The problem of custom battles

[SimonLancaster]

I can understand wanting more fog of war during battles. That seems reasonable. But, not seeing the map before deployment seems a bit much to me. Generals would surely have scouts. In my area of expertise, the Napoleonic period, Wellington even specifically selected the battlefield for Waterloo. I have read of many other accounts, even in the Ancient period, of generals selecting a particular area to give battle.

Altering the command and control mechanism and the effects of rough ground I would be open to!

I don't know if you played FOG1 at all, but the pre-battle system was interesting. You picked your army first; then there was a map selection process that included your general's capability, the amount of cavalry/light horse in your army and then a d6 roll. If you won this roll (the general and cavalry generated modifiers) then you were shown a screen with 4 maps on it. You could see the main features of these maps, but not all the detail, and then you chose one of them. Your opponent then went first. You could opt to have "fog of war" and "double moves" switched on.

So that system does the answer the "scouting" issue quite well. A few LH in your army selection could give you a +1 modifier that was decisive in the d6 roll. I imagine that there would be quite a bit of work involved in reproducing something similar to this for FOG2, not least because the maps in FOG2 are so much better than what we had in FOG1. Whether a simpler, different type of system could do the same thing for FOG2, I don't know, but this pre-battle feature is something that I miss from FOG1.

Okay, that kind of set-up seems interesting. If you won the dice roll then you would see four maps and choose from one and your opponent wouldn't have any idea what kind of battlefield he was fighting on?

Winning the roll and having the advantage of choosing one from four maps with the enemy seeing the outline (like you) of the selected map would seem best for me.

[SnuggleBunnies]

I can understand wanting more fog of war during battles. That seems reasonable. But, not seeing the map before deployment seems a bit much to me. Generals would surely have scouts. In my area of expertise, the Napoleonic period, Wellington even specifically selected the battlefield for Waterloo. I have read of many other accounts, even in the Ancient period, of generals selecting a particular area to give battle.

Altering the command and control mechanism and the effects of rough ground I would be open to!

I don't know if you played FOG1 at all, but the pre-battle system was interesting. You picked your army first; then there was a map selection process that included your general's capability, the amount of cavalry/light horse in your army and then a d6 roll. If you won this roll (the general and cavalry generated modifiers) then you were shown a screen with 4 maps on it. You could see the main features of these maps, but not all the detail, and then you chose one of them. Your opponent then went first. You could opt to have "fog of war" and "double moves" switched on.

So that system does the answer the "scouting" issue quite well. A few LH in your army selection could give you a +1 modifier that was decisive in the d6 roll. I imagine that there would be quite a bit of work involved in reproducing something similar to this for FOG2, not least because the maps in FOG2 are so much better than what we had in FOG1. Whether a simpler, different type of system could do the same thing for FOG2, I don't know, but this pre-battle feature is something that I miss from FOG1.

Okay, that kind of set-up seems interesting. If you won the dice roll then you would see four maps and choose from one and your opponent wouldn't have any idea what kind of battlefield he was fighting on?

Winning the roll and having the advantage of choosing one from four maps with the enemy seeing the outline (like you) of the selected map would seem best for me.

You chose your army comp before map selection in fog1 anyway

[stockwellpete]

I agree that players being able to see the map beforehand is weird, though I think you should know the map type. A couple problems with a blanket ban on seeing though -
1) In mirror matches, how would you get this to work?
2) It would lead to more lopsided matches when someone just screws up or gets hammered by the map generation. I personally wouldn't mind this, but I think a lot of people would.

1) I suppose you would have to pick both your armies for the two battles first - and then you would see the map.
2) it might do initially if players were asked to change from one system to another, but I don't remember that FOG1 pre-battle map selection process being unpopular after it was introduced. With that you knew the map type and its main features, but not the detail.

Anarchy I enjoy, the command and control changes in Alt Mod I'm neutral on. What I would very much like is if allied contingents only got bonuses from their subgeneral, so you'd be strongly encouraged to deploy allies in a separate wing, instead of spread throughout the army. However, this was rejected during beta because it was thought most people would hate the restrictiveness. Note that this system *was* implemented somewhat in Sengoku Jidai, where the command groups were automatically generated, with mixed armament command groups to reflect the adhoc feudal nature of army mustering in Sengoku Japan. Chinese/Korean armies had basically an infantry commander and then 2-3 cavalry commanders, again outside of the player's control.

Yes, I agree about allied contingents. I think the "Steam-heads" have got a lot to answer for.

On the spectrum of "game" to "simulation" I think you have... unrealistic expectations about what is actually marketable. FoG I'd say is about 3/4 towards the financially viable simulation end of that spectrum, and while there are aspects I'd like nudged further in that direction, if you just browse the steam forum/reviews you'll see that what we already have is really hard for a lot of people to accept. So mods are probably the way to go for more radical changes.

Well, I actually think we are in the same sort of area, really. I don't want a simulation, I want a game. I just want to nudge FOG2 from the "game" part of the continuum into the middle. What I don't accept though is the frequent argument made that says making things more historically accurate than they are now necessarily will make the game less enjoyable. I think the opposite is true. The command and control rules barely exist in the vanilla game because the command radii are so big. Players are not really forced to think of their armies as coalitions. "Units" can be interchanged and re-deployed without penalty, when in reality it would be impossible to do this.

What would spoil the game is if, in the pursuit of historical accuracy, you started to introduce fiddly details that broke up the rhythm of the game. My approach is that any modifications need to be very simple. They should add a new variable, but "simple to understand, hard to master" is the way to do it. I certainly don't want players to spend ages poring over charts before they make a decision.

Yes, we can add these things with mods for players to try out if they are interested. Whether any of the ideas tried out in the mods so far might merit inclusion in the vanilla game is up to Richard. I think new game mechanisms can extend the life of a game though, especially now as nearly all the DLC's for FOG2 Ancients have been released.

[stockwellpete]

Winning the roll and having the advantage of choosing one from four maps with the enemy seeing the outline (like you) of the selected map would seem best for me.

If you won the roll, you would choose the map and then deploy your army (which you had picked before the map was decided). Then the second player would see the map and deploy their army (which they had also picked before the map selection process). The second player would then have first move. I thought it was good. Players sometimes went for a "great commander" or lots of light horse/cavalry to give themselves a better chance of winning a favourable map, while others didn't worry so much and concentrated on picking a balanced army.

[Athos1660]

How many historical commanders had the luxury of choosing the forces available to them and/or the terrain of the battlefield ?

[Schweetness101]

I can understand wanting more fog of war during battles. That seems reasonable. But, not seeing the map before deployment seems a bit much to me. Generals would surely have scouts. In my area of expertise, the Napoleonic period, Wellington even specifically selected the battlefield for Waterloo. I have read of many other accounts, even in the Ancient period, of generals selecting a particular area to give battle.

The issue is really just that you can recruit your army after having seen the map in vanilla FoG, which does not make sense. You cannot realistically recruit units on the battlefield that match the exact terrain. You can deploy them as per the terrain in real life, but you wouldn't send home to recruit more medium foot say for a battle that day if you saw there was more rough than anticipated. The dark ages/alt mod hides the map during army selection, not during deployment.

Using very large maps with shorter view distances would help as well as scouting would be necessary and there would be a few places you could choose to do battle. IE a closer simulation of the choose from 4 maps based on who has more scouts idea from FoG1. However, the game doesn't really have a strategy layer aspect that determines definitively who the aggressor is, so camping issues would be magnified greatly there potentially, and the first 5-10 or so turns would be a bit boring (a mod that doubles AP during group move could mitigate that though, as well as the single mount in deployment/dismount in combat from the dark ages mod when appropriate).

How many historical commanders had the luxury of choosing the forces available to them and/or the terrain of the battlefield ?

none of them of course. In FoG Vanilla you can recruit units while viewing the map, and deploy them and move them around to see exactly how many medium foot, heavy foot, lights, cav etc...are exactly ideal for the terrain. It enables a very unrealistic degree of min-maxing that also makes competitive deployment a total chore.

[BMAXIMUS]

Just my two cents as a newbie who has been playing this game a few hundred hours :
- I hate fog of war, it might me more "realistic" but I am just not interested in guessing things.
- I want the battle to be realistic in the way that what's happening on the board is realistic , (the way men moves, fight etc ... composition of the army etc ...)
- I don't expect (and probaby don't want) the "META" game to be realistic. What I mean by meta-game is "How do I arrive to this battle , those two armys on this terrain".
- I don't expect the commanding to be realistic. Ok in practice I might not have been able to control all my troops the way I wanted to but I would have probably be able
to give them macro-instructions the night before like "defend that bit", "wait for those guys and then do this" etc. So maybe the actual command system should be seen as top-down design.
Also if wanted to be commanding to be historically accurate then we should be allow to use "tactics" before they were invented or even known to the army at play ?
That can of defeat the point of the game isn't it . Being historically accurate means that epic battle should be played exactly as they happened with the historical winning all the time.
Or they should be fought only once before having read on wikipedia what happened, etc. Where is the limit ?

[Schweetness101]

Just my two cents as a newbie who has been playing this game a few hundred hours :
- I hate fog of war, it might me more "realistic" but I am just not interested in guessing things.
- I want the battle to be realistic in the way that what's happening on the board is realistic , (the way men moves, fight etc ... composition of the army etc ...)
- I don't expect (and probaby don't want) the "META" game to be realistic. What I mean by meta-game is "How do I arrive to this battle , those two armys on this terrain".
- I don't expect the commanding to be realistic. Ok in practice I might not have been able to control all my troops the way I wanted to but I would have probably be able
to give them macro-instructions the night before like "defend that bit", "wait for those guys and then do this" etc. So maybe the actual command system should be seen as top-down design.
Also if wanted to be commanding to be historically accurate then we should be allow to use "tactics" before they were invented or even known to the army at play ?
That can of defeat the point of the game isn't it . Being historically accurate means that epic battle should be played exactly as they happened with the historical winning all the time.
Or they should be fought only once before having read on wikipedia what happened, etc. Where is the limit ?

I think you might like a lot of the pre-set epic battle scenarios then, as they tend to start the armies much closer than custom battles so that everyone can see all of the enemy forces from the beginning, the deployment is mostly chosen for you, and there isn't really room to do any maneuvers other than the historical ones.

[SimonLancaster]

I can understand wanting more fog of war during battles. That seems reasonable. But, not seeing the map before deployment seems a bit much to me. Generals would surely have scouts. In my area of expertise, the Napoleonic period, Wellington even specifically selected the battlefield for Waterloo. I have read of many other accounts, even in the Ancient period, of generals selecting a particular area to give battle.

Altering the command and control mechanism and the effects of rough ground I would be open to!

The issue is really just that you can recruit your army after having seen the map in vanilla FoG, which does not make sense, as you cannot recruit units on the battlefield the match the exact terrain in real life. You can deploy them as per the terrain, but you wouldn't send home to recruit more medium foot say for a battle that day if you saw there was more rough than anticipated. The mod hides the map during army selection, not during deployment.

In truth, quite a few of the army lists are already limited in terms of scope. Some lists don't have a lot of medium infantry or much cavalry. Perhaps making the map less detailed during unit selection could help develop some 'realism'.

I also think that one of the great things about FoG 2 is that it is so fun to play. We shouldn't move away too much from the essentials, I think. In my view it is a huge improvement on FoG I. I did play FoG I for a short time and in my humble opinion it was pretty awful. That is just my opinion, though. I understand that many on here liked it or even miss quite a few of the features that FoG 2 doesn't have.

[BMAXIMUS]

none of them of course. In FoG Vanilla you can recruit units while viewing the map, and deploy them and move them around to see exactly how many medium foot, heavy foot, lights, cav etc...are exactly ideal for the terrain. It enables a very unrealistic degree of min-maxing that also makes competitive deployment a total chore.

Is it not xenophon which once converted part of his army to mach the terrain/opponents ? I think he converted some HF to MF by telling them to drop their armour or someting similar.

I agree they wouldnt' know exactly the map (even though the "at home" side probably would) but I'm sure they would have a much better idea of the terrain that "mediteranean hilly" which depending on the RNG can be anything. And they'll probably chose somehow were to fight, so I'm not sure not seeing the terrain would actually be more accurate than the current situation. Finally, both sides can the see the map, so It's not like it changes much at the end.

[Athos1660]

How many historical commanders had the luxury of choosing the forces available to them and/or the terrain of the battlefield ?

none of them of course. In FoG Vanilla you can recruit units while viewing the map, and deploy them and move them around to see exactly how many medium foot, heavy foot, lights, cav etc...are exactly ideal for the terrain. It enables a very unrealistic degree of min-maxing that also makes competitive deployment a total chore.

But in Vanilla FoGII both in SP and MP custom battles, you can make unit selection random, that's Auto force selection (not to mention 'Fight now!' and 'Quick battles' in SP).

Why don't you use Auto force selection in MP ?

[BMAXIMUS]

I think you might like a lot of the pre-set epic battle scenarios then, as they tend to start the armies much closer than custom battles so that everyone can see all of the enemy forces from the beginning, the deployment is mostly chosen for you, and there isn't really room to do any maneuvers other than the historical ones.

That's what I mainly do vs the AI. However AI is not that strong and it's nice to play MP as well. But I'm not so keen on playing epic on MP.

[SnuggleBunnies]

What I don't accept though is the frequent argument made that says making things more historically accurate than they are now necessarily will make the game less enjoyable. I think the opposite is true.

Well I agree with you, but a lot of players don't. FoGII has higher Steam reviews than the previous games. Part of that comes down to UI and graphical improvements. Part of it though, is that FoGII gives more control to the player - less pursuits, and manual melee adjudication. The latter in particular is something that adds another layer of thinking to the game, somewhat increases the skill ceiling, *and* makes it less realistic.

In FoGII, you can play out melees and moves in the order you want to predictably set up flank and rear attacks etc., in something of a chess like ballet. This is not an option in Pike and Shot - in that game, you can try your best to set up the flanks etc., but because you don't have the ability to set off melees, cohesion checks, and pursuits in the order you would like, and in fact don't know what's going to happen with those, there is an extra layer of 'friction' that FoGII stripped away. Most players like this extra control - one of the most frequent complaints of non-wargamers who encounter this series, particularly the earlier games, is related to that perceived insufficient level of control - that it 'feels like the game is playing itself,' or 'why can't I set my troops to don't pursue/don't evade.'

So the game has to thread a path between appealing to those who want a more historical experience, and selling copies so we can get more DLCs and a decent number of unit models. Overall, I thing RBS & co have done a good job with this, even though I am on the spectrum of wanting more realism/less player control than is in the current iteration of FoGII/M.

[Schweetness101]

none of them of course. In FoG Vanilla you can recruit units while viewing the map, and deploy them and move them around to see exactly how many medium foot, heavy foot, lights, cav etc...are exactly ideal for the terrain. It enables a very unrealistic degree of min-maxing that also makes competitive deployment a total chore.

Is it not xenophon which once converted part of his army to mach the terrain/opponents ? I think he converted some HF to MF by telling them to drop their armour or someting similar.

I agree they wouldnt' know exactly the map (even though the "at home" side probably would) but I'm sure they would have a much better idea of the terrain that "mediteranean hilly" which depending on the RNG can be anything. And they'll probably chose somehow were to fight, so I'm not sure not seeing the terrain would actually be more accurate than the current situation. Finally, both sides can the see the map, so It's not like it changes much at the end.

So in the mod your army selection goes both off of what the opponent might bring of course, and the initial terrain type selection like 'hilly' or 'agricultural', although in the mod I made hilly maps more hilly, agricultural maps more open, woodland maps more wooded, etc...as yes as you say the vanilla map-gen can basically give you anything.

The Anglo Saxons for example re-equipped some of their men with lighter leather armor and/or javelins to fight the Welsh and other Brythonic forces, and in the mod that is represented with 0 + 0/5 lightly equipped offensive spears and javilenmen/50% sword units on the middle anglo saxon list, but they apparently did that systematically as a result of top down orders from the King before going on campaign into Wales, IE going to a battlefield that they knew would likely be be 'North European rough/hilly,' but without of course knowledge of the exact layout of the 'map' they might fight on. That's what I'm going for in the mod, but yeah works better with the mod's map generator changes as well.

What it changes in part is motivating choosing armies that generally suit the terrain and your opponent while still being somewhat balanced as you don't know exactly what you are up against, rather than the sometimes one-dimensional armies and/or armies that are exactly tailored down to the grid square, which can be very unbalanced in vanilla depending on the map roll (IE in vanilla you see that your side has a defensible hill on the map, so you just max lights, bowmen and defensive spears and sit on it, or you see that 6 tiles out from your starting point the terrain is 2 rough, 1 difficult, 4 open....and so you select 2 mediums, a javelinmen, 4 heavies, etc...down the line.)

[Schweetness101]

How many historical commanders had the luxury of choosing the forces available to them and/or the terrain of the battlefield ?

none of them of course. In FoG Vanilla you can recruit units while viewing the map, and deploy them and move them around to see exactly how many medium foot, heavy foot, lights, cav etc...are exactly ideal for the terrain. It enables a very unrealistic degree of min-maxing that also makes competitive deployment a total chore.

But in Vanilla FoGII both in SP and MP custom battles, you can make unit selection random, that's Auto force selection (not to mention 'Fight now!' and 'Quick battles' in SP).

Why don't you use Auto force selection in MP ?

because the auto force selection algorithm is bad, frankly. I still want to choose an army based on:

-the opponent's army
-the type of terrain
-my play style

I just don't want to be able to min max it based on the exact grid squares

[Schweetness101]

I think you might like a lot of the pre-set epic battle scenarios then, as they tend to start the armies much closer than custom battles so that everyone can see all of the enemy forces from the beginning, the deployment is mostly chosen for you, and there isn't really room to do any maneuvers other than the historical ones.

That's what I mainly do vs the AI. However AI is not that strong and it's nice to play MP as well. But I'm not so keen on playing epic on MP.

epic battles can be fun in MP, especially mirrored to make it more fair. I'd say at least give it a shot.

[BMAXIMUS]

What I don't accept though is the frequent argument made that says making things more historically accurate than they are now necessarily will make the game less enjoyable. I think the opposite is true.

Well I agree with you, but a lot of players don't. FoGII has higher Steam reviews than the previous games. Part of that comes down to UI and graphical improvements. Part of it though, is that FoGII gives more control to the player - less pursuits, and manual melee adjudication. The latter in particular is something that adds another layer of thinking to the game, somewhat increases the skill ceiling, *and* makes it less realistic.

In FoGII, you can play out melees and moves in the order you want to predictably set up flank and rear attacks etc., in something of a chess like ballet. This is not an option in Pike and Shot - in that game, you can try your best to set up the flanks etc., but because you don't have the ability to set off melees, cohesion checks, and pursuits in the order you would like, and in fact don't know what's going to happen with those, there is an extra layer of 'friction' that FoGII stripped away. Most players like this extra control - one of the most frequent complaints of non-wargamers who encounter this series, particularly the earlier games, is related to that perceived insufficient level of control - that it 'feels like the game is playing itself,' or 'why can't I set my troops to don't pursue/don't evade.'

So the game has to thread a path between appealing to those who want a more historical experience, and selling copies so we can get more DLCs and a decent number of unit models. Overall, I thing RBS & co have done a good job with this, even though I am on the spectrum of wanting more realism/less player control than is in the current iteration of FoGII/M.

As I said in my previous post, I'm not sure generals as much less control, because they could give much more complex command to their generals than we can within the game. What can be seen as micro management might be just the result of putting in practice the "Plan" which was given to the generals.
In practice a general might no be able to tell this unit to not pursue, but he could have beforhand said that this patch was important and units should stay whatever or equivalent. In this game the way to not push or follow is either to not attack or put troops which don't follow (like Defensive spearmen).
This were doing the force selection afte viewing the map might make sense from a top down point of view.


By the way, I would love a gain when I can just create a genaral plan and see the battle unroll itself.

[Athos1660]

I am all for more realism/less player control ! It'd be nice if there were more gameplay options (like 'Do you lots of or only a few pursuing?' etc.) but I guess it'd fragment the MP community. Note that playing out the melees is only an option. Nobody (but a competitive spirit ) can oblige you to do so and you can play the melees as in P&S.

[BMAXIMUS]

I don't know P&S but I understand that the way evasion/pursuing works (with the AI instead of player) is needed to do per email game, so that you can play you own turn on your own.

[Schweetness101]

...

As I said in my previous post, I'm not sure generals as much less control, because they could give much more complex command to their generals than we can within the game. What can be seen as micro management might be just the result of putting in practice the "Plan" which was given to the generals.
In practice a general might no be able to tell this unit to not pursue, but he could have beforhand said that this patch was important and units should stay whatever or equivalent. In this game the way to not push or follow is either to not attack or put troops which don't follow (like Defensive spearmen).
This were doing the force selection afte viewing the map might make sense from a top down point of view.

I think that with relatively rare exception (maybe some Mongol armies?) pre-modern generals more or less had no direct control of their forces after the melee engaged, or even after the point leading up to it. You can deploy them and send them forward, but once they are near the enemy and charging in, they aren't going to be able to hear orders or just extricate themselves on command. Bloodthirsty pursuits, refusals and anarchic charges pretty much removed any remaining control over units that were even near enemies or had removed themselves from combat simply by winning, hence the importance of keeping reserves so that you had some kind of non-engaged force in the mid to late battle to deploy where needed.

I think this is in part why most of these ancient and medieval battle plans were pretty simple, often just this sort of thing:

-everyone attack all along the front and the reserve will charge in wherever there is a breakthrough
-the best units attack in a wedge all in one place and everyone else move forward in an oblique formation behind them on each side
-the best units attack in a weighted flank with the rest of the forces in an asymmetrical oblique formation to their side
-pikes hold in the middle and cav go around the side
-spears hold a hill and archers shoot over them
-our shieldwall attack their shieldwall and just try to keep things together...
-run at the enemy, shoot them, run away

that sort of thing was nearly all you could realistically control. FoG2 as is, or even with anarchy etc. mods, still gives 100x as much granular control as a real general would have, not to mention the bird's eye view of the battlefield.