The Rally Point (discussion and questions)

[Cunningcairn]

It is amusing to see this topic roll up again with the same old arguments.

The reason that players like dkalenda, Nosy_Rat and pantherboy win most of their matches is because they are better players than everyone else. Luck can become an increasingly important factor though between players of fairly similar skill levels. If the top players just played each other and no-one else for a while they would quickly come to understand what many players further down the ratings have known for some time - that luck can often play quite a big part in deciding the outcome of particular battles.

It would seem to indicate then that better play yields more favourable results more often than not? You do understand that any game system that has any degree of randomness, or any amount of hidden information, that affects the final outcome will have this feature right? The only way in which equal players, playing equal forces, in equal form playing a game against each other to NOT be the result of RNG would be if the system HAS no RNG at all. Luck not only "can become an increasingly important factor", but it logically must be the *ONLY* factor which drives the final outcome in such scenarios where the game has any degree of RNG in it. Similarly in games where players have imperfect information as to their opponent's specific capabilities at any point in time and must make a decision before knowledge is revealed then luck also will be the major determinant, assuming all things being equal. An example being a goalkeeper being forced to commit to one side of the net or the other in the fraction of a second before the shot is struck on a penalty kick and must rely on luck to some degree to have guessed right and be in a position to stop the ball assuming that the shooter didn't miss. Otherwise, if it wasn't for luck deciding outcomes between two equal opponents, what other factors could be possible here?

Given that you are one of the two authors of the alternate gameplay mod which specifically includes anarchy and refusal of charing, it may be that you are simply unsatisfied with where the RNG is being applied? I personally don't see how one can reconcile approving of troops moving without orders or refusing to obey orders and yet be unapproving of disastrous consequences in a unit to unit engagement otherwise.

If that's the case why do dkalenda and pantherboy keep trashing me over and over again? Seems to me like the game rewards skill more than anything still.

You're comparing the specific to the generic, that's a logical fallacy. The chance factor in this game is subject to fat tails, that leads to disproportionate differences in many games of the chance factor itself, and makes the biggest difference in the closest games.

While you are technically correct on the fallacy, you didn't address Snuggles' specific comment on why the same players keep winning. Are you proposing that they are skating by on pure chance alone? This could be possible, but unlikely. IE, If we were to hold a 64 man coin flipping tournament 5 times, it is not impossible, but also HIGHLY IMPROBABLE that the same group of individuals keep showing up at the top of the standings. If your belief isn't that it is pure chance, then it would presumably run counter to your original claim that those things "de-skills and passes outcome (of the game) to chance".

I personally think in any given game has a big luck factor in it. Like on any given Sunday, a top-end division A player can be brought down by a mediocre to decent players like myself or even a Div C player. But the odds of that happening over and over again throughout multiple tournaments? Feels unlikely. The skill gap has compressed though over the past two years for sure and I am unsure how high the skill ceiling is for players to keep improving before we get to a state where RNG regularly becomes a dominant factor for winning tournaments even in Div A. I would not be surprised if Div B and C tournaments are almost completely decided by RNG at this point. Enough seasons have passed by that players that don't belong there have long since rocketed up the tables out of those divisions.

Mike I don't think anyone is suggesting that good players win most of the time against lesser opponents despite these rules. Read Stockwellpete's posts above. Every time this is brought up the argument against a change is that Pantherboy, Dkalenda and Nosy_Rat still win most games. It isn't relevant. What is wrong with making the probability of a double drop less than it is at the moment? What is wrong with dropping the probability of units rallying when not in command range of a general? Why should a rallied unit out of sight at the other end of the battlefield save a defeated army?

[MikeC_81]

Mike I don't think anyone is suggesting that good players win most of the time against lesser opponents despite these rules. Read Stockwellpete's posts above. Every time this is brought up the argument against a change is that Pantherboy, Dkalenda and Nosy_Rat still win most games. It isn't relevant. What is wrong with making the probability of a double drop less than it is at the moment? What is wrong with dropping the probability of units rallying when not in command range of a general? Why should a rallied unit out of sight at the other end of the battlefield save a defeated army?

Nothing is wrong with any of those suggestions and I did read Pete's as well as everyone else's posts carefully. The reason why Pantherboy and friends always get brought up is because the topic invariably begins with some form of 'I lost x game because y unit double dropped!' with the usual unsaid implication being that they were somehow robbed and proceeds down the well-trodden path of 'there is too much RNG negating skill'. Paul straight up said this. Snuggles quoted it. The standard response at this point is that if RNG is negating skill, then the Pantherboy phenomenon needs to be explained.

There are 3 possible explanations.

1. RNG is not enough to override skill gaps as the primary determinant of games so the original assertion is false. I tend to fall into this camp.

2. RNG is enough to override skill gaps as the primary determinant of games and pure luck is responsible for this convergence of players repeatedly winning tournaments or placing very highly. I find this unlikely however I do agree that you cannot be unlucky and still win a tournament unless you are much better than your peers).

3. RNG is enough to override skill gaps as the primary determinant of games and these players are getting to the top consistently by save-scumming to mitigate bad RNG when it happens. I find this answer to be unlikely although imo, from what is known about the system, it is my belief you can save scum with enough regularity to affect the outcomes of games without being flagged.

You get to pick which option you want to believe in.

However, you can be firmly in camp 1 and still be against double drops. You simply might not like where the RNG is being served up and that is a game design issue and you can keep articulating to RBS if you want. Or you can do what Pete and Schweet is doing and make a mod and play that. Or you can find another game where the RNG is to your liking. All those options are available but if you are in camp 1 and believe skill matters, don't say things like this:

Combination of double drops and lopsided rallies from rout decides a huge number of games, de-skills and passes outcome to chance.

[SimonLancaster]

It seems to be like the old argument about RNG.. I think that the game is okay regarding double drops and rallies. Yes, chance but nothing on the battlefield in real life was precisely premeditated and exact.

It isn't the RNG at all it is the probability of silly things happening. If you play games with the mods currently being created by schweetness you will see that skill is the deciding factor and not one in a lifetime events that happen once or twice a game. The argument about real life isn't valid. Everyone knows that life throws curve balls but it is the frequency that they occur that is the issue. The mods probably still need a bit of tweaking but they are a vast improvement on certain aspects.

You are talking exactly about RNG. This is the same argument.. people don't like random events like double drops and rallies because they are out of their control. What you define as a 'silly thing' is open to question. And, again, frequency is something I don't see an issue with. I am playing games now and just a couple of units may rally at best. If 4-5 units were rallying on each side every game then I might agree with you.. but this isn't happening.

[stockwellpete]

There are 3 possible explanations.

1. RNG is not enough to override skill gaps as the primary determinant of games so the original assertion is false. I tend to fall into this camp.

2. RNG is enough to override skill gaps as the primary determinant of games and pure luck is responsible for this convergence of players repeatedly winning tournaments or placing very highly. I find this unlikely however I do agree that you cannot be unlucky and still win a tournament unless you are much better than your peers).

3. RNG is enough to override skill gaps as the primary determinant of games and these players are getting to the top consistently by save-scumming to mitigate bad RNG when it happens. I find this answer to be unlikely although imo, from what is known about the system, it is my belief you can save scum with enough regularity to affect the outcomes of games without being flagged.

You get to pick which option you want to believe in.

I want to pick option 4.

4. RNG is sometimes enough to override skill gaps as the primary determinant of some games. I would say that 1 out of every 6 or 7 games that I play is what I call an "RNG game", where the RNG either helps me to win or does its best to make me lose. So the debate for me has always been about how we might make this figure 1 in 10 or 1 in 12 so that it becomes less of a concern to players like myself. In the mod, for example, we have reduced the number of turns that routed units have before they disperse by 2, so now units do not rally so much in the far flung corners of the map and decide the outcome of very close matches.

[MikeC_81]

I want to pick option 4.

4. RNG is sometimes enough to override skill gaps as the primary determinant of some games. I would say that 1 out of every 6 or 7 games that I play is what I call an "RNG game", where the RNG either helps me to win or does its best to make me lose. So the debate for me has always been about how we might make this figure 1 in 10 or 1 in 12 so that it becomes less of a concern to players like myself. In the mod, for example, we have reduced the number of turns that routed units have before they disperse by 2, so now units do not rally so much in the far flung corners of the map and decide the outcome of very close matches.

I would only point out that option 4 doesn't really exist because as I and others have tried to explain, the rate at which RNG determines the outcome of any specific game is a function of how close the skill level is between the two players. IE if Pantherboy or anyone else cloned themselves and played a series of games. The rate at which RNG determines the outcome would be 100%. Meanwhile, if Pantherboy played against the game's AI on equal points setting, the likelihood of the RNG being so bad for Pantherboy that the AI winning any given game would be astronomically low. Even if all your rules were implemented, this would remain the same.

Furthermore, your mod doesn't remove RNG so much as shifts where they might influence the outcome of the final game. For example, let us pretend we had a mod that only removed the chance for units to rally far away from the battlefield. While the removal of far-flung rallies removes RNG from that particular element of the game, you cannot necessarily say the game overall now is less determinant by RNG. That is because the outcome of games now might focus more heavily on other aspects which have RNG in them. For example, combat rolls, double drops, etc in this scenario now carry more weight than before and if those things are more volatile than far-flung rallies, then the RNG determinism is actually increased (this is a hypothetical example, not a statement of fact).

Sometimes this is very easy to spot. Ex, if FoG2 games started with a coin flip in which the winner received 50% more FP and we subsequently got rid of that mechanic, it is pretty easy to say that RNG determinism got reduced. Other times it is not and with a game with as many moving parts as FoG2, you cannot say for certain until your mod is complete and rigorously tested by players. I would say though that the most volatile element of FoG2 that you might want to tackle if you truly want to push RNG down a bit is to take a look at is the fundamental combat loop between units. The fact any unit that is not steady is essentially useless combined with the there is a harsh 3 outcome matrix of win/draw/loss with the loser almost always taking at least a -2 modifier on a 2d6 roll needing to hit 6+ is inherently RNG heavy.

It creates situations where even troops that are facing off against their mirror image will generate a high number of morale breaks in a short amount of time. This is what leads to the disconnect a lot of players sometimes report when (to use our old friends) warbands fighting each other in a line result in a lot of random breaks all over time while random conscript unit manages to hold on vs Vet Roman Legions for what feels like an extended period of time. Volatility starts high between evenly matched units and while it does increase when units are mismatched, it is not radically so in the grand scheme of things. This is rather different than a lot of other game systems I have played where evenly matched troops tend to have very low volatility while mismatch troops tend to get run over far more quickly in relation.

The relationship between luck and skill in any game is very complex. We haven't even talked about things like a minimum skill floor, the skill cap effect, or how elastic the skill+luck output curve might look in FoG2 or your modded version. But, hopefully, this is a little bit of a game design perspective on RNG effects for your mod, and people can articulate their dissatisfaction of RNG more precisely than what happened with Paul.

[stockwellpete]

I would only point out that option 4 doesn't really exist because as I and others have tried to explain, the rate at which RNG determines the outcome of any specific game is a function of how close the skill level is between the two players. IE if Pantherboy or anyone else cloned themselves and played a series of games. The rate at which RNG determines the outcome would be 100%. Meanwhile, if Pantherboy played against the game's AI on equal points setting, the likelihood of the RNG being so bad for Pantherboy that the AI winning any given game would be astronomically low. Even if all your rules were implemented, this would remain the same.

Of course it exists. If I play 10 matches with Cunningcairn we will probably end up 5-5. But 2 of those matches will likely be "RNG games" where the RNG decisively favoured one of us in some way. These are not particularly enjoyable games to play. One player may have got a lot more rallies from routed than usual, or the other player may have lost his C-in-C in a drawn melee result (in what seemed to be an advantageous match-up to him) and that triggered cohesion loss in 3 or 4 nearby units that were also in combat. Nothing much a player can do in those circumstances to mitigate the effects of RNG when the opponent is at a similar skill level. The RNG has defeated him/her. So the question has always been can anything be done to reduce the likelihood of this happening? Notice I am using the word "reduce" and not "remove". It is not impossible to prevent this happening completely without turning the game into something like chess. And in both examples I have given there are things you could consider doing as a designer i.e. reduce the number of turns that units rout for and don't have leaders getting killed unless they are in a unit that has lost a melee round very heavily (or until that unit has fallen below 50 or 66% strength).

Furthermore, your mod doesn't remove RNG so much as shifts where they might influence the outcome of the final game. For example, let us pretend we had a mod that only removed the chance for units to rally far away from the battlefield. While the removal of far-flung rallies removes RNG from that particular element of the game, you cannot necessarily say the game overall now is less determinant by RNG. That is because the outcome of games now might focus more heavily on other aspects which have RNG in them. For example, combat rolls, double drops, etc in this scenario now carry more weight than before and if those things are more volatile than far-flung rallies, then the RNG determinism is actually increased (this is a hypothetical example, not a statement of fact).

RNG is not the focus of the mod though. Schweetness and myself have hardly spoken about RNG. The removal of rallies from the far flung corners makes the game more realistic and enjoyable to play' in our opinion. It stops units ending up scattered all over the place. So does the introduction of anarchy rules as part of a command and control upgrade for the game. The removal of automatic cohesion drops for flank attacks does mean that units stay "steady" for longer and other changes will make infantry combat a bit more attritional than vanilla. Combine this with the work we are doing on cavalry melees that is shifting them away from fragmentation towards greater coherence and quicker resolution overall means there will be a greater chance to achieve the real devastating flank attacks that we can read about in historical accounts of ancient and medieval battles.

[Cunningcairn]

It seems to be like the old argument about RNG.. I think that the game is okay regarding double drops and rallies. Yes, chance but nothing on the battlefield in real life was precisely premeditated and exact.

It isn't the RNG at all it is the probability of silly things happening. If you play games with the mods currently being created by schweetness you will see that skill is the deciding factor and not one in a lifetime events that happen once or twice a game. The argument about real life isn't valid. Everyone knows that life throws curve balls but it is the frequency that they occur that is the issue. The mods probably still need a bit of tweaking but they are a vast improvement on certain aspects.

You are talking exactly about RNG. This is the same argument.. people don't like random events like double drops and rallies because they are out of their control. What you define as a 'silly thing' is open to question. And, again, frequency is something I don't see an issue with. I am playing games now and just a couple of units may rally at best. If 4-5 units were rallying on each side every game then I might agree with you.. but this isn't happening.

There are 4 to 5 units rallying a turn in some games never mind a game. What size battles are you fighting? Have you ever broken multiple enemy units at the beginning of game when they have minimal casualties? What troop types do you use or fight? I am not making these things up. They happen far too often.

It is absolutely not the RNG. A RNG generates numbers which are used to determine an outcome. The rules assign a probability for any particular outcome and then use the numbers generated by the RNG to determine what it is. The intelligence is in the rules and that is what needs to be tweeked.

[Swuul]

There are 4 to 5 units rallying a turn in some games never mind a game. What size battles are you fighting? Have you ever broken multiple enemy units at the beginning of game when they have minimal casualties? What troop types do you use or fight? I am not making these things up. They happen far too often.

Some anecdotal evidence, if I may. This season I have completed three matches.

1) 1600 points of British (with Viking allies) with 44 units and opponent had Sassanid Persians. No unit of either side rallied from being routed before the game ended, though the game pretty much went from silent manouvering to game over in two rounds when the british assault commenced.
2) 1600 points of Spartans (with corinthian allies) with 36 units and opponent had Cimmerians. Two spartans rallied from being routed, the other had time to get back to combat but was routed again. No cimmerians rallied from being routed.
3) 1200 points Samnites (with Etruscan allies) but I don't remember how many units I had, vs Romans. One roman was rallied from being routed, but was routed again before getting back from Fragmented (as a CT failed when a nearby roman routed). No routed samnites did rally from being broken.

There seems to be some very wide discrepancy on the view how often broken units actually rally. Perhaps some volunteers (I for one can volunteer) here wants to keep a log of how many and which units rally during this season? Just to see if the rules of maths hold?

[Cunningcairn]

Mike I don't think anyone is suggesting that good players win most of the time against lesser opponents despite these rules. Read Stockwellpete's posts above. Every time this is brought up the argument against a change is that Pantherboy, Dkalenda and Nosy_Rat still win most games. It isn't relevant. What is wrong with making the probability of a double drop less than it is at the moment? What is wrong with dropping the probability of units rallying when not in command range of a general? Why should a rallied unit out of sight at the other end of the battlefield save a defeated army?

Nothing is wrong with any of those suggestions and I did read Pete's as well as everyone else's posts carefully. The reason why Pantherboy and friends always get brought up is because the topic invariably begins with some form of 'I lost x game because y unit double dropped!' with the usual unsaid implication being that they were somehow robbed and proceeds down the well-trodden path of 'there is too much RNG negating skill'. Paul straight up said this. Snuggles quoted it. The standard response at this point is that if RNG is negating skill, then the Pantherboy phenomenon needs to be explained.

There are 3 possible explanations.

1. RNG is not enough to override skill gaps as the primary determinant of games so the original assertion is false. I tend to fall into this camp.

2. RNG is enough to override skill gaps as the primary determinant of games and pure luck is responsible for this convergence of players repeatedly winning tournaments or placing very highly. I find this unlikely however I do agree that you cannot be unlucky and still win a tournament unless you are much better than your peers).

3. RNG is enough to override skill gaps as the primary determinant of games and these players are getting to the top consistently by save-scumming to mitigate bad RNG when it happens. I find this answer to be unlikely although imo, from what is known about the system, it is my belief you can save scum with enough regularity to affect the outcomes of games without being flagged.

You get to pick which option you want to believe in.

However, you can be firmly in camp 1 and still be against double drops. You simply might not like where the RNG is being served up and that is a game design issue and you can keep articulating to RBS if you want. Or you can do what Pete and Schweet is doing and make a mod and play that. Or you can find another game where the RNG is to your liking. All those options are available but if you are in camp 1 and believe skill matters, don't say things like this:

Combination of double drops and lopsided rallies from rout decides a huge number of games, de-skills and passes outcome to chance.

Pantherboy doesn't actually play that many games and as Pete explained probably doesn't exclusively play top players. If the top 5 players played each other exclusively they would be saying the same thing. Better players are still going to win more games if the suggestions are implemented and you have just agreed there is nothing wrong with those suggestions. So why do you oppose them? On Paul McNeil's comments I must say I agree with him. I have won and lost too many games that are influenced by too many 1 in a 1000 chance events. I don't know how often it happens but in league competition I would guess it is at least 1 in 4 or 5 games as the players are of quite equal in ability.

[SimonLancaster]

It isn't the RNG at all it is the probability of silly things happening. If you play games with the mods currently being created by schweetness you will see that skill is the deciding factor and not one in a lifetime events that happen once or twice a game. The argument about real life isn't valid. Everyone knows that life throws curve balls but it is the frequency that they occur that is the issue. The mods probably still need a bit of tweaking but they are a vast improvement on certain aspects.

You are talking exactly about RNG. This is the same argument.. people don't like random events like double drops and rallies because they are out of their control. What you define as a 'silly thing' is open to question. And, again, frequency is something I don't see an issue with. I am playing games now and just a couple of units may rally at best. If 4-5 units were rallying on each side every game then I might agree with you.. but this isn't happening.

There are 4 to 5 units rallying a turn in some games never mind a game. What size battles are you fighting? Have you ever broken multiple enemy units at the beginning of game when they have minimal casualties? What troop types do you use or fight? I am not making these things up. They happen far too often.

It is absolutely not the RNG. A RNG generates numbers which are used to determine an outcome. The rules assign a probability for any particular outcome and then use the numbers generated by the RNG to determine what it is. The intelligence is in the rules and that is what needs to be tweeked.

I don’t know about your definition of RNG. If a unit rallies from routing this is random and out of anyone’s control. There is a certain probability of this occurring. But, this is the same in any game of this type and of course it comes under the ‘rules’. I played a game called Chaos Reborn and people complained a lot about RNG there. This is part of the rules and if you don’t like it then play another game or use the mod. (They did actually create another version in Chaos Reborn called Law which did away with almost any RNG at all and everything was based on pure predetermined outcome. A lot of players hated this version of the game but others liked it).

I know for some players anything that is random and that can have a seemingly strong effect on the battle (like double drops, rallies and routing) is annoying and they like to minimize these elements in a game. I can understand this view but I don’t agree with it. You lose a lot of the excitement and buzz in this game if you start to overly control and manipulate it.

I play standard games like in the Digital League - medium sized armies. There have been little rallies from routing in my last 8 games or so. Nothing that changed the outcome of the game. But, sometimes it can happen!

[MikeC_81]

I would only point out that option 4 doesn't really exist because as I and others have tried to explain, the rate at which RNG determines the outcome of any specific game is a function of how close the skill level is between the two players. IE if Pantherboy or anyone else cloned themselves and played a series of games. The rate at which RNG determines the outcome would be 100%. Meanwhile, if Pantherboy played against the game's AI on equal points setting, the likelihood of the RNG being so bad for Pantherboy that the AI winning any given game would be astronomically low. Even if all your rules were implemented, this would remain the same.

Of course it exists. If I play 10 matches with Cunningcairn we will probably end up 5-5. But 2 of those matches will likely be "RNG games" where the RNG decisively favoured one of us in some way. These are not particularly enjoyable games to play. One player may have got a lot more rallies from routed than usual, or the other player may have lost his C-in-C in a drawn melee result (in what seemed to be an advantageous match-up to him) and that triggered cohesion loss in 3 or 4 nearby units that were also in combat. Nothing much a player can do in those circumstances to mitigate the effects of RNG when the opponent is at a similar skill level. The RNG has defeated him/her. So the question has always been can anything be done to reduce the likelihood of this happening? Notice I am using the word "reduce" and not "remove". It is not impossible to prevent this happening completely without turning the game into something like chess. And in both examples I have given there are things you could consider doing as a designer i.e. reduce the number of turns that units rout for and don't have leaders getting killed unless they are in a unit that has lost a melee round very heavily (or until that unit has fallen below 50 or 66% strength).

I am unsure whether you still don't understand the concept despite several attempts to have it explained to you or whether you are just ignoring it because it fit your argument but assuming you are discussing in good faith I will repeat the concept. The effect of RNG in terms of a percentage with respect to how much it contributed to a win or loss is not fixed. It is directly a function of the skill gap between the two players. Therefore it is not possible to "fix" a certain percentage of games, in any system FoG2 or otherwise, to say 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 or 1 in 100. Games between two equally skilled opponents in good form will likely have the majority of their games decided by luck, while games between players that have a big skill gap will rarely be decided by luck.

Pointing out things like random rallies deciding games is irrelevant other than pointing out your distaste to them with respect to this discussion because it ignores all events that lead up to that, and all events that followed from that. If you find those particular events unsatisfying then mod them out. No big deal. Shift the RNG somewhere else. But that has little to no bearing on Paul's original comment that these events "de-skill" the game. You and others keep conflating the two things. It is OK to say that you don't like the RNG happening where it is. It is an entirely different matter to say that those particular RNG effects "de-skill" the game.

Furthermore, your mod doesn't remove RNG so much as shifts where they might influence the outcome of the final game. For example, let us pretend we had a mod that only removed the chance for units to rally far away from the battlefield. While the removal of far-flung rallies removes RNG from that particular element of the game, you cannot necessarily say the game overall now is less determinant by RNG. That is because the outcome of games now might focus more heavily on other aspects which have RNG in them. For example, combat rolls, double drops, etc in this scenario now carry more weight than before and if those things are more volatile than far-flung rallies, then the RNG determinism is actually increased (this is a hypothetical example, not a statement of fact).

RNG is not the focus of the mod though. Schweetness and myself have hardly spoken about RNG. The removal of rallies from the far flung corners makes the game more realistic and enjoyable to play' in our opinion. It stops units ending up scattered all over the place. So does the introduction of anarchy rules as part of a command and control upgrade for the game. The removal of automatic cohesion drops for flank attacks does mean that units stay "steady" for longer and other changes will make infantry combat a bit more attritional than vanilla. Combine this with the work we are doing on cavalry melees that is shifting them away from fragmentation towards greater coherence and quicker resolution overall means there will be a greater chance to achieve the real devastating flank attacks that we can read about in historical accounts of ancient and medieval battles.

I think you and Schweet should do your mod, and release it with a comprehensive design doc behind it. That thread is turning into a cesspool as I predicted it would. I won't comment on achieving historical accounts in the game other than the fact that I find them hilariously inadequate with respect to details and most of which are written by third party sources long after the events have occurred. I have always felt that the search for "realism" beyond the broad strokes is a fool's errand. Nonetheless, I look forward to seeing this mod in a feature locked beta state as testing different game systems is something I have always enjoyed.

Pantherboy doesn't actually play that many games and as Pete explained probably doesn't exclusively play top players. If the top 5 players played each other exclusively they would be saying the same thing. Better players are still going to win more games if the suggestions are implemented and you have just agreed there is nothing wrong with those suggestions. So why do you oppose them? On Paul McNeil's comments I must say I agree with him. I have won and lost too many games that are influenced by too many 1 in a 1000 chance events. I don't know how often it happens but in league competition I would guess it is at least 1 in 4 or 5 games as the players are of quite equal in ability.

Not sure what to say when you haven't attempted to address anything I wrote in the post you quoted. So I guess you believe in option 2 then?

[stockwellpete]

I am unsure whether you still don't understand the concept despite several attempts to have it explained to you

You know where to put your patronising twaddle.

I think you and Schweet should do your mod . . .

We are not asking for your permission.

[Cunningcairn]

You are talking exactly about RNG. This is the same argument.. people don't like random events like double drops and rallies because they are out of their control. What you define as a 'silly thing' is open to question. And, again, frequency is something I don't see an issue with. I am playing games now and just a couple of units may rally at best. If 4-5 units were rallying on each side every game then I might agree with you.. but this isn't happening.

There are 4 to 5 units rallying a turn in some games never mind a game. What size battles are you fighting? Have you ever broken multiple enemy units at the beginning of game when they have minimal casualties? What troop types do you use or fight? I am not making these things up. They happen far too often.

It is absolutely not the RNG. A RNG generates numbers which are used to determine an outcome. The rules assign a probability for any particular outcome and then use the numbers generated by the RNG to determine what it is. The intelligence is in the rules and that is what needs to be tweeked.

I don’t know about your definition of RNG. If a unit rallies from routing this is random and out of anyone’s control. There is a certain probability of this occurring. But, this is the same in any game of this type and of course it comes under the ‘rules’. I played a game called Chaos Reborn and people complained a lot about RNG there. This is part of the rules and if you don’t like it then play another game or use the mod. (They did actually create another version in Chaos Reborn called Law which did away with almost any RNG at all and everything was based on pure predetermined outcome. A lot of players hated this version of the game but others liked it).

I know for some players anything that is random and that can have a seemingly strong effect on the battle (like double drops, rallies and routing) is annoying and they like to minimize these elements in a game. I can understand this view but I don’t agree with it. You lose a lot of the excitement and buzz in this game if you start to overly control and manipulate it.

I play standard games like in the Digital League - medium sized armies. There have been little rallies from routing in my last 8 games or so. Nothing that changed the outcome of the game. But, sometimes it can happen!

We are not really disagreeing on anything. I am not suggesting that unpredictability is removed from the game and I sincerely doubt that Pete and Schweetness are either. The fact that an introduction of anarchy and higher casualties for cavalry rules are being introduced in their mods makes that obvious. The purpose is to improve the enjoyment of the game and to give players a realistic experience of an ancient battle. I have also not suggested that curve balls should be removed but rather that the rules that govern their probability be changed so they happen less frequently or rather more realistically.

As an example let's take the current rules regarding rallies. Do you think that a routing unit that is out of sight of it's own troops and too far away from the action to assist should save an army from defeat because it has rallied based on a percentage of losses calculation? In a game I am currently playing my opponent had 4 routing units on the battlefield all within 1 or 2 turns of exiting the edge. One of these units was 4 casualties off auto-breaking. All were average quality. In two consecutive turns all 4 rallied. That is 100% of the broken units on the table rallied out of sight of the action. These units have now turned certain defeat into a possible victory because they have experienced a psychological change to their state of mind although their compatriots don't even know that it has happened. I think this extreme and unrealistic.

[Cunningcairn]

I would only point out that option 4 doesn't really exist because as I and others have tried to explain, the rate at which RNG determines the outcome of any specific game is a function of how close the skill level is between the two players. IE if Pantherboy or anyone else cloned themselves and played a series of games. The rate at which RNG determines the outcome would be 100%. Meanwhile, if Pantherboy played against the game's AI on equal points setting, the likelihood of the RNG being so bad for Pantherboy that the AI winning any given game would be astronomically low. Even if all your rules were implemented, this would remain the same.

Of course it exists. If I play 10 matches with Cunningcairn we will probably end up 5-5. But 2 of those matches will likely be "RNG games" where the RNG decisively favoured one of us in some way. These are not particularly enjoyable games to play. One player may have got a lot more rallies from routed than usual, or the other player may have lost his C-in-C in a drawn melee result (in what seemed to be an advantageous match-up to him) and that triggered cohesion loss in 3 or 4 nearby units that were also in combat. Nothing much a player can do in those circumstances to mitigate the effects of RNG when the opponent is at a similar skill level. The RNG has defeated him/her. So the question has always been can anything be done to reduce the likelihood of this happening? Notice I am using the word "reduce" and not "remove". It is not impossible to prevent this happening completely without turning the game into something like chess. And in both examples I have given there are things you could consider doing as a designer i.e. reduce the number of turns that units rout for and don't have leaders getting killed unless they are in a unit that has lost a melee round very heavily (or until that unit has fallen below 50 or 66% strength).

I am unsure whether you still don't understand the concept despite several attempts to have it explained to you or whether you are just ignoring it because it fit your argument but assuming you are discussing in good faith I will repeat the concept. The effect of RNG in terms of a percentage with respect to how much it contributed to a win or loss is not fixed. It is directly a function of the skill gap between the two players. Therefore it is not possible to "fix" a certain percentage of games, in any system FoG2 or otherwise, to say 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 or 1 in 100. Games between two equally skilled opponents in good form will likely have the majority of their games decided by luck, while games between players that have a big skill gap will rarely be decided by luck.

Pointing out things like random rallies deciding games is irrelevant other than pointing out your distaste to them with respect to this discussion because it ignores all events that lead up to that, and all events that followed from that. If you find those particular events unsatisfying then mod them out. No big deal. Shift the RNG somewhere else. But that has little to no bearing on Paul's original comment that these events "de-skill" the game. You and others keep conflating the two things. It is OK to say that you don't like the RNG happening where it is. It is an entirely different matter to say that those particular RNG effects "de-skill" the game.

Furthermore, your mod doesn't remove RNG so much as shifts where they might influence the outcome of the final game. For example, let us pretend we had a mod that only removed the chance for units to rally far away from the battlefield. While the removal of far-flung rallies removes RNG from that particular element of the game, you cannot necessarily say the game overall now is less determinant by RNG. That is because the outcome of games now might focus more heavily on other aspects which have RNG in them. For example, combat rolls, double drops, etc in this scenario now carry more weight than before and if those things are more volatile than far-flung rallies, then the RNG determinism is actually increased (this is a hypothetical example, not a statement of fact).

RNG is not the focus of the mod though. Schweetness and myself have hardly spoken about RNG. The removal of rallies from the far flung corners makes the game more realistic and enjoyable to play' in our opinion. It stops units ending up scattered all over the place. So does the introduction of anarchy rules as part of a command and control upgrade for the game. The removal of automatic cohesion drops for flank attacks does mean that units stay "steady" for longer and other changes will make infantry combat a bit more attritional than vanilla. Combine this with the work we are doing on cavalry melees that is shifting them away from fragmentation towards greater coherence and quicker resolution overall means there will be a greater chance to achieve the real devastating flank attacks that we can read about in historical accounts of ancient and medieval battles.

I think you and Schweet should do your mod, and release it with a comprehensive design doc behind it. That thread is turning into a cesspool as I predicted it would. I won't comment on achieving historical accounts in the game other than the fact that I find them hilariously inadequate with respect to details and most of which are written by third party sources long after the events have occurred. I have always felt that the search for "realism" beyond the broad strokes is a fool's errand. Nonetheless, I look forward to seeing this mod in a feature locked beta state as testing different game systems is something I have always enjoyed.

Pantherboy doesn't actually play that many games and as Pete explained probably doesn't exclusively play top players. If the top 5 players played each other exclusively they would be saying the same thing. Better players are still going to win more games if the suggestions are implemented and you have just agreed there is nothing wrong with those suggestions. So why do you oppose them? On Paul McNeil's comments I must say I agree with him. I have won and lost too many games that are influenced by too many 1 in a 1000 chance events. I don't know how often it happens but in league competition I would guess it is at least 1 in 4 or 5 games as the players are of quite equal in ability.

Not sure what to say when you haven't attempted to address anything I wrote in the post you quoted. So I guess you believe in option 2 then?

You made a self-fulfilling prophecy that this thread will turn into a cesspool You are very clear that you don't like the proposed changes. Now that we all understand that why don't you stop commenting? Let people exercise their rights of free thought and speech. If the proposed changes are as bad as you think they are they will never be introduced so what's the problem? Unfortunately the attacks and negative comments have caused the moderator to suggest that the mods be done in secret. That is indeed sad.

[harveylh]

As an example let's take the current rules regarding rallies. Do you think that a routing unit that is out of sight of it's own troops and too far away from the action to assist should save an army from defeat because it has rallied based on a percentage of losses calculation? In a game I am currently playing my opponent had 4 routing units on the battlefield all within 1 or 2 turns of exiting the edge. One of these units was 4 casualties off auto-breaking. All were average quality. In two consecutive turns all 4 rallied. That is 100% of the broken units on the table rallied out of sight of the action. These units have now turned certain defeat into a possible victory because they have experienced a psychological change to their state of mind although their compatriots don't even know that it has happened. I think this extreme and unrealistic.

I have both won and lost with rallies on the edge of the battlefield far beyond where the rest of the army is still fighting. This is the one thing that I find most unrealistic and I would like to see modified.

Harvey

[Macedonczyk]

If that's the case why do dkalenda and pantherboy keep trashing me over and over again? Seems to me like the game rewards skill more than anything still.

This discussion remeber me Gary Lineker citat:
"Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win."

[gamercb]

These are the type of results that drive me crazy.

What is the Additional Modifier to take me to-3 total? Surely the fact that the combat went badly when I charged and I lost badly and lost against Lancers is sufficient.

-1 Significant melee casualties received this turn
-1 Lost close combat round badly
-1 Fighting lancers

Thank you Richard.

Obviously I need to retrain these lancers as they definitely are not superior.... They did not inflict a single casualty on the enemy.

Colin

[Ludendorf]

Lancer battles and battles involving lots of medium infantry and particularly a few impact infantry do tend to be rather combustible. A few bad impacts here and there and your battlefield can end up looking like a warzone.

[MikeMarchant]

These are the type of results that drive me crazy.

What is the Additional Modifier to take me to-3 total? Surely the fact that the combat went badly when I charged and I lost badly and lost against Lancers is sufficient.

-1 Significant melee casualties received this turn
-1 Lost close combat round badly
-1 Fighting lancers

Thank you Richard.

Obviously I need to retrain these lancers as they definitely are not superior.... They did not inflict a single casualty on the enemy.

Colin

If it's any consolation, Colin, I once had a line of three superior armoured lancers charge into the rear of a line of enemy spear engaged in melee to their front. The spear took their obligatory cohesion drop for the impact and then won all three impacts and fragmented all three of my lancers. It's an example of what Martin was saying about how the ridiculously unliklely events occurs too often in this game.


Best Wishes

Mike

[SimonLancaster]

There are 4 to 5 units rallying a turn in some games never mind a game. What size battles are you fighting? Have you ever broken multiple enemy units at the beginning of game when they have minimal casualties? What troop types do you use or fight? I am not making these things up. They happen far too often.

It is absolutely not the RNG. A RNG generates numbers which are used to determine an outcome. The rules assign a probability for any particular outcome and then use the numbers generated by the RNG to determine what it is. The intelligence is in the rules and that is what needs to be tweeked.

I don’t know about your definition of RNG. If a unit rallies from routing this is random and out of anyone’s control. There is a certain probability of this occurring. But, this is the same in any game of this type and of course it comes under the ‘rules’. I played a game called Chaos Reborn and people complained a lot about RNG there. This is part of the rules and if you don’t like it then play another game or use the mod. (They did actually create another version in Chaos Reborn called Law which did away with almost any RNG at all and everything was based on pure predetermined outcome. A lot of players hated this version of the game but others liked it).

I know for some players anything that is random and that can have a seemingly strong effect on the battle (like double drops, rallies and routing) is annoying and they like to minimize these elements in a game. I can understand this view but I don’t agree with it. You lose a lot of the excitement and buzz in this game if you start to overly control and manipulate it.

I play standard games like in the Digital League - medium sized armies. There have been little rallies from routing in my last 8 games or so. Nothing that changed the outcome of the game. But, sometimes it can happen!

We are not really disagreeing on anything. I am not suggesting that unpredictability is removed from the game and I sincerely doubt that Pete and Schweetness are either. The fact that an introduction of anarchy and higher casualties for cavalry rules are being introduced in their mods makes that obvious. The purpose is to improve the enjoyment of the game and to give players a realistic experience of an ancient battle. I have also not suggested that curve balls should be removed but rather that the rules that govern their probability be changed so they happen less frequently or rather more realistically.

As an example let's take the current rules regarding rallies. Do you think that a routing unit that is out of sight of it's own troops and too far away from the action to assist should save an army from defeat because it has rallied based on a percentage of losses calculation? In a game I am currently playing my opponent had 4 routing units on the battlefield all within 1 or 2 turns of exiting the edge. One of these units was 4 casualties off auto-breaking. All were average quality. In two consecutive turns all 4 rallied. That is 100% of the broken units on the table rallied out of sight of the action. These units have now turned certain defeat into a possible victory because they have experienced a psychological change to their state of mind although their compatriots don't even know that it has happened. I think this extreme and unrealistic.

I can understand your point to a degree.. but it is all about RNG again even if you don't think so. Like a rat killing a giant in Chaos Reborn. 3% chance to do it or something. It can upset people. Those units on the border have a small chance to rally but they do so.. Like I said, I haven't seen what you are describing almost ever in my games. That is just bad luck. (1-2 enemy units rallying at the back can happen but even that isn't so common.)

In these kind of arguments people tend to zoom in on the rat and complain. But, the actual likehood of the rat killing a giant or four units rallying on the edge of the map for your enemy is so small in reality.

In a number of historical battles that I have been reading about quite a number of units rallied and then came back to fight. It is not something absurd. I would say that FoG 2 is fair in this regard because the units can almost never fight so you just have to concentrate on beating the main army!