Romans what are they good for absolutely nothing

[firefalluk]

In my last outing against romans I managed to lose all my generals in the first hour and a half as the IF/SSw cut through my best troops like they were tissue paper.

Graham, you should have learned by now that even Superior Tissue Paper won't wipe out the Romans: Stick to BOUNTY, the only paper made with real Persians

[SirGarnet]

In my last outing against romans I managed to lose all my generals in the first hour and a half as the IF/SSw cut through my best troops like they were tissue paper.

Graham, how about playing Bilugo to cheer him up?

[DVeight]

I actually playstested my army against Bilugo before the competition. Originally he was going to enter a Kingdom of Pontus army however they always lost against my Late Period Serbs. So couple of weeks before the comp he switched to Romans, they fared slightly better however in our playtests we used the terrain deployment rules so he had option of placing terrain that suited his army and furthermore we had more terrain than there was at the tournament. Therefore the playstesting was somewhat skewed as well.

Seeing his experience at the tourney I would never choose Romans either. Armies with poor pike (blocks of 12) fared much better and had better results.

[hammy]

Seeing his experience at the tourney I would never choose Romans either. Armies with poor pike (blocks of 12) fared much better and had better results.

At 550 points I would avoid Romans, at 600 and 650 they are better.

Poor pikes though are road kill to superior legionaries. OK, the legionaries are more expensive but if they his the pikes it is horrendous, the odds are that the legionaries will just walk straight through the pike and come out the other side brushing crumbs from their scuta.

At impact there is just shy of a 40% chance that the pikes will disrupt and an additional 10% chance they will fragment. Once disrupted they are toast.

[grahambriggs]

I actually playstested my army against Bilugo before the competition. Originally he was going to enter a Kingdom of Pontus army however they always lost against my Late Period Serbs. So couple of weeks before the comp he switched to Romans, they fared slightly better however in our playtests we used the terrain deployment rules so he had option of placing terrain that suited his army and furthermore we had more terrain than there was at the tournament. Therefore the playstesting was somewhat skewed as well.

Seeing his experience at the tourney I would never choose Romans either. Armies with poor pike (blocks of 12) fared much better and had better results.

The difficulty with taking Romans in an open period is that they are better against foot than mounted, particularly knights and cataphracts. If they play a lot of the latter, particularly on open table they will struggle. They did historically against good mounted armies.

There's also the fact that against foot a good impact phase really helps so opponents will try and stop that happening.

Of course there is now the dilemma: do you stick with the Romans and try and improve with them or do you risk the butterfly dance of disappointment around the armies you think are better

[Toms0lo]

Seeing his experience at the tourney I would never choose Romans either. Armies with poor pike (blocks of 12) fared much better and had better results.

At 550 points I would avoid Romans, at 600 and 650 they are better.

Poor pikes though are road kill to superior legionaries. OK, the legionaries are more expensive but if they his the pikes it is horrendous, the odds are that the legionaries will just walk straight through the pike and come out the other side brushing crumbs from their scuta.

At impact there is just shy of a 40% chance that the pikes will disrupt and an additional 10% chance they will fragment. Once disrupted they are toast.

Strange stats !

At impact PoAs are equal, with only "superior" to give the Romans a small 1 in 2 chance on one die (on 6) to make one more hit.
Should the Romans win, then only have the pikes a good chance to get disrupted (if no general with the unit of course).
So it seems to me that there is less than 1 in 2 chance for the pike to get disrupted or worse on impact.

But even disrupted the pikes are far away from being "toasted" as wise players have a general in the area ready to joint disrupted units.
Subsequent melees are still at equal PoAs with of course more dice and superior in favour of the Romans. But should the Romans fail to downgrade the pikes in next melee there is a fair chance for them to rally in the JAP (7 (-1 for disrupted; +1 or +2 for general)).

On the opposite Romans failing to disrupt the pikes on impact have a more serious chance to get "toasted" because
- They remain on PoA- for subsequent melees
- Any base lost is immediately translated in -1 die which is more critical than losing a PoA on a single base to the pike.

All this at a cost of 26 for the Romans vs. 24 for the Pike (per frontage), so Romans shouldn't expect too much from overlaps...

This is all primary experience of several games Romans (or similar) vs. Pikes.

In this context I wonder why rules have not been more restrictive to pikemen by simply preventing them 90° turns ? This would have given comparatively more flexibility to Romans in "compensation".
I wonder whether 90° turns could be performed anywhere other than on the parade ground by pikemen, and second that in game terms a 2 front x 4 deep pike unit always ends up in optimal formation (without expansion needed) which not even the case for the Romans.
Sorry if this suggestion was already addressed in the "rules" forum, didn't have the courage to go thru it all.

Thomas

[philqw78]

Show me the poor pike and I will gladly point my cataphracts at them.

So it seems to me that there is less than 1 in 2 chance for the pike to get disrupted or worse on impact.(Against Legio)

Is that the 40% quoted above

[hammy]

Seeing his experience at the tourney I would never choose Romans either. Armies with poor pike (blocks of 12) fared much better and had better results.

At 550 points I would avoid Romans, at 600 and 650 they are better.

Poor pikes though are road kill to superior legionaries. OK, the legionaries are more expensive but if they his the pikes it is horrendous, the odds are that the legionaries will just walk straight through the pike and come out the other side brushing crumbs from their scuta.

At impact there is just shy of a 40% chance that the pikes will disrupt and an additional 10% chance they will fragment. Once disrupted they are toast.

Strange stats !

I am confident they are correct.

At impact PoAs are equal, with only "superior" to give the Romans a small 1 in 2 chance on one die (on 6) to make one more hit.
Should the Romans win, then only have the pikes good chance to get disrupted (if no general with the unit of course).
So it seems to me that there is less than 1 in 2 chance for the pike to get disrupted or worse on impact.

Superior legions hit 21 times in 36, poor pike hit 15 times in 36. If you work on 2 bases in contact so 4 dice each there is a 55% chance that the pike will lose. This is when things get bad for the pike. As they are poor they reroll 6s on cohesion tests and are testing at -1 for being beaten by impact foot.
If the Romans only win 1 hit to 0 the pikes need an 8 on their CT and there is only a 27% chance of that. Should the Romans win with 2 hits (I am assuming fighting with 2 files then the test is at -2 (1 per 3 and Impact foot) and the pikes pass less than 15% of the time.

The exact percentage of failing assuming 2 files fighting 2 files, ignoring generals and rear support is 49.57%

But even disrupted the pikes are far away from being "toasted" as wise players have a general in the area ready to joint disrupted units.

So 3 dice hitting 15 times in 36 vs 4 dice hitting 21 times in 36 is a good fight?? There is a good chance the pike will lose a base and that makes things even worse.

There is a 60% chance that the pike will lose and fail another cohesion test in the melee.

For the pike to be bolstered they need to not drop cohesion in two consecutive melee phases so there is only a 16% chance that you would be able to bolster them by adding a general the following turn. Adding the general before the second melee means that the chance of dropping reduces to 53%.

Subsequent melees are still at equal PoAs with of course more dice and superior in favour of the Romans. But should the Romans fail to downgrade the pikes in next melee there is a fair chance for them to rally in the JAP (7 (-1 for disrupted; +1 or +2 for general)).

But to be able to bolster them you will have to have either won or drawn two melees or not failed CTs when you lose. As I stated above there is a 60% chance that 4 superior legionaries will cause cohesion loss to a disrupted poor pike BG in melee.

On the opposite Romans failing to disrupt the pikes on impact have a more serious chance to get "toasted" because
- They remain on PoA- for all subsequent melees
- Any base lost is immediately translated in -1 die which is more critical than losing a PoA on a single base to the pike.

But even if the Romans don't disrupt the pike at impact they still have more chance of disrupting them in melee than the pike did of disrupting the Romans at impact......

All this at a cost of 26 for the Romans vs. 24 for the Pike (per frontage), so Romans shouldn't expect too much from overlaps...

And the pike can't expect a general on that basis either.

This is all primary experience of several games Romans (or similar) vs. Pikes.

IMO either you have been unlucky, you are missing a key rule somewhere or you are ending up fighting in bad situations

In this context I wonder why rules have not been more restrictive to pikemen by simply preventing them 90° turns ? This would have given comparatively more flexibility to Romans in "compensation".
I wonder whether 90° turns could be performed anywhere other than on the parade ground by pikemen, and second that in game terms a 2 front x 4 deep pike unit always ends up in optimal formation (without expansion needed) which not even the case for the Romans.
Sorry if this suggestion was already addressed in the "rules" forum, didn't have the courage to go thru it all.

I do tend to agree that the 90 turn and move by pike seems wrong for helenistic pike. That said when I did pike drill in the ECW society we did practice such things and I imagine that medieval pike should be able to manage it.

[Toms0lo]

Superior legions hit 21 times in 36, poor pike hit 15 times in 36.

I was refering to "Average" pike rather than "Poor"

Against poor pike points difference is even more acute 26 vs. 16 !!

Thomas

[hammy]

Superior legions hit 21 times in 36, poor pike hit 15 times in 36.

I was refering to "Average" pike rather than "Poor"

Against poor pike points difference is even more acute 26 vs. 16 !!

Thomas

Well as the sentence before the stat started with "Poor pike" it does infact refer to them.

Yes poor pike are significantly cheaper than superior legions but superior legions will tear them to pieces.

Average pike are much better off than poor but there is still a 35% chance they will be disrupted or worse at impact and once disrupted they will drop cohesion 45% of the time in melee.

[Zombo]

In this context I wonder why rules have not been more restrictive to pikemen by simply preventing them 90° turns ? This would have given comparatively more flexibility to Romans in "compensation".
I wonder whether 90° turns could be performed anywhere other than on the parade ground by pikemen, and second that in game terms a 2 front x 4 deep pike unit always ends up in optimal formation (without expansion needed) which not even the case for the Romans.

I definitely agree with Tom about the 90° turn restriction for pikes.
In fact I don't particularly mind, and indeed agree with, the fact that pikes tend to stand their ground vs legionnaires; the latter were very reluctant to engage pike frontally unless they had been previously drawn into uneven terrain.
The problem is that legionnaire victories vs Phalanx were the result of superior manoeuvrability. This, in FoG, is hard, if impossible at all, to achieve:
1) because the Romans are more expensive (cost/frontage) than the pikes, which means they are actually more likely to be outflanked by superior numbers than anything else.
2) because a phalanx bloc is as flexible as a legionnaire unit, more even, considering, as previously pointed out, that a 2x4 phalanx bloc retains perfect formation while performing 90° turn, while the legionnaires would have to expand subsequently.

From the lessons learned on FoG tables, it is hard to explain why historical pike armies would want to convert their infantry into imitation-legionnaires, rather than the very opposite.

[GKChesterton1976]

I was the organiser in the comp in which bilugo (Mitchell) feels his Roman's did not perform well. I only played one round (a bye) against Syracusans and I won 24-1. I don't see what the problem is!

In all seriousness, it was not a tournament format that favourable to Romans of any kind. The terrain was pre-set, though generally there was quite a lot of it, and the points was only 550, with 4 by 3 tables. Nowhere to run for the legionaries on many tables.

In social games I have found Roman's can be successful, and even though I have probably lost a little more than I have won with them, I have disproportionately been fighting knight heavy armies, and in most games there were real prospects for the Romans for a long period into the game, with the result up in the air for a long time.

Adrian

[ethan]

One thing I have found in FoG is that it is not easy to take a "moderate" army that is at least average against everything. So there is an element of chance in your army choice regardless - there are bad match-ups out there for almost everything (at least best I can tell so far) and so you pays your money and takes your chances.

This is actually good for Romans. One other thing about FoG is that infantry armies are very capable and if you want something to counter infantry hard to see anything better than Roman Legions IMO. I know that my 100YW English types pretty much rate foot based Romans as "army we least want to fight." OTOH those same longbowmen are not too unhappy about meeting some guys running around on horseback with lances.

[BrianC]

Can I ask why FOG designed it so that that Pikeblocks are as maneuverable as any other BG including Roman BGs? Having used Pikes now I prefer them to the Roman Legions as they are just as maneuverable and pack more of a punch IMO. I had always heard that pikes were slow and lumbering, hard to turn and maneuver.

My gut is tellling me that the designers went the way of fast play over historical accuracy. I think also that its a design philosophy not to give different types of troops special rules, again for ease of play. In the end its a trade off which is ok. But thats just my uninformed opinion. But I must admit I would prefer to have the pikes less maneuverable.

Brian

[hammy]

Small groups of pikes are indeed maneuverable but often by trying to be clever they can end up in really horrible situations. Pike are a lot more vulnerable to missile fire than Roman legionaries because they are proected rather than armoured and once you start to get clever it is relatively easy to get 3 shots per BG or more.

I can see that the turn and move option is rather excessive for pike but IMO they should be more maneuverable than undrilled troops.

[Draka]

My opinion is that the perception of pike formations being less maneuverable on the battlefield has a lot less to do with an inability to "Column Left March" than it has to do with the effects of anything other than flat. level ground. The legendary maneuverability of the manipular legio was in the line of the ability to stay effective on nearly any part of any battlefield, thus being more maneuverable as to tactical movement. More flexability in planning and carrying out a battle plan as opposed to pure drill movements.

[SirGarnet]

If the intended effect is little maneuverability, the Pikes are Undrilled.

[Toms0lo]

I remember a game in which I was completely outmanoeuvred in the deployment phase and was able, with some screening, to transfer my 4x12 pike bases from center deployment zone to my right deployment zone in just a few turns.

As said, simply prevent pikes from 90° turn would have seemed just fine/realistic/fair to me.

Thomas

[Redpossum]

Hmm, what this sounds like to me is "This unit here won't work like I think it should, so let's nerf that unit over there."

This sort of solution leads to us all being bitten in the butt by the Law of Unintended Consequences.

You go nerfing one ability of one unit, and you may set off a chain reaction by disturbing all the other delicate balances between units.

I would politely suggest that pikes be should be left alone.

[ars_belli]

Hmm, what this sounds like to me is "This unit here won't work like I think it should, so let's nerf that unit over there."

This sort of solution leads to us all being bitten in the butt by the Law of Unintended Consequences.

You go nerfing one ability of one unit, and you may set off a chain reaction by disturbing all the other delicate balances between units.

I would politely suggest that pikes be should be left alone.

I second the motion.

One of the features I find most impressive about FoG (and one that often can be overlooked by newer players) is the emphasis on developing a coordinated battle plan using all of the units in one's army, rather than focusing exclusively on the minutiae of single unit match-ups.

Cheers,
Scott