Slitherine

What are the determinants for cavalry BGs breaking off?

Having an idea of a units chance of breaking off could help in the decision process of whether to charge or not.

I would have thought it may be related to the Complex Move Test but there is no mention of this in the relevant sections of Help.

If the majority of the foot they are fighting are steady they will break off if they can. No tests.

How much turns does it take before they break off ?

After each melee phase they try to break off (note the initial contact is an impact not melee).

iainmcneil wrote:If the majority of the foot they are fighting are steady they will break off if they can. No tests.

I'm pretty sure I've seen mounted break off when just fighting mounted opponents although again it would be difficult to show youthe situation where it happens.

Chris

Now it is clear to me, thanks

To clarify:-

Mounted will attenpt to break off at the end of a player turn in which they fought a melee combat (not impact) and at least half their opponents are steady foot.

Keith

In a game I just played, Roman horse broke off from a combat with Carthaginian light infantry. The LI were disrupted but uphill from the cavalry (who were steady). No other units were adjacent.

I like the break off rule - even when it works against me! Realistic. But I don't like how it sometimes allows a unit to break off by moving forward behind my lines (when that is the only avenue to move away) leaving it perfectly positioned to launch an attack into the rear of my main line.

Units required to break off but who can't should under FoG TT rules, lose a level of cohesion. In FoG PC, they don't.

Deeter

deeter wrote:Units required to break off but who can't should under FoG TT rules, lose a level of cohesion.

Deeter

That makes a lot of sense. I've often wandered why units that show as being unable to break off aren't penalised in some way. They should be IMHO.

I'm not a TT player, but on thing that puzzles me about breaking off is that there are no casualties associated with it. Maybe the break-off is assumed to be part of the preceding combat and so the casualties are included there (though I doubt it), but if it is classed as a separate activity then surely, as the horses turn and ride away, there would be a loss, even if small, associated with this.

I've also suffered from the break-off being very favourable to the enemy. In a multiplayer game (last night I think) I was in melee with a Cavalry unit and had just brought an infantry unit up behind to, give it a good one in the rear , when the cavalry broke off - ran straight past my infantry unit (with no penalty) and ended up facing the newly arrived units rear, needles to say instead of giving one in the rear it took one instead

I think it's time to move onto another post

I have pointed out the lack of cohesion loss for breakoffs before and was told that it was intentional by the PC game designers. There are a few things in the PC game that they have intentionally changed from the TT rules.

deadtorius wrote:I have pointed out the lack of cohesion loss for breakoffs before and was told that it was intentional by the PC game designers.

I wonder why? Simplification? Surely anything that is in the TT should be in the PC game, other than rules that may be difficult for the AI to handle.

I cannot see breakoff casualties/cohesion testing being an AI issue, in the same way as seperate Commanders might be.

Also, I do not think that failed breakoffs receive any negative inpact either (?), which is even more odd.

To my way of thinking a successful breakoff should have the potential for some percentage loss of numbers from 0 to, say, 15% depending on current cohesion level. This indicates cavalry in generally good order, with maybe some losses from parting shots and more for lower cohesion levels, doing what it is trained and designed to do.

Failed breakoffs, usually caused by being hemmed-in or surrounded, should trigger a cohesion test at least and possibly some numerical loss as well, again made progresively worse through lower current levels of cohesion. This replicates trapped units not being able to do what they should and losing the advantage that mobility normally gives them.

If we were dealing with gamescale units that represented actual tactical units in life then I could see an argument for casualties for horse breaking off from foot (though I still wouldn't think it necessarily sound). But we're not, we're dealing with abstract units and, for all I love the game, it is an abstraction designed to give good 'feel' more than a simulation designed to be realistic.

If we are to carp about breaking off being scot free, then what about drilled infantry being able to do parade ground manoeuverings within spitting distance (well javelin throw...) of the enemy? What about units being able to gang up in combat, attacking some enemy units 2-1 while others in contact go unengaged? What about light infantry being able to run as fast as horses? What about... but why go on? Any single bit of the game, if looked at in isolation, is leakier than a sieve. But taken as a whole it works. Although it's a tactical game in terms of play, it's really not a tactical simulation. It's tremendous fun, and (which I regard as more important than spurious 'realism') it gives a great feel for the overall flow of a battle. Turn to turn, not so much. But look back at a battles end... look at routed units not so much as whole units that have fled, but rather a leaking of men from the front. Don't get bogged down by the positions of the units but look at how though your centre was shattered, you crushed both his flanks in a Cannae style manouevre, or whatever. But don't sweat the small stuff.

If a routing unit sweeps down your entire line, disrupting and fragmenting as it goes, look on it as morale collapsing over the whole front. Sure, it might not be how the morale rules are meant to work. But it does, if inadvertently, simulate the strange vagaries of fortune that occur on the battlefield regardless of what 'should' happen...

Just to clarify, in the TT rules if you can't break off you lose one cohesion level, in the PC game you just remain in combat. Why the PC designers decided on this was not explained to me I was just told it was intentional.
Likewise, flank charging does not cause a cohesion drop but I think that is due to the hex side issue so it was only given to rear charges.
Mobs move like heavy foot instead of MF in the TT rules. Pointed it out was told it was an intentional design in the PC game.
Bows can move then auto turn to face their target in the PC game, TT game they face however they ended when they moved and do not get to change facing unless part of a legal turn/wheel. Bows are much deadlier in the PC game.
Pretty much the same for lights who can end a move and then turn to face their target they shoot at which on the TT they end their move in whatever direction they moved regardless, and can still only shoot to their front.
Drilled can change facing in any direction after a move in the PC game, they are much more restricted about changing facings and moving in the TT game. You can turn 90 degrees and might be able to move, if you turn 180 degrees you can not move.
These are just some of the rules differences I can think of off the top of my head, between the TT game and the PC game. Kind of have to keep in mind they really are 2 separate games based on the TT game with certain design and game play differences. Still a great PC game and lots of fun.

Hmmm, after reading deadtorius' post it sounds suspiciously like a 'dumbing-down' excercise. I hadn't realised that there were so many differences in the two games.

It is not as if the implementation of such rules would adversely effect the AI, which is hardly the sharpest knife in the drawer in any case. So it must relate, I think, to facilitating a more simplistic multi-player based game.

Sure, both the TT and PC versions, as Paisly said, contain many abstactions but I don't see them as abstact games. They have considerable detail in them; start stripping that out and you get a faster, perhaps more MP -friendly game but not necessarily a better one. The rules in the TT were put there for a purpose; removing many of them suggests to me that the devs see the audiences for the two games as being somewhat different.

The hex based nature of the game resulted in too many break offs failing in our testing. It was unreasonably prohibitive to cavalry to hit them with a cohesion loss when it is much harder to leave room for them to break-off on than on the tabletop.

I think part of the problem is that people sometimes view each counter as a distinct and single entity on the battlefield. Whereas it might represent 3 or more 6 tactical units in real life (1500 men is 3 cohorts or 9 maniples for instance). So things that would seem superficially sensible don't actually apply in the same way because the men in the hexagon are not in one monolithic grouping (even phalangites would be in three separate subdivisions). And as Ian says the hex grid imposes certain restrictions anyway.

While I agree the game is detailed, I'm unconvinced that extra detail is necessarily a good thing, even if it reflects something in the tabletop rules that is currently not in the pc game. More detail might be good. But it might not. And I think most 'real life' tactical arguments for change are on shaky ground anyway as the game doesn't reflect that tactical reality in any other than very broad detail anyway.

I'm not a TT player, but are comparisons with the TT game really the best thing?

What the game is trying to represent (IMO) is the effect of a real-life historical battle, so while the PC game may not give the same results as the TT game may give, we should ask the question is it giving the same results as the battle would have given?

So, just because it gives different results to the TT game it may be better, neutral or worse than the history that we strive to represent.