Roads

[petedalby]

Not the sexiest of topics!

A column of HF moving through Difficult terrain appears to move at the same speed as a column of HF moving entirely on a road through Difficult terrain - ie +1MU.

Shouldn't there be some benefit for being entirely on the Road?

Pete

[robertthebruce]

Bingo Pete!!!

Why???

A Column must to move Faster in all terrains, and faster again in a Road. In All napoleonic Rule sets, the columns move Faster than other formations, why not in ancients Rules???


David

[thefrenchjester]

Hi ,
marching in column at a pace is not ancient or medieval practice or I missed something ( perhaps in chinese or aztec armies , not sure )
in all the games played until now , it seems to work well in this format
surely due to my training

thefrenchjester " 1,2,1,2,1?2,(CMT) on the right , right ! 1,2,1,2 "

[petedalby]

Hmmm - I figured those Romans would have been building those roads for some reason.....

But let me try another example.

Heavy Chariots, Battle Wagons and Light Artillery have N/A for their move distance in Difficult Terrain.

Can these troop types move through Difficult Terrain on a Road?

Ideally the Road should count as Open?

Pete

[thefrenchjester]

Hi Pete ,

I read on the rules page 17 that the move in column is +1MU along roads , my point of view is you can move in column along a road even in difficult going while you normally follow the tracks and with more reason if you have two or four wheels road = open going or uneven if it rains , seems to be logic to me because the wagons of my circus do it easily each day
perhaps Richard can confirm this ( or not )

thefrenchjester"view from the hill " ( not the ill )

[petedalby]

Simon / Richard - not sure if you got to see this?

Any views?

Pete

[rbodleyscott]

Not the sexiest of topics!

A column of HF moving through Difficult terrain appears to move at the same speed as a column of HF moving entirely on a road through Difficult terrain - ie +1MU.

Shouldn't there be some benefit for being entirely on the Road?

Pete

In reality probably yes, but for simplicity no. Roads are a minor feature of the rules, roads through woods an even more minor feature.

It always seemed ludicrous to us that we have a largely open battlefield, and the road could easily go round our small clumps of woodland, but perversely the road builders always choose to go through the middle of any wood!

Consequently, the current terrain rules don't allow a road to go through a wood anyway, only to be placed adjacent to one. If you want to simulate a road through the woods (for a scenario), you can place two woods with the road in between. The road is then clearly in open terrain, and hence the column of HF can move 4 MUs.

Moral: If you want your columns to be able to relax their guard and move fast, cut back the woods for more than a bowshot either side of the road!

[lawrenceg]

Not the sexiest of topics!

A column of HF moving through Difficult terrain appears to move at the same speed as a column of HF moving entirely on a road through Difficult terrain - ie +1MU.

Shouldn't there be some benefit for being entirely on the Road?

Pete

In reality probably yes, but for simplicity no. Roads are a minor feature of the rules, roads through woods an even more minor feature.

Road is compulsory through a village. Yet it has no effect on movement through the village. Might as well remove it from the definition of village. The restriction in the definition of Road that it must pass through a village if there is one is sufficient. However, this is not consistent with the terrain placing appendix p 89, which says the road must pass through or touch the village.

The definition of Road says the maximum length is 5 ft. Shouldn't this be changed to 60 MU?

It always seemed ludicrous to us that we have a largely open battlefield, and the road could easily go round our small clumps of woodland, but perversely the road builders always choose to go through the middle of any wood


Consequently, the current terrain rules don't allow a road to go through a wood anyway, only to be placed adjacent to one. If you want to simulate a road through the woods (for a scenario), you can place two woods with the road in between. The road is then clearly in open terrain, and hence the column of HF can move 4 MUs.!

I wouldn't have been sure that "A road can be placed closer than 4 MUs to any piece" prohibited it passing through the piece if you hadn't have pointed it out just now. The only prohibition I can find on superposition applies to sliding and pivoting, not initital placement.

Roman road builders would have carried on in their straight line regardless of terrain, wouldn't they? Other roads sometimes went over hills rather than along valleys, giving us paths such as the Ridgeway and North Downs Way. Presumably less boggy up there. It would be simpler to legislate against superposition however.

[petedalby]

Thanks for sharing the rationale Richard - no issues with what you propose.

Lawrence highlights the compulsory road through a Village. As it stands Hvy and Scythed Chariots, Battle Wagons and Light Artillery can't use this road to move through a Village.

Again is this intentional?

If so why bother with the road in a Village at all?

Pete

[rbodleyscott]

Lawrence highlights the compulsory road through a Village. As it stands Hvy and Scythed Chariots, Battle Wagons and Light Artillery can't use this road to move through a Village.

Somewhat anomalous, I agree.

However, we are not playing Napoleonics. Roads would appear to have had a miniscule (if any) effect during battles in our period. (After deployment).

Certainly I can think of no historical cases of roads being using to redeploy the troops you have listed during a battle. (And few, if any, of them being used by other troops during a battle).

Even in the Napoleonic era a village would often be a choke point on a road, and artillery etc, might get stuck.

Probably better to keep things simple.

[rbodleyscott]

Roman road builders would have carried on in their straight line regardless of terrain, wouldn't they? Other roads sometimes went over hills rather than along valleys, giving us paths such as the Ridgeway and North Downs Way. Presumably less boggy up there. It would be simpler to legislate against superposition however.

All true.

We wanted to avoid players putting roads on top of other pieces as part of our drive to beautify terrain set-ups. In the case of villages, we assume they would be modelled with an integral "main street".

Depending on the terrain pieces involved, superimposing roads could look tatty, and does not really add much of value to the game. We are not playing Napoleonics.

[shall]

lawrenceg wrote:
Roman road builders would have carried on in their straight line regardless of terrain, wouldn't they? Other roads sometimes went over hills rather than along valleys, giving us paths such as the Ridgeway and North Downs Way. Presumably less boggy up there. It would be simpler to legislate against superposition however.



All true.

We wanted to avoid players putting roads on top of other pieces as part of our drive to beautify terrain set-ups. In the case of villages, we assume they would be modelled with an integral "main street".

Depending on the terrain pieces involved, superimposing roads could look tatty, and does not really add much of value to the game. We are not playing Napoleonics

.

The odl civil engineer in me ....

The ancietns really didn't ahve the technology to build raods throguh difficult terrain very much. They owuld either buiold good rods across falt easy lands - Watling street - or follow the edges of terrain - e.g. the dirt track round the rear or kuirkara.

So we don't really want doards through to many things in this era.

If you look at tresimene (?) IIRC the road was round the lake edge for the above reasons - that mabush came out of the mist over some woddy hills.

Most roads where ambushes occuud were in fact roads along the open stretches of ground between woods, not the hollywood idea ofa track through a LOR forest............ELVES clearly had better technology ....ENT DIGGERS and the like.

SI