Slitherine

Hi,

I have design a simple campaign for FOG where we don't use standing army (we use 400 pt DAG when our system call for a battle) , but now I would like to design a campaign with army point or detail army composition and of course depletion and reinforcement. So I wonder how (and why) do you handle army in campaign related to FOG in the following field : Tracking army composition outside of combat, loss in battle, attrition, pursuit, actual battle resolution (scenario or DAG)?

Thank you

Hmm, that is a pretty broad series of questions you have.... i too have been tinkering with campaign ideas to handle many of those things...

However this topic is so broad it is really hard to answer without knowing what your objective is
Firstly, is this a solo campaign? or a small campaign you intend to play with only 1-2, maybe 3 other players?
If solo i imagine you could really get into heavy detail regarding army composition, attition etc... If playing w a large amount of people , i would suggest it would be out of the question and your best bet would be to use dag armies. The lost World campaign (20 plus players) used a relativley simple way of determing how many AP's were lost in a battle and if a second battle was needed players would load up armies to fight MP with less than the allowed purchase points used. Easy to do but certainly limits the concept of specific units being lost in battle.
basically tsanding armies are out of the ? if using the dag to to unit caps and moer importantly, unit minimums.....
Also, if you are gaming ahistorical or fantasy type battles , then the DAG is out of the question.

Ideas i have muddled over: unit losses: tough since the # of men has no influence on a BG performance so tracking that BG A lost 63 men out of 300 in the ist battle and creating a scenario where that unit has 237 men doesnt do you any good at all....

One idea I had was to say : Nation A recruits a specific type of unit, say Knights, from a province . lets say 4 bg's worth .
After a battle i would then determine the Total # of men lost from that unit type, lets say 350 out of the total 1200 Depending on how you want to round you could say only 3 of those kniggits still exists for the next battle...

Hopefully Slitherine will allow units to be created in the editor to be "damaged" ie placed at a # less than their original notational strength, would solve a lot of problems...

Pursuit: one thing i considered is after a battle, tally up all your remaing Light cavalry/ maybe regular cavalry units(certainly not knights/cats) that are in good going and not engaged in combat at the end of the battle. Those that qualify ae considered to be in pursuit of the rout/fleeing enemy army.... Havent gotten as far to think about what those effects might be though

Looking around this forum category, I see the bleached bones of many abandoned campaigns which is truly sad. So I would suggest whatever you come up with for a multipalyer campaign, make it simple enough and small enough to be sustainable over the long run.

I've been in several of these dead campaigns and think that Lysimacho's Mare Nortrum campaign was the best thought out because it had an historic framework with limited goals: six players, 10 year turns and a map (although somewhat abstract.) There are lots of good ideas in the rules which are still downloadable if you're interested.

Hopefully, Sltherine will create an online campaign so it will continue even if real life forces players/moderators to drop out. However, as Slitherine is following in the footsteps of the TT FoG rules and those don't include a campaign, this isn't going to happen anytime soon, I'm guessing. Any talented programers out there want to take a crack at it?

Deeter

Deeter you are quite right. The worst problem is player dropping out. In my oversimplified campaign for 4 players we already have touble on the 5th turn. I have try to make campaign in other games and every thing that last long never succeeded. I think that more than 10 turn (may be even 5) is too much for most people.

TGM, right now, I have only a vague idea of a 2-3 players 1st crusade campaign. This question is really for brainstorming about what is feaseable and what is out of question due to the FOG engine.

Very sad we cannot have a simple tool to export the army as it is after battle, edit it eventually, export it to either a scenario or custom random battle (use DAG map with custom army list). That will make thing easier. I am day dreaming though.

Hmm, players dropping out is always a concern but looking at all the campaigns on this forum that started and then "faded away" it actually appears the problem might really be with the moderator or creator of the campaign... Some have just disappeared(4), others personal health and or time commitments(2) have basically ended the campaign......
This is no critisism of anyone who started one btw, running one of these is vastly time consuming.

The Lost World lasted quite a while but i sense it too is dead, despite being mostly player driven. With its spiritual head and leader gone, I guess players just didnt have the heart for it any more.

Well, TGM, I didn't want to point fingers but of course you are correct that all the campaigns died because their creators moved on. I enjoyed the LW campaign but feel it was too huge and open-ended to sustain for long. It would be great if there was a PC moderated campaign that works as seamlessly as multi-player.

I envision a limited-scope campaign like Mare Nostrum which players could join like they would a multiplayer battle with the PC handling all the moderator stuff automatically. Should a player drop out, another player could take over the nation and continue on. Having about six players and a duration of 10 turns would keep the campaign to a timely and managable size. The PC could import your exact army (previous losses and all) for a given battle and maybe generate some random events to boot.

Just a thought.

Deeter

I like the idea of being able to export the remaining armies from any battle, it would give the player an incentive to treat the units as more than just units for a battle if there were likely to be other battles fought with the remnants (plus any of routed and new recruits) of the army. At present, in a campaign scenario, there is no handicap with achieving Pyrrhic victories.

Now that would be a good automative feature..... You play a dag battle vs another player, after the battle the server records the states of all your units(and or or creates a new saved DAG army into your army folder) , it records % of men left, routed etc... You get the option to "save as" your army in its current states to either load up another challenge or even a function to play the same player again immedielty against their atritted army...

Come to think of it, a common wish is to continue a battle after one side breaks. This might a way to do that, although with new break points.

Deeter

Well, I see that for campaigning the game need to be customizable which it is not.

I am currently play-testing a two player campaign game that I have devised. It is fairly simple.

Losses are dealt with in this way . . .

I have made a break-point table
0-9 break-points lost in the battle = insignificant losses
10-19 bps lost = 20 army points lost
20-29 bps lost = 40 apl
30-39 bps lost = 60 apl
40-49 bps lost = 80 apl
50+ bps lost = 100 apl

So if you fielded a 600pt army in a battle and and lost 37 bps, your army would be reduced to 540pts. There are separate very simple recruitment rules linked to calibre of leaders, movement and finances.

When I have play-tested it a couple of times I will share it with everyone. "Short and simple" is my motto for any campaign rules - the primary aim being to allow two players to link 5 or 6 battles together in a more meaningful way.

Thank you for your answer.

I wonder if BP is the good thing? Shouldn't it be linked to men lost?

The lost world did it this way:


Ap of army * .50 * MEN LOST/ ORIGINAL MEN (FOR THE WINNER, THE LOSERS MULIPLIER WOULD BE .80)

THE FIGURE CALCED WOULD BE THE AP LOST ( AND THUS SUBTRACTED FROM THE ORIGINAL AP FOR THE NEXT BATTLE)

Skanvak wrote:Thank you for your answer.

I wonder if BP is the good thing? Shouldn't it be linked to men lost?

It could do - it depends on how complicated you want things to be. In FOG when you look at the battle summary it uses the word "casualties" which is different from "killed", isn't it? "Casualties" might include people who were knocked unconscious and recovered later, or people who were only slightly wounded (e.g. they couldn't walk for a few days etc).

You are right for the attacker, though most founds were fatal (infection of wound kill more than blades) at this time or will make the soldier unfit for battle. And we don't take the pursuit after battle which result in lot more loss (and according to period, wounded prisonner were slaughtered or sold back).