Slitherine

Gentlemen.

Would like to see special victory conditions introduced into the game concept. Would allow to balance battles like Orchomenos by forcing the Pontic side into an all in attack.

What about punishing the Pontic side by 1-2 break points per turn for example ? What about Victory hexes ?

Cheers, Klaus

I like the idea of victory hexes very much.

It would also be cool to be able to give the AI 'invisible' victory hexes, so that you can give the AI paths to work with.

Great idea!

A Carrhae-type scenario, with victory points awarded to the Romans for reaching a border of the map, would be great.

Gentlemen.

Glad so many like the idea of varying victory conditions !

Cheers, Klaus

Hi guys, great idea i hope it will be added to new game features.

VERY much in favour as it would lend itself to the AI having targets and not necessarily move round in circles as sometimes happens. Would aid scenario designers and allow a number of objectives to be set and indeed aimed for in scenarios, doesnt need to be just ONE or TWO but the ability to set a number of them, including at map edge for pushing through the enemy, and indeed even for capturing a hill top.

Add this to Slitherine hopefully adding to the scenery tiles, and weather effects tiles, plus buildings and walls etc and we are well on the way TOWARDS the "perfect" wargame to recreate ANY battle from ancient times, right through to Renaissance (eventually and hopefully also allow ACW Period). In my view the end result that this gaming system deserves to achieve.

John

Victory hexes are vital if the system is to evolve to its full potential and, yes, weather and buildings too.

It would certainly prevent encounters where neither side has any strategic incentive to advance

The problem is that "victory hexes", though they might be realistic in a 20th century wargame, don't really represent anything historical in the Ancient/Medieval period. The aim was usually to defeat the enemy army, not to capture hill No.5. Such concepts are rather anachronistic in this period.

Moreover, from a game balance point of view, they favour the side with the hardest nastiest troops. (Swiss, for example, who really don't need any extra help).

Although i would love to see AI improvements, i dont like the idea of victory hexes for the reason Mr Scott has stated. Also , games that feature victory hexes or waypoints for the AI units are codependant on some kind of formation system, which FOF completely lacks , otherwise a scenario designer would need to plot a path for every individual unit.... Keep in mind too, if you specifically proagram the IA to act a certain way in a scenario, i will always act that way and lack of replayability, predicability etc will be a possible problem

I do agree it would be nice to have a defender agressor role
Perhaps if one side is a defender, their goal is simlply to survive, ie if they end the game not broken the the "attacker" loses, period

TheGrayMouser wrote:I do agree it would be nice to have a defender agressor role
Perhaps if one side is a defender, their goal is simlply to survive, ie if they end the game not broken the the "attacker" loses, period

That would be historically realistic - and DAG games could be set up like this if desired, with one side having a suitable proportion higher points than the other.

Geordietaf wrote:It would certainly prevent encounters where neither side has any strategic incentive to advance

And yet such encounters, resulting in a "non-battle", were historically quite common.

Just as one example among many, the French allies in the Welsh army are based on a historical campaign in which the French sent substantial forces to aid Owain Glyndwr. The English and Welsh/French armies met, faced each other off for 2 whole days, then parted again without fighting.

If neither side is willing to advance in a FOGPC game - perhaps because of the terrain - call it a draw and start again somewhere else. That's what happened historically. With the wonder of computer technology, it doesnt take long to set up another game on more suitable terrain.

Forcing one side to (for example) attack across a defended river would not be appropriate unless the forces are adjusted to give the side forced to attack an advantage in points.

Yes.

You can have the best of both worlds of course. Allow stand offs where neither side has a strategic reason to attack and also allow battles like Bannockburn where the Scots had to force the issue or give up the siege of Stirling. All that's needed is a facility to ste one side as attacker, who loses if time expires, or to have neither side as attacker (as now). I completely agree that victory locations are irrelevant to the time period. I've been wracking my brain for an exception but can't think of one.

Forcing one side to (for example) attack across a defended river would not be appropriate

The Swiss don't seem too bothered.

I don't believe we will ever see the AI handling correctly a Thermopylae-type scenario without some kind of victory hexes, and I think the attacker/defender roles would be easier to simulate if there was some clear objective for the AI to attack/defend (Of course, the Hexwar/Slitherine guys know more about their AI than me, this is just my opinion based on my experience as a player)

In human vs human, I think that victory hexes are probably not needed, although to be true, I don't see how they can be anachronistic. I see victory hexes as just a mechanism to try to reproduce certain features of a battle which actually happened (holding a pass instead of going for a full attack, retreating towards one place instead of attacking, ...).

BTW, I think that everyone posting in this thread should make clear if he is talking about human vs human, human vs ai, or both types of games.

I think there should be an option to edit breakpoints needed to win. Now I think they are 1 point / 1 unit. This is usually a good default but in some cases it is not.

For example, I'm currently working to make a triple scenario pack, where I'm working with scenarios Cannae, Ilipa and Zama. (will post it somewhere here soon.)

With Zama I have a problem. If Hannibal uses his first 2 low quality lines, he loses so much breakpoints that he is near to break even before the old guard(3rd line) is committed to combat. I have tackled the problem by making a camp of peasants to carthagian side and hiding it behing impassable terrain to give Hannibal some more breakpoints. I think this goes well with this scenario but is pretty ugly way Unless you think it is cool to have a mass of spectators at nearby hill, where Hannibals camp was historically located... It would be nice to adjust breakpoints needed to win Carthaginians.

Another possible way would be to set breakpoint values for units, so that some units might be worth 1 point and others worth 2 points. That way you could make elite units and leaders more precious for army morale.

Then another idea:
Maybe in some scenarios you could set so you gain victory points for not losing your units. So that you win if your enemy does not kill you. That would be great in scenarios where the other side is forced to take a battle or perish. That was the historical situation many times.

I would be worried that adding victory locations would encourage the AI to fight the same way every time. In my opinion, one of the interesting things about re-fighting historical battles is seeing what would happen if the plan were changed. Forcing the AI to fight a certain way might be fun once or twice, but I think a predictable battle would become boring very quickly.

If any change is made, I would consider varying the amount of break points per battle group based on their importance. Some armies historically contained a core of units that really counted in the battle and large hordes of units that, if they were used at all, were considered inconsequential. I think, especially if a CinC gets killed, there should be an extra break point loss.

kujalar wrote:I think there should be an option to edit breakpoints needed to win. Now I think they are 1 point / 1 unit. This is usually a good default but in some cases it is not.

For example, I'm currently working to make a triple scenario pack, where I'm working with scenarios Cannae, Ilipa and Zama. (will post it somewhere here soon.)

With Zama I have a problem. If Hannibal uses his first 2 low quality lines, he loses so much breakpoints that he is near to break even before the old guard(3rd line) is committed to combat. I have tackled the problem by making a camp of peasants to carthagian side and hiding it behing impassable terrain to give Hannibal some more breakpoints. I think this goes well with this scenario but is pretty ugly way Unless you think it is cool to have a mass of spectators at nearby hill, where Hannibals camp was historically located... It would be nice to adjust breakpoints needed to win Carthaginians.

Another possible way would be to set breakpoint values for units, so that some units might be worth 1 point and others worth 2 points. That way you could make elite units and leaders more precious for army morale.

Then another idea:
Maybe in some scenarios you could set so you gain victory points for not losing your units. So that you win if your enemy does not kill you. That would be great in scenarios where the other side is forced to take a battle or perish. That was the historical situation many times.

I quite like the idea of variable army morale (varying the breakpoints) as its what I do when playing with the TT version if it either a) suits the scenario or b) is part of a campaign battle.

In the instance of a) battles such as Alexanders vs the Persians are hard to simulate on the PC game with the disparity of numbers and yet the Persians really were beaten before they started historically with the demoralising effect of Alexanders prebattle tactics and the very real (to them anyway) bad omens for the coming battle (eclipses etc.). So in those cases it would be easy to give The Macedonians a boost to their break points and the Persians a lowering of theirs.

For b) the presence of omens, fatigue through prebattle tactics or forced marches etc. can all be factored in to boost or lower break points.

Obviously these are things that could be put into play for use as and when appropriate (player campaigns and historical scenarios), unless otherwise agreed between players beforehand I think 'one off' games should stay as they are. Again I would say the same about objective markers etc. they would be absolutely great for scenarios/campaigns but probably less so for 'one off' games where they could cause more problems than not.

Just to add in the TT game we roll a dice for consulting the omens/gods in the pc game it could be as simple as 1= bad omens (lose 25% of break points) 2-5 = neither good or bad 6 = good omens (add 25% to break points). As for fatigue etc. it could again simply be a dice roll with varying percentage losses, its an idea anyway.

I agree with variable army morale as well. Perhaps not for the DAG battles, but especially for the scenario editor. The ability to set one side as an attacker and the other as the defender would be nice for the editor as well. I have no problem with DAG battles as they are but some additional tools would be nice for the scenario editor so that people can make those 'exceptional' battles we all want to see.