The Great Rebellion Campaign

[shawkhan2]

Well, much like Napoleon was defeated, one would fight his other generals and avoid fighting the master.

Just brainstorming here, but if we went with allowing better generals to have larger armies eventually, it would give players some motivation to fight.

With increments of 100 only allowed, it could make sense to simply save up points, say a score of ten or even twenty required to get the first bonus.

This gives some positive benefit to being a winning general. Otherwise, there is no advantage.

Another thought just occurred to me. Would it be possible to allow players to refuse battle when they feel outmatched?

Much like the contrived match-ups in the second round of Caracole II, this would allow better generals to fight other good generals.

Just a thought, trying to make this campaign more interesting w/o making it more complicated than necessary, and hopefully more fun for the participants.

Commanders could communicate their proposed match-ups and any battle refusals could be re-shuffled to other players before we begin. I certainly know that if I could have refused battle with CaveHobbit, I would have done so:)

If noone else likes this idea, it is fine with me. Just trying to work on incentives to fight here.

[keyth]

First of all, apologies for the shoddy record-keeping; that will teach me to try to do it in between meetings! The overall results as published should now be correct (correct me if I'm wrong ) (Edit: still think that there is something slightly wonky with the scores - have scheduled time this evening to double-check) but shawkhan2 should be at 7 points on the personal scoring table - this has been updated in the 'records' and I'll publish later. With the new home regions, it makes record keeping simpler as one side in every battle is fixed (i.e. the region 'home owner') so future errors are less likely, in theory at least

Regarding the discussion about incentives, this is part of the reason for bonus points. By winning well and driving up the mood in the regions, you not only push your faction closer to winning but also gain the potential (in bonus points) to field larger armies, win the propaganda war and get a strategic edge by viewing the opponent's disposistions.

The movement system is the bit I am least convinced by but as it was something of a hot topic, I'm happy to give it a go; I'm also open to suggestions about an alternative.

Finally, I thought I'd share what was in my head when I came up with the campaign. From my simplistic viewpoint, the core game is either the campaign layer, with P&S enabling the battles for territory rather than rolling some dice, or P&S is the core game, with the strategic layer giving some context and additional value/incentive to those battles. This is very much the latter system, hence I am totally against people refusing battle. The bare bones system is based on each player fighting two battles per turn and the results of these pushes a slider towards one team or the other.

That said, I don't want this just to be another league - the team element is very important. The additional rules, bonus points etc are being added to give a few more strategic options to hopefully add a bit more depth to the campaign/team side of things and greater relevance to the individual battles. This is very much a work in progress and not everything will work as well as hoped (if at all ).

I will post some movement examples this evening in an attempt to de-mystify the idea - the good news is that it has no relevance for the early 1643 turn

[Ironclad]

Mid-West and Lowlands are still showing the wrong results.

[keyth]

I may have uploaded the wrong image earlier - will check later.

[keyth]

Mid-West and Lowlands are still showing the wrong results.

After much checking, these have already been corrected in 'the records' and the overall picture is the correct one BUT I haven't yet uploaded the corrected battle scores for the turn - I need to take a new screenshot and upload it. So, all is well behind the scenes and everyone has been scored correctly, I just need to upload the corrected image tonight.

I will be sharing a scoring format for use in the future to make my errors less likely

[keyth]

Corrected image now added to results post. In other news, the King's herald has just handed me the Royalist dispositions for Early 1643...

[rbodleyscott]

Corrected image now added to results post. In other news, the King's herald has just handed me the Royalist dispositions for Early 1643...

Decide in haste, repent at leisure.

[keyth]

I repent at haste too, no point getting slack about it

[Ironclad]

This carries over from a discussion about playability v realism from the Royalist thread where Keyth had just summed up the main event of the campaign as being fighting P&S battles.

Agreed, so on reflection, I think Aryaman is right about abandoning the away movement rules. After all through the home regions we have already introduced a restrictive movement rule ie none for home commanders. Anyway we will get to see how it works in Early 1643.

Instead I would like to see some sort of simple incentive to encourage both sides to aim at building up territorial blocks (which in the absence of London and other city targets is perhaps the only civil war objectives we can aspire to). So how about an extra 100 bonus points for three controlled regions in an adjacent group. For example in Late 42 Royalists would have gained 200 from 3 out of SW/SWa/NWa/CW/S and the 3 of NW/NE/ME and Parliament would have gained 100 from the 3 of SE/CE/A. This was using my map so no arrow link between NWa and NW.

[ulysisgrunt]

The great value in this campaign is that to a certain extent an experimental exercise, and hopefully this will be applicable to other wars. I used to play in one of RBS' old computerized campaign for Europe. My carefully trained and funded army was wiped out when I tried a winter move in the mountains near Florence. That summer I drove on a road in that area and noticed a sign warning of "early heavy snow" on the road.
Campaigns can be really interesting!
Danny Weitz

[Waldorf]

I'm afraid the increasingly complex rules have flummoxed me. This is not helped by the game being operated in multiple forums and posts issuing instructions being edited.

Could someone please tell me where on earth I'm actually fighting in 1643? Highlands and somewhere else?

I'll reiterate an earlier plea, for the love of spaniels please don't make me CiC!

[Ironclad]

I'm afraid the increasingly complex rules have flummoxed me. This is not helped by the game being operated in multiple forums and posts issuing instructions being edited.

Could someone please tell me where on earth I'm actually fighting in 1643? Highlands and somewhere else?

I'll reiterate an earlier plea, for the love of spaniels please don't make me CiC!

If you haven't done so already, check on the Great Rebellion - Parliament thread. You access it by clicking on the Pike and Shot: Tournaments and League thread in the top section and provided you are logged on it will appear. We Royalists have are own equivalent in the same place (you don't get to see it, just as we can't see yours).

[Waldorf]

Yes I've seen that. Thanks .

Turns out this turn our CiC chooses.

[keyth]

I'm afraid the increasingly complex rules have flummoxed me. This is not helped by the game being operated in multiple forums and posts issuing instructions being edited.

Could someone please tell me where on earth I'm actually fighting in 1643? Highlands and somewhere else?

I'll reiterate an earlier plea, for the love of spaniels please don't make me CiC!

Unfortunately and entirely accidentally, a Royalist forum thread ended up as a discussion about movement rules - this should have been public from the start! Also, no-one has to take a turn at being CiC Hopefully the faction sub-forums give you the opportunity to discuss who will be where. To give an example from the Royalist camp, cavehobbit has announced his divinely-appointed dispositions and asked if we are all happy with them. Hopefully something similar is happening on your side of things, though it may involve voting

I hope that things will become unflummoxing in short order as the new bits bed in; I am trying to achieve a balance so that those who just want battles to fight can do so while those who want a bit more strategic depth can have that also. In your case, I totally understand why you don't want to be CiC and just want people to fight Yank your CiC's chain to get some orders issued and we're good to go

[Waldorf]

Absolutely, I'm not complaining about the new rules, just trying to work out what I'm doing next. I think the situation was not helped by the fact our 1643 CiC did not know he was CiC! He does now .

[keyth]

Absolutely, I'm not complaining about the new rules, just trying to work out what I'm doing next. I think the situation was not helped by the fact our 1643 CiC did not know he was CiC! He does now .

Ah, noted I shall better advertise in future!

[KiwiWarlord]

I will be away until the 7th April and unable to access P&S.
This may cause a problem re the time taken to play this first round of 1643, if so the organisers may need to appoint a temporary Lieutenant to lead my lads against the King.

[rbodleyscott]

The new update is due to be released very soon. You might want to give some thought to assigning provincial terrain types to the provinces. The available map types are Agricultural, Hilly, Wooded and Mountains. There is still quite a variety in the maps produced in each case. Agricultural more or less corresponds to the current maps - with slightly less woodland - the others have more of their appropriate terrain - although this will not necessarily impinge heavily on the battlefield. A battlefield in a mountainous terrain, for example, might only have mountains on the fringe of the map - or they might be a major feature.

I don't think one could make a case for any of the British provinces counting as Woodland, but I would suggest that the incumbent challenger in North Wales and Scottish Highlands might choose between Hilly or Mountainous maps (only). Some of the other provinces (e.g. South Wales, South West, Scottish Lowlands) could perhaps allow the incumbent challenger to choose between Agricultural or Hilly maps.

I appreciate that those of you not involved in the beta won't yet have any idea of how the maps average out, so perhaps this is something worth thinking about for Later 1643 after people have played the update.

[keyth]

Early 1643 Challenges

Here they are, just shout if you have any queries!

early43challenges.jpg (120.84 KiB) Viewed 2292 times

[cavehobbit]

Early '43 challenge for Shawkhan2. You and I have unfinished business...

Password: unfinished