Slitherine

No battle plans, no maneuver, no cunning tactics, not trying to use terrain to your advantage, not defending a position or doing a holding action on one side of the battlefield and attacking at another, not trying the get aroudn the flanks...

While I think anarchy rules are in desperate need of a fix, this just isn't true. The only thing that is problematic is holding high ground. you can still do all the others

Paisley wrote:

No battle plans, no maneuver, no cunning tactics, not trying to use terrain to your advantage, not defending a position or doing a holding action on one side of the battlefield and attacking at another, not trying the get aroudn the flanks...

While I think anarchy rules are in desperate need of a fix, this just isn't true. The only thing that is problematic is holding high ground. you can still do all the others

You can try to do it, but the new uber-anarchy system will sabotage most of your plans.
Sometimes... if you are lucky on the rolls, you can patch somewhat that maybe resembles your intentions. But only sometimes... and in a most unsatisfactory way (maybe because your poor rival is already having headhaches to make his troops follow orders...)

You want to hold a position?? well, do it to your own risk but count on maybe 20 or 30% of your force ignoring you orders and charging ahead after LF or whatever, just to be killed next turn when they are isolated.
You what to try to get some lancers on the enemies flank?? well, count on half of them just ignoring orders and charging frontally on the enemy phalanx they should be circling or follow a LF unit to god knows where
(is sooo easy to just send LF around provoking stupid anarchy charges that is not even fun to do )
etc, etc...

So it seems the only "right" way to play we are left to is charging away with everybody together before the system force you charge one BG at at time

That, or find creative gamey and completely historical tricks like...
- being sure your defensive line has all units looking to the sides instead of to the front so they don't get "tempted"
- ensure yourself that your flanking force always ends his movements looking away from the battle ("keep your eyes on the map border guys!! Don't look at the enemy or you will became crazy bersekers!!"

I will not call that and improvement on historical gameplay

While anarchy certainly needs re-visiting, have you considered defensive spears? They'll stand where you put them all day long...

keyth wrote:While anarchy certainly needs re-visiting, have you considered defensive spears? They'll stand where you put them all day long...

I wish the Ptolemaics i'm using on a tournament had some of these... but they have shock troops, shock troops ans also some shock toops
On RoR most of the units (LF aside) are some kind of shock troops. It's not a problem you can easily avoid!

arsan wrote:

keyth wrote:While anarchy certainly needs re-visiting, have you considered defensive spears? They'll stand where you put them all day long...

I wish the Ptolemaics i'm using on a tournament had some of these... but they have shock troops, shock troops ans also some shock toops
On RoR most of the units (LF aside) are some kind of shock troops. It's not a problem you can easily avoid!

From the little I have played it, SoA seems to be the opposite. Haven't seen much shock troops other than mounted knights and the Swiss. That's why I enjoy SoA so much more at the moment. If it wasn't for the campaign I'm part off I don't think I would play any more RoR. Not as long as anarchy is as it is.

Ah, anarchy! My second favorite topic right after cavalry evades which still aren't fixed.

I've seen the A's at turns end that don't result in charges and believe the unit tested and failed as a "can't move this turn" result. I've also noticed in the black box a whole bunch of anarchy tests rolling by even though I've already moved everyone. I suspect there is a bug in the implementation.

Deeter

I'll just wade into this topic once more. I think anarchy as it is modeled now sucks. The chance is far too high and negates the possibility of calculated defence unless it involves gamey play (which I have no problem doing to achieve victory but nevertheless is totally boring). I don't feel their is a preponderance of evidence that this factor was an aspect of the majority of historical warfare. Also it negates all the situations where defence was a role. For example Thermopylae, as it is a well known battle for even the layman, where we see Greeks and Spartans defending a pass. To defeat them as Persia you simply send forward some lights who they will charge and leave the narrow gap to be surrounded and butchered. I can't fathom why they don't introduce a rule prohibiting heavies or mediums to chase lights and their is little point for mounted to chase also as you cannot catch them. In the TT version evading affords the chance for the pursuer to catch them and if it isn't represented in the PC game then they shouldn't force units to anarchy after them. Also regarding to lines of pike at 4 hexes distance with LF between in front of one line of pikes. You can't get any more gamey a position. If I charge the light or get anarchied then I'll impact the enemy line with no chance of support as the flanking LF will have scattered also. This produces an early impact before the rest can support and allows the opponent to stay together and then gang up on one. This could partly be resolved by not allowing MF or HF to follow up evading LF which would mean I could safely advance my line 2 hexes adjacent to the enemy LF scattering them and then we could have a historical crash of two lines. Many solutions exist to the current problem but persisting with anarchy as is I feel is wrong. I'm winning to many of my battles through just gamey play, positioning, non-historical movement etc.

After playing quite a few games (more than 100), I totally agree with the anarchy charge flaw since last patch.

I'm not an historian but I find it hard to believe any drilled troop under command would (suicide) charge any ennemy in their range or lose any advantage position at least once in every battle they fight in (with the current stats, it is the case). I don't think any hoplite, phalanx or legion would have ever charged all over the place like it is the case now (may be once in their entire life !). Shock troop does not mean stupid troop IMHO. I don't think at all such a behaviour being historical for drilled troops, except in exceptional circumstances like being under heavy fire or having an easy prey close to them without putting them in great danger.

I've just had a game with Illyrians where 1/3 of them just suicide charged every turn. The battle was over within 4 turns after the first combat... No fun although I did not expect to win this game. They were undrilled though, but the anarchy charge occurs far too often.

Although I'm always trying to accomodate of any game rules, I'm also considering giving up FoG despite its quality just because of this. I think it goes against history and gameplay, 2 major concerns for an ancient/medieval wargame.

I would suggest drilled troops under command should almost NEVER charge and having the out of command/undrilled troops still anarchy charge, but not at this unrealistic rate.

What about the forthcoming Immortal Fire ? Could you believe seeing all your Spartan hoplites charge in all directions on the battlefield ? Certainly not, it would just be a parody of a wargame.

It does seem that the anarchy charge rules need to be modified from those that work well in the TT game, in order to accommodate the other differences in the PC game.

(Although the situation is currently worse than it might be because the full TT anarchy exception rules have not yet been implemented).

Just to reiterate, the anarchy charge exceptions in the TT rules are:

"However, shock troops will not charge without orders (and are therefore not required to take a CMT to prevent charging) in the following circumstances:
 If their move could end even partly in terrain that would disorder or severely disorder them.
 If they are medium foot starting wholly in uneven, rough or difficult terrain and the move could end even partly in open terrain.
 If they are foot defending fortifications or a riverbank.
 If they are foot whose move could contact or be intercepted by mounted.
 If their move could end in contact with a fortification, elephants or a riverbank.
 If they are fragmented (they cannot charge).

Otherwise, if shock troops would normally be required to test to prevent them from charging without orders, the following rules apply if they could not contact the enemy without passing through friends, even by wheeling and/or dropping back bases:
 They do not test (and will not charge) if the friends are shock troops or already in melee.
 They do not test (and will not charge) if all the enemy in reach are skirmishers.
 Otherwise the battle group must take a CMT as normal. If it fails, it must burst through the friends. (Note that a player cannot choose to allow his shock troops to burst through in this way, they can only do so if they fail their CMT and charge without orders)."


In my view a balance needs to be struck.

- It would be dumbing down the game to remove anarchy charges entirely. (Not to mention altering the balance between shock armies and non-shock armies. We haven't got to Swords and Scimitars yet, but when we do, the interaction between Crusaders and Saracens will not work historically without the Crusader knights being prone to anarchy charges.).
- It would be dumbing down the game to make them so rare that there would be no real point in taking precautions against them.
- However, they do seem to many people to be a bit too common at the moment.

I guess it is over to the developers to try to find a better balance than the current situation, which does severely handicap certain armies. (Particularly the poor old Illyrians).

I suspect that all that is necessary is to implement the full exception list above and make the CMT slightly easier to pass for anarchy charges. (Even a +1 modifier on the dice roll would make a substantial difference in practice).

I have only seen 1 or 2 Anarchy charges a game since the 1.2.6 patch came out. I have executed single envelopment (only 1 mounted anarchy charged the baggage) I use all 4 general slots. I also put screening light troops in front of my shock troops. Ilyrians are one of the army lists that has about 50 percent more break points because of unit costs, so they may have issues. I played a carthaginian army against them and I think we had a few anarchy chargss, but that was 1.2.5. There seems to be less anarchy charges in 1.2.6.

Also, LF are now being caught while evading cavalry and rarely by foot. (I think a medium spear unit caught an evading bowman) I expect the dev's to fintune the anarchy and evading mechanics over time.

All my tests (see above postings) were done under 2.6

Xiggy wrote:I have only seen 1 or 2 Anarchy charges a game since the 1.2.6 patch came out. I have executed single envelopment (only 1 mounted anarchy charged the baggage) I use all 4 general slots. I also put screening light troops in front of my shock troops. Ilyrians are one of the army lists that has about 50 percent more break points because of unit costs, so they may have issues. I played a carthaginian army against them and I think we had a few anarchy chargss, but that was 1.2.5. There seems to be less anarchy charges in 1.2.6.

Also, LF are now being caught while evading cavalry and rarely by foot. (I think a medium spear unit caught an evading bowman) I expect the dev's to fintune the anarchy and evading mechanics over time.

I also use 4 generals, ALL my troops are drilled, keep everybody under command radius mostly all the times and try to screen them as good as possible with my LF against enemy skirmishers.
Still, still my 15 or so pikes BG, 4 lancer cav and six MF off spears go anarchy mad with irritating frequency.
In my ptolemaic army everybody except my 2 elephants and 8 LF is shock
You seem to be extremely lucky with die rolls. If i were you i will play lottery

arsan wrote:

Xiggy wrote:I have only seen 1 or 2 Anarchy charges a game since the 1.2.6 patch came out. I have executed single envelopment (only 1 mounted anarchy charged the baggage) I use all 4 general slots. I also put screening light troops in front of my shock troops. Ilyrians are one of the army lists that has about 50 percent more break points because of unit costs, so they may have issues. I played a carthaginian army against them and I think we had a few anarchy chargss, but that was 1.2.5. There seems to be less anarchy charges in 1.2.6.

Also, LF are now being caught while evading cavalry and rarely by foot. (I think a medium spear unit caught an evading bowman) I expect the dev's to fintune the anarchy and evading mechanics over time.

I also use 4 generals, ALL my troops are drilled, keep everybody under command radius mostly all the times and try to screen them as good as possible with my LF against enemy skirmishers.
Still, still my 15 or so pikes BG, 4 lancer cav and six MF off spears go anarchy mad with irritating frequency.
In my ptolemaic army everybody except my 2 elephants and 8 LF is shock
You seem to be extremely lucky with die rolls. If i were you i will play lottery

One thing you might want to try is using more LF in your Ptolemaic army to keep the opposing LF away from your shock troops. 8 LF sounds a bit low.

Chris

batesmotel wrote:
One thing you might want to try is using more LF in your Ptolemaic army to keep the opposing LF away from your shock troops. 8 LF sounds a bit low.

Chris

Thats the max normal LF the DAG will let me buy for my Ptolemaics.
Well, i could add some fancy cretan archers too (3 or 4 max IIRC) but thats all. I doubt a couple more cretan archers will change the anarchy problem drastically...

keyth wrote:While anarchy certainly needs re-visiting, have you considered defensive spears? They'll stand where you put them all day long...

I don't necessarily want a defensive line all the time. Sometimes I just want to hold a line until some other units have got into position, or until my cavalry has seen off the enemy cavalry, then I want to attack. Defensive spears are fine (but not as good as pikes) for holding a line, but nothing else.

Just had a MF anarchy-charging a routing enemy BG unit. Now, really, what is that about....????

It is happening far too frequently. I like the chaos of end of turn anarchy, but it is just too frequent. It can ruin the enjoyment of the game.

I keep having fragmented knights go anarchy but the only thing that stops them from charging back into the pikes that put them in that state is that they are fragmented and so can not charge front on. Now it seems to me if some of your mates are lying just back where you have been impaled on very long sticks that the last thing you would want to do is run back into that pile of sticks. I don't mind increased anarchy when troops look at some rabble in front of them and would think they are infinitely superior and so with a rush of blood take off and charge into them. I think there could be a case where the chance is increased if they are under missle fire as they are more likely to take matters into their own hands. But the situation where the type of spear you are holding in your hand turns you into a suicidal maniac seems just wrong. Increased anarchy I think is a step towards more realistic game play but frequent suicidal anarchy seems unrealistic and is therefore just annoying. I would petition the designers to change the tests so that the relative strengths of the units including any terrain advantages they are forgoing be factored in to any tests for Anarchy. Under these rules Thermopylae would have lasted about 3 minutes as Leonidas would have not been able to stop his lads rushing out from a fairly nice position.

rbodleyscott wrote: (Although the situation is currently worse than it might be because the full TT anarchy exception rules have not yet been implemented).

I would like to see these fully implemented before the PC designers start deviating from the TT rules too much. The TT rules work fine and perhaps I'm missing something but I can't see why they can't work "as is" in the PC version. The closer the PC version is to the TT version the better. It means the PC version can be used as a test bed before buying lead and paint for a TT army.

2 cents,
S.

Is it possible to get someone from Slitherine to way in on the topic so that we may get a sense of the direction they wish to take. This would certainly give me an indication whether I'd like to persist with this game or call it quits.

Also in relation to Batesmotel advice to purchase more LF. Yes, it is how we can limit the current effects but gamewise I don't think it is the correct solution. The TT rules need to be implemented for anarchy in their entirety. If not it further heightens the power of poor classed LF which can't be purchased by many lists.