Slitherine

>I concede this doesn't take into account that 'superior' may mean better weapon training.

You also seem to be making the assumption that number of hits rolled is a direct reflection of combat skill, whereas the resulting cohesion test is a direct reflection of how well your morale holds up after having "lost" the round of combat i.e. presumably in the real-life having suffered more casualtied, even if not enough to result inbase loss on the table.

Not saying that is necessarily unjustified...but an alternative way to look at it is that hits, death rolls, and cohesion tests are all part of an intermingled and abstract representation that taken together produce a range of possible combat outcomes, and that the "hits" are just an intermediate part of the overall (black-box) process that shouldn't be taken too literally on its own.

I feel the differential in base-for-base performance between poor, average, and superior troops is about right. If it is felt that they are unblanced in terms of cost-effectiveness, the remedy should be to adjust the points cost rather than trying to make poor troops less brittle. Although as I said before, I don't actually think even that is necessary.

I'm do not think points adjustments work for ineffective troops. If they cannot fight, then they are only worth buying as filler to boost the BG count. If players are not using poor troops in combat, then they need to be more effective. It's the fine balance between 'some chance' and 'no chance' that makes it work.

Possibly the reason for a dearth of poor troops on the table is that competion games emphasize speed of play and poor troops are harder to maneuver, less likely to produce positive combat outcomes and more likely to be lost. Plus it's easier on the wallet to field superior troops. One base of knights (3 horses with riders) is 23 AP, but costs $3-5, while a BG of 12 mob is 24 AP but will cost $30-50

maybe change poor troops to reroll sixes only when they are + or ++? When they are at a disadvantage and only hitting on 5 or 6, rerolling the 6 is just too painful.

That would make them way too good.

You know, I think the problem with people not taking poor BGs is not a factor of whether or not they are cost effective or whether or not they are accurately portrayed, but more a problem of dice.

If people want to win tournaments competitively and often, they have to limit the impact of dice on their gameplay. The more chances statistically of your dice being randomly bad, the more chance you have of losing a game you should have won, and losing a tournament because of it.

Poor troops are unreliable, and you want things that you can reliably guesstimate the combat result if you are trying to win tournaments.


It is true that poor troops are more cost effective at lower points values, but even if their costs were changed, I still wouldn't use them, because they are too unreliable to count on winning you games. And I'm the guy who champions using 10-12 elephants in armies.

If their performance were improved, they probably would not be historically accurate.


I think Poor troops are fine as is. If I were to change anything, I would change something that has nothing to do with their combat ability, as basically any change there runs the risk of making them unhistorical or too good. I would change something like:

A - Let poor troops give Averages rear support.
B - Let Superiors not have to test for seeing Poors break.

Or something like that. I would not mess with their combat factors at all.

I would take more poors if they were generally cheaper.

Civic Militia Thureophoroi Drilled, Protected, Poor, Offensive Spearmen 6AP each. That is just too much.

If they were 3AP I would seriously consider them and might give them a look at 4AP. An 8 base BG of them for 24AP would be pretty interesting.

I played a game against Hammy very early on in FoG - maybe during the Beta Test. He used some Poor, Undrilled, Armoured, Defensive Spearmen. He had a whole wodge of Average chaps as well. I was using Medieval French. Hammy deployed the average lads to the front and the poor lads behind in the second rank.

I flank marched with on BG of superior Knights and a general. The rest of the knights and generals hit the Average troops and bounced off, the flank march arrived early and ran over three BG's of poor spearmen in three turns.

Nuff said.

dave_r wrote:I flank marched with on BG of superior Knights and a general. The rest of the knights and generals hit the Average troops and bounced off, the flank march arrived early and ran over three BG's of poor spearmen in three turns.

Nuff said.

This is an example where they are at their worst. The armour doesn't help them and at best they are evens in melee...and the possibility of cascade failures is large. I see them as pretty useful (much like the unprotected, average MF bow) chasing off LH, LF and small numbers of "good" troops, say 4 lancer cavalry where they have a PoA in impact and if they say steady they have a PoA and superior numbers in melee. For that job they might be fairly cost effecient.

If they are cheap enough they might have a role as niche troops. Right now they are too expensive for that.

ethan wrote:

dave_r wrote:I flank marched with on BG of superior Knights and a general. The rest of the knights and generals hit the Average troops and bounced off, the flank march arrived early and ran over three BG's of poor spearmen in three turns.

Nuff said.

This is an example where they are at their worst. The armour doesn't help them and at best they are evens in melee...and the possibility of cascade failures is large. I see them as pretty useful (much like the unprotected, average MF bow) chasing off LH, LF and small numbers of "good" troops, say 4 lancer cavalry where they have a PoA in impact and if they say steady they have a PoA and superior numbers in melee. For that job they might be fairly cost effecient.

If they are cheap enough they might have a role as niche troops. Right now they are too expensive for that.

Since they disrupted at Impact they would also have been ridden down by Armoured Cavalry. Not having a general really hurts poor troops.

dave_r wrote:Since they disrupted at Impact they would also have been ridden down by Armoured Cavalry. Not having a general really hurts poor troops.

That is somewhat unlucky, I believe that the poor troops with a PoA will mostly win (or at least not lose) impact even to superior troops (the poors get something like 5/12th hits per die, the superiors down a PoA get something like 7/18ths hits per die or .42 hits per die vs. .39 hits per die) so it is close but slightly favors the poors. If the Cav lose/draw in impact they can take serious damage at 6 to 8 dice up a PoA versus 4 down a PoA.

Also against amoured cav even if the poors go disrupted at impacts they will throw at least 4 dice versus 4 and possibly 6 versus 4 at even PoAs.

It certainly is dicey without a doubt, but again if the AP is appropriate then maybe it is worht thinking about. Right now Drilled Poor Armoured Defensive Spear are 7AP each so an 8 pack is 56. This compares unfavorably with other 50-60AP battlegroups so not worth taking. But if I could get that BG for 40AP...

ShrubMiK wrote:I personally feel that the points costs of poor, average, superior are quite well balanced, and that the fact that most wargamers will never take poor, and always upgrade to superior if there is the option, is more about some combination prejudice/fashion/personal preference than true reflection of their merits.

Not true at all IMO. Wargamers who play competitively will not mind using poor troops if their use is worth the cost, and similarly will not use superiors if they are over-priced.
Certain Inferior troops were very popular under DBM - Bow(I), Sp(I) and Ps(I) for example, whereas Cv(I) were hardly ever used unless compulsory. This is because of the merits and points value of the troops, and nothing to do with prejudice against low quality troops.

In fact the same thing can be seen in FOG - Poor LF are one of the best value troops in the game, and so are widely used. Why would that be if there was a prejudice against them ?

ShrubMiK wrote:I am very willing to take significant amounts (e.g. 16 or 24 bases) of poor HF, even with the usually-frowned upon light spear/sword combo, and put them down as a challenge to the virility of my opponent. The intention obvously being to use the points saved to win elsewhere whilst a significant portion of his best troops are tied up taking out something I have chosen to regard as expendable.

The flaw in that plan is that they are not expendable. However you might regard them, the two or three BGs of poor troops you lose costs you the same in APs as two or three average or superior BGs.
As an opponent of yours I'd be quite happy to go along with your plan. I'd put my best troops against your Poor HF, whilst delaying the rest of your army with skirmishers. Once the Poor HF are dealt with (probably quite quickly) I'd turn my best troops on the rest of your army.

Polkovnik wrote:The flaw in that plan is that they are not expendable. However you might regard them, the two or three BGs of poor troops you lose costs you the same in APs as two or three average or superior BGs.
As an opponent of yours I'd be quite happy to go along with your plan. I'd put my best troops against your Poor HF, whilst delaying the rest of your army with skirmishers. Once the Poor HF are dealt with (probably quite quickly) I'd turn my best troops on the rest of your army.

If we can get poors to the point that people are legitimately debating their use and we have differeing views on whether they can be employed successfully, then we are basically there.

I could equally well point out that I might use my skirmishers to chase off yours while my "real" troops attack the flanks of your best troops fighting my poor troops or whatever.

I have had some success using Average, unprotecte, MF bow in this role and they can be surprinsgly effective. I have seen undrilled knights go straight at them and then straight over them only to find they have pursued 8 MUs out of hte battle and are now 3-4 turns away from returning to the fight, which can be an eternity in FoG.

This sort of thing might not be a strategy for everybody or every army, but right now Poor troops just aren't in the frame. The unprotected MF Bow for me at least are in teh "sweet spot" for this sot of thing. You can get a bigish BG for not too many points and being Bow they have quite a reach and are difficult for skirmishers to deal with - assuming you can keep the flanks protected. This is much like Bw(I) In DBM actually.

I can see using Poor melee troops in the same way, they would have different strengths and weaknesses, but right now they are too pricey. One problem may be the range of APs available at the bottom end. There are a lot of different gradings and factors to squeeze into the 3-6AP a base AP range and anything costing 6 may not get used....

Polkovnik wrote:

ShrubMiK wrote:I am very willing to take significant amounts (e.g. 16 or 24 bases) of poor HF, even with the usually-frowned upon light spear/sword combo, and put them down as a challenge to the virility of my opponent. The intention obvously being to use the points saved to win elsewhere whilst a significant portion of his best troops are tied up taking out something I have chosen to regard as expendable.

The flaw in that plan is that they are not expendable. However you might regard them, the two or three BGs of poor troops you lose costs you the same in APs as two or three average or superior BGs.
As an opponent of yours I'd be quite happy to go along with your plan. I'd put my best troops against your Poor HF, whilst delaying the rest of your army with skirmishers. Once the Poor HF are dealt with (probably quite quickly) I'd turn my best troops on the rest of your army.

That's very true, but if you stop to think about it a bit more, what it actually reflects is the mindset of a tournament player, combined with the peculiarities of the FoG victory conditions and tournament scoring. That is of course, a separate argument.

Re. your second point, you make it sound trivial. Have you ever tried it in practice? Firstly, there's nothing that says I can't also delay your best troops with a small number of skirmishing LF. Secondly, it's harder for you to delay me if your centre is coming forward - I don't have so far to go before I'm in a threatening position. Thirdly, I'm not obliged to keep all my units fruitlessly chasing your skirmishers. I'm not by any means claiming it's an easy win in this matchup, and the timing must be got right or it can spectacularly fail, but it's perfectly do-able.

My view is that if you want to encourage people to use more poor troops and reflect their historical usage the obvious change would be to allow them to support higher quality battlegroups. They therefore have a use which to my mind would make sense historically. They can fill in the line if any of the average or superior troops in front breaks. No need to mess with any factor changes or points costs.

I'm still not sure what the reticence is to allowing Poor to support Average troops (and others one step up). It seems to work for FOG-R. It will also help a number of armies, usually barbarian types, where the better troops fought in the front and the lesser in the rear, at least in the cases where these are separate BGs in FOG.

After all, the advantage to having overlaps is so great that I think there will still be a dendency to prefer a longer frontage to depth of lines of BGs. Why not put it in the play test document and let us try it?

In agreement with Rob Smith. It is historically accurate with poorer troops behind at least giving a morale boost. It would allow armies with average troops which were the norm to get a look in against superiors with help from the mob behind. Armies with numbers would then be able to deploy deep if not enough room in the width. Makes perfect sense.
pete

player wrote:In agreement with Rob Smith. It is historically accurate with poorer troops behind at least giving a morale boost. It would allow armies with average troops which were the norm to get a look in against superiors with help from the mob behind. Armies with numbers would then be able to deploy deep if not enough room in the width. Makes perfect sense.
pete

Average already get a morale boost from poor troops in that each poor BG boosts the army breakpoint by 1. So it is not clearcut that an extra boost is needed.

GHGAustin wrote:I'm still not sure what the reticence is to allowing Poor to support Average troops (and others one step up). It seems to work for FOG-R. It will also help a number of armies, usually barbarian types, where the better troops fought in the front and the lesser in the rear, at least in the cases where these are separate BGs in FOG.

After all, the advantage to having overlaps is so great that I think there will still be a dendency to prefer a longer frontage to depth of lines of BGs. Why not put it in the play test document and let us try it?

I think the fear is as much letting Average support Superiors is an issue.

I wonder since we have a great variety of lists now. How many have meaninful poor troops (ie no skirmishers and no mob). I know there are some chinese armies, some NW europe types.

Perhaps if average supports Poor then the Poor don't have to re-roll 6s. ?

I do think we need to keep in mind this is an era where masses of poor were annhilated by better quality troops.