Slitherine

I would not like to face a Scots army at those points in a singles game

How about 800pts Parthian v's Picts after Burton Dave?

rbodleyscott wrote:It seems to me that 50% outright wins is the sort of proportion we should be aiming for. If all games ended in outright wins then decisive play would not be rewarded.

An excellent point that should not be overlooked.

Marc

Or it would mean people were being more decisive.

Game Completion Rates for Godendag

I have just analysed the Godendag results for completion rates.

To recap, Godendag was a 900 point pairs competition, with "last pair of bounds" being called after 3 hours 20 mins.

The overall game completion rate (one army broken) was exactly 50%, which I submit is satisfactory..

Where it gets interesting is the difference between completion rates for the two themes:

Rise and Fall of Rome - 37.5%

Byzantium and Islam - 67.8%

I really don't think this is coincidence. It seems likely that the Byzantium and Islam games were more decisive because of the faster movement speed of cavalry relative to foot, and less reliance on indecisive skirmishing with LH vs enemy foot.

If people do decide to tinker about with points values, they may need to set different points values for different themes.

rbodleyscott wrote:Game Completion Rates for Godendag

I have just analysed the Godendag results for completion rates.

To recap, Godendag was a 900 point pairs competition, with "last pair of bounds" being called after 3 hours 20 mins.

The overall game completion rate (one army broken) was exactly 50%, which I submit is satisfactory..

Where it gets interesting is the difference between completion rates for the two themes:

Rise and Fall of Rome - 37.5%

Byzantium and Islam - 67.8%

I really don't think this is coincidence. It seems likely that the Byzantium and Islam games were more decisive because of the faster movement speed of cavalry relative to foot, and less reliance on indecisive skirmishing with LH vs enemy foot.

If people do decide to tinker about with points values, they may need to set different points values for different themes.

Agereed - cavalry are more fun

Any differences in BG sizes of the armies ?

madaxeman wrote:

rbodleyscott wrote:The overall game completion rate (one army broken) was exactly 50%, which I submit is satisfactory.

Where it gets interesting is the difference between completion rates for the two themes:

Rise and Fall of Rome - 37.5%

Byzantium and Islam - 67.8%

Any differences in BG sizes of the armies ?

Not really. The average army size in BGs was:

Rise and Fall of Rome: 14.75

Byzantium and Islam: 15

As a point to note we returned from PAW2009 last night. I'll do a write up shortly but as regards game completion, Andy may correct me but I think in 25mm 650AP only 4 games had proper wins (army route) out of 16. In 15mm 800AP not one game had an army route out of 16.

This should be tempered by the fact that the games were a notional 3 hrs but to meet that timeline 'No new turns' was called at 2hrs 45mins. We all played it as such as that was the way it was, but in discussions with Andy after many felt 3hrs 15mins to 3hrs 30mins games would have been better, with warnings 10 mins before the end.

It was frustrating as in my third game I finished my turn just after 'No new turns' was called, so we had to stop and lost 15mins of play... and of course I was just about to give my opponent a final kick in the teeth !! There were similar comments from others that with a couple more turns there would have been a result one way or the other.

I think a few players were perhaps more 'methodical' than others but in general people got on with games; we just simply ran out of time.

Steve P

I think Andy was right about the time

rbodleyscott wrote:
I really don't think this is coincidence. It seems likely that the Byzantium and Islam games were more decisive because of the faster movement speed of cavalry relative to foot, and less reliance on indecisive skirmishing with LH vs enemy foot.

If people do decide to tinker about with points values, they may need to set different points values for different themes.

Equally it could be that at 800 Classical armies have to spend too much effort on skirmishing/counter skirmishing given the AP/Table size so slow down and then can't recover given the slower movement speed of heavy foot. Taken to the extreme 1200AP of heavy foot classical armies might be pretty fast. Cover the table in Pike, Legions, Lancers and Cataphracts and march forward. Having a 2 turns in the middle with the skirmishers going at it and then the heavy troops smash each other apart in a another couple of turns. Hard to see it taking very long.

One difference between FoG and say DBM is that FoG combat is over quickly once there is a fight. It is on average over in 2-3 turn tops and 2 turns is more typical (Impact+4 rounds of melee). So the places to look for game lengthening are in two places:

- Maneuver. I have seen a number of games go long when there is a lot of relatively indecisive maneuver and counter-maneuver trying to get an advantage.
- Broken up combat. While individual combats are fast, if both armies wind up committing piecemeal you can wind up not seeing enuogh decisive combat to finish the game.

Cavalry armies can tend to see both happen, but because of smaller units (BGs of 4 normally) and faster moving troops (along with missile fire which can speed things up in chasing off a crumbling opponent) they might be all rigt and overcome both factors. Classical/heavy infantry-ish armies might be more forced to play a maneuver game than they really want at say 800AP and various bitty combats contributing to both slowing possibilities.

It might be interesting to compare the completion rates of say 800AP steppe/cavalry armies vs. 900-1000AP of classicals. The classicals could actually be faster at higher AP.

ethan wrote:
Equally it could be that at 800 Classical armies have to spend too much effort on skirmishing/counter skirmishing given the AP/Table size so slow down and then can't recover given the slower movement speed of heavy foot. Taken to the extreme 1200AP of heavy foot classical armies might be pretty fast. Cover the table in Pike, Legions, Lancers and Cataphracts and march forward. Having a 2 turns in the middle with the skirmishers going at it and then the heavy troops smash each other apart in a another couple of turns. Hard to see it taking very long.

I think this was similar to Tim Porter's thinking in the conversation we had that promted me to start this topic. For the foot heavy armies you, counter-intuitively, need more points on table so that you get enough action to get a result. Too much open space allows for armies to escape destruction as it takes time for relatively slow moving troops to chase down the BGs thye need to win the game.

ethan wrote:

rbodleyscott wrote:
I really don't think this is coincidence. It seems likely that the Byzantium and Islam games were more decisive because of the faster movement speed of cavalry relative to foot, and less reliance on indecisive skirmishing with LH vs enemy foot.

If people do decide to tinker about with points values, they may need to set different points values for different themes.

Equally it could be that at 800 Classical armies have to spend too much effort on skirmishing/counter skirmishing given the AP/Table size so slow down and then can't recover given the slower movement speed of heavy foot.

One thing I've noticed is that classical armies often end up in a game of wheeling. e.g. a weak wing can't advance but the strong wing on the other flank does. Hence infantry centres end up wheeling. Unless they can shoo off the enemy skirmishers, it's a slow old process.

stenic wrote:As a point to note we returned from PAW2009 last night. I'll do a write up shortly but as regards game completion, Andy may correct me but I think in 25mm 650AP only 4 games had proper wins (army route) out of 16. In 15mm 800AP not one game had an army route out of 16.

Absolutely right Steve, only four full games out of 32. Something we will address next year. Those who regularly turn up at our Ancients Competition will correct me if wrong but the timings were no different from that of previous years. It can't be that DBM games get quicker results than FoG, can it?

Albion1 wrote:Absolutely right Steve, only four full games out of 32. Something we will address next year. Those who regularly turn up at our Ancients Competition will correct me if wrong but the timings were no different from that of previous years. It can't be that DBM games get quicker results than FoG, can it?

The game completion rates for Godendag when it was all DBM were certainly no better than quoted above for FoG.

Albion1 wrote:Absolutely right Steve, only four full games out of 32. Something we will address next year. Those who regularly turn up at our Ancients Competition will correct me if wrong but the timings were no different from that of previous years. It can't be that DBM games get quicker results than FoG, can it?

I probably noticed it more as I was rubbish at DBM so wanted to get it over and done with quicker, with FOG I want more time as I want to keep going

Steve P