Slitherine

**** This thread is now out of date and needs a full review with the new team. Please bear this in mind when reading! ****


For information on the game, screenshots or to buy it go to http://slitherine.com/games/fog_pc

We wanted to keep you up to date on planned changes and additions to the Field of Glory system. We are not setting dates to avoid any disappointment.

Planned for version 1.2.7
1) Add: Apple Mac editions of Field of Glory, Rise of Rome and Storm of Arrows.
2) Add: In game ‘update’ system. There should be no more requirements for patches. The system can now check for the latest update and download and install it automatically.
3) Change: The multi-player system will be amended to only allow official DAG army lists to be used.
4) Change: The anarchy scores required to pass a CMT test to be reduced by one. This effectively reduces the change of anarchy charges.
5) Bug: Units should not take part in an anarchy charge if it will disorganise them.
6) Bug: Error in Anglo Irish list, some LB did not have stakes.
7) Change: Put ‘open’ rather than ‘pass worded’ challenges to the top of the accept a challenge list in the DAG.
9) Bug: Sometimes the end game/end turn sequence gives cannot move message.
9) Add: Review and add user supplied battles.
10) Change: When listing your outstanding challenges your own army name and details should not be hidden.
11) Change: How replay reveals the line of sight. The aim is to allow a front line to move forwards and leave the back line obscured.
12) Change: Allow players to select less than the nominated number of points in DAG batttles to allow mismatched army sizes to assit in campaign games.
13) Change: The AI to select an army to the size of the target points, not the number chosen by the player. This allows the player to take less points in to a battle and fight handicapped.
14) Change: Baggage to be 10% of the army points, minimum 2.
15) Change: Add the army pack version numbers to the splash display. This will make it obvious when you have successfully installed an army pack.


Planned for Immortal Fire
1) Add: All armies as per the printed book.
2) Add: New maps for DAG games.
3) Add: Double moves. Battle groups at distance ‘x’ from an enemy to be able to move further than normal.
4) Change: Allow a player to continue using unmoved movement points after moving a unit.
5) Add: Duplicate play: A single challenge to be to play as both sides in an historical battle and the overall win to come from combining the results of both battles. This allows unbalanced games to be extremely interesting.
6) Change: Better looking general’s flags.


Planned for Sword and Scimitars
1) Add: All armies as per the printed book.
2) Add: Soft sand terrain.
3) Add: Evade options: A player can set a battlegroups aggression level. High aggression means they will not evade. Low aggression means they will always evade. Medium means they will evade if the charger has better combat odds.

Planned for future revisions with no specific date allocated
1) Add: Themed Armies: As per the printed books themed armies from other books can be used in a specific book DAG challenge.
2) Add: Village terrain.
3) Add: Variable line of sight to represent mist, fog, rain and time of day.
4) Change: Line of sight. Light foot in most terrain and all in woods would remain hidden from the enemy until they move, shoot or the enemy moves with two hexes.
5) Add: List feature to open a screen to summarise the status of all the battle groups in an army. This willbe useful for campaign games to get detailed results of a battle.
6) Add: Variable sized maps for DAG battles. This takes away the certainty of the size of the battle area.
7) Review: Information displayed in the challenge summary window.
9) Change: Units contacted by pursuers in their rear will reduce their cohesion level as per normal rear charges.
10) Review: Scenario filters and sort options.
11) Review: Add a method for players to communicate outside of the current game turn e.g. to chat about a completed game.
12) Add: Detailed information down to best player by DAG army or historical battle as either side.
13) Add: Cancel private challenge button.
14) Add: Hot seat DAG games.
15) Add: Ability to cut and paste in the scenario creator.
16) Add: Prompt to players on end game turn if there are still units to move.
17) Add: Allow players to add their own custom general’s flags.
19) Add: 6 sided palisades.
19) Add: Palisades to the scenario creator.
20) Add: Baggage camps to the scenario creator.
21) Add: Store the game to enable replay of the whole game.


Planned A.I. Changes
These will be included as testing of them is completed.

1) Only charge when the chances of victory are high.
2) Shooters to only charge when almost sure of victory.
3) When charging usually select the target with the one with the most chance of winning.
4) When in a melee usually select the target with the one with the most chance of winning.
5) When shooting usually select the target with the one with the most chance of causing a cohesion test.
6) Usually charge where you can reduce an enemy’s cohesion.
7) Fragmented and poor units need to be less aggressive.
9) Review: Deployment logic.

Looking good!

Thank you for listening to our thoughts. This is nice as it lets those of us who have been around since the first beta to see the progress. Double moves will help eliminate some of the "dancing" And thank you for the "charge only when chance of success is high" (will this be everyone or just LF or skirmishers??)!

Very interesting! Thanks for posting Iain

Blathergut wrote:Thank you for listening to our thoughts. This is nice as it lets those of us who have been around since the first beta to see the progress. Double moves will help eliminate some of the "dancing" And thank you for the "charge only when chance of success is high" (will this be everyone or just LF or skirmishers??)!

What is the double move?? ( i assume it has something to to with advanciing after an enemy after it evades??)

TheGrayMouser wrote:What is the double move?? ( i assume it has something to to with advanciing after an enemy after it evades??)

I can't remember what it was called in DBMM, but basically, if your troops are outside of engagement range of the enemy, you can perform a 'big move' (double) to get into contact quicker.

Sounds good, thanks for listening!

Nice to see the scheduled changes. Setting aggression levels will help stop poor LF always pinning better troops.

Cheers,

Steve

Iain, thanks very much for this overview of future changes. Clearly you have been listening to the feedback and I'm sure we all really appreciate it (I know I do). Looking down the list there is a lot of great new features, bug fixes and general enhancements, thank you!

I have a few questions about some of the listed changes....

iainmcneil wrote:5) Bug: Units should not take part in an anarchy charge if it will disorganise them.

Presumably this means that a unit will not anarchy charge into terrain that reduces their cohesion? I'm assuming that this isn't reflective of a units chance of success and likely cohesion drop as a result, e.g. An impact foot that is close to auto rout will still anarchy charge if it fails the CMT, or a disrupted impact foot will still anarchy charge a superior unit in better position even though the result is a probable loss of cohesion.

iainmcneil wrote:14) Change: Baggage to be 10% of the army points, minimum 2.

I'm assuming that Baggage is different from the Camp? If it is, is there any planned change to the value of the camp?

iainmcneil wrote:3) Add: Double moves. Battle groups at distance ‘x’ from an enemy to be able to move further than normal.

What's the rationale for this? I can see that it could save time, but it will seriously reduce the ability of a commander to move for tactical position, or to refuse combat. I know in some games where one side is severely disadvantaged it is essential to be able to refuse battle with foot troops for a while while cavalry fight or move for position. This one really concerns me!

iainmcneil wrote:3) Add: Evade options: A player can set a battle groups aggression level. High aggression means they will not evade. Low aggression means they will always evade. Medium means they will evade if the charger has better combat odds.

Presumably all these settings will be subject to occasional anarchy so that the results aren't 100% predictable?... I hope so!

Finally, are there any planned actions to review the Break-Off rules? It seems the only issue that I don't think has been addressed. the 2 problems, in my opinion, are;
1) Break-offs can move through zones of control (I know there aren't zones of control in FoG, but it is the best phrase I can think of that describes the action) and thus end up in a really favourable position that wouldn't normally be able to achieve. I believe this shouldn't be allowed.
2) Break-offs can sometime move a much greater distance than the unit would otherwise be able to move. I think that if the break-off would have to exceed its normal movement distance then it shouldn't be allowed to break-off.

Once again, thank you!

You do get double moves in the TT version.

I kind of expected that reply

My only concern is that I doubt that my Seleucid army would have been able to beat the Swiss pikemen if I had been unable to 'dance for a while'. The key part of the strategy was causing the Swiss to lose formation and break up into smaller units, while all the time allowing the missiles to make a dent in the enemy strength.

Anarchy will be prevented if the unit would end in terrain that disorders it - it doesnt matter the odds of winning the combat.

By baggage we mean camp.

Double moves allow redeployment of troops behind the lines. It is only possible if out of range of enemies so not used when close up. If you are screening your main force with light troops you'll be able to double move but the enemy wont because of your lights.

Evades are not subject to anarchy.

Break off is not on our list for now. Working out if the unit gains from a break off or not is almost impossible so it is unlikely this will ever change. All we can do is look at the mechanics and it either will be able to or not based on the space avaialble, not on whether it gains from it.

The planning is very very good!!

Most of the changes look good, thanks for posting them. Only two comments:

1) I also don't like the double move idea, what is the point? Even large games usually only take 10-12 turns, why speed things up? and will you make shooter units twice as effecteive against double-moving BGs? If not seems like it will affect balance in favor of armies with heavy units, which is hardly needed.

2) For baggage @ 10%: I assume this means the camps? I think this makes sense, but only if the player can place the camp. Otherwise it could put a player at a distinct disadvantage based on random placement of camps.

ist thank you for posting the roadmap to the future, of course the risk of doing so is commentary and concerns about features that havent even been implemented yet!

With that being said I too am a little leery of a "double move" simply being allowed because those units are far away for the enemy, especially if it is simply a feature to speed up gameplay( which I think has a perfect tempo now)
What is it supposed to represent?
Now if it is represents a double time march, or an abstarct march column formation etc, i have no problem with it, however there would need to be a penalty as well for doing this... Since the game doesnt represent fatigue, the only thing I can think of is an automatic cohesion hit for every unit that double times....or something similar.

Cheers

Double moves are only possible behind the lines so they will not have any effects you are concerned about. Ask tabletop players for clarification if you need it as it happens on the TT game.

I wont be commenting on these any more as we just dont have the time!

iainmcneil wrote:Double moves are only possible behind the lines so they will not have any effects you are concerned about. Ask tabletop players for clarification if you need it as it happens on the TT game.

I wont be commenting on these any more as we just dont have the time!

Fair enough

Ok table toppers, what is this all about?

I think the key is , what is the definition of "behind the Lines"??
I would hate to think half my battle line can advance double but 1 or 2 units cant keep up because some lurking enemy skirmisher happens to be in whatever trigger zone, 5, 6 , 7?? hexes away that dis-allows double moves...

I have played the TT game and I thought the double move feature was a sorely missing part of the PC game.

Basically its meant (I think) to represent troops in march formation waiting to plug gaps in your line or break through a gap created in the enemy lines/wings. In the TT game you needed to have a general with the unit so it was limited to a couple units at most but units in the TT are bigger so it might even out. You also had to stop double moving once you came within a certain distance of the enemy.

I suppose it depends how you see how the game should play, for me its big battles with sweeping moves and a reserve. Sadly the current game doesnt really encourage you to keep a reserve as it takes an age for them to get over to where they are meant to go.

Also, thanks for the update of whats going to happen, its nice to know where you guys want to go even if we dont have any dates on this.

The double move on the TT is only available to units with a leader attached either directly of to a battleline the unit is part of. The entire move must begin and end outside of 6 inches (hf move 3 inches on the tt) and can only be a simple advance. It's a great feature when taken together with initiative.

Whoever loses initiaitve moves first but can usually double move the skirmishers very far onto the map effectively slowing the other army down. It's very useful for HF armies to lose initiative in order to gain the first move. This coupled with agression settings for lights should really make the game work much better.

I am pretty impressed by the list of changes proposed. Kudos to the developers for listening to us and adopting some of our suggestions. I dodn't see any mention of moving anarchy back to the start of the turn, which is a bad thing I think.

Deeter

Thanks for announcing some great upcoming changes.

There is a niggle in impassable terrain though that shouldn't be too hard to fix, but I didn't see it announced.

The trouble is the impassable cliff hexes don't block Line of Sight, making it impossible to hide behind them and allowing missile troops to fire over them, essentially giving impassable terrain the same effect as a body of water.

You could of course also see the cliff terrain as very dense low brambles and thickets, but that's not what the terrain seems to represent, and those brambles and thickets would be better served by their own terrain type imho.

It would be great to see this fixed at some point. What do you think?