Slitherine

After playing this game a while I wonder about the design decision for what unit classes are allowed for leaders for the differnt lists. Some lists are extremely restrictive while others its basically anything goes
for example:
Mid Republicans and Phyrrics are the most restrictive, only triari and Roman heavy cavalry , and pikes and top tier cavalry for Phyrrus respectively
Late Republicans/ Macs are next , adding light cavalry and of course the superior pikes
Finally there are some lists, Seleucids, Pergamene that can chose almost any unit class for leaders, even medium infantry (although have never seen anyone use a medium infantry leader in those armies....)

It almost appears some lists they looked at and thought lets be historically restrictive and others not so much....

That being said i wonder if it would be better to have an all or nothing aproach; Either all lists can use any non light foot as a leader or aproach it more historically where only 2-3 "regulars" for that list could be a leader, so Romans(all lists) it would be basically any legionary unit or Roman cavalry, Pike armies either top tier cavalry or pike units, medium based barbarians: mediums and cavalry, Carthos: cavalry and African spears etc.... Parthians, Armenians Bosphorans of course their respective heavy cavalry and horse archers only....

I think most players would agree, being able to use light cavalry as a leader is extremely usefull, but not all lists can do this, and some that can (Seleuids) I wonder, why them?

Choice of leaders likly will be even more important once the double moves is added to the game...

Just musing aloud, any thoughts?

TheGrayMouser wrote:After playing this game a while I wonder about the design decision for what unit classes are allowed for leaders for the differnt lists. Some lists are extremely restrictive while others its basically anything goes
for example:
Mid Republicans and Phyrrics are the most restrictive, only triari and Roman heavy cavalry , and pikes and top tier cavalry for Phyrrus respectively
Late Republicans/ Macs are next , adding light cavalry and of course the superior pikes
Finally there are some lists, Seleucids, Pergamene that can chose almost any unit class for leaders, even medium infantry (although have never seen anyone use a medium infantry leader in those armies....)

It almost appears some lists they looked at and thought lets be historically restrictive and others not so much....

That being said i wonder if it would be better to have an all or nothing aproach; Either all lists can use any non light foot as a leader or aproach it more historically where only 2-3 "regulars" for that list could be a leader, so Romans(all lists) it would be basically any legionary unit or Roman cavalry, Pike armies either top tier cavalry or pike units, medium based barbarians: mediums and cavalry, Carthos: cavalry and African spears etc.... Parthians, Armenians Bosphorans of course their respective heavy cavalry and horse archers only....

I think most players would agree, being able to use light cavalry as a leader is extremely usefull, but not all lists can do this, and some that can (Seleuids) I wonder, why them?

Choice of leaders likly will be even more important once the double moves is added to the game...

Just musing aloud, any thoughts?

From a game perspective then I'd allow any unit apart from LF. I exclude LF simply because I just can't rationalise why a leader would be ranging off from the main units and in such a weak and vulnerable unit.

From a historical accuracy perspective, then I guess there will be restrictions based on what types of units leaders were associated with for that country.

I've use MF generals before as Seleucids; I like to take the thorakitai and I make one of them a troop general. They're very good at seizing hills or just being annoying.

If you ask me, the one thing that Slitherine could do to improve leaders is... Give them names! I wish there was a little input window on the DAG screen that allowed users to name their generals, or even an option/new window to name units. That way when my opponent mouses over my phalanx, he'll know it's Craterus who is laying his men low. Also, this way you could have an AAR showing that Craterus killed X number of men, companioncav had x num of casualties, etc.

Right now, the DAG feels impersonal. I play FOG for the history, so I want to customize te unit and leader names/appearance so it feels more in theme. Some units also look better than others, too; I like the weakling Egyptian phalanx with the red shields, so I take a few even though they're terrible; if I was just able to change the graphic tile for the regular phalanx, this wouldn't bean issue. Then again, it is probably better to limit this because otherwise players might constantly misidentify units.

grumblefish wrote:I've use MF generals before as Seleucids; I like to take the thorakitai and I make one of them a troop general. They're very good at seizing hills or just being annoying.

If you ask me, the one thing that Slitherine could do to improve leaders is... Give them names! I wish there was a little input window on the DAG screen that allowed users to name their generals, or even an option/new window to name units. That way when my opponent mouses over my phalanx, he'll know it's Craterus who is laying his men low. Also, this way you could have an AAR showing that Craterus killed X number of men, companioncav had x num of casualties, etc.

Right now, the DAG feels impersonal. I play FOG for the history, so I want to customize te unit and leader names/appearance so it feels more in theme. Some units also look better than others, too; I like the weakling Egyptian phalanx with the red shields, so I take a few even though they're terrible; if I was just able to change the graphic tile for the regular phalanx, this wouldn't bean issue. Then again, it is probably better to limit this because otherwise players might constantly misidentify units.

Now that is a great idea!

I agree being able to name generals would be a nice touch in DAG games. You can do it in the scenario builder I believe, too bad you cant do it all the time if you wanted to. Lets hope someone from Slitherine is reading this

deadtorius wrote:I agree being able to name generals would be a nice touch in DAG games. You can do it in the scenario builder I believe, too bad you cant do it all the time if you wanted to. Lets hope someone from Slitherine is reading this

Another reason why I wish the Scenario builder and DAG were linked so that you could build armies and then directly port them into a custom scenario. I really never understood why it was not designed this way. It would seem to be such a natural thing to do.

In single player, a DAG save game can be edited to change everything. In the screenshot below, I have changed the name and strength of the C-in-C's BG, and the unit image of the Egyptian Phalangite BG in the extreme right of the double phalanx:



There are two ways to do this: split the save game in components that can be loaded in the scenario editor (that's what I did in the example above), or edit directly the save game (the latter is specially suited to do something like changing unit strengths, which was my initial objective). I guess with some patience and a half-decent text editor, either thing could be done manually, but I have written a python script to automatize the process. I may release the script in the future, when I make sure that it can't be used to do funny things in MP, and write a GUI for it.

Examinondas wrote:In single player, a DAG save game can be edited to change everything. In the screenshot below, I have changed the name and strength of the C-in-C's BG, and the unit image of the Egyptian Phalangite BG in the extreme right of the double phalanx:



There are two ways to do this: split the save game in components that can be loaded in the scenario editor (that's what I did in the example above), or edit directly the save game (the latter is specially suited to do something like changing unit strengths, which was my initial objective). I guess with some patience and a half-decent text editor, either thing could be done manually, but I have written a python script to automatize the process. I may release the script in the future, when I make sure that it can't be used to do funny things in MP, and write a GUI for it.

Thats great that this can be done. I would likly use such a utility if ever released, to redeploy the AI's forces