david53 wrote:lawrenceg wrote:
Yet mounted armies do get the extra troops and the +2 PBI.
For +3 vs +4 the +3 will win just under one third of the time.
True I'll get +2 for a mounted army you then can get +1 for 12 bases of mounted troops most if not all troops apart from Blood and Gold can have 12 mounted bases if required.
So a straight dice roll for you of +1 and a mounted chap of +2
As I say what I find strange and had people say this to me I've a foot army did'nt take any mounted all TCs to get extra points yet they still wanted to win PBI.
If you want it PBI that is then plan for it don't change the whole system cause you want everything.
BTW lawrence this is a general statement not one aimed at anyone in particular.
David does raise a good point (ha!) here.
When looking straight at the PBI numbers, it does not seem so bad. Everybody has access to +2 from an IC equally.
The argument that mounted armies get +2 for free does not really hold weight, as this is assuming that a Cav elements affect on initiative is not included within their points cost. This is likely not the case. Cav units are grossly expensive, part of the cost likely has to do with the initiative bonus.
However, David then wraps this logic up within the very incorrect assumption that "most if not all troops apart from Blood and Gold" can get +1 initiative from mounted.
Let us examine how wrong he is.
Discounting external allies because I cannot be bothered to check that much information, this is the exact number of armies that can get initiative bonuses from mounted:
(Without Blood and Gold)
223/278 +1 (80%)
147/278 +2 (52%)
(With Blood and Gold. Why are we discounting it, exactly?)
223/305 +1 (73%)
147/305 +2 (48%)
Please note that while this is not counting external allies, it is counting troops that nobody in their right mind would take for a tournament army. For example, in order to get a +2 Initiative bonus, Neo Babylonian Empire has to take all of its Cavalry, as well as 12 stands of Poor Camelry.
The reality of the situation is actually worse than what these numbers portray.
Furthermore, even though there is in fact a significant number of armies (82 of them) that cannot get any initiative bonus from mounted troops at all, the percentage proportion of them is not an issue here.
The issue here is that those armies specifically have difficulty competing in tournaments, because they, as all foot armies, inevitably require terrain in order to defeat all mounted armies, and cannot get terrain because they cannot reliably defeat all mounted armies at PBI. It is specifically these 83 armies that are having problems.
If you have a PBI advantage of +1, you have a 32% chance of losing initiative. (10/31. 5 tie results)
If you have a PBI advantage of +2, you have a 18% chance of losing initiative (6/32. 4 tie results)
This makes it incredibly difficult for armies that generally require terrain in order to be effective to obtain decent terrain vs. armies that, Dave is correct, can easily take 10 mounted stands for a +1.
Should one fourth of all armies simply not be competitively playable in a tournament because of the initial die roll, Dave?
