Slitherine

One of the things that always irked me about all tactical wargames (and lets face it, with few exceptions most tactical wargames are about battles in complete isolation from strategic and or operational concerns) Without an overwhelming good reason to risk battle, what is a victory? Because of this all wargames have some sort of victory condition requirement that i feel is the most artificial part of these games. Almost all J Tiller games, as well as Panzer General tallied up the value of enemy killed, detracted your own killed and then add/detract for victory hexes held (This made it way to easy to stop risking yourslf cause you could keep tabs on the #'s and knew when you were in like flynn for the victory) .....At least panzer general was played in an operational context where to succeeed you really need to keep your core force whole to gain experiance to enable more victories... getting that "decisive win" was hollow if 3 of your 5 Star Tigers or Messerscmidts were destroyed because it likly meant you would have a very hard time your next battle... They were irreplacable.... In most games though, you can commit the Guards and destroy them in order to obtain victory without any second thought about it, especially when you can bean count exactly what and when the game will end....

I doudt if there is any easy answere for this, especially in the context of isolated battles... when does a battle end? When the sun sets? When x % of an army routs? Is a set % even remotely realistic?
Regardless, I do feel FOG has one of the better mechanisms for handling this, however, I often get annoyed with myself near the final stages of a battle, when I no longer really need to conserve strength, or even worry about keeping solid battle lines... Why, becasue I KNOW I only need to cause 3 more break points to my opponents army and thus can make costly high risk impact attacks, move lights around without regard for their safety if the game were to continue another turn, just to get a popshot against that unit at 56% strength to rout it...

LOL but I really miss that "feature" introduced in 1.28 that turned out to be a bug where the game at the end of your turn, even if you had reached your BP, would go thru the rallying and you could actaully rally yourself back into the game! (as could your opponent) I loved it for the 3-4 games I completed before it was patched back out....

I wonder if FOG games would develop more naturally and or realistically if your enemy BP's and BP losses were kept hidden.... For this to work , however, since it would be way too easy to keep track of this in your head, another mechanic would be needed.... One idea would be that each army is randomly assigned a plus or minus % in Bp's. So even if you counted the enemy BG's and tried to tally routs and frags , you would never be quite sure....

Any thoughts, comments?

I liked it because it added to the suspense of the game. Wish it was put back in. It also encouraged you to have good leader(s) for that extra chance at rallying!

Blathergut wrote:I liked it because it added to the suspense of the game. Wish it was put back in. It also encouraged you to have good leader(s) for that extra chance at rallying!

Me too. Didn't know it was gone!
The old game Civil War Generals had a nice feature; if a lot of fighting were going on in a spot on the map a victory hex could appear. Not sure if that work in an ancient setting but it added a nice level of uncertainty.

It was gone a patch or two back.

I liked it too. It did add a random element to a game, which I thought was good.

Like GM said, I too recently had a similar experience where knowing the end point prompted me to playing artificially. I was a few BPs away from victory in a close game and opportunities arose, which I took, which gave me the chance to win which I may not have normally taken. In essence, the were attacks which left the units rear exposed (and they would have been destroyed on any following turn), so I made them knowing there were no turns to follow. If the random element was there then I probably wouldn't have made those attacks.

I'm just musing now (and slightly intoxicated) but something like this:
Each commander can reduce BP:s. More the better commander. Not much, perhaps -1 -2 -3 for the three classes there is.
If you chose to reduce you lose the ability to move a certain number of BG:s for every BP you lower your score.
That way there would also be a big incentive to take commanders.
At the end of a game so many BG:s might be fighting that the penalty of not be able to move is not enough, I don't now.
But something that you as a commander can do so that your opponent can't be certain and do like you described.

I think overly complex solutions should be avoided. Firstly ny system involving alterations to the army breakpoint will be derived through a formula and thus prone to calculation unless purely random. If purely random it can provide a bias to one player which I dislike making a tough match-up even more difficult thus depriving a player of a tough win or granting a player an easier win due to the armies involved. Obviously you could randomly get the better army losing BP's while the worse army gets more but this result is not enough to balance out all the other scenarios.

Now if you keep the bug it doesn't alter much as we are talking about doing bold attacks to finish off the enemy on the last turn. The enemy doesn't rally during your turn it is only yourself so this won't alter those last ditch attacks. Also when an enemy crumbles to their breakpoint you could imagine it as a general rout from the field so the psyche of the enemy is already broken so they will be focused on leaving the field of battle alive rather than charging an exposed enemy at the end as their army won't be providing support.

If you do leave the bug in what can happen in a close game is some last ditch charges to break the enemy while hoping for a rally thus encouraging by what you term as high risk attacks. I really think its apples and oranges one or the other as what people propose create alternative results which culminate in the commander making the final decision on how to finish the enemy. Personally I enjoyed seeing the bug allow those rallies as it allowed some of my opponents to go an extra turn against me and if the match is close then that can make it all the better but ultimately your just looking at a means to protract the conflict as I don't feel it truly will improve the game system. Just another cosmetic way of ending the game.

I do plan a lot of things for the game I've started to work on.

dynamic army vales/victory values, army center/wings general morale, pre-battle scouting/deployment, dynamic battle fields (like in no map edge), battlelines (flank/rear support will generate greater confidence), realistic fog of war (like in enemy BG's 20 hexes away will be displayed as general infantry or general cavalry until they will get into unit type recognizing distance), simultan deployment and so on.