Slitherine

I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but I couldnn't find the old threat to ressurect. Something needs to be done about this. I had six armored superior Gallic cav with a leader and rear support sitting uphill form the enemy and hold a critical flank. They were charged by one cataphract and everyone evaded except the leader who got distrupted in the melee. All the other gav dirsupted or fragged eached other trying to get out of the way. Some evaded of the map. My flank is ruined.

I was on the verge of resigning in disgust but decided it would be unfair to my worthy opponent. If something isn't done to correct this and a few other things fix skirmish evades, etc. I fear this game is going to lose its following. The problems with this game all come from taking player control out of the equation. I know this was done to make the turns move faster, but without some better AI behavior what remains is a potentially great game that is seriously broken.

Deeter

I tend to agree.

It wouldn't even be so bad if you KNEW your cavalry would evade - you could plan accordingly

It would be very useful if you could set the % or less at which your skirmishers and cavalry evade as a parameter. While not giving the player real-time control, it gives some control without breaking the flow of a game.

Cheers,

Keyth

I think I'm only going to bring infantry from now on.

Deeter

deeter wrote:I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but I couldnn't find the old threat to ressurect. Something needs to be done about this. I had six armored superior Gallic cav with a leader and rear support sitting uphill form the enemy and hold a critical flank. They were charged by one cataphract and everyone evaded except the leader who got distrupted in the melee. All the other gav dirsupted or fragged eached other trying to get out of the way. Some evaded of the map. My flank is ruined.

I was on the verge of resigning in disgust but decided it would be unfair to my worthy opponent. If something isn't done to correct this and a few other things fix skirmish evades, etc. I fear this game is going to lose its following. The problems with this game all come from taking player control out of the equation. I know this was done to make the turns move faster, but without some better AI behavior what remains is a potentially great game that is seriously broken.

Deeter

AMEN!!!!!

Hooray! The whole of my right wing cavalry have evaded off-map, bar the leader. I wouldn't mind if they'd been lights. Or even if they'd been charged by obviously heavier horse (when I'd have minded a bit, but I could have seen the logic). But how, pray tell, can my men know what quality an enemy unit is? Is it marked on their banner - elite unit, evade at all costs? I suppose they had lances and mine had light spears. but even so...

The only slight consolation is I was losing anyway.

Lately my enemies evades have been to my rear setting them up behind my own units all lined up for a rear charge..... not sure which is worse, they bugger off and disorder each other or they end up in a prime position they probably could not have gotten too if they had tried to move there voluntarily

I agree. It does seem bizarre that a unit can evade to a favourable position that it wouldn't be able to get to otherwise. The only good thing is that sometimes it works for and sometimes against. However, it isn't good

Another goody from yesterday, I had 3 Cavalry surrounding a light horse so that there was no route to move (the unit could not move on it's turn). It then gets charged (anarchy) and the LH evades through the zones of control of the 3 surrounding units and escapes. Personally, it seems totally daft that it can't move normally, but can when attacked

I don't think it's ever going to be as fixable as it works on the table. I think maybe routs and evades need to not be random. They should always go through an adj. empty hex towards your base line...or if not available, no rout/evade allowed. It's the getting tangled in your own troops you'd never really go through that is the main problem. That, and the evading past enemy and ending up behind them.

And add in there no anarchy charges through your own heavy troops.

I totally support the idea that if there is no route to escape (rout or evade) apart from through enemy controlled hexes, then the unit should stand and fight (for evade) and die (for rout). @Slitherine: Is this simple logic something that can be incorporated?

For all the other comments about evading... well, you all know my thoughts and support for this

One thing that would help for evades in general, and especially for those into the enemy rear would be for the evading unit to end up facing in the direction it evaded rather than in the direction from which it came. This would be consistent with the TT evade behavior and would prevent the unit from immediately charging back into the battle in the direction from which it evaded. This would make evades different from break offs where the unit breaking off should end up positioned to be able to charge back in.

On the TT evade moves are not subject to the "ZOC" (2 MU restricted zone) rules of enemy units that do apply for normal moves so I do not think it would be a good change to the PC version to allow ZOCs (hexes adjacent to enemy BGs) to restrict evade moves since the hex grid provides even more quantization of movement and would further distort this effect to the detriment of the game in my opinion.

Chris

So Chris, let me paraphrase what I think you saying: A unit can be surrounded by enemy units so that any movement would bring it into melee. On it's turn it can't move without engaging. Yet, when attacked it can miraculously skip through these control hexes and escape.

This seems totally nonsensical.

It begs the question, particularly with relevance to skirmish troops that largely are immune to attack anyway, why surround a unit (which is a normal real-world battle tactic to cut off lines of retreat) if it can just skip through the lines.

Morbio wrote:So Chris, let me paraphrase what I think you saying: A unit can be surrounded by enemy units so that any movement would bring it into melee. On it's turn it can't move without engaging. Yet, when attacked it can miraculously skip through these control hexes and escape.

This seems totally nonsensical.

It begs the question, particularly with relevance to skirmish troops that largely are immune to attack anyway, why surround a unit (which is a normal real-world battle tactic to cut off lines of retreat) if it can just skip through the lines.

The problem is that BGs in the game occupy far more depth than they would in the real world. This is combined with the fact that most units in the period covered by these rules are not equipped with ranged weapons so they really do not influence an area beyond that occupied by the unit. So no, I don't think there should be Zones of Control in the normal board game sense that block all movement in the PC game. The TT rules do have a 2 MU (2" deep for 15mm figures) restricted zone that applies to normal moves but does not apply to evades, break offs, charges and routs. I think that the PC rules should behave analogously to this and not apply a ZOC to block evaders moves. The problem with catching evaders in the PC version is the relative movement rates of troops compared with the quantization of movement due to the use of the hex grid which insures that the evaders always have a full hex head start compared to the charging unit. In the TT rules the charger can get proportionately much closer to the skirmishers before charging than in the PC rules so faster chargers are likely to catch slower skirmishers. This is what needs to be fixed for the PC rules to make it more dangerous for LF to expect to be able to evade from LH and cavalry.

Chris

Chris, I understand what you are saying and I agree with the fix that is required for LF when attacked by LH and cavalry.

The bit I still struggle with is: If there is no ZOC beyond the area occupied by the unit, then why can't the unit being attacked move through the hexes on its normal movement phase? It's this inconsistency that does my head in

Morbio wrote:Chris, I understand what you are saying and I agree with the fix that is required for LF when attacked by LH and cavalry.

The bit I still struggle with is: If there is no ZOC beyond the area occupied by the unit, then why can't the unit being attacked move through the hexes on its normal movement phase? It's this inconsistency that does my head in

If combat occurred within the hex rather than between BGs in adjacent hexes then it would probably work to have no ZOC. The current implementation does seem to give the right feel for ancient combat as it now works in that it prevents units filtering through opposing lines and making it a little more difficult to turn flanks so it is right in a top down sense. Historically, the normal tactic for dealing with skirmishers was to run them down rather than to try to surround them so again I think the current implementation with evades allowed through the ZOC while normal movement isn't does give the right effect overall. Something to remember is that in an actual battle, the skirmishers would be re-acting to the situation as it developed rather than in move counter move fashion so that the process of moving to "surround" the skirmishers might well trigger the evade rather than just the actual charge.

I can possibly see an argument that ZOCs possibly should apply to cavalry but not to skirmishers (LF and LH) in the respect that cavalry units presumably do have a more rigid formation compared to skirmishers which are most likely just a cloud of LF or LH on the actual battlefield.

Chris

Ideally, this is what I would like to see with skirmishers at the least -

An option to set:

Always Evade
Never Evade
Evade Below a certain %

If we could do that, I think that things would go a lot smoother... It seems like it would be easy to be able to create your own 'custom' flags for your skirmishers that you can use in certain situations to give you more control about the situation.

Being a Parthian army player, Horse archers are somewhat dangerous vs. enemy skirmishers because it is extremely easy for them to be anchored by a skirmisher followed by a charge with a Phalanx.

The old rope-a-dope gambit. It makes good skirmishers such a liability.

Deeter

The other problem, which was probably mentioned earlier in this thread, is that it is by allowing evades through ZOC (even if there isn't one ) that cavalry get behind the enemy lines nicely facing the rear of the line..... and of course, the player that has just forced the evade, may not be able to stop the rear shunt that will follow if he has already moved those units!

It just seems simpler to me to stop evades through hexes where normally they'd have to fight.

Morbio wrote:The other problem, which was probably mentioned earlier in this thread, is that it is by allowing evades through ZOC (even if there isn't one ) that cavalry get behind the enemy lines nicely facing the rear of the line..... and of course, the player that has just forced the evade, may not be able to stop the rear shunt that will follow if he has already moved those units!

It just seems simpler to me to stop evades through hexes where normally they'd have to fight.

Evaders should end their move facing the way they evaded. This would be consistent with the TT rules and would prevent evaders in general from being ready to immediately charge back into combat in the direction from which they just ran away. Allowing the 1 hex ZOC all around a BG to block evades would allow a BG to control too much area in general.

Chris

Mordio, I've seen that with breakoffs but never with evades. It's annoying enough though with breakoffs.

Deeter