A suggestion

[NikiforosFokas]

I know it is late to change anything for the in-game mechanics. But I want to share an opinion about how the multiplayer experience can become better. I love the game, but I have caught myself avoiding multiplayer, playing only the campaigns. Why? Because most of my games, there is a hill and someone is camping on this. Or in the forests.. You all mean what I mean. I know this had been discussed in length in the past. There was the opinion that this is a tactical decision to avoid the battle, etc. But this is a tactical game, not a strategic or operational one. When we play, we suppose that for any reason, the two forces want to have a battle. Do not forget that there was a simple way to find the winner of the battle in ancient times. The winner was the side that controlled the battlefield at the end of the day.
My simple suggestion comes from my RTS experience (e.g., Dawn of War 1 &2). In that game, some strategic points forced the two players to battle. In fact, the game told you: Oh do you want to turtle in the corner? Fine, do that, but you lose 100%. An excellent idea, in my opinion. The secret why DoW has a multiplayer base almost two decades after its release.
How can this transfer to FoG2? Simply. Put two strategic points in the middle of the battlefield. Just 2, just in the middle. The player who controls both of them for some turns (for example, 5) wins the game. Simply and I think it will create a far more enjoyable game. As I already stated, I know it is late. But I would like to hear RBS's opinion about that.

[pompeytheflatulent]

The game mode 'Advance Guard' already contains most of what you are looking for. Currently it suffers from two small drawbacks: 1) Force selection is mostly automatic, I think you only get to decide what units to buy for a small fraction of your points, the rest is pre-selected. and 2) The game plays for the full 24 turns long after the outcome has already been decided, so the players should be prepared to call the game early if one side has an insurmountable lead.

Still, the game mode could be a lot of fun and I'd encourage everyone to at least try it once.

[SnuggleBunnies]

Or you could just host games on Steppes map type, which has little terrain to take advantage of

[Karvon]

Or set up matches with armies that are fairly similar in troop types that do better in open terrain?

[NikiforosFokas]

Thanks for the replies, but the point of the post was not how I could play the way I like. This was an idea how a game about tactical battles will force the players to give a battle.

[rbodleyscott]

Unfortunately I have to reiterate my view that Map Objectives (for that is what you are describing) represent nothing that actually existed in Ancient/Medieval warfare.

I understand why you suggest them, but they have many pitfalls. For a start they are a more or less guaranteed win for the heavier army. (Unless the objective is in difficult terrain, in which case they are a more or less guaranteed win for the medium army). Likewise they severely disadvantage cavalry armies, who already struggle in competitive play.

They won't ever be going into the main game, but that doesn't mean they could not be implemented as a mod.

[NikiforosFokas]

Thanks for the answer, Richard.
The battlefield itself was the objective in Ancient Warfare, was not it?
But I fully understand the difficulties of a suggestion like this.
I hope in the future (FoG III ? ) you will be able to find a way to force the players to give the battle.

[NikiforosFokas]

The game mode 'Advance Guard' already contains most of what you are looking for. Currently it suffers from two small drawbacks: 1) Force selection is mostly automatic, I think you only get to decide what units to buy for a small fraction of your points, the rest is pre-selected. and 2) The game plays for the full 24 turns long after the outcome has already been decided, so the players should be prepared to call the game early if one side has an insurmountable lead.

Still, the game mode could be a lot of fun and I'd encourage everyone to at least try it once.

Thanks for this. I am playing this right now and I love it
Ps: Do you know if there is the same mode in the Fog2: MEdieval ?

[Paul59]

The game mode 'Advance Guard' already contains most of what you are looking for. Currently it suffers from two small drawbacks: 1) Force selection is mostly automatic, I think you only get to decide what units to buy for a small fraction of your points, the rest is pre-selected. and 2) The game plays for the full 24 turns long after the outcome has already been decided, so the players should be prepared to call the game early if one side has an insurmountable lead.

Still, the game mode could be a lot of fun and I'd encourage everyone to at least try it once.

Thanks for this. I am playing this right now and I love it

I haven't played this scenario type very often. Unfortunately the first time I played it, in a campaign scenario, I had a huge difficult hill between my units and the objective area, and my units were mainly heavy foot. Therefore I had no chance of getting many units into a points scoring position!

Luckily since then I have had much fairer terrain selections, and I agree that the scenario type can be quite fun.

[rbodleyscott]

Ps: Do you know if there is the same mode in the Fog2: MEdieval ?

Yes, there is.

[rbodleyscott]

The battlefield itself was the objective in Ancient Warfare, was not it?

From a propaganda point of view, perhaps, in a drawn battle, but in reality the objective was to put the enemy to flight, and kill as many as possible in the pursuit, to stop them from reforming as a cohesive force.

[NikiforosFokas]

Ps: Do you know if there is the same mode in the Fog2: MEdieval ?

Yes, there is.

Thanks Richard. It is time to buy it .
ps: Thanks again to pompey. This is indeed a much better way to play the game.

[NikiforosFokas]

The battlefield itself was the objective in Ancient Warfare, was not it?

From a propaganda point of view, perhaps, in a drawn battle, but in reality the objective was to put the enemy to flight, and kill as many as possible in the pursuit, to stop them from reforming as a cohesive force.

I can not disagree. But look, for example, the battle of Solachon. In the end, the Persians retired to a nearby hill. The Byzantines surrounded the hill, and the Persians died (except a little of them) by thirst. It was not a viable strategy to just hide, I mean it was not a tactical option. There was an operational strategy to hide-and-seek (like the Byzantine Shadowing War) but it was not a tactical option. I am sure you know what I mean (even with my bad English)

[rbodleyscott]

And yet there are plenty of historical cases of enemy armies deploying opposite each other on a battlefield, but then, because neither had a strategic imperative to attack, neither did attack, and one or both retired during the night.

So the idea that because they are on the battlefield, they ought to fight, regardless of the terrain situation, doesn't really wash.

Unfortunately the digital league scoring system does nothing to encourage players to take a chance, because it gives no points at all to the losing player unless a certain threshold of losses is inflicted on the opposing player. If you don't think you can achieve that, you may as well hide and deny your opponent the points if you can.

[SimonLancaster]

For the record, I am 1000% behind NikiforosFokas. The maps I am getting in the Digital League have been awful. I think I am playing one with Morkin where we both sit on hills and there is a deep stream running through the middle. I have a similar map with Challenge. There was a big hill on the map with tyronec and he didn’t want to attack it so a draw was agreed. Another map with Legion had a huge forest in the middle of my deployment area.

The problem is because a lot of armies are weighted towards particular styles of play you often don’t have many reasonable options. One way I could see being able to play on a lot of maps would be to have greater flexibility in your choice of units. More lights or more medium inf, etc. But, I think this is more of a workaround than a solution because part of what makes the game great is the varied army lists in terms of them being unique from one another.

What I would say is so far Field of Glory 2: Medieval has been a big improvement going by the maps. Every battle I have played (nearly 15 now or so) has been on a fairly flat battlefield with some *small* hills and rough ground here and there. It makes play enjoyable and tactical in the true sense of the word. I am actually playing tyronec again in the Medieval section of the DL and there is a small forest next to me but nothing large. He has to work out how to bypass or go through it and it leads to good tournament play.

I think Classical era battlefields are probably among the best in FoG 2: Ancients. Usually quite flat and the other important factor is that armies are fairly balanced. Almost every army has heavy inf, medium inf, cavalry and skirmishers so both sides can adapt in some way.

In Late Antiquity you find infantry heavy armies and cavalry heavy armies which restricts your options. I also find more hilly terrain in the later periods. I just don’t find it so enjoyable a lot of the time.

Going through my mind on the Morkin map was the question - what armies in the Biblical era would actually choose to fight in a giant valley with a heavy stream running through it?

I made the suggestion last year about having some kind of victory points to make players advance more. But, in essence, it all comes back to the map itself.

Anyway, try out Medieval!

[Athos1660]

A world flat and empty as a chessboard ?
I pray the 'Gods' of FoG2 for relief

Are terrains for custom SP battles moddable by scripts ? If so, which ones ?
In addition to the nice random terrains the Vanilla FoG2 series offer, I'd like to be able sometimes to force the map to have say a forest in its centre as it sometimes occurs in P&S. Just for fun (and myself). Is it possible ?

[rbodleyscott]

A world flat and empty as a chessboard ?
I pray the 'Gods' of FoG2 for relief

Are terrains for custom SP battles moddable by scripts ? If so, which ones ?
In addition to the nice random terrains the Vanilla FoG2 series offer, I'd like to be able sometimes to force the map to have say a forest in its centre as it sometimes occurs in P&S. Just for fun (and myself). Is it possible ?

All possible if you are good at programming. The map generation code (and there is a lot of it) is in /Data/Battle/Scrips/MapGenerateBattle.BSF.

[Athos1660]

Thank you very much, Richard.

[kronenblatt]

A world flat and empty as a chessboard ?
I pray the 'Gods' of FoG2 for relief

Are terrains for custom SP battles moddable by scripts ? If so, which ones ?
In addition to the nice random terrains the Vanilla FoG2 series offer, I'd like to be able sometimes to force the map to have say a forest in its centre as it sometimes occurs in P&S. Just for fun (and myself). Is it possible ?

All possible if you are good at programming. The map generation code (and there is a lot of it) is in /Data/Battle/Scrips/MapGenerateBattle.BSF.

That's excellent! Does that mean that we can also create our own tailor-made map types?

[rbodleyscott]

A world flat and empty as a chessboard ?
I pray the 'Gods' of FoG2 for relief

Are terrains for custom SP battles moddable by scripts ? If so, which ones ?
In addition to the nice random terrains the Vanilla FoG2 series offer, I'd like to be able sometimes to force the map to have say a forest in its centre as it sometimes occurs in P&S. Just for fun (and myself). Is it possible ?

All possible if you are good at programming. The map generation code (and there is a lot of it) is in /Data/Battle/Scrips/MapGenerateBattle.BSF.

That's excellent! Does that mean that we can also create our own tailor-made map types?

Probably. You can mod most things.