Slitherine

After playing this game for years I am finally throwing in the towel. When you attack a unit on the flank and cannot beat it, when your frontal assaults say that you have the upper hand in numbers and you continually lose ... something is wrong guys.

When it tells me "67 23" that means I have a 66 percent chance of winning. Ok, I could lose. But when it says 87 percent and I continually lose something is wrong.

Why tell the player in the pre-melee/pre-shock values that he has the upper hand but then he loses? Makes no sense.

I do not want to play a game where I have to find out every little detail. If the odds say I have a good chance of winning but there are so many hidden things to check that I have to waste all of my time searching for them then its time to move on to something else.

87 12
93 7

And I end up taking too many losses. Ridiculous.

What I am going to do is this: let the game lie dormant. Wait for the newer updates once the new team has done their work. Try it out SOLO again. If it has changed to where if I see 87 12 and I am winning I will play it again. Otherwise I will just say that the gaming part of it was fun with the opponents but that the system is marred.

There are a lot of us out here that are fed up with the series. I would suggest that if the odds say to us that we have a good chance of winning that the game had better have us win the melee 87 percent of the time. And Knights attacking Light Infantry stuck up against a water barrier should rout their rear ends on the FIRST attack period. No light infantry in the world ever held off an opponent with their backs to water. They would jump into the water and drown first OR surrender.

Old_Warrior wrote:After playing this game for years I am finally throwing in the towel. When you attack a unit on the flank and cannot beat it, when your frontal assaults say that you have the upper hand in numbers and you continually lose ... something is wrong guys.

man, i wrote the same years ago after one month of playing...but i'm still playing it, though not regularly, simply because it really is great fun...; unfortunately, it is very far from being a credible historic simulation.
what i find most irritating, is that it would need few, very simple changes to do a better work of simulating history without forfeiting the fantastic ease of play, good interface and fun; but there was no serious attempt in these years to change it the way a lot of players would call for

But now we have NewRoSoft galloping to the rescue . . . and all will be well soon, Frank!

I agree, Frank, just a FEW changes to the combat routine would help. Get rid of the die rolls for kills and just have the percentages work as shown on the board.

Gday all
I know the new developer is working on FOG 2 and good on someone for taking this game we all like so much. Unfortunatly the game at the momment is becoming so unpredictable that i cant blame people for leaving .I personally believe the percentage calulator is a load of rubbish and should be scrapped as it is seldom even close to being right. You are better off playing without it on and figuring it out yourself. That being said it is a huge problem when new players believe what the percentage calculator says and then lose combat after combat. No wonder they lose interest.Ive put up with this for a long time now and like Pete i am hoping Cothyoso will do something to make the game more believable. The luck factor in this game is far too great but i have gotten used to that So at the momment we are waiting for something new and put up with the old tired version which some have mastered quite well and others never will. To be good at this game at the momment you have to go by Murphys Law " If it can go wrong it will" .

Cheers Turk

Yeah, Turk, you hit it but many of us do not want to sit back and try and calculate out each melee. The calculator is a good feature for those of us that are not wanting to "run the charts" each time we go to calculate an attack. The computer should do that for us and yes, it does. You can turn on a feature that shows you all of the die roll mods. That is a nice feature and more trustworthy than the calculator.

I do agree that the combat results system at the moment is diabolically stupid (some units seem to be armed with sticks of rhubarb) but I don't think it is the right time to give up on the game given a new version is only a couple of months away.

I think there are two more phases that I am prepared to go through before I finally decide if I am going to stop playing the game. Firstly, I want to see the new version. Secondly, I want to see how the game develops after the new version comes out. Will the players suggestions for improvement (that have been submitted already) now be taken seriously? Will there be further expansions after "Wolves rom the Sea" and "Oath of Fealty"? Will we be moving quite quickly to FOG 2.0? And is there any prospect of FOG:Renaissance in the forseeable future?

You can turn on a feature that shows you all of the die roll mods

What hotkey is that? Showing the DRMs before the attack? I only know about this window that gives me the actual DR while attacking, not before.

I think that would be the "P" Key and it brings up all the odds and details of the coming combat.

Cheers Turk

I don't think the calculator is wrong. I think the percentage chance of success being calculated is about right.

FOG minatures calculates +'s and -'s and the computer does the same. So when it displays your attack as ++ and your opponent as -- the chances of them "winning" should be tiny. Which is what the calculator correctly shows.

The problem is the randomn number generator that seems to be just that "Random". As it calculates the number of hits with a high degree of ransdomness, and then much worse having come up with a number of successful hits which was at least influenced by the pluses and minus's it then rolls a completely randomn number for the kills that has virtually nothing to do with the number of hits you achieved.

If the randomness on the kill score was say 5% to 8% for a specific number of hits that would be acceptable but it is more like 2% and 25% which as you have already had the random element of calculating hits is completely stupid.

Merely reduceing the degree of randomness on the kills table would probably solve the majority of the issues where chaos seems too extreme.

I am not giving up on the game, but I do sincerely hope the new version has a more appropriate level of randomness.

I own the game plus immortal fire and swords and scimitars. I do not intend to buy any more with the current version. IF the randomness is fixed then I will buy ALL the additional packs AND the iPad version, BUT only if they correct the randomness.

Andy

This thread has run before - what I add below a member of the forum called Cheerfully Insane said much more er... cheerfully previously.

The percentage calculator is correct and the "P" key gives very useful information that supports this.
The issue is also not that the random number generator is too random it is that it has too few values.
To have no chance of a hit requires more modifiers than you are likely to accrue.
Therefore the most improbable 'hit' has a 1/6 or 16.66% chance of occurring.
The fact that an improbable result occurrs once does not make it less likely to happen next time you "roll the dice".

So the issue is that the improbable is too probable and therefore occurrs too frequently and of course this is unequally shared between us players as well.
- Probabilty don't you just love it.

Any fix will never be perfect but simply making the virtual dice 10 or 20 sided would help and would probably not (though I do not know) be too technically difficult to script.

I can understand having a preferance for different game mechanics, but some of the information on these kind of posts isnt quite fair, and is misleading
Here are the combat result charts for % men killed, lined up neatly with the worst case scenario for a BG that wins a combat, ie the minimum way to win (remember to win a combat all you need is 1 more hit than the loser inflicts on YOU

So the column on the left is the loser , how many hits the LOSER recieved and how many casualties the Loser will receive. The right column is the worst case possiblity for the winner to win in that combat
ie if the Winner caused only one hit on the loser then by pure math logic and the game logic it MUST have taken 0 hits itself....(otherwise it couldnt have won)

Winning a combat by one dice is just barely winning and there are differnt degrees of just barley winning. So if two side go "balls to the wall" and the winner take 3 hits but give 4, it makes sence that the loser and winners casualty ranges will be MORE than if the winner wins by a feeble one hit and recieves no hits. How "hot" the combat got.

As you can see, there is NO possibiity that the WINNER can EVER suffer more casualties than the loser

Think about it , if you score 4 hits on the loser but take three yourself your enemy will lose between 12-24%, you 2-9%, and even if you are extremly unlucky here, you STILL at least will cause 3% more causalties....
if you clobber the loser with 4 hits and you take NONE, well 12-24% of the loser dies and yu only lose .01-1%...
What is unreasonable or silly about this?


I think that ties are what throws people off ( and they BOTH will be using the chart on the right ). However even here I dont really see too much "extreme variance" I mean if both sides roll 3 hits each, each will take between 2-9% Again, the most xtreme variance in a tie is 7%!! Oh the horror of such an extremety, cleary the game is broken! I think not , I think it works as intended and makes sence. Could it be Tweaked , sure. To what though? In a tie lets say you narrow the band to 2-4%.... Whoopty do dah. i doudt that that would cause any one to go wow , this is what i was waiting for, you likly would barley notice the difference....



If a battlegroup received more hits than it inflicted: (Loser hits received and Casualties) vs Other results:(the hits winner received and the Winners casualties)
A 1 hit : 2% to 9%-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->0 hits : 0.01% to 1%
B 2 hits : 5% to 14%------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------>1 hit : 0.25% to 3%
C 3 hits : 9% to 18%------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------>2 hits : 0.5% to 5%
D 4 hits : 12% to 24%----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->3 hits : 2% to 9%

Heres where it does get wierd though:
this is a ratio of extremes expressed in low high ratio of losers causulaties vs winners (aprox as i did in my head) at the two extremes
A 200-1 to 9-1 ( so if the loser takes 1 hit winner takes 0 hits the 200-1 is ratio if both roll lowest causalty possible and 9-1 if both roll highest...)
B 20-1 to 4.66-1
C 18-1 to 3.6-1
D 6-1 to 2.22-1

Hmmm..... I am not sure BUT i have a sneeking suspician this was done on purpose based on how the TT game handles causualties ie the death throw which if lost means the loss of a base. In th eTT its all or nothing you lose a base or yo dont but the chance to lose a base corresponds to A how many hits you took, B whether you won or lost etc... Wonder if this spread we see here corresponds to dice probobilty on the TT death throw uhh and coverted to a % loss somehow..... If this was the intent , likly this is very balanced and i do wonder if tweeking it will throw the game off.....

Gday TGM .
What you are explaining makes a lot of sense but what most are annoyed by is the Casualty percentages as very often ist the extremes one side loses nealy the maximum and the other nothing. I think the whole thing should be toned down unless say you have 3 or 4 hits to zero then yes the maximum could apply ,i say could.There is nothing worsr than getting 2 hits to 3 and your opponent loses 0% and you lose 18%. Thiss is stupid and if you get 3 of these in a row which can happen then goodnight.2 hits should count for some casualties ,surely. How can anyone say thats allright and not have a problem with it? I think if the casualty rates were more believable then we could put up with the other annomalies.......

If anyone wants to play around, I have added the spreadsheet I used to the wiki site.
http://fog-pc-wiki.wikispaces.com/FOG+Analysis

It has been mentioned before that the key trade-off is between staying close to the TT rules, and coming up with rules that use the power of the PC more (e.g. ability to track small casualty increments)

I remember cothyso was a supporter of reduced casualty volatility, so am optimistic that will be coming in FOG 2

Triarius wrote:The issue is also not that the random number generator is too random it is that it has too few values.To have no chance of a hit requires more modifiers than you are likely to accrue.Therefore the most improbable 'hit' has a 1/6 or 16.66% chance of occurring.The fact that an improbable result occurrs once does not make it less likely to happen next time you "roll the dice".

Yes, this is how I understand the issue - and it helps to explain why we get bizarre combat results in every turn, not just occasionally in every game. This desperately needs to be changed. I have asked elsewhere and this is a relatively simple thing to change for an experienced computer boffin.

Looking at these posts and there are some excellent explenations as to why these bizzare combat casualty rates occur. It makes me wonder why the powers to be havent even attempted to do anything about it.There are good arguments both ways but the vast majority of players agree there needs to be a change.I think it may be a bit more complicated than we think to change it in the current format,otherwise why hasnt it been done? I wont stop playing this game but i will alter the way i play as there is no such thing as a sure thing at the momment.

Turk1964 wrote:Looking at these posts and there are some excellent explenations as to why these bizzare combat casualty rates occur. It makes me wonder why the powers to be havent even attempted to do anything about it.There are good arguments both ways but the vast majority of players agree there needs to be a change.I think it may be a bit more complicated than we think to change it in the current format,otherwise why hasnt it been done? I wont stop playing this game but i will alter the way i play as there is no such thing as a sure thing at the momment.

I think the explanation is to do with HexWar and their decision to stop developing the game. I am pretty sure that the powers-that-be within Slitherine are fairly sympathetic to our arguments with regards to this issue. What they are against is taking the chance element out of the game altogether - but nobody appears to be arguing that that should happen.

I have all the expansions bar the battle pack and I was running two campaigns for the community. The casualty issue made me walk away and I feel no great draw bringing me back. While I miss the banter and the people, the game just isn't fun when you can't make reasonable judgement calls about the outcome of a combat.

stockwellpete wrote:

Turk1964 wrote:Looking at these posts and there are some excellent explenations as to why these bizzare combat casualty rates occur. It makes me wonder why the powers to be havent even attempted to do anything about it.There are good arguments both ways but the vast majority of players agree there needs to be a change.I think it may be a bit more complicated than we think to change it in the current format,otherwise why hasnt it been done? I wont stop playing this game but i will alter the way i play as there is no such thing as a sure thing at the momment.

I think the explanation is to do with HexWar and their decision to stop developing the game. I am pretty sure that the powers-that-be within Slitherine are fairly sympathetic to our arguments with regards to this issue. What they are against is taking the chance element out of the game altogether - but nobody appears to be arguing that that should happen.

Not quite true
Slitherine and Hexwar both indicated way back the causalties were developed the way they are purposfully and not stupedly or randomly or haphazardly the way many are suggesting.

No offence but these arguements for change are still using extreme examples and even those xtrme examples arent that bad when you think about, at least imho
The latest example given is what about losing a combat w 3 hits and giving two hits to the winner

Sure, the most xtreme casualty possible is .5% to the winner and 18% to the loser
Lets think abot that and assume each BG has 100 men ( easier to think about rather than coverting from 300 , and besides the engine cares about % not #'s of MEN)

Is it impossible to believe that a cavalry squadron that wins a tough combat(3-2 hits) vs another equal opponent might not suffer any losses while the loser suffers 18 men hors de combat?
Doesnt seem to fanatstical to me and not only that , this is an extreme example.

Whether or not Newpro tweaks the casualty charts is beyond my control but i would like to see players who state the way it is as stupid not logical etc create a chart showing how the causalty spread SHOULD look like. Then at least we could attempt to imagine what possible consequences there could be in balance, especially in the dag list line ups.
IMO simply changing the ranges so its noticable is going to stale up combat and make each combat a fixed loss. You will know almost exactly how long every single combat will last before an autoroute which isnt realistic at all.
The game doesnt care about unit size , all units are the same so I dont see how playing will the ranges will have the effect wanted. Casualties were very absract in this game and need not mean men killed.(injured combat fatigue etc loss of enthusiam for dying for Xerxes etc)

After all hex turn based I GO UGO games are pretty much as abstract as you can get (well, squares are more abstract), Noone pretends in this format you can explain or account for what exactly happens in every combat whithin a hex, a certain amount of imagination i suppose is needed to ignore the abstractness, or just ignore it altogther.

Just to be clear, I am not opposed to controlled experiments/tweaks but I dont think the causualties are the real problem in this game, maybe just a minor symptom of the compromises they took when coverting from the TT

TheGrayMouser wrote: Is it impossible to believe that a cavalry squadron that wins a tough combat(3-2 hits) vs another equal opponent might not suffer any losses while the loser suffers 18 men hors de combat? Doesnt seem to fanatstical to me and not only that , this is an extreme example.

I am sure that it would happen very, very occasionally, but not 20 or 30 times in every battle. If you recall . . .

BATTLE OF BONKERS, (Stockwell, London 2011)

I set up two armies of Swiss halberdiers (two lines of 8BG's each with a C-in-C BG behind them) on open ground.

Turn 1 (the lines come together 8 separate melees)

Results 12-1, 4-20, 15-1, 2-13, 3-13, 15-2, 5-2 and 4-12.

So 7 results were "bonkers" and 1 was "normal".

Turn 2 (a further 8 separate melees. (D) indicates that unit was "disrupted" prior to melee)

4-3, 0-11, 1-(D)2, 3-14, 13-4, 4-(D)16, 14-1 and 2-11.

so 5 results were "bonkers" and 3 were "normal" (including the two involving "disrupted" units)

By turn 3 quite a few units were getting "disrupted" but the basic ratio of "bonkers" results remained steady through the next few turns. By turn 6 the battle was over. Side A had won by 0/9 to 9/9. A truly "bonkers" result considering the sides were evenly matched at the start.

IMO simply changing the ranges so its noticable is going to stale up combat and make each combat a fixed loss. You will know almost exactly how long every single combat will last before an autoroute which isnt realistic at all.

No, no - we still want the chance element in the game and we still want the occasional extreme result (one or two per battle would be enough for me).