Slitherine

This came up for discussion in the pub during the Roll Call weekend. The turn 180 and walk away tactic seems somewhat unrealistic. How about:

180 degree turn only permitted to skirmishers and BG's in a single line.

Others would have to turn 90 degrees twice to about face. Still an option, but not one that would be viable close to the enemy

Could you expand on what was seen as unrealistic as there are a few different things I could imagine within those comments.

Si

rogerg wrote:This came up for discussion in the pub during the Roll Call weekend. The turn 180 and walk away tactic seems somewhat unrealistic. How about:

180 degree turn only permitted to skirmishers and BG's in a single line.

Others would have to turn 90 degrees twice to about face. Still an option, but not one that would be viable close to the enemy

This would make flank marches very powerful. Arrives, enemy flee facing away, it can then turn 90 in own turn, then gets charged in flank. Brilliant. It would be better easier and safer to form orb and unform in a different facing. There are other issues that its hard enough for undrilled foot to turn around and face that enemy to their rear. It would become impossible to do in a timely fashion with this.

I believe that this is referring to the ability of enemy troops to turn 180 degrees to face away from you and then move off on a subsequent turn, literally running away without any penalty. OK for skirmishers (and probably shooty cavalry) but currently very prevelant amongst drilled MF and even drilled HF. I don't think that the proposed solution is a good one (particularly as ancient armies did have drills for turning 180 degrees and it was generally an easier manoeuvre than turning 90 degrees to face a flank - although even ancient authors commented on the care that had to be taken to ensure that turning 180 degrees was not seen as a retreat). Other ideas to counter this have been proposed which may be better (e.g. making non-skirmisher/shooty mounted troops take a CT to move away from the nearest enemy).

Tend to agree that it is difficult to retrict a 180 turn if you have time to move again later. It was easier than 90 in most cases. But also see some of the game mechanics where too much running away is bad for the game perhaps. Although we do need to leave room for good game generalship and avoid the risk of ending up with everything lined up and lobbing dice.

One idea I wondered about was having a CT if you open up a flank to a charge to anything by turning 90 or 180 degrees. Reflects the nervousness you might feel of trying such a trick if the enemy ar close. LH would then cause issues for MF when within 7MU. All the turn 90 and moves near enemy would have some fear and risk built into them. [recent idea this one - not yet discussed with RBS/TS].

Harder to fix issues of people doing this from a long way from enemy. Which I am not sure isn't reasonably historical infact - weren't there quite a few examples of sensible withdrawals to new fighting lines in history? If we take 4MU as effective bow range couldn't drilled troops execute a sensible withdrawal to new ground from over 2x that away?

Good issue, trickier to find good solutions IMHO.

S

shall wrote: Harder to fix issues of people doing this from a long way from enemy. Which I am not sure isn't reasonably historical infact - weren't there quite a few examples of sensible withdrawals to new fighting lines in history? If we take 4MU as effective bow range couldn't drilled troops execute a sensible withdrawal to new ground from over 2x that away?

Good issue, trickier to find good solutions IMHO.

S

While there were armies that did walk way from the enemy as part of a prolonged battle of manouver, most didn't. The issue at present (in my mind) is that most armies that were formed up and ready for battle shouldn't be able to turn evryone round with impunity. Drills to turn units around (e.g. Laconian countermarch) did exist but co-ordinating lots of units doing it at once would have been very difficult in the face of the enemy.

Perhaps allow:

skirmishers to do 180 as a simple at all times

Drilled troops and undrilled cavalry, light chariots simple if no enemy within 12 MU, otherwise complex.

Others: impossible if no enemy within 12 MU, otherwise complex

This would make it a complex move for skirmishing cav to turn back and shoot.

But easy to allow for cav in single rank

S

shall wrote:Harder to fix issues of people doing this from a long way from enemy. Which I am not sure isn't reasonably historical infact - weren't there quite a few examples of sensible withdrawals to new fighting lines in history? If we take 4MU as effective bow range couldn't drilled troops execute a sensible withdrawal to new ground from over 2x that away?

Good issue, trickier to find good solutions IMHO.

S

I'd like to see a list of these examples (excluding those already covered by evades or breakoffs).

There are some examples of "feigned flight", almost exclusively by cavalry, and you occsionally hear of routing foot rallying in the safety of woods or steep hills and inflicting loss on pursuers, but these units are still broken for all practical purposes.

I don't think there are many examples of foot retiring to a rearward fighting position and even fewer of foot retiring from enemy they do not intend to fight without this turning into a rout.

And I've never come across any historical report that resembles the Benny Hill phase.


In the game, BGs rarely expose themselves to flank or rear charges, for obvious reasons, so I don't think a CT for that would have much effect. Normally they are outside charge range when they turn, then whenever you move into charge range, they move out.

I think modifying that idea would do the trick:

Test cohesion if an enemy battle troops BG moves into a position from which it could rear charge troops of a type that can't evade (i.e. skirmishers and non-shock cavalry don't test).

Then a BG that continues to run away will eventually degrade. It would also produce the historical effect of troops breaking when enemy appear behind them, before they actually get charged in the rear.

I like Graham's solution.
The only change I would make would be to allow non shock mounted deployed in a single rank to be treated like skirmishers (i.e. can turn 180 degrees as a simple move).

BG's represent several units working together. Allowing even drilled troops in such a formation to turn away when close to the enemy does not appear to reflect any battle tactics I am aware of. As noted, this is a convenient escape for drilled foot in FoG.

The idea of the rule was to allow skirmishing units to turn about as now, but to make others turn 90 twice, hence making this something to be done at a distance from the enemy, rather than as a close up battle tactic. As always, I believe in the top down approach and employing a simple rule to get the correct final effect.

Drilled infantry turning 180 degrees and marching away from the enemy can be either perfectly legitimate or very cheesy depending on the circumstances.

Turning your back on slowly approaching heavy foot to face a fast approaching group of lancers is a sensible manoeuvre and should not be penalised in the same way that a line of drilled heavy foot sometimes does in order to delay fighting a slowly approaching line of bigger, nastier heavy foot.

In the latter case, turning when the enemy reaches 4MU away -- safe in the knowledge that you can keep ahead of them and eventually turn again and face them a few turns later when you are ready -- is certainly cheesy.

I suggest that that non-skirmishing foot should take a cohesion test in the following circumstances. If the BG has enemy non-skirmishers anywhere to the front of its front edge and within 6MU and the BG turns 180 degrees, and having turned there are no enemy non-skirmishers to the front of its NEW front edge AND within 12 MU, then it must pass a cohesion test or drop a level.

There should be an additional minus on the test if the BG is within 12 MU of the army's back edge of the table (in ADDITION to the standard minus for being within 6MU of any table edge).

What this simulates is troops being convinced that it is sensible to turn face an approaching, visible threat but being very suspicious of anything that looks like the start of a retreat from the battlefield. A number of armies disintegrated in the face of a weak opponent just because some army standards were seen moving towards the rear (eg, Mazikert). And the closer troops are to their camp, the more likely such a manoeuvre is to be interpreted as a cowardly general starting a retreat.

Arguably, it might be realistic and fun to force nearby BGs to test as well if they see friendly units (especially of aristos on horses) do such a turn, but this might be a bit too harsh.

I think that this cohesion test should only apply to infantry: even medieval western European cavalry should be familiar with the concept of battlefield redeployment (even if they never trained for anything as sophisticated as a feigned retreat) so mounted units should not have to test. And anyway, it was the poor bloody infantry who had the well-founded fear of being left in the pooh if their side came second.

rogerg wrote:BG's represent several units working together. Allowing even drilled troops in such a formation to turn away when close to the enemy does not appear to reflect any battle tactics I am aware of. As noted, this is a convenient escape for drilled foot in FoG.

The idea of the rule was to allow skirmishing units to turn about as now, but to make others turn 90 twice, hence making this something to be done at a distance from the enemy, rather than as a close up battle tactic. As always, I believe in the top down approach and employing a simple rule to get the correct final effect.

Is there not a glossary item making this distinction:

Light troops = LF, Lh
skirmishers = LF, LH, cav and lt chariots in single rank

If this were defined it woudl then be simple to apply rules to one group or the other

In reply to GordonJ. What you are suggesting would be more precise than my idea. However, it would be introducing a lot more rules, measuring and dicing. It's all stuff to be remembered.

The history buffs will be better than I at that bit but deep in memory I think I recall that a hoplite army did retire from enemy and reform on new lines, also happened with Mongols vs Arab where centre turned and moved all the way to a flank, and a few others. Over to the expert readers and students of history ...

So my sense is there are two different issues mixed into one here:
1. A sensible retire to new ground is possible acceptable
2. The mechanism that allows this today creates the benny hill syndrome which bis not healthy

Would be nice to solve (1) if reasonable, in a way that does not allow (2

On exposing flanks when i ahve played the swarmy armies thay have turned and moved all the time in front of me exposing flanks, and then wheel to remove that risk. As someone mentions on LH they often do this after and evaede as well.

S

shall wrote:The history buffs will be better than I at that bit but deep in memory I think I recall that a hoplite army did retire from enemy and reform on new lines

Are you referring to Platea maybe? The Greeks tried but they had to start that movement overnight and had to stop as soon as the Persian cavalry started skirmishing them. And there you have the anecdote of the Spartan mora commander who refused to give ground. Given that in FoG there are not pushbacks, that hastati and principes are merged into one unit, etc, I would not worry about small movements which might have happened in a few battles (in fact, it was suggested that if you did that kind of movement in certain situations a CT and not a CMT would be more accurate) and would rather try to solve 2 by ignoring 1. This is true mainly for infantry (heavium and medium). I think that cavalry (even knights) can be treated differently and "more generously".

What if, BG's with enemies on their back (if the enemy is turned on their direction), automatically turn to face them (these should be the basic instinct of any soldier), unless they pass a CMT, or also have enemies to their front.

These would make more difficult running away, as if a running BG, failed a CMT, would end the turn in the same place, with his front to the opponent.

Would also allow for retire maneuvres, but would probably be wise to have a general nearby.

Also would avoid the strange situation that a BG fails sistematically to turn to face an opponent or shooting to his back.

Alternatively, this restriction, could take effect only if the coming BG was near enough (to be defined ), of the running BG.

Evades would not be covered by this rule.

Auto 180 would penalize the enemy who just got into a tasty charge position.

spikemesq wrote:Auto 180 would penalize the enemy who just got into a tasty charge position.

More likely save those who would otherwise be intercepted in flank or rear when the made the charge

Auto 180 would penalize the enemy who just got into a tasty charge position.

Yes, but is it realistic, that a barbarian BG, with no foes to the front, would sit still while a bunch of lancers or elephants charge to their back from whatever hundred meters distance?

If you want to charge the back of the enemy, you should either be ambushed or pin the target with troops in his front.