Slitherine

SnuggleBunnies wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 5:46 pm The diagonal turn thing is obnoxious, though I don't see it too often. I suppose there is no simple fix for it.

stockwellpete wrote: ↑Mon Sep 24, 2018 10:54 am I have suggested it already but one way to reduce this rapid disintegration of the infantry lines would be to say that infantry units cannot be pushed back if they have "steady" units on either side of them (the units would have to be facing exactly the same way). So you would have to get a "disrupt" result somewhere in the middle of the line before you could start pushing the centre of it back.

If you imagine 5 infantry units in a line going into the impact phase, the two end units can be pushed back in the same way as units are now because they do not have a "steady" unit on each side. As the three middle units do have "steady" units on either side they cannot be pushed-back during the impact phase. This idea should help to stabilise the centre of infantry lines a bit more without affecting the general gameplay at all.

However, it wouldn't always make a great deal of difference. Imagine a situation where the middle unit of the 5 is "disrupted" on impact, then the whole line is vulnerable to push-backs in the next melee phase as none of the units would now have "steady" units on either side of them.

TheGrayMouser wrote: ↑Mon Sep 24, 2018 12:17 pm Pete, I suspect what you envision is not really possible in the land of hexes and grids, perhaps not even in free form map where units “ foot print” are established ( ie like a tt game or DBA online). It likely would reqire a 1 to 1 representation of model to soldier, and be real-time to boot).

But the question is, could individual subunits rout independently of the battle line? I don’t see why not , and I don’t believe history speaks to us in so great detail that we can say absolute conviction one way or the other, even if one types in big fonts and boldface

Delbruck wrote: ↑Mon Sep 24, 2018 12:24 pmIronically, I don't believe the original miniatures game had any push backs, for many of the reasons mentioned here.

erichswafford wrote: ↑Mon Sep 24, 2018 9:46 am
Again, my suggestion is to have infantry units get progressively disordered as a way to simulate what happened at, say, Pydna (as opposed to pushbacks). At this scale, IMHO, Units really should not be able to advance into an unbroken, healthy unit's frontal ZOC (the three squares to its front).

To "break in" an enemy line, you'd need to get the units on either side of the target unit disordered enough to, say, eliminate their ZOC's. And you'd do that as they did historically: By grinding them down. Having it work this way re-asserts the overriding need to actually turn a flank (and there are many ways to do this, though it was often a matter of having a last reserve or cavalry serendipitously returning from an unexpected quarter) to decisively win the battle. Right now, that's unnecessary - Because your infantry will simply penetrate (to a quite astonishing depth!) the enemy line here and there. And, of course, they'll do the same to you.

Ludendorf wrote: ↑Sat Sep 22, 2018 3:24 pm The 'pushback every second occasion' mechanic would have to be explained in the manual and ideally come up as a tooltip in tutorials, as a player who sees pushbacks sometimes appear to move the line back and sometimes not will be potentially baffled and possibly quite annoyed. I'd certainly have questions if I saw 'Pushed Back' come up only for nothing to happen, and not everyone is going to check the forum.

julianbarker wrote: ↑Fri Sep 21, 2018 6:39 pm How will the 100:50:0 system work when I have flanked the enemy and am driving the enemy's flank guards back towards the heart of his army at right angles to their front line? Is my successful flanking manoeuvre going to be penalised by this?

Kabill wrote: ↑Mon Sep 24, 2018 5:25 pm

Regardless of questions about "realism" - since they can't be answered reliably anyway - I think it's important to think about this issue from a gameplay perspective as well.

Pushbacks play a really important role in creating tactical opportunities which can be exploited to arrive at a decisive advantage. I.e. pushing a unit back creates space for a player to deploy reserve units and therefore apply more pressure at particular points in an opponent's formation; and also creates opportunities for flank attacks etc. Getting rid of pushbacks, or seriously reducing them, would result in large infantry clashes will become primarily die-rolling exercises where luck rather than player skill plays a more significant role in the outcome. Whether or not that system would be more realistic is irrelevant because it would be a worse game.

To take your suggestion as a proposal: what are the players doing while each side is being "ground down"? That to me reads like several turns of little more than die-rolling, hoping that you get the rolls needed to actually then do something to affect the outcome. That doesn't sound like a very interesting game to me. In contrast, having a system where lines are more dynamic leads, ultimately, to a more tactical game.

This aside, I think it's also important to emphasise how much of this game is ultimately an abstraction. Even if we accept that the amount units push each other back is unrealistically excessive, as an abstraction of the kinds of micro-level tactical opportunities that might arise during a battle I think it works very well. This argument can be applied to the game as a whole: the very high level of control the player has over individual units is exceptionally unrealistic, but it functions effectively as an abstraction of small-scale tactical decisions and manoeuvres which may have occurred spontaneously or which were the product of devolved command structures. And again, while it would be "more realistic" (maybe) to remove those things, the game would be much less tactically interesting for it.

The point that I'm trying to make here is that appeals to realism - even if we agree on what is "realistic" - are not always (or even often) very helpful for producing a good game. One of the things I really like about FoG2 is that it manages to produce battles which are both interesting to play and which flow in a fashion which feels fairly plausible. That's quite an achievement, and while I do think there's some scope for winding in some of the most egregious instances of line penetration (and I think the solution Richard's come to will do that), I don't think a more extensive overhaul will improve on that and may in fact be detrimental to it.

julianbarker wrote: ↑Tue Sep 25, 2018 7:02 pm I have not see nan answer to my question above about whether limiting push backs disadvantages successful flanking manoeuvres.

shadowblack wrote: ↑Wed Sep 26, 2018 1:40 amI hope my concerns are unfounded and these proposed changes are good for the game. Lots of beta testing please, because it's going to have a big impact on how the game was originally envisaged and designed. With luck, a good compromise has been reached here without altering the feel of the game too much.

rbodleyscott wrote: ↑Wed Sep 19, 2018 4:10 pm

erichswafford wrote: ↑Wed Sep 19, 2018 2:39 pmMy suggestion: Make it where an individual small unit will only advance if they have at least one friendly unit either adjacent, or one square back (diagonally). That would at least place some sort of check on these mad dashes behind enemy lines. This would only apply to infantry, of course.

I am not averse to this. It would not alter the intended effect of the mechanism, as it would still allow them to get flanked, but as you say it would stop them advancing very far from the main battle line.

We could try it out in the next beta.

Kabill wrote: ↑Mon Sep 24, 2018 5:25 pm

erichswafford wrote: ↑Mon Sep 24, 2018 9:46 am
Again, my suggestion is to have infantry units get progressively disordered as a way to simulate what happened at, say, Pydna (as opposed to pushbacks). At this scale, IMHO, Units really should not be able to advance into an unbroken, healthy unit's frontal ZOC (the three squares to its front).

To "break in" an enemy line, you'd need to get the units on either side of the target unit disordered enough to, say, eliminate their ZOC's. And you'd do that as they did historically: By grinding them down. Having it work this way re-asserts the overriding need to actually turn a flank (and there are many ways to do this, though it was often a matter of having a last reserve or cavalry serendipitously returning from an unexpected quarter) to decisively win the battle. Right now, that's unnecessary - Because your infantry will simply penetrate (to a quite astonishing depth!) the enemy line here and there. And, of course, they'll do the same to you.

Regardless of questions about "realism" - since they can't be answered reliably anyway - I think it's important to think about this issue from a gameplay perspective as well.

Pushbacks play a really important role in creating tactical opportunities which can be exploited to arrive at a decisive advantage. I.e. pushing a unit back creates space for a player to deploy reserve units and therefore apply more pressure at particular points in an opponent's formation; and also creates opportunities for flank attacks etc. Getting rid of pushbacks, or seriously reducing them, would result in large infantry clashes will become primarily die-rolling exercises where luck rather than player skill plays a more significant role in the outcome. Whether or not that system would be more realistic is irrelevant because it would be a worse game.

To take your suggestion as a proposal: what are the players doing while each side is being "ground down"? That to me reads like several turns of little more than die-rolling, hoping that you get the rolls needed to actually then do something to affect the outcome. That doesn't sound like a very interesting game to me. In contrast, having a system where lines are more dynamic leads, ultimately, to a more tactical game.

This aside, I think it's also important to emphasise how much of this game is ultimately an abstraction. Even if we accept that the amount units push each other back is unrealistically excessive, as an abstraction of the kinds of micro-level tactical opportunities that might arise during a battle I think it works very well. This argument can be applied to the game as a whole: the very high level of control the player has over individual units is exceptionally unrealistic, but it functions effectively as an abstraction of small-scale tactical decisions and manoeuvres which may have occurred spontaneously or which were the product of devolved command structures. And again, while it would be "more realistic" (maybe) to remove those things, the game would be much less tactically interesting for it.

The point that I'm trying to make here is that appeals to realism - even if we agree on what is "realistic" - are not always (or even often) very helpful for producing a good game. One of the things I really like about FoG2 is that it manages to produce battles which are both interesting to play and which flow in a fashion which feels fairly plausible. That's quite an achievement, and while I do think there's some scope for winding in some of the most egregious instances of line penetration (and I think the solution Richard's come to will do that), I don't think a more extensive overhaul will improve on that and may in fact be detrimental to it.