Terrain Tweaks

[grahambriggs]

There are a few oddities in the terrain system that would be good to fix:

Rivers are quite good terrain blockers. Put one down a side edge and any terrain rolloing a 3 or 4 can't be placed on that edge. This leads to odd looking terrain where one flank is clear apart from the river, the other has all sorts of stuff. That doesn't seem very likely. plantations, forests, marshes and the like are often found near rivers. Suggest thaton a 3 or 4 terrain should be able to be placed touching any river (except perhaps a gully?)

Some linear features - roads for example - can be slid by the opponent if they roll the right number. So people do gamey things like have the road running from base edge to side edge. Can't be slid then. Suggestion: if the dice allows you to slide it but you can't do that, option to remove it instead.

If you want to deny terrain pieces to the opponent, there's a tendency to combine them. i.e. gentle hill with brush on denies them a gentle hill and a bit of brush. I've no problem with combined features, but it seems odd that it denies choice to the other player. Suggestion: When combining hills and other terrain, this only counts as a hill for the purpose of denying terrain to the enemy

[rogerg]

Place rivers and roads last in the sequence?

Allow hill coverings not to deduct from the available pieces? Perhaps limiting the coverings to the number of pieces of the type available.

[philqw78]

IMO the problem with the terrain rules is they are not fair. An army that would never wander from the mountains ends up fighting in the steppe and an army that would never go near the mountains ends up attacking between 2 volcanoes and a river. It is a part of army choice but does make some armies unnecessarily less competetive. Its nice to say that Huns fought in this terrain and Thracians that, but in a competition they are hamstrung by their troop types.

[philqw78]

ooh, Pretorian Guard.

[grahambriggs]

ooh, Pretorian Guard.

Judge Dredd more like...

[MatthewP]

Judge Dredd more like...

Dont encourage him Graham. He'll be ruuning around shouting 'Eat Judge boot punk' every time he wins a combat.

[timmy1]

Phil does not need any encouragement...

[philqw78]

Phil does not need any encouragement...

I'll be the Judge of that

[MatthewP]

You are not the law!!

[azrael86]

There are kind of two issues here,

a) the infamous taunting to draw those impetuous Swiss, Welsh etc out into the steppe. Solution - the winner of initiative can only choose from the loser's terrain choices.

b) Cheesy rivers, road (and possibly coast) placement. Obviously roads should go down last (I believe there is some historical precedent for this). As for rivers, then really it is only an issue for hills and gullies. Any other terrain can obviously occur on both sides of a river. Impassable is a problem but it could be either a lake (in which case it goes down) or a mountain (it is removed). I'd say gullies are lost but hills can be place if they are no more than 6" from the edge, but must be placed as close as possible to the edge.

[philqw78]

You are not the law!!

As a perp you have no right to comment on the law Poole. In fact mis-quoting the law is against the law. Prepare to be judged.

[spikemesq]

Off the cuff, the terrain rules for linear features could benefit from some basic and intuitive changes.

1. Slides - these pieces should be presumed to continue beyond the table edge, allowing the opponent to slide them where appropriate. If the slide pulls the feature from an edge (e.g., where the feature connects a side and long edge), the slide incorporates the additional length. The current rule imposes a "hard stop" terminus at each board edge. That is dumb.

2. Area feature interaction - linear features should either go down last and/or not block placement of other features. If a road exists, a wood can go on top, and the road now goes through a wood. If a road goes down last, it can be placed on existing terrain for the same effect. The interaction might be fine-tuned with respect to area features that roads/rivers traditionally avoid (e.g., impassable features, steep hills, etc.).

[spikemesq]

There are a few oddities in the terrain system that would be good to fix:

If you want to deny terrain pieces to the opponent, there's a tendency to combine them. i.e. gentle hill with brush on denies them a gentle hill and a bit of brush. I've no problem with combined features, but it seems odd that it denies choice to the other player. Suggestion: When combining hills and other terrain, this only counts as a hill for the purpose of denying terrain to the enemy

This may swing too far in the other direction. Do we want to allow players to increase the number of certain feature types by slapping them onto hills?

[expendablecinc]

Off the cuff, the terrain rules for linear features could benefit from some basic and intuitive changes.

1. Slides - these pieces should be presumed to continue beyond the table edge, allowing the opponent to slide them where appropriate. If the slide pulls the feature from an edge (e.g., where the feature connects a side and long edge), the slide incorporates the additional length. The current rule imposes a "hard stop" terminus at each board edge. That is dumb.

Good idea. But placing roads last and counting a river/coast as the board edges is IMO a more elegant solution.

2. Area feature interaction - linear features should either go down last and/or not block placement of other features. If a road exists, a wood can go on top, and the road now goes through a wood. If a road goes down last, it can be placed on existing terrain for the same effect. The interaction might be fine-tuned with respect to area features that roads/rivers traditionally avoid (e.g., impassable features, steep hills, etc.).

Overlaying has been suggested a lot however I believe the design approach was that at the scale/size of terrin pieces in the board, that roads would go around terrain rather than through them. This seems right for hills, woods, impassable etc... but not quite logical for fields that would be more likely to straddle an existing road rather than stay 4 inches away from it. Allowing overlaying and placing it last turns it into a strategy for those who are terrain averse and give the terrain piece a purpose on table beyond the aesthetic appeal.

[gozerius]

The requirement for a 4 MU buffer between terrain pieces creates unusual effects. Fields, plantations and vineyards are placed distant from the homes of the peasants that tend them. Marshes, forests, gullies that are not adjacent to a water feature.
If you look at any map, you will see that topographic and vegetation features tend to merge. They are not scattered randomly. If you really want to improve the terrain laying sequence, follow nature's order.
1st, place all water features: Coast/river, (impassable) lakes
2nd place all orthographic features: (impassable) mountains, steep slopes, gentle slopes, gullies.
3rd place vegetation: forest, Brush, broken
4th place man made features: village, openfields, enclosed fields, vineyards, plantation
5th Roads
Eliminate the requirement to place terrain pieces at least 4MU away from other terrain.
Did I leave anything out?

[expendablecinc]

The requirement for a 4 MU buffer between terrain pieces creates unusual effects. Fields, plantations and vineyards are placed distant from the homes of the peasants that tend them. Marshes, forests, gullies that are not adjacent to a water feature.
If you look at any map, you will see that topographic and vegetation features tend to merge. They are not scattered randomly. If you really want to improve the terrain laying sequence, follow nature's order.
1st, place all water features: Coast/river, (impassable) lakes
2nd place all orthographic features: (impassable) mountains, steep slopes, gentle slopes, gullies.
3rd place vegetation: forest, Brush, broken
4th place man made features: village, openfields, enclosed fields, vineyards, plantation
5th Roads
Eliminate the requirement to place terrain pieces at least 4MU away from other terrain.
Did I leave anything out?

I think from a game length perspective the 4 inch buffer is necessary. Otherwise terrain bridges/barriers are too easy to manufacture. Exceptions imo are rivers and coasts.

Looking at the current terrain sequence its a game mechanic rather than emulating the 10,000 years or so required to produce the terrain.

[lawrenceg]

There are a few oddities in the terrain system that would be good to fix:

If you want to deny terrain pieces to the opponent, there's a tendency to combine them. i.e. gentle hill with brush on denies them a gentle hill and a bit of brush. I've no problem with combined features, but it seems odd that it denies choice to the other player. Suggestion: When combining hills and other terrain, this only counts as a hill for the purpose of denying terrain to the enemy

This may swing too far in the other direction. Do we want to allow players to increase the number of certain feature types by slapping them onto hills?

Do we want to allow players to decrease the size of and control the placement of certain feature types by slapping them onto hills? That is what we have at the moment.

[grahambriggs]

b) Cheesy rivers, road (and possibly coast) placement. Obviously roads should go down last (I believe there is some historical precedent for this). As for rivers, then really it is only an issue for hills and gullies. Any other terrain can obviously occur on both sides of a river. Impassable is a problem but it could be either a lake (in which case it goes down) or a mountain (it is removed). I'd say gullies are lost but hills can be place if they are no more than 6" from the edge, but must be placed as close as possible to the edge.

Coast isn't an issue - a 3 or 4 allows terrain to be placed in contact with it. Rivers are currently an issue for ALL terrain: if you roll a 3 or a 4 you can't place it in contact with the river, so it has to go over to the other side edge. In nature the position is revesed - plenty of forests, hills with rivers right next to them

[robertthebruce]

The armies with high iniative choose favourable terrain. But I think is not historical that a mounted army could force a foot army to fight in open terrain.

Except when the foot army is the invader like in Carrhae for example.

[rogerg]

Allow the player without initiative to veto one type of terrain area not on the opponents list. This should give a more compatible battlefield for very different army types.