Slitherine

Here was the latest battlefield...a vast sloping steep hill with lakes and marsh cascading down the side.

The leaderless Romans have been working quite well!

I think perhaps linking rallying to in-range-of-command would do wonders to get rid of the LF/shooty/MF swarms perhaps.

Having to actually be in command range to bolster would make one think twice of the leaderless option. As it is now, things rally amazingly well without a leader!

TheGrayMouser wrote:I dont seem to recall you playing like a "wallflower" in any of our matches, more like Blathergut the Bold (or Rash)

My favorite map is what i call the "Bloodbowl" Imagine an oval inside the rectangle of the map edges, the area that would fill the gap between the rectangle and the oval is rising hills

Oh I don't mean I sit somewhere! I just hate chasing around and around the vastness of the map. I've found the Thracian swarm to be able to stop this somewhat because it can stretch across the field. And the MF and cav are quick enough to force the shooty things back fairly quickly. It's the HF sloggers who have a hard time with it.

But ya, have always been the gung-ho-into-it type

rbodleyscott wrote:

Blathergut wrote:1. Less maps with water and rough/difficult ground in/across the centre of the field.

I disagree. The real world has such terrain. Historical ancient/medieval battles did not generally take place in the terrain (although they quite often did - e.g. Agincourt, Bannockburn and many more), but the historical battlefield is not represented by the whole map, it is represented by the part of the map on which the battle actually takes place. On most (but not all) such maps there are clear areas in which the battle can take place - if both sides are willing to fight there. If one side takes to the hills and refuses to come out, that is also historical, and if the other side refuses to come in after them, then no battle will take place, which is also historical. In which case you must agree a draw and start again.

Why not?

In my view, the minor inconvenience of the occasional false start is a price worth paying for adding to the historical difficulties that PC generals must learn to deal with. At least you don't have to get all the figures out of the box and put them back again like you do on the TT.

Like others I agree with RBS.

Translating this into a wish list I would ask for
First; (As others) slightly larger maps in proportion to points.
Second; The option for players to agree
a) One player can select from a limited choice of potential maps.
And/or
b) One player can select which side of the selected map is their deployment area.
The rationale is that this would be primarily for campaigns where one army may be ‘defending’ its own territory and might be expected to be picking its ground. No reason why it should not be available as an option in competition or friendly games for the side with initiative.

Or this leads to the "dancing." If that is enjoyable to you, then cool. Enjoy. It's just not my cup of tea.

You call it dancing, I call it vying for favorable position
I find it enjoyable if not taken to the extreme. Some armies is better suited for flanking movements then others, of course. As to how realistic this is I have to leave to the experts of ancient warfare to decide.
Also...I'm totally with deeter in what he states about casualties. Getting more than 20% of a BG wiped out in one turn is...too much. The trend towards horde armies is a bit depressing, I agree (I'm as guilty as anyone) and also add to the cramped feeling I get from many of the maps.

I also agree with the comments re. Horde armies and damage ranges.

I'd also like to see some benefit given to the level of armour in conflict. At present there is no real benefit of being a lot more armoured than the opponent. e.g. A protected unit gets +1 vs unprotected, whereas an armoured unit also gets +1 vs unprotected, despite the fact that it should, in theory, perform better.

I would like to see where you can select which books you can figgt against. Now it is 1 book, or all books. Maybe a list of all books with a checkbox next to each. Also have an all books check list. For instance, I would like to fight against ROR and iIF armies. But now if I army is from IF, My choices are IF or IF, ROR and SOA.

I don't mind the hord armies at all. I generally don't select them, because they don't fit my play style. FOG has the most balanced points system I have ever seen. It is nice that super troops don't always win. Trash armies don't either. It comes down to who coordinates his troops movements the best.

You can choose a specific army list book if you want in the DAG battles. When you put up the challenge there is a drop down menu with the book your opponent can choose from. It defaults to whichever book you chose your army from. You can even allow your opponent to choose from any book, Romans versus knights??? Look directly under where you choose your army for the challenge and I think thats where you will see the opponents may choose from drop down menu.
I currently have a Galatian vs Gauls game going, I let my opponent choose any book for his army on that one.

deadtorius wrote:You can choose a specific army list book if you want in the DAG battles. When you put up the challenge there is a drop down menu with the book your opponent can choose from. It defaults to whichever book you chose your army from. You can even allow your opponent to choose from any book, Romans versus knights??? Look directly under where you choose your army for the challenge and I think thats where you will see the opponents may choose from drop down menu.
I currently have a Galatian vs Gauls game going, I let my opponent choose any book for his army on that one.

I think what the dude was saying was that right now you either have to choose the book the army is from or all books. He'd like to be able to say just IFR and RoR, for example, and exclude SoA.

Got yah, a little more choice with more restrictions.

I vote yes for custom maps in DAG battles.

I also thought of the rain, haze, dusk/dawn, night. I hope they implement it so that the visibility / weather may change during the scenario. So that you can code your weather maybe with propability / turn to your scenarios. I would make a scenario which starts at 4 pm and when the night falls, the visibility would drop, and soon the scenario would end. And where it now reads "turn 1" "turn 2" etc I would like to see my scenario coded messages "04:00 PM (Daylight)" "04:20 PM (Daylight)" ... "11:30 PM (Night)".

My wish list:

1. Swifter than Eagles

2. Wolves from the Sea

3. Decline and Fall

4. Oath of Fealty

All the other ones look cool too, of course, but my top two are the top two.

Did they agree to give the Later Classical Greek armies flamethrowers yet? They're in Thucydides so it's only fair

grumblefish wrote:Did they agree to give the Later Classical Greek armies flamethrowers yet? They're in Thucydides so it's only fair

Where are the "flamming pigs" not seen them yet!!!

Also on the wish list I would like to see Indain Cavalry/Chariots not disordered by Elephants.

It does not seem to me that troop morale is taken into account as much as it should be. I have noticed BG's that are attacked in front and flank, with enemy to their rear (not attacking but behind their rear) seem to react no differently than if the enemy to rear were not even there. I think there should be a higher probability for a unit to suffer an adverse result in combat with enemy behind them, if that enemy BG is facing their rear, especially if that enemy BG is heavy or medium troops (non-skirmishers).

My second wish relates to command and control. I am sure this would be difficult to achieve, but I would like to see the creation of a unit structure for heavy infantry in which 3 or 4 BG's of the same type (Average Pike HI), for example, would combine into a unit for movement purposes. The "unit" would move together and charge together. Once any part of the "unit" was in contact with an enemy, the individual BG's could move independently. I believe this would produce a more historically accurate battle, in which lines approaching maintained their facing, requiring proper screening by the light or medium (say peltasts) troops. The system now allows HI BG's to be dispersed and have gaps between each BG or have cavalry or MI in between. I do not remember reading any account of an historical battle of any size in which the troops were deployed in this fashion, with the sole execption, perhaps, of the way Republican Romans handled their multiple lines or checkerboard formation. I am not sure how this could "unit" system could be done using the hexes, but would like to see a discussion on it.

Currently when you mouse over a unit you get a terrain graphic in the bottom left corner of the screen and next to that a graphic of the unit and a summary of the key points about the unit.

When you mouse over a terrain you only get a graphic.

My request is that if the player mouses over an unoccupied terrain hex then could you put a summary of the key points about the terrain in the space where you normally display details of a unit.

Despite having played this game for over 6 months I'm still having to periodically refer to the online manual for details about terrain. The sorts of information I'd like to see displayed is; movement cost, effect on unit types, etc.

Whilst a reasonably experienced person like me would appreciate this, then I'm sure it would be really helpful for the newer player.

Morbio

One or two wishes/thoughts.

First off, one that's nothing to do with game mechanics. Some more variety in the unit graphics please, particularly medievals. An army where every Swiss pikeman is dressed identically just isn't right somehow And more flags as well would be nice (though I suppose that would mean generals would have to be distinguished in some other way).

Secondly, some mechanism to make/encourage BGs to act as historical units/groups rather than as a collection of small, independent single units. Games vs. the AI at least have a tendency to rapidly turn into a Hollywood-style "ancient battle" where there are no lines, no phalanxes; just a muddle of individual small groups, with the armies throughly intermixed as each BG manouvers and acts independently. That behaviour's fine for horse archers, but historically dubious for hoplites, phalangites, legionaries, Swiss etc.

Maybe what's needed is for command control to play a more dominant role, or something akin to the way groups behave in DBA/DBMM or TT FoG to encourage (enforce, even?) more historical behaviour. Another possibility might be to combine BGs into units, with BGs suffering penalties if they don't operate as part of their larger "unit", though I suspect that may require too much of the game being re-written from scratch if it can be done at all. I'd be interested to hear what the TT rule-writers think about this.

Command control being necessary to avoid movement/combat penalties would also be a way to discourage the "mob armies" mentioned on other threads (maybe I'm odd, but one reason I've never been particularly interested in "competitive" wargaming is that I'm more interested in the historical prototypes of the armies, their historical tactics, limitations and capabilities, than I am in finding ways to exploit rules mechanisms or lists). Another way to partially block the "lots of troops and no generals" armies would be to make sub-generals compulsory a la the WRG lists (I don't have FoG TT but assume it's similar in this respect) - e.g. every army has a general, usually at least one sub general, and the more the points, the more compulsory generals required.

On the subject of lists, in DAG games the AI tends to field an unlikely number of gladiators in its Later Republican Roman armies. Just how many battles were gladiators involved in anyway?

Advances after combat could perhaps do with looking at as well - drilled BGs in particular leave a good defensive position a little too easily if they beat their immediate opponents. There have been many times I've longed for a Primus Pilus to bellow "the next cohort who break ranks and abandons their comrades, leaving a big gap in the legion so they can chase after few dozen frightened Gauls is on latrine duties in darkest Caledonia for the next 50 years". I suspect Harold Godwinson had similar thoughts at Hastings; but drilled troops like hoplites or legionnaries were trained to act as a unit and keep the ranks dressed because they tended to get killed if they didn't. Automatic pursuit also makes it impossible to defend a river/stream line because when you beat the enemy who are disordered by being in the river, your BG advances in to the river itself and hands the advantage to the enemy on the other bank.

All of which is just my opinion, and therefore may be a load of ******** of course

I agree with the ability to be able to hold more, whether it is a stream, hills, woods or whatever. Ideally, I'd like to be able to right-click a unit (or similar) and just select HOLD so that the unit would just stand and defend. Obviously, anarchy should be simulated so that sometimes the order would be ignored and in this respect the proximity of a commander would help... or may even be required? This may encourage more commanders. Maybe the chance of anarchy would be less with drilled units rather than undrilled. Just a thought...

TimW wrote:One or two wishes/thoughts.

Secondly, some mechanism to make/encourage BGs to act as historical units/groups rather than as a collection of small, independent single units. Games vs. the AI at least have a tendency to rapidly turn into a Hollywood-style "ancient battle" where there are no lines, no phalanxes; just a muddle of individual small groups, with the armies throughly intermixed as each BG manouvers and acts independently. That behaviour's fine for horse archers, but historically dubious for hoplites, phalangites, legionaries, Swiss etc.

Maybe what's needed is for command control to play a more dominant role, or something akin to the way groups behave in DBA/DBMM or TT FoG to encourage (enforce, even?) more historical behaviour. Another possibility might be to combine BGs into units, with BGs suffering penalties if they don't operate as part of their larger "unit", though I suspect that may require too much of the game being re-written from scratch if it can be done at all. I'd be interested to hear what the TT rule-writers think about this.

Command control being necessary to avoid movement/combat penalties would also be a way to discourage the "mob armies" mentioned on other threads (maybe I'm odd, but one reason I've never been particularly interested in "competitive" wargaming is that I'm more interested in the historical prototypes of the armies, their historical tactics, limitations and capabilities, than I am in finding ways to exploit rules mechanisms or lists). Another way to partially block the "lots of troops and no generals" armies would be to make sub-generals compulsory a la the WRG lists (I don't have FoG TT but assume it's similar in this respect) - e.g. every army has a general, usually at least one sub general, and the more the points, the more compulsory generals required.


All of which is just my opinion, and therefore may be a load of ******** of course

Fully agree with these points and have advanced similar arguments to the same effect in previous posts.

Up 'til recently I would have said that the tide of opinion, as expressed in this forum at least, has tended towards not having more C&C. However, there are a number of current threads which suggest that opinion is more divided, with more support being voiced in favour of additional C&C 'rules'.

Ultimately it devolves to the Devs as to whether they make any such changes/additions but I think that, from what they have previously stated, it seems fairly unlikely. You never know though; perhaps some of these suggestions would make it as optional rules for those who favour them.