Slitherine

nikgaukroger wrote:

dave_r wrote:

nikgaukroger wrote: Assuming you ignore the defeats of the Ionian Greeks.

Was that before or after they had burnt the Persian Capital to the ground?

Irrelevant to your question - plus it was Sardis, a regional centre, not the capital

That doesn't count anyway - it was just supressing a revolt

And they weren't proper Greeks.

dave_r wrote: They only beat the Lydians because they disbanded their army for winter and then got surprised when the Persians didn't.

The Persian empire was mainly a victory for organisation, political and diplomacy ability rather than military conflict. The fact they could muster a massive army was usually enough to bully their neighbours into submission. When it actually fought it usually performed poorly.

The fact they never beat the Greeks (except at Thermopylae) perhaps says it all.

It would appear that the Greeks, notably Themistocles, weren't quite as confident as you are that the Persian army was rubbish!

Alexander rather overshadows the Persian achievement, which given his empire lasted less than 20 years is curious. Persia actually reached it's peak after Marathon, gaining both Egypt and eastern provinces.

Didn't the Romans consider two legions could hold all of egypt? That must mean the Nubians could field as many as 20000 troops? A similar number to the Greek mercenaries hired by numerous Persian kings?

I think the Achaemenid Persians were reasonably competent in their day, but then remained stagnant to the point of becoming obsolete and ineffective.

Skullzgrinda wrote:I think the Achaemenid Persians were reasonably competent in their day, but then remained stagnant to the point of becoming obsolete and ineffective.

Or average to put another name to it

Average by the time the empire fell, yes.
Like every other empire, in fact. They always start out superior and end up average, or even poor if nobody pushes them over first.

I'm sure Alexander wouldn't have lost to the Romans, but his successors did.
You're really just arguing for the sake of it, aren't you?

pyruse wrote:Average by the time the empire fell, yes.
Like every other empire, in fact. They always start out superior and end up average, or even poor if nobody pushes them over first.

I'm sure Alexander wouldn't have lost to the Romans, but his successors did.
You're really just arguing for the sake of it, aren't you?

You've found out what he's good at

pyruse wrote:Average by the time the empire fell, yes.
Like every other empire, in fact. They always start out superior and end up average, or even poor if nobody pushes them over first.

I'm sure Alexander wouldn't have lost to the Romans, but his successors did.

It's far from clear whether Alexander would have lost to the Third Reich. Certainly not in an ego-based system.

pyruse wrote:I'm sure Alexander wouldn't have lost to the Romans, but his successors did.

War is about economics and logistics, not the odd, even superbly fought, battle.

What I hate about FoG is multiple complex combats where you get units that don't line up, some are disordered so lose dice but some aren't, some files are missing back ranks so have different POAs to their friends next door, then you've got to work out who did what damage to who afterwards......

It's OK to do it once but when you're doing it repeatedly during the game it can turn into an arithmetic test with wargames figures and it isn't my idea of fun.

What the answer would be should the authors wish to change it, frankly I don't know which irritates me a little as it's perhaps a little unfair to criticise without putting forward possible solutions.

AlanYork wrote:What I hate about FoG is multiple complex combats where you get units that don't line up, some are disordered so lose dice but some aren't, some files are missing back ranks so have different POAs to their friends next door, then you've got to work out who did what damage to who afterwards......

It's OK to do it once but when you're doing it repeatedly during the game it can turn into an arithmetic test with wargames figures and it isn't my idea of fun.

What the answer would be should the authors wish to change it, frankly I don't know which irritates me a little as it's perhaps a little unfair to criticise without putting forward possible solutions.

It seems to be an inevitable side effect of a unit based system. Element based systems bring their own, different, side effects.

YPYMAYTYC

AlanYork wrote:What I hate about FoG is multiple complex combats where you get units that don't line up, some are disordered so lose dice but some aren't, some files are missing back ranks so have different POAs to their friends next door, then you've got to work out who did what damage to who afterwards......

It's OK to do it once but when you're doing it repeatedly during the game it can turn into an arithmetic test with wargames figures and it isn't my idea of fun.

What the answer would be should the authors wish to change it, frankly I don't know which irritates me a little as it's perhaps a little unfair to criticise without putting forward possible solutions.

Personally, I don't think it's that difficult but then again I rarely get the opportunity of actually getting stuck in as most players prefer to play FOG as a non-contact sport.

My beef with FOG and other similar rulesets is with the victory conditions. Since you get points for killing enemy BGs and preserving your own, gameplay is biased towards taking as few risks as possible unless you have a massive advantage. My experience is that it often makes for dull, inconclusive games. The 5 point bonus for routing the enemy is usually not enough of an incentive for both players to actually go for it and try to win the game not when that might put at risk the 10 points they already have for their own army.

For lack of players in the vicinity I only play wargames at competitions and I'm no longer prepared to dedicate weekends and money to a ruleset which doesn't force players to actively seek a victory at all costs. Unfortunately, I've come to the conclusion that only a ruleset or competitions that use objectives to decide victory conditions can achieve this. While this might be an appropriate system in Ancients for, say, hoplite armies it clearly isn't for a Skythian army. Anyway, to cut a long story short it just isn't going to happen anytime soon so my ancients figures will remain in their boxes for the forseeable future.

Julian

rbodleyscott wrote:

AlanYork wrote:What I hate about FoG is multiple complex combats where you get units that don't line up, some are disordered so lose dice but some aren't, some files are missing back ranks so have different POAs to their friends next door, then you've got to work out who did what damage to who afterwards......

It's OK to do it once but when you're doing it repeatedly during the game it can turn into an arithmetic test with wargames figures and it isn't my idea of fun.

What the answer would be should the authors wish to change it, frankly I don't know which irritates me a little as it's perhaps a little unfair to criticise without putting forward possible solutions.

It seems to be an inevitable side effect of a unit based system. Element based systems bring their own, different, side effects.

YPYMAYTYC

I don't think it's inevitable, Impetus is a unit based system and doesn't have this problem. To be fair though I have only read Impetus and have yet to play a game, when I do they might be brilliant but then again they might be awful.

Despite the complexity of some combats I feel that FoG bringing units back into Ancients games is overall a good thing.

Impetus isn't a unit based system. Effectively it's an element based system, like DBA, just with more detail.

One way to get rid of all the alignment/overlap problems is to mandate that all units have the same frontage.
Then you can say they always line up.
See Neil Thomas' AMW rules, or Phil Sabin's Strategos for examples of unit based rules with no complications to do with funny angles, overlaps, etc.

pyruse wrote:One way to get rid of all the alignment/overlap problems is to mandate that all units have the same frontage.
Then you can say they always line up.
See Neil Thomas' AMW rules, or Phil Sabin's Strategos for examples of unit based rules with no complications to do with funny angles, overlaps, etc.

Then you might as well not have units made up of multiple bases and just go back to an element sytem like DBA. The big advantage of units consisting of multiple bases is that you can vary the formations and sizes of the units, thus having different frontages.

jlopez wrote: ...My beef with FOG and other similar rulesets is with the victory conditions. Since you get points for killing enemy BGs and preserving your own, gameplay is biased towards taking as few risks as possible unless you have a massive advantage. My experience is that it often makes for dull, inconclusive games. The 5 point bonus for routing the enemy is usually not enough of an incentive for both players to actually go for it and try to win the game not when that might put at risk the 10 points they already have for their own army. ... For lack of players in the vicinity I only play wargames at competitions and I'm no longer prepared to dedicate weekends and money to a ruleset which doesn't force players to actively seek a victory at all costs. ... Julian

I certainly don't dispute you Julian, but I have to say the game is played very differently along the Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas circuit. I have run my army as Alan (LH heavy list), Cimmerian, Skythian and Saka and only about 1/3 of the games were indecisive. On the occasions the game timed out with minimal losses, one of more of the following occurred: one or both players were new; the army was new to the player; there was a mismatch with LH versus heavy foot which were deployed defensively.

My experienced opponents have typically been very aggressive on a broad front, and have forced the game to a conclusion within the time limits. The only exception was a bizzarre slugfest in which the armies' shock troops locked for about 5 indecisive turns. I wonder what contributes tot he different regional styles - assuming my experiences have been typical in the region?

azrael86 wrote: Well, compared to themselves, no, but most sane rulers understood that regularly losing a lot of peasants wasn't a good idea as you need peasants to sow crops, shoe horses, etc. Possibly some steppe armies were less bothered, the Mongols in china being a case in point.

Sane? Well that eliminates entire Centuries. Or to paraphrase from the move "ZULU" That's daft then who would run to fight a battle.

Sanity has little to do.

AlanYork wrote:I don't think it's inevitable, Impetus is a unit based system and doesn't have this problem. To be fair though I have only read Impetus and have yet to play a game, when I do they might be brilliant but then again they might be awful.

Despite the complexity of some combats I feel that FoG bringing units back into Ancients games is overall a good thing.

Impetus from memory essentially does away with conforming and it averages out the combat strenght of all units to pretty much a single number.

I have finally managed to fight my way through the rules (it took a lot of attempts) and am happy to try them out but would like to play someone who knows them as I have found what I think may be a number of rather 'interesting' situations from reading the rules and I want to see if other are aware of them or if I have misread the rules.

It definitely seems more like a DBA plus than a DBM minus. Each 'unit' is effectively just a big element which has strength points which may gradually or very rapidly erode.

Still not sure about it. I was quite interested, to the point of persuading a company to stock the rules to sell so I could buy them from them but now having struggled so much to digest them I am less sure I want to play.

I
If I am up in York sometime I will look you up Alan.

hammy wrote:
I have finally managed to fight my way through the rules (it took a lot of attempts) and am happy to try them out but would like to play someone who knows them as I have found what I think may be a number of rather 'interesting' situations from reading the rules and I want to see if other are aware of them or if I have misread the rules.

There you go you tournament tiger already trying to twist the rules.

hazelbark wrote:

hammy wrote:
I have finally managed to fight my way through the rules (it took a lot of attempts) and am happy to try them out but would like to play someone who knows them as I have found what I think may be a number of rather 'interesting' situations from reading the rules and I want to see if other are aware of them or if I have misread the rules.

There you go you tournament tiger already trying to twist the rules.

Absolutely

When I read a ruleset I automatically seem to look for extreme situations and areas where I can gain advantage. There are some very different design choices in Impetus such as you can either move or wheel but not both which I suspect will have a very significant impact on the way the game plays out.