but not all, and less than if they stood and fought. If the enemy decides to stand and fight, then the attacking should still take somewhat significant losses in most cases. It should be pretty rare to take no (or almost no) losses battle after battle, an army should be worn down by consistent fighting even in winning engagements, unless it stops to rest and regroup.

Its pretty typical for armies to lose units even in prolonged battles. Every turn in this game is a year. When Carthage lost all their stuff at the battle in their homeland Rome took like 2500 casualties. Carthage lost like 20k. The mechanics are realistic but seems like you just disagree with the presentation of effectiveness in FoGE. When you fight a battle in FoG2 you take realistic losses. But when it converts back to FoGE you still get the same red and orange corners situation. You don't lose the actual units. The abstraction isn't saying units don't take losses, its just representing them in a particular way.

[ledo]

I think of those engagements as typical of the relatively major skirmishers that occured as two major armies came close to each other and tested out options/looked for an advantage. So yes, they are indecisive in themselves, but the balance of losses starts to tilt the wider campaign one way or the other

Well with lopsided troop numbers that's fine to me, but when I wipe out 10-12 units without taking more than a few effectiveness point losses, I feel it's a little bit too much. If the enemy is disadvantaged they might either retreat from the field, losing some of their troops but not all, and less than if they stood and fought. If the enemy decides to stand and fight, then the attacking should still take somewhat significant losses in most cases. It should be pretty rare to take no (or almost no) losses battle after battle, an army should be worn down by consistent fighting even in winning engagements, unless it stops to rest and regroup.

Its pretty typical for armies to lose units even in prolonged battles. Every turn in this game is a year. When Carthage lost all their stuff at the battle in their homeland Rome took like 2500 casualties. Carthage lost like 20k. The mechanics are realistic but seems like you just disagree with the presentation of effectiveness in FoGE. When you fight a battle in FoG2 you take realistic losses. But when it converts back to FoGE you still get the same red and orange corners situation. You don't lose the actual units. The abstraction isn't saying units don't take losses, its just representing them in a particular way.

I don't use fog2. I'm fine with effectiveness losses, I don't like that I have too many battles when I'm in a good position where I take no or almost no losses. I think a 2* general and superior numbers should give me a huge advantage and im fine with consistently winning with that. What I don't like is winning like 8 battles in a row with no recognisable wearing down of my army that requires me to rest. 2500 losses for the Romans are light but continued losses at that level should see your army start to deteriorate and be more vulnerable to counter attack no matter how good your general is. The easiest starting fix for me is auto but minor effectiveness loss after every battle and more stringent recovery requirements, a close battle shouldn't be the only thing that forces me to regroup occasionally.

Maybe even just a war weariness stat for armies/units in battles in consecutive turns.

[MoLAoS]

Well with lopsided troop numbers that's fine to me, but when I wipe out 10-12 units without taking more than a few effectiveness point losses, I feel it's a little bit too much. If the enemy is disadvantaged they might either retreat from the field, losing some of their troops but not all, and less than if they stood and fought. If the enemy decides to stand and fight, then the attacking should still take somewhat significant losses in most cases. It should be pretty rare to take no (or almost no) losses battle after battle, an army should be worn down by consistent fighting even in winning engagements, unless it stops to rest and regroup.

Its pretty typical for armies to lose units even in prolonged battles. Every turn in this game is a year. When Carthage lost all their stuff at the battle in their homeland Rome took like 2500 casualties. Carthage lost like 20k. The mechanics are realistic but seems like you just disagree with the presentation of effectiveness in FoGE. When you fight a battle in FoG2 you take realistic losses. But when it converts back to FoGE you still get the same red and orange corners situation. You don't lose the actual units. The abstraction isn't saying units don't take losses, its just representing them in a particular way.

I don't use fog2. I'm fine with effectiveness losses, I don't like that I have too many battles when I'm in a good position where I take no or almost no losses. I think a 2* general and superior numbers should give me a huge advantage and im fine with consistently winning with that. What I don't like is winning like 8 battles in a row with no recognisable wearing down of my army that requires me to rest. 2500 losses for the Romans are light but continued losses at that level should see your army start to deteriorate and be more vulnerable to counter attack no matter how good your general is. The easiest starting fix for me is auto but minor effectiveness loss after every battle and more stringent recovery requirements, a close battle shouldn't be the only thing that forces me to regroup occasionally.

Maybe even just a war weariness stat for armies/units in battles in consecutive turns.

But you lose effectiveness which opens you up to die later on a bad dice roll. What fights are you having where you can win 8 battles in a row with otherwise equal armies and not even worry about a unit dying? A 3 dice roll general doesn't help if the enemy rolls a 9 or a 10 on their one roll for instance. You are engaging in 8 battles on consecutive turns and taking no casualties? You say you take almost no losses. But effectiveness and hearts even more so are losses and they do have a negative impact on your army. The army code puts damaged units in the reserve as well. Also its extremely uncommon to encounter equal armies in any case. How are you fighting 8 armies in a row that are on equal footing with you?

[ledo]

Its pretty typical for armies to lose units even in prolonged battles. Every turn in this game is a year. When Carthage lost all their stuff at the battle in their homeland Rome took like 2500 casualties. Carthage lost like 20k. The mechanics are realistic but seems like you just disagree with the presentation of effectiveness in FoGE. When you fight a battle in FoG2 you take realistic losses. But when it converts back to FoGE you still get the same red and orange corners situation. You don't lose the actual units. The abstraction isn't saying units don't take losses, its just representing them in a particular way.

I don't use fog2. I'm fine with effectiveness losses, I don't like that I have too many battles when I'm in a good position where I take no or almost no losses. I think a 2* general and superior numbers should give me a huge advantage and im fine with consistently winning with that. What I don't like is winning like 8 battles in a row with no recognisable wearing down of my army that requires me to rest. 2500 losses for the Romans are light but continued losses at that level should see your army start to deteriorate and be more vulnerable to counter attack no matter how good your general is. The easiest starting fix for me is auto but minor effectiveness loss after every battle and more stringent recovery requirements, a close battle shouldn't be the only thing that forces me to regroup occasionally.

Maybe even just a war weariness stat for armies/units in battles in consecutive turns.

But you lose effectiveness which opens you up to die later on a bad dice roll. What fights are you having where you can win 8 battles in a row with otherwise equal armies and not even worry about a unit dying? A 3 dice roll general doesn't help if the enemy rolls a 9 or a 10 on their one roll for instance. You are engaging in 8 battles on consecutive turns and taking no casualties? You say you take almost no losses. But effectiveness and hearts even more so are losses and they do have a negative impact on your army. The army code puts damaged units in the reserve as well. Also its extremely uncommon to encounter equal armies in any case. How are you fighting 8 armies in a row that are on equal footing with you?

I'm not talking about equal footing, I'm talking where I'm fighting a weaker but not insignificant enemy. And I am talking about losing little to no effectiveness or hits. These are battles I should clearly win regularly, but I don't like that my army is not being degraded by fighting them. 8 battles is just an exaggeration, I should have been more precise, but 3-4 battles occurs quite regularly, because you often end up in multiple wars in small areas. It happened with the picts when the brigantes and britonae both declared war on me after I'd beaten up on them a few times. The Hibernians who I was at war with but had had to redirect troops back to the mainland landed in Northern England. On the turn they landed I was assaulting a walled city, I then dealt with a Brigante army about 2/3 my size but with a worse general, then a Britonae army about half my size but in open terrain so that was a sure victory and then fought a close battle with the Hibernian's whose force was close to mine. The assault and first two battles caused little to no effectiveness loss to my army. Limited frontage in the second battle against the brigantes meant I only rolled 8 dice and with a superior general I won on every roll and only took a few effectiveness points in damage due to skirmishers (that i recovered). The second battle saw me take 1 or two hits while I wiped their entire army. The assault caused zero damage whatsoever. I just fought three battles non insignificant battles (the assault was probably the least of it, but it's an assault, I should have to pay for it) for a total of 3-4 effectiveness loss and a couple of hits, all of which were either recovered in between turns or largely irrelevant considering the size of armies at that point of the game was about 15-20 (I would have taken some skirmisher damage, but there was no frontline troops really affected by it by the time I faced the Hibernians). It's not a huge drawback, but I would rather some penalty that actually has an effect on my combat effectiveness (i.e. enough damage it actually makes it to the frontline) when I do three battles in a row and then fight an equal sized Hibernian army. Maybe just make it harder to recover effectiveness, or reconsider in what cases both sides take some damage. I mean aside from stalemate or skirmisher/evade only an exactly equally mathcing result means the other duelling unit takes some losses. Thus with a good general and solid troops you're really unlikely to ever have a costly victory in any duel, and so only the odd outright loss causes any real damage (that and the skirmishers pre-battle, which is usually only significant if the army is as large or bigger than yours), which creates results that are too close to binary, which is then further compounded by the pursuit stage, and automatic re-battle of draws. In general, wins are almost always major and so are losses. Rarely is there a victory that is pyrrhic in nature, or requiring me to seriously regroup, rarely is there even a string of victories that require me to do this (especially since, as you said, it is rare to encounter equal armies). Based on the current system, it actually helped to fight those three battles first because farmed experience, with little risk and little to no carryover loss in effectiveness or damage.

I get that these are good results consummate with a strong army and a good general, I'm not disputing I should win them, I would just like to be challenged more to prioritise (forcing me to take my relatively fresh army to face the Hibernians immediately). Maybe that's just how it was historically, but still it dulls the management of the army for me, and certain situations just feel a bit one-dimensional. But hey, still very much enjoy the game.