Forthcoming Changes - 16/03/07

[rbodleyscott]

FORTHCOMING CHANGES

Here are some major changes that we plan to be in the next iteration. It may be a few weeks before we are ready to issue a new beta version, but we would be grateful if you could start play-testing these changes soon, as they are particularly directed at improving the historical simulation and game balance.

Shooting

1) Instead of the -1 cohesion modifier for suffering 1HP3B from shooting or close combat, this becomes:

>= 1 HP2B from shooting -1
>= 1 HP3B from close combat -1

Note that these only apply when actually testing for shooting hits or losing a close combat.

NB: A cohesion test is still triggered by 1 HP3B from shooting.

2) Medium Foot with Bow, Longbow or Crossbow (but not Bow*) shoot with
1 dice per 1st and 2nd rank base at effective range.
1 dice per 2 elements outside effective range.

Cavalry still shoot in 1.5 ranks as before.

Medium Foot

1) + POA for mounted vs MF in the open now only applies in the impact phase.
(But still applies in the melee phase vs LF - although we are contemplating giving LF 1/2 close combat dice vs LH instead)

2) Cohesion modifier becomes:

MF in close combat against mounted or HF in open terrain -1

(In both phases, and also other tests while in such close combat).

Impact Foot

1) Impact phase POAs for impact foot become:

++ against any foot
+ against any mounted, unless charging shock mounted

2) Also, to prevent legionaries being too super vs mounted:

Skilled swordsmen are on net + vs foot swordsmen, but net 0 vs mounted swordsmen.

(We also considered raising the cost of cost of impact foot capability to +2 instead of +1, but eventually rejected the idea).

[sagji]

Would 1HP2B for all CT modifers be better?

The problem with reducing SSw is that it is now little better than Sw - you get a bonus versws ft Sw and Hw which is at best 25% of the time. The only solutions I can see to this are introduce 1/2 point costs and rely on the fact that bases are bought in even numbers, or to get rid of it entirely.

[hammy]

Richard,

These are IMO a very good set of ballancing changes however I am a touch concerned that the increase in th cost of impact foot is over the top.

Consider the following POA packages

Light spear / Sword cost 1
Impact foot / Sword cost 3
Impact foot / skilled sword cost 4
Light spear /Sword / Armoured rather than protected cost 3

Yes impact foot is definitely better than light spear but given the choice of armoured light spear it is a no brainer if the costs are the same.

2 points for impact foot might not be too bad when paying for a Roman legionary but it means that unprotected Libyan impact foot will cost 7 points which is the same as protected hoplites, surely this is not right.

IMO an impact POA is only half (if that) as good as a melee POA. Paying 2 points for an impact POA against most things is out of whack with all the other costs.

Hammy

[rbodleyscott]

Richard,

These are IMO a very good set of ballancing changes however I am a touch concerned that the increase in th cost of impact foot is over the top.

Consider the following POA packages

Light spear / Sword cost 1
Impact foot / Sword cost 3
Impact foot / skilled sword cost 4
Light spear /Sword / Armoured rather than protected cost 3

Yes impact foot is definitely better than light spear but given the choice of armoured light spear it is a no brainer if the costs are the same.

2 points for impact foot might not be too bad when paying for a Roman legionary but it means that unprotected Libyan impact foot will cost 7 points which is the same as protected hoplites, surely this is not right.

IMO an impact POA is only half (if that) as good as a melee POA. Paying 2 points for an impact POA against most things is out of whack with all the other costs.

You may be right. It certainly has not been finally decided. What made us consider changing it was:

1) Someone (I think his name was Hammy) suggested it might be necessary when the change to impact foot was mooted.
2) Impact foot, sword seemed to be worth more than 1 point more than light spear, sword. I don't agree that it is a no-brainer to pick armoured light spear, sword over protected impact foot, sword at the same cost. In the impact phase the impact foot are much better vs foot, and have a much better chance both of beating them and disrupting them. You may say that the armour cancels this in melee, but winning the impact phase and disrupting the enemy is critical for swordsmen vs spearmen or pikemen. (But not so critical if armoured, it is true).

Clearly, in my view, if the points are only 1 different it is a no-brainer to pick impact foot, sword over light spear, sword of the same armour class.

So I am unsure. Perhaps armour is too cheap? Perhaps the entire points system needs to be "stretched" along the Quality and Armour parameters?

Any other views please? Although the publication date may seem a long way away, we need to address balancing issues ASAP so that the "rebalanced" rules can be properly tested.

[hammy]

1) Someone (I think his name was Hammy) suggested it might be necessary when the change to impact foot was mooted.
2) Impact foot, sword seemed to be worth more than 1 point more than light spear, sword. I don't agree that it is a no-brainer to pick armoured light spear, sword over protected impact foot, sword at the same cost. In the impact phase the impact foot are much better vs foot, and have a much better chance both of beating them and disrupting them. You may say that the armour cancels this in melee, but winning the impact phase and disrupting the enemy is critical for swordsmen vs spearmen or pikemen. (But not so critical if armoured, it is true).

I may have suggested it might be necessary and when this was first posted it didn't leap out as a problem. While thinking things over I concluded that there is possibly a problem.

While the current points the difference between a superior armoured drilled impact foot swordsman and a similar light spear armed base (13 to 12) is not much the differecne between average protected undrilled impact foot swordsmen and similar light spear troops (7 to 6) is far more significant.

Making the first difference 14 to 12 is not too bad but 8 to 6 makes a really big difference.

Impact POA's are nice to have but in my eperience it is melee POA's and misile power that win you battles. It is all wee and good to be a POA up at impact but there is still significantly less than a 50% chance of disrupting your opponent and if they are not disrupted you will be in big trouble if your opponent has better armour.

Look at it another way: Superior protected light spear will be the same cost as average protected impact foot.

Perhaps further stretching the points is needed.

Hammy

[sagji]

A melee advantage is much more important than an impact. In a mounted vs foot you sometimes get the impact, melee, breakoff but this is often a loosing proposition for the mounted Knights tend to be loosing bases and even other mounted are breaking off usualy having lost at least one round of combat at thus at risk of having lost a base. In mounted vs mounted and foot vs foot it is usually 1 impact and several melees before a result is achieved.
I think there is insuffient granularity in the current weapon costing.


I also think LF/LH should only pay +1 per level of armour - it doesn't help against being shot at and they only want to fight other light troups.
I think quality needs to be looked at - I estimate that if an average base costs 10 then superior should be 13 and elite 16 - currently these are 12 and 14.
I would also like to see lights costed as drilled.

[markm]

I don't yet have the experience to comment on these exact changes, but surely 'doubling' all points costs will give you more granularity to sort out any balance issues?

[jre]

I hope you are aware that even though the bow dice change benefits those poor unprotected MF bowmen, it turns those bowmen that already were good, impressive. If the English bows already made cavalry run away, now they can make run anything but heavily armoured foot. Something similar for the Janissaries. 6 superior dice on a frontage of 3... I doubt getting 1HP2B is too hard with them.

I feel it is too much. Although my only owned army is a Burgundian Ordonnance, so maybe I should just profit from this.

Jos?©

[rbodleyscott]

I hope you are aware that even though the bow dice change benefits those poor unprotected MF bowmen, it turns those bowmen that already were good, impressive. If the English bows already made cavalry run away, now they can make run anything but heavily armoured foot. Something similar for the Janissaries. 6 superior dice on a frontage of 3... I doubt getting 1HP2B is too hard with them.

I feel it is too much. Although my only owned army is a Burgundian Ordonnance, so maybe I should just profit from this.

It has been suggested that we remove re-rolls for shooting as it has been suggested that Superior shooting re-rolls may be (largely) responsible for the perceived excessive effectiveness of heavy shooty cavalry.

How would people feel about this?

(I am trying Medieval French with 16 MF crossbowmen, and 16 allied Scots MF longbowmen this afternoon vs Generalitat Catalonian. No superiors though. We shall see.....)

[davidandlynda]

As long as the relative points values reflect the diference I think there is definately a place for superior re rolls,if there were none you would see very few of those types cost wise we'd go for average.
I still think the amount of shooting from the cavalry is what needs changing ,make them bow* or all mounted bows as LH shooters ie 1 per 2 bases that would be 1 dice less.
David

[neilhammond]

The advantage of 1HP3B is its easy to remember. Once you start getting into 1HP2B in some situations and 1HP3B in others complexity starts to creep in. A bit like the my bound / your bound if Fast under DBM 3.0

I agree with sagji that melee advantage is much more important that impact. I found this to be the case at Leeds.

The problem with foot missilemen is the troops without secondary weapons (e.g. non-swordsmen) are vulnerable, but foot bows + swordsmen with protection aren't too bad, unless facing heavier armour. It's back to LF bows are the same price as basic MF bows but much more versatile so you'd choose LF over MF. If you increased shooting power then it makes the better troops even better.

Removing quality rerolls for missile troops - an idea, but needs to be tested out. You'd not really bother taking better quality foot missiles (because you generally don't want to engage in close combat anyway), but you'd still bother with better quality cavalry because of the combat option.

[rbodleyscott]

We played a test game today between Medieval French (with Scots allies) and Catalonian Generalitat.

The French had 2 BGs of 8 average MF crossbowmen and 2 BGs of 8 average MF Scots longbowmen.

The Catalonians had 2 BGs of 8 average MF crossbowmen.

Emboldened by the rules changes, both sides used their crossbowmen out in the open.

The Scots longbowmen were not really tested as they started out in some rough going, and although they emerged, the enemy was falling back away from them.

The 16 French longbowmen were attacked by 2 BGs of heavily armoured knights - one of 4 average mercenaries and one of 4 military order superiors.

One base was shot off the mercenaries before impact. The military order knights hacked they way through the crossbowmen BG they were fighting, but the mercenaries ended up autobroken. (Which they wouldn't have been if they had been superior). A BG of almughavars then caught up and finished off the other BG of crossbowmen.

One of the Catalan crossbow BGs was ridden down by knights, but shot a base off them on the way in, and inflicted another base loss in the combat.
The other Catalan crossbow BG reduced an advancing French armoured polesarms BG to Fragmented, and only failed to rout them because the crossbowmen were charged by a BG of Scots longbowmen to distract them. This did feel a bit excessive. The respite gave the billmen a chance to rally, they then charged in and finished off the crossbowmen.

A BG of knights charged an 8 base Catalan BG of pikemen, eventually managing to defeat it after rallying back 4 times , the knights reduced to half strength and only winning with the help of an overlap from the other half-strength knights. This felt very historical, and left both knight BGs in no state to do much else.

My overall impression is that increasing MF bow shooting to 1 dice per 1st & 2nd rank base may make them a little too effective. (or not). While it is true that all 4 crossbow BGs bit the dust, two of them were ganged up on, they did lack a melee POA and English longbowmen (for example) would probably have fared better.

So guys, your mission is to test out MF bowmen (using the rules changes listed in the first post in this thread) and report back please.

[paulcummins]

But making failing 3 CT = to losing 50% casualties in its effect on morale is a big step backwards towards recreating previous rulesets.

I reallty like the idea that the only way units actually run away is for them to be reduced to 50% (ish) casualties - or be threatened with being tonked in combat by someone much much better than them because thir morale is already wavering (reader says "so, you have to actually beat units in combat for them to rout, cool, oos of combat and stabbing each other with big pointy swords, cool!!")?

This still seems to be the most important concept - its not how much damage the super shooty cav do, but its the 'run away from the nasty skirmishers' thing that makes it seem somewhat pants.

though using my longbowmen with the rule adjustments will be fun

[davidandlynda]

I tried native Palmyrans against Carthaginians last night,the Palmyrans had 5 x 6 BG of MF bow,3 x 8 LF bow,I think I would have proved that the foot bow upgrade to 2 ranks worth of elements shooting was too powerful but for my superb prowess in rolling dice ,at one stage I rolled 12 needing 4's against a 4 element BG of armoured cav, result 5 1;'s 2 2's and 5 3's.it should have been 5 or 6 hits almost certainly a base off and a test.
On the other hand the change to 1HP2B could work,it could even be left at that,the cavalry would have to work hard to get that especially agaisnt a deep target
David

[hammy]

I tried native Palmyrans against Carthaginians last night,the Palmyrans had 5 x 6 BG of MF bow,3 x 8 LF bow,I think I would have proved that the foot bow upgrade to 2 ranks worth of elements shooting was too powerful but for my superb prowess in rolling dice ,at one stage I rolled 12 needing 4's against a 4 element BG of armoured cav, result 5 1;'s 2 2's and 5 3's.it should have been 5 or 6 hits almost certainly a base off and a test.
On the other hand the change to 1HP2B could work,it could even be left at that,the cavalry would have to work hard to get that especially agaisnt a deep target
David

I think the dice gods are teasing us. In my game on Monday I shot with 8 bases of archers at effective range against protected cavalry, acheived 6 hits and did absolutely nothing

One thing to bear in mind though, under the 5.01 rules you would have expected 4 hits and to force a test at -1 whereas with 12 dice rather than 8 the real difference is that you are more likely to cause a base loss. That said with lots of archers pouring arrows into cavalry I would expect something to happen.

The 1HP2B rule definitely works well and the new MF vs mounted rules actually made things worse for my unprotected archers who were fighting at -- rather than --- but had an extra -1 on their CT.

I am intending trying out Navarese again next week and they have a lot of quality MF missile troops.

[davidandlynda]

I did it more than once ,they didn't fight well in the open either once they were tempted out,the LF performed best more than once forcing tests on protected MF ,bizarre,I need to find the optimum number of dice to roll,1 is clearly no good from last years DBM experience,maybe we should make 1's good and 6's not
David

[lawrenceg]

The new higher cost of Impact Foot has pushed my Dominate Roman army over 800 pts. One easy way to get it back down would be to drop the supporting archers from one of the BGs.

The lists specify "1/3 or 0" for the LF archers in the "total bases" column (not the "bases per BG"), so it would not be legal for me to drop the archers from only one BG.

While contemplating this question I noticed that there is nothing to say that the supporting archers need to be in the same BGs as the auxiliaries. So I could have the archers as a separate LF archer BG as long as it contains 1/3 of the total field army auxiliaries. (Obviously I still need to look elsewhere to save the points.)

Am I right ?
Was this the intention?

[rbodleyscott]

While contemplating this question I noticed that there is nothing to say that the supporting archers need to be in the same BGs as the auxiliaries.

Am I right ?
Was this the intention?

No. If I have it in the total bases column, that is an error. It should be in the Bases per BG column.

I will correct it.

If you spot any similar ones please let me know.

[lawrenceg]

Thanks

Please also clarify whether (all BGs need to be 1/3 or all 0) or (some 1/3 others 0).

[rbodleyscott]

Thanks

Please also clarify whether (all BGs need to be 1/3 or all 0) or (some 1/3 others 0).

IIRC it is intended to be all/0 but I will need to check. In particular I cannot remember what we decided about whether we wanted to allow legions to have LF while auxilia didn't.