Slitherine

This is a repost of a thread that I made back in June on the NorthAmerican FOG Yahoo group. The statistics in it were accurate at the time, and likely still similar:



One thing that I thought was odd about FoG when I first started playing, is that
the pre-battle initiative system (while WAY better than the DBM system) did not
differentiate between attackers and defenders. It feels odd to me that when an
army wins initiative, it is allowed to pick any of its terrain types, or any of
its opponents terrain types. Realistically, pre-battle initiative would be
determined within the confines of at least a single country, let alone
continent.

Additionally, after playing games for a while, I noticed that this system has
the effect of doubly hurting armies that are designed to work in bad terrain. An
army like Early Scots Isles and Highlands works best in Hilly or Mountain
terrain, but cannot get any mounted, making their maximum initiative +2. This
gives them a disadvantage against a Steppe army which can easily get +3 or +4
initiative, as well as bring their Steppes with them, forcing the Scots to fight
in Mongolia.

The reality is, if you were to play Early Scots Isles and Highlands, you'd feel
compelled to take an IC for that +2, and you'd still only have at best a 1/3rd
chance of getting Hilly or Mountain against a lot of armies. Seems kind of odd
for an army whose only terrain options are Hilly and Mountains.


If you were to add a die roll at the start of the game for Attacker and
Defender, this issue would largely go away. It wouldn't have to take place of
the initiative, it would work like so. Before rolling initiative, both players
roll a die, with no modifiers. The high die is the attacker, the low die is the
defender. Whoever then wins initiative may only pick terrain options out of the
Defenders options.

This would mean that in the case of Scots Isles and Highlands, and many similar
armies, 50% of their games would be played in bad terrain, regardless of
initiative. A big boost in playability for the Scots, who according to the FoG
site are army #167 in ELO value.

There are a few Steppe armies that only get Steppes, who would also benefit some
by this, but they would benefit much less, since they already have high
initiatives, and are already dictating most of their matchups. Very very few bad
terrain armies can also get +4's.

Personally, I also think this might create some fun dilemmas when doing terrain.
Say you're the Mongol army who is unfortunately attacking the Scots. How do you
pick Hilly / Mountains, and also try to minimize terrain? It'd make terrain
picks more thought intensive, and less of a mechanical "if I win initiative I am
going to do this setup in every game."


To back myself up, I did a quick flip through all the books, and found the
armies that in my opinion would benefit from this. The first list is mostly
Cavalry armies that only get Steppe and/or Agricultural, and the second list is
mostly Medium Foot armies that only get
Developed/Hilly/Woodland/Mountains/Tropical/Desert. I organized them by their
ELO scores on the Field of Glory website. Unsurprisingly, a lot of these armies
have very low ELO scores, and several have never been used in a tournament,
while only a couple (notably Swiss) have good scores. Here is what I found:

No-Terrain Armies
#29 /1693 - Parthian
#37 /1679 - Avar
#39 /1688 - Mongol Conquest
#49 /1651 - Western Turkish
#52 /1648 - Mongol Invasion
#55 /1645 - Ilkhanid Mongol
#57 /1642 - Early Horse Nomad
#69 /1630 - Early Sarmatian
#74 /1625 - Timurid, Black Sheep Turcoman or White Sheep Turcoman
#113/1596 - Early Alan
#114/1595 - Cimmerian or Early Skythian
#125/1588 - Skythian or Saka
#125/1588 - Magyar
#159/1563 - Early Ostrogothic, Herul, Sciri or Taifali
#171/1549 - Later Sarmatian
#187/1521 - Tatar
Never used - Later Horse Nomad
Never used - Cuman
Never used - Pecheneg
Never used - African Vandal

Terrain Armies
#15 /1726 - Swiss
#33 /1688 - Early Libyan
#48 /1652 - Urartian
#60 /1634 - Medieval Welsh
#91 /1614 - Early Scots
#108/1598 - Early German
#117/1593 - Early Welsh
#145/1571 - Later Pictish
#167/1554 - Early Scots Isles and Highlands
#174/1543 - Illyrian
#205/1483 - Early Pictish
#208/1478 - Later Scots Isles and Highlands
Never used - Inca
Never used - Amazonian Forest Tribes
Never used - Tupi
Never used - Chichimec
Never used - Early Highland Raiders
Never used - Vietnamese
Never used - Taureg
Never used - Later Welsh

40 lists
0 in top 10
1 in top 25 (Swiss)
6 in 26/50 (Early Libyan, Urartian, Parthian, Avar, Mongol Conquest, Western
Turkish, Mongol Invasian)
12 never been used in a tournament

In short:


The proposition is to add a single attacker/defender die roll at the start of the game before initiative. High die is the attacker.

Afterwords initiative works as normal, but the winner of initiative must choose a terrain type from the defenders options.


This has two main effects.

A - It gives a buffer to armies that require terrain to play effectively, but cannot get a high initiative score due to a lack of cavalry. The armies that this would benefit are according to Slitherines statistics poorly represented in tournaments.

B - It forces people to think more about their terrain options, since they may play a game where they've won initiative, but are attacking into the hills, and must pick Mountains or Hilly and then try to end up with no terrain on the board anyway. This benefits people who are good at thinking dynamically about terrain, and prevents people from having structured pre-tournament plans of "if I win initiative, I will always pick this"

I don't think completely severing the initiative from the terrain type is the right path. Basically, your structure turns the over-powered initiative option (i.e., pick of the terrain litter) into a 50/50 shot at a good terrain menu, irrespective of initiative. The player that plans for and obtains initiative should have more than a wholly random shot at getting a preferred terrain type. OTOH, I do agree that the current pick of the litter system could be improved.

You might take a look at the semi-predefined terrain ideas that have bounced around in the "Terrain Tweaks" thread. Essentially, players would prioritize terrain types from their own list and roll for it with an edge towards the player with initiative.

If you think about it, seperating the two doesn't necessarily make winning initiative useless when you're attacking into bad terrain.

It is still very possible to come up with a set of pieces for Hilly or Mountains that would give you little to no terrain on the table. In Hilly for example you could take a 6x4 Steep Hill as your mandatory, and then a Road and 3 Gentle Hills. The primary difference is your opponent being guaranteed a mandatory terrain piece that would benefit him.

Additionally, the vast majority of armies have Agricultural in their terrain types, which means an army that is attacking and doesn't want terrain can still normally pick Agricultural. Only a few armies benefit from having no open-terrain options, and these are generally armies that are seen as poor for tournament play.

Why not getting a compromise among both of them? I will explain. The problem with hilly and mountanious is not the terrain itself, but the fact that FoG allows both players to choose uo to 4 terrains. I think it would be nice that the winner of the initiative gets more to choose instead of the football assignation: I get the terrain and you get to start first.

I think that the winner of the initiative should choose among the terrains of the defender. In the other hand, we can give him also the possibility to limit the number of elements that can be used in that battle, ranging from 4 to 8, for example. Then dice rolls will be made and maybe some of them will disappear. This way the defender gets a terrain type that could be convenient to him and the attacker limits the number of pieces, balancing things. If you want to describe the process, that would be that the defender chooses more or less where to intercept, but the attacker the path more convinient.

It might also be useful let the player with the initiative to choose whether he wants to be first or second. I can't understand why an army with a big mobility would give up the first turn, very important to gain ground for skirmishing tactics.

Although there may be some historical drivers for PBI/terrain ammendments I dont think that the actual problem to be overcome has stood the test of time.

People with mobile open terrain armies ofter prefer to move first so arent really concerned about steppe fascination.
People with mobile open terrain armies liking having difficult/rough around to break up the enemy advance and having somewhere for them to evade to.

If you really have a MF army that feels it needs terrain and is faced with a mobile lancer cav outfit on the steppe the souce of the problem is that the one who doesnt want terrain deliberately picks it to deny it to the opponent.

Increasing the numbers of each type of terrain and changing the terrain placement order (as in FoGR) already solves this problem.

eg facing scythians with catalans I woudl be fine fighting on the steppe assuming I got to pick and place a couple of bits of rough going (which is available to steppe)

The other good option is letting the winner of the initiative roll hand initiative to the opponent (letting them pick the battle location so they can deploy first and move first.

The player with the initiative does already control the terrain placement by placing most terrain first. So even if foorced to fight in developed, I can get two 12MU sized "open"s, and a couple gentle hills. Placed judiciously, I can sqeeze the battlefield to where the "defender" would be lucky to get all his choices on the table.

rpayne wrote:If you think about it, seperating the two doesn't necessarily make winning initiative useless when you're attacking into bad terrain.

It is still very possible to come up with a set of pieces for Hilly or Mountains that would give you little to no terrain on the table. In Hilly for example you could take a 6x4 Steep Hill as your mandatory, and then a Road and 3 Gentle Hills. The primary difference is your opponent being guaranteed a mandatory terrain piece that would benefit him.

Additionally, the vast majority of armies have Agricultural in their terrain types, which means an army that is attacking and doesn't want terrain can still normally pick Agricultural. Only a few armies benefit from having no open-terrain options, and these are generally armies that are seen as poor for tournament play.

I don't mean to suggest that splitting terrain type from initiative renders the latter useless.

In the very narrow context of choosing terrain type, however, the current system is too binary. Your system, again in the narrow context, swings too far in the other direction, and makes terrain type simply a coin toss regardless of initiative.

Limiting terrain choices to a player's own list appeals to me. It allows terrain preference to be folded into the pre-game army list preparations, and makes the terrain types more of an army flavoring.

Another minor option is to let the loser of initiative pick their terrain choices first, thereby preventing the winner from picking all the good terrain. This largely solves the steppe problem. Where the steppe army puts a 6x4 plantation on on gentle hill or other such things.

There seems to be a larger question of how do we make 3rd tier armies more viable. An army of undrilled MF protected light spear sword as its main foot troop type does what in this game?