Slitherine

It occurred to me that a reason a BG WOULD have a cohesion test was from deaths and not being able to include those deaths in the cohesion test of the current turn seems illogical to me.

The other question I had was, I imagine it was discussed and playtested but there is no mechanism for 'pushing back' the enemy formation nor 'falling back'. Hannibal did an ordered fall back of his lines at the battle of Cannae as well as other generals used fake routes to entice enemy pursuits out of fortified lines.

I suspect the reason for the current sequence is the no double whammys principle i.e. losing a base is bad enough, losing a base and suffering an extra -1 on the CT for being below 25% is doubly bad.

Or, put differently, neither the casualties or loss of cohesion occur at one given time. Sometime during the combat cohesion drops and enough casualties occur to cause the removal of a base.

As far as push-backs: I've seen this argued before. Some people said they never happened, some say they did. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Troops would retreat in the face of the enemy, but before full contact. Or, combat wasn't a constant slog fest, but a series of pushes and retreats. This makes sense for how the Romans expected to pull Hestati out of combat and move Princepii (sp) up as fresh fighters.

House-rules aren't that hard. For every point a unit loses combat by, it is pushes back 1MU. Any base of a BG must also fall back if not doing so would cause the BG to break apart. Or perhaps 1mu per 2 points.

Also, BGs can choose to lose combats, with all the risks involved. We've all seen boxing matches where a timid or overly defensive fighter gets destroyed because the aggressive boxed didn't have to worry about getting hit.

A little out of period, at Flodden, we have a pretty fair idea that the first impact of the Scottish Pike pushed the English bills back almost fifty meters--some people say more. The bills then went on to at least draw the combat, if not win it (really, after James died, it's more one of those "opponent rolled an 11" situations..) LoL at using wargaming jargon to describe history...

Anyway, pushbacks happened in documented cases in the early modern period, so they probably happened in Ancients. However, the distances may not matter at the ground scale of FoG and the effects were always probably minimal.

And if Hannibal was in control of any part of his battle line an hour after the start of Cannae, I'll eat my Classical Greek textbook.

Kineas1 wrote: And if Hannibal was in control of any part of his battle line an hour after the start of Cannae, I'll eat my Classical Greek textbook.

I am waiting on the pics!! If you think Hannibal ever lost control of a battle let me recommend "Hannibal" by T.A. Dodge.

The basics of the battle plan at Cannae was for the middle to start moved forward in a long curve (think upside down bowl) and slowing "fall back" until it was flat and then inverted like a bowl. The whole time Hannibal was moving among these Gauls and Spaniards keeping order among the units. Once the bowl was created the Africans on the flanks pushed more units into the already crowded bowl and finally the cavalry attacked from the rear.

I have great respect for Hannibal, but lacking radio, no period general had any control of his lines at all once the dust started to fly.

If you doubt this, go to a football match and look at 50,000 fans. Imagine them on a field. Imagine that your commands move at the speed of a rider... add politics and language... imagine that your staff consists of less than fifty men...

Now, if Mr. Dodge was an eye witness of Cannae, I'll eat the textbook. Otherwise he offers a conjecture--a conjecture full of the delusions of 1890 (totally different delusions from those of 2008). If he feels that Livy and Polybius reveal that Hannibal planned for the driving back of his center--we'll, that's possible, although risky. If Dodge feels that Hannibal ORDERED the center to retire under pressure--that's just plain unlikely. Polyaenus says "When Hannibal drew up his army, he placed his best troops on either side of of the main body of infantry, and his weakest troops in the centre, in front of the rest of the infantry. He gave instructions, that when the enemy pushed back the men in the centre and tried to pursue them, the wings of the army should move inwards. As a result, the enemy were surrounded, and fifty thousand of them were killed in the battle." That's a plan--not that I automatically believe Polyaenus, as some of his plans sound pretty half-baked. But it suggests that Hannibal was taking advantage of something he had observed--NOT ordering his men to fall back.

Thought exercise--find a nice plowed farm field and walk backwards. Now keep in mind that if at any point you fall down, you die. (Remember--you've been ordered to retire, so many ranks of Romans will march over you, and the rear ranks will finish you off.) See how this effects your morale.

: ) But, of course, no one really knows. I just like critically examining the received wisdom of gaming.

Continuing the intellectual banter...

Dodge wasn't actually at Cannae but he was a civil war vet who marched and moved with armies of comparable (larger?) size than those of Hannibal armies. I'd have to argue that although many things were vague and undocumented about what Hannibal was thinking and doing at different times, the formation and evolution of what happened at Cannae was known, studied and discussed. The validity of authors and sources I leave to Dodge who compared all the sources, walked the battlefields and had the military experience to better judge the truth of what was reported.

I guess that it could be argued that Hannibal expected his weaker troops in the middle to fall back like they did. I don't disagree with that. But normally, troops which started getting pushed back would panic and break. Now if the troops knew this was part of the plan and his presence keep them from panicking, then I'd argue it WAS a plan.

Now back to the eating of books... In the battle of Gettysburg there were 70k vs 100k? They managed to control thing with exactly the same horse messengers as did Hannibal and the fight lasted all day. If the generals during the civil war with cannon fire, smoke from muskets, etc could control the movement of troops and make adjustments during the battle I don't see why Hannibal couldn't. Hannibal didn't command 50k troops he commanded about 30k infantry which were all in one solid line. Mago and Hanno commanded the cavalry wings.

I don't think that the comparison to walking backwards in a plowed field and a fall equals death is an exact comparison. The gradual falling back of the middle wasn't rushed. I imagine it like 2 big groups of rugby players in formation with one side pushing the other one step back at a time. You could slip and fall and still get up and help. It wasn't a stampeed where a slip means you get trampled to death IMO that is

The exact site of Cannae is still being debated, so it is entirely possible that Dodge walked the wrong battlefield, in which case his conclusions won't be valid no matter what his experience.
Dodge's analysis of the Sambre is compromised for this reason - the site he selected isn't actually compatible with Caesar's account.
I'd certainly recommend reading some more recent authors than Dodge - there's been a lot of useful work done on source analysis since the 1890s.

The site of Cannae wasn't in dispute but I am open to reading other authors. Who have you read that you like or found more believable/reliable?

Reading Dodge isn't always easy since he wrote in civil war language and the chapters are 'heavy' reading. But I liked his thinking when analyzing and prioritizing which sources he would depend on more. Example, Livy vs Polybius. Polybius was a contemporary of Hannibal and mentor to Scipio. He was able to travel in the steps of Hannibal and talk to the locals who witnessed many of the events with their own eyes. Livy was born 150 years after the end of the 2nd Punic war and wrote all writings were from a desk with almost 200 years of 'boogy man' mental slant in his writing. Unreliable as Livy was, he was the only good source post Cannae.

A long winded way of saying, for the battle of Cannae, we have a reliable source and an author who walked the battlefield and was able to fit the written accounts to the field observations.

Cannae has been narrowed down fairly well, however, there most certainly is disagreement about exactly where the armies formed up and fought.

nikgaukroger wrote:Cannae has been narrowed down fairly well, however, there most certainly is disagreement about exactly where the armies formed up and fought.

And IIRC the river has changed its course in the last 2200 years, so there must be some uncertainty about exactly where itwas at the time.

Civil war generals of course only commanded a handfull of corps commanders, who controlled division commanders, who controlled brigade commanders, who possibly were able to control their portion of the army. Hannibal presumably had a similar hierarchy of officers and tribal chiefs, but we don't know anything about them.

I doubt that Lee at Gettysburg would have had any material control over the fighting troops once Pickett's charge got unde way, for example. He failed even to coordinate supposedly simultaneous attacks by two corps earlier in the battle. And he was so good that both sides offered him the position of CinC at the start of the war. The same would apply to Hannibal IMO.