Sengoku Jidai - 2021 team event - The Emperor's Throne - Round 4

[ahuyton]

Game Four - Koxinga fights back, 1655-59
Cheng Ch'eng-Kun (aka Koxinga), son of a pirate, builds up a force of Ming loyalists and marches North to restore a Ming Emperor. The rebels, torn by doubt and division, join him in his quest.

Koxinga's army 1647-1662* v Qing 1636-17007
Large armies, wide agricultural terrain, open battle
Emperor team to launch the games please

*Kiwiwarlord's team

Match-ups

Kiwiwarlord v Dang
Snugglebunnies v Gdod
GentlemanRanker v ahuyton
SMjohnso77 v PompeytheFlatulent

[pompeytheflatulent]

um, shouldn't Kiwiwarlord's team be playing as the Qing since they won last round?

[ahuyton]

um, shouldn't Kiwiwarlord's team be playing as the Qing since they won last round?

No, the Ming empire is now represented by Koxinga against the upstart Qing who have yet to consolidate power further south.

[pompeytheflatulent]

I would argue that the Qing would be the 'Emperor team' by this point. The Ming dynasty proper ended when rebels took Beijing. The Southern Ming were a collection of short-lived romp states with various Ming royal family members claiming to be the emperor. Their power was divided between different claimants to the Ming throne and they were never able to unite against the Qing before they all fell one by one. Besides, I don't know about anyone else, but I am so sick of playing as the Qing at this point.

[ahuyton]

I would argue that the Qing would be the 'Emperor team' by this point. The Ming dynasty proper ended when rebels took Beijing. The Southern Ming were a collection of short-lived romp states with various Ming royal family members claiming to be the emperor. Their power was divided between different claimants to the Ming throne and they were never able to unite against the Qing before they all fell one by one. Besides, I don't know about anyone else, but I am so sick of playing as the Qing at this point.

Understood, but this was the scenario as set-up at the beginning of the event. I don't think we can say that the QIng are at this stage ruling what was once 'Ming China', that is for later on.

[pompeytheflatulent]

Alright since SMjohnso77 haven't created the game yet I went ahead and made it myself. Also I made a few games in Battle Academy for Dang or GR or anyone else interested - just going down the list of multiplayer scenarios starting with Market Garden since I don't know what's good or interesting. Password for everything is "12345".

[KiwiWarlord]

Alright since SMjohnso77 haven't created the game yet I went ahead and made it myself. Password is "12345".

Hi PtF, I have contacted SMJ77 and told him you have posted the challenge & that if he cannot play Round 4 let me know & I will play it for him.
We will give him a few days to answer.

[pompeytheflatulent]

Alright since SMjohnso77 haven't created the game yet I went ahead and made it myself. Password is "12345".

Hi PtF, I have contacted SMJ77 and told him you have posted the challenge & that if he cannot play Round 4 let me know & I will play it for him.
We will give him a few days to answer.

He picked up the game already so I think it's all good.

[KiwiWarlord]

Round 4 Result, KiwiWarlord V Dang
Koxinga's Army 10%, Qing 42%
Win for the Emperor.

Koxinga set up in and around the woods in the gully with all the Loyalist cavalry deployed on the Left Wing. The Qing advanced up onto the plateau with Light Horse Scouts leading . Artillery fire singed their tails and sent them out to support their cavalry advance against the Emperor's cavalry wing.
There was a long, fierce combat by the Infantry around the woods and a cavalry engagement on the far side of the plateau. Koxinga's cavalry had archery, crossbow & artillery support which was a big advantage. Some of Koxinga's cavalry actually managed to swing around and attack the Qing Infantry & Cavalry who were assaulting the Right Flank of Koxinga's position. A good win for the Emperor's troops.

[GentlemanRanker]

The Emperor further consolidates his position with a narrow victory in Nanjing province.

Koxinga's army 1647-1662 (GentlemanRanker) defeated the Qing 1636-1707 (ahuyton), 43 – 62

The Zheng Dynasty troops lucked out with terrain, deploying on a raised flat plain surrounded by large patches of forest. The substantial force of superior Manchu cavalry was unable to come to grips with the Zheng defenders, and had to withdraw under withering fire from bow and crossbow from units sheltering safely amongst the trees, backed up by light artillery. The Manchu infantry poured into the forests, and seemed destined for an easy victory when the Zheng CinC was killed in a duel, disrupting or fragmenting every adjacent Zheng unit. However, the Manchus faltered on emerging from the forest to face numerous Zheng reserves.

The Manchu light cavalry hooked around the left flank, and managed, for a time, successfully to distract the three units of Zheng cavalry. But eventually, the lights succumbed to Zheng combined arms firepower, and the Zheng cavalry were just able to race back in time to deal with a couple of units of Manchu cavalry which had managed to break through the defensive cordon.

A hard fought battle, in the end very close result; I shudder to think what the outcome might have been if the Manchu cavalry had been able fully to engage.

[pompeytheflatulent]

Qing (pompeytheflatulent) defeats Koxinga (smjohnso77) 45-12

I got a rant I want to get off my chest. Being on a hill = having an advantage is one of those stupid ass video game tropes that needs to go crawl into a hole and die already. Players look at a difficult sloped hill in this game and think it's a strong position when in fact it's a deathtrap. Once on top you'll be exposed to artillery fire coming from half of the map plus archers stacked 2 deep. While your own ability to bring all of your fire to bear is hampered by the disordering slope all around, as well as being isolated from your own artillery support and reinforcements by the terrain. What's worse is when games set in more modern conflicts blindly follow this trope. What, shooting downhill is going to give your guns just the extra bit of ummf needed to penetrate the enemy tank's armor? Being on a hill just means that everything can see you, and everything can shoot at you. Plus you'll be silhouetted against the horizon while everything you are trying to shoot at blends into the background. Ok rant's over.

[SnuggleBunnies]

Qing (pompeytheflatulent) defeats Koxinga (smjohnso77) 45-12

I got a rant I want to get off my chest. Being on a hill = having an advantage is one of those stupid ass video game tropes that needs to go crawl into a hole and die already. Players look at a difficult sloped hill in this game and think it's a strong position when in fact it's a deathtrap. Once on top you'll be exposed to artillery fire coming from half of the map plus archers stacked 2 deep. While your own ability to bring all of your fire to bear is hampered by the disordering slope all around, as well as being isolated from your own artillery support and reinforcements by the terrain. What's worse is when games set in more modern conflicts blindly follow this trope. What, shooting downhill is going to give your guns just the extra bit of ummf needed to penetrate the enemy tank's armor? Being on a hill just means that everything can see you, and everything can shoot at you. Plus you'll be silhouetted against the horizon while everything you are trying to shoot at blends into the background. Ok rant's over.

Depends on the game though doesn't it? In Pike and Shot and Sengoku where a lot of units can shoot and there's heaps of cannons, yeah, a difficult sloped area can just be a trap. But in FoG II, where a lot of your missile support is skirmishers, it can be easier to make use of the slope. Though even then I agree you really only want to have a few units holding a position like that, ideally anchoring a flank and acting as a delaying force while you attack on the other wing.

[pompeytheflatulent]

I'm bitching more about the game design aspect. Players have this idea in their heads that being on a hill = advantage no matter how little sense it makes, and if the game mechanics don't feature that they the players will complain about it. That's how we get wonderful pieces of absolute nonsense like this gem from the Battle Academy manual: "Units on top of hills can see down, but are hidden from units at ground level until they open fire". Or in FOG2 how archers on a hill can shoot over the top of a unit's head at a enemy but that unit can't shoot back. That's not how line of sight works! If you can see something well enough to shoot at them then they can see you well enough to shoot back. But players have this stupid trope stuck in their heads and will expect some game mechanic that rewards being on top of a hill, which I suspect is how the above examples of nonsense even made it into the games.

Personally I think the game engine itself is just too loose and sloppy in regards to line of sight and so struggle to depict conflicts past the 1600s where artillery plays a bigger role. Taking Kiwiwarlord's screenshot above as an example, my crudely drawn artillery should not have line of sight to units in that treeline. What the artillery would actually see from ground level would be the ground dropping away, then the top half of the trees.

[KiwiWarlord]

I'm bitching more about the game design aspect.

Try posting your thoughts on line of sight to Tech Support Pompey.

[pompeytheflatulent]

Development on these games stopped years ago so there's no point, so I'll just ramble horribly off-topic here like some mad Rasputin. Besides it's not like anything I have to say is that new or profound. I'm sure there are plenty of old grognards out there who's been wargaming for longer than I have been alive who complained about the same things. I think RBS really made the right call in making the cut-off date for his games at 1700. The nature of what constitutes good ground fundamentally changed as you enter the gunpowder age. I've read instances from wide ranging places like the American Revolution, the Crimean War, and WWI where a unit gets to the top of a hill, and then goes: "Why are we sitting here eating artillery fire for no good reason? This is stupid, let's go back down behind this hill." I don't know how many of you here have tried the Waterloo scenario for Pike and Shot. I can see what the scenario creator was aiming for: to represent how the subtle folds in the terrain limited what Napoleon's artillery could see and hit. And I think the creator did a good job in achieving that. But my god was that map aesthetically just the ugliest and most unnatural looking thing ever.

So basically with all this rambling I think I'm just trying to scratch at what I feel is a fundamental divide that separates wargamers that play ancient/medieval games and those that play more modern era games. I feel that there is a different mindset that make these players be able to look at the exact same map and see completely different things. And I think that this makes it really hard to jump between games set in different eras, even if they use basically the same game engine. There's a few of us in here that are dipping our toes into the Battle Academy games right now, and I think we all hitting that learning curve and losing units left and right needlessly as we learn/re-learn these lessons. And I think we are at that stage in the learning process where basically we are the bloke on top of that hill getting shelled and thinking 'who's brilliant idea was it to occupy this hill in the first place?' What do you guys think?

P.S. Sorry about going so off topic.

[GDod]

Pompey, I guess the solution is ... it's ok to be on a hill but you also need superior firepower perhaps

[ahuyton]

We are just now waiting for Snuggles and Gdod to finish their game before moving to the last round.

[SnuggleBunnies]

We are just now waiting for Snuggles and Gdod to finish their game before moving to the last round.

SnuggleBunnies (Zheng) defeats GDod (Qing) 66-49

GG, a close match decided by both armies' cavalry

[ahuyton]

So a clear win for the valiant Koxinga, with only Pompey able to win for the QIng. So we move to the final round, and Kiwiwarlord and his allies remain Emperor, reversing history as they go.