Slitherine

I do not have the beta rules and battle reports are quite short, so my question is:

Is there any kind of friction of war in the command system?

I do not think of troops just getting impetus or flee.
My experience is that most of the rules give the C-C the universal command abilities.
They are able to react immediatelly (live, in real time) on every move, anywhere, that the opponent is doing.
Even DBM had this problem (of course you needed to have pips to react)

I think of having to make an overall battle plan before the battle starts
that you cannot change easily after combat broke out.

If I read the article about romans against crusader I have my doubts.

What kind of order is this?
Build up in Square at the beginning of the battle, wait and see how your opponent is deploying.
Then, if it is usefull deploy into a line. Otherwise stay is square.

neilhammond wrote: Alan??™s main force was deployed in a hollow square, screened by more light infantry. Why the hollow square? I held the pre-game initiative, forcing Alan to deploy 25% of his army first. He therefore needed to deploy defensively. As the game progressed the legionaries in the box ???unfolded??? and deployed out in a line.

killerhobbit wrote:I think of having to make an overall battle plan before the battle starts
that you cannot change easily after combat broke out.

I agree that most ancients rules--indeed, most wargaming rules in any period--give commanders far too much control over what their troops are doing on the table top for strict historical accuracy. But . . . that extra control makes for a far better game. Being able to redeploy one's troops after the action starts is simply more fun.

Marc

PS. I think that DBM's use of PIPs to simulate the fog of war is a pretty good job, but it does lead to other potential problems, such as the unit with enemy to its flank that just has to sit there and take it if there aren't enough PIPs available that bound.

babyshark wrote: I agree that most ancients rules--indeed, most wargaming rules in any period--give commanders far too much control over what their troops are doing on the table top for strict historical accuracy. But . . . that extra control makes for a far better game. Being able to redeploy one's troops after the action starts is simply more fun.

Yes its very difficult to find a way of simulating this in a tabletop wargame.
But it could be done in the computer game variant.
This kind of universal command system is more napoleonic than ancient

Maybe there should be a test to adopt new orders.

with minus for

distance to C-C
for each different kind of movement needed
number of BG involved

So a square 30 inch away would get a minus because its far away. Result is the order being adopted later.
This minus could be reduced in a second or third trial.
and minus for the complexity of the manouver. (a square would have 3 different moves, 1st unit turn right, 2nd turn left.
others units stay direction or just move forward. A Swiss block thats want to turn to the flank would just need one kind of movement (turn right)

Fun is a very relative notion; for me it's no fun to have to micro-manage whirling light cavalry to optimize enemy flanking...

The problem with most sets is that if you do not move/activate the troops they don't do much by themselves (not even filling a gap between two parent units) while in reality there were (sometimes intelligent) sub-commanders to make the minimal coherent decisions. But at the same time, when you activate/move you are able to make god-like surgerical thrusts.

PIP is a good system IMHO, the whole question is what they allow to do and at which cost. Some obvious moves might even be free of PIPs

tom wrote:Fun is a very relative notion; for me it's no fun to have to micro-manage whirling light cavalry to optimize enemy flanking...

The problem with most sets is that if you do not move/activate the troops they don't do much by themselves (not even filling a gap between two parent units) while in reality there were (sometimes intelligent) sub-commanders to make the minimal coherent decisions. But at the same time, when you activate/move you are able to make god-like surgerical thrusts.

PIP is a good system IMHO, the whole question is what they allow to do and at which cost. Some obvious moves might even be free of PIPs

AoW allows a player to move all of their non engaged battle groups every turn but depending on the troops you may not actually be able to do what you want. The key to command and control is the complex maneuver test, when you move a BG you can always make certain moves (the better disciplined the troops the more you can be sure to acheive) but if for example you want your drilled infantry to turn to their flank and then march that would require you to pass a complex maneuver test. If you were wanting to do something similar with undrilled infantry then the test would be required simply to turn and there would be no chance at all of moving.

There is less standing around than in DBM but it can happen. I have managed to keep a BG of enemy knights out of play for half a game with some skirmishers simply because the knights kept on failing the maneuver test they needed to turn and move away. Obviously in that case my skirmishers were doing a good job

Hammy

hammy wrote: I have managed to keep a BG of enemy knights out of play for half a game with some skirmishers simply because the knights kept on failing the maneuver test they needed to turn and move away. Obviously in that case my skirmishers were doing a good job

Hammy

good to hear.

I think new orders for sub generals should be hard to adopt too if they are far away from the CiC

Has anybody played principles of war. In that wargame you have a command system with movement arrows.
similar to the system of WRG 6th edition
If the table could be divided into smaler areas (right flank sector 1 or centre sector 3) C-C would have to give exact movement orders to his sub general and they could not move anywhere.
For example the battlefield could be divided into 6 X 9 areas. BG would have to move in the ordered areas or the neighbouring ones if enemy is in these.

lets say
unit 1 move from A9 to F9 to F5

I have played PoW, and I personally don't care for that much fiddliness and table clutter. It's all a matter of personal taste, though.

Cheers,
Scott K.