Slitherine

I don't actually own Sengoku/Pike but have been watching playthroughs. They are on my to buy list but whilst I find their settings interesting, i prefer ancient and medieval warfare and i was wondering if others agree whether or not Field of Glory would translate well to that engine.

Watching the playthroughs of these games i couldn't help think that the gameplay is very similar to Field of Glory. And the 3d layout makes it visually resemble the Field of Glory table top board game more than the FOG game itself. The biggest difference to me, other than cosmetically is that one is hex based and the other has an octagon based grid. In my opinion either could work for Field of Glory, it isn't written in hard stone that it has to be hex based as the original table top game does not use a grid based map at all. These hexes and octagons just make it more convenient to translate the spacing into a computer game format so whether it is hex or octagon doesnt really matter, does it? They both let you carry out the same tactics.

Some may be concerned that the troops would lose their miniatures like look if translated to the pike and shot/sengoku style graphics. I say not necessarily. It would be a case of digitalising these miniatures in 360 degrees. I've seen such software in use on table top war game websites that allow prospective buyers to pan around miniatures before ordering online. It would actually look pretty cool in my opinion, if done right. It could even have some terrain/battlefield graphics made to look like good table top set pieces.

This in my opinion is the future for Field of Glory and the way to market it to a bigger audience. And owners of original FOG would qualify for a loyalty discount of course

For me personally games like Slitherine's Warhammer 40k, Panzer Corps and also the old Field of Glory are unique for me because the high quality unit graphics, even when zoomed in.
I can stare hours to all the different units while inspecting their stats. The old FOG have superb high quality units which are 50% of what I like from the game.
Most dissapointed in the new FOG Unity for me is that the quality of the graphics is less smooth (pixelated) compared to the original FOG.
Personally I don't see any improvements on that aspect of the game when rebuild in Pike&Shot/Sengoku engine, but I admit that gameplay wise I can see the pros.

At the moment I have only one wish and that is that the new Unity version of FOG will be of the same quality as the old version graphics and gameplay wise.
As well on PC and other platforms (I don't care much myself about Android etc since I'm still a PC only user).
My advice should be to bring the new FOG(U) to Steam's EA program and keep working on the game with all new player feedback it will generate.
For now I still stuck with the old original FOG which is perfect for me.

I played Pike&Shot quite a bit when it came out but no longer after the novelty wore off and I grew frustrated with its rules, notably evading/pursuit, and the general opaqueness of them. By contrast, in FoG, I know exactly what's going on and why; I can even see the dice rolls. Furthermore, there is an easy to use editor, a hot seat mode which is my favorite way of playing. And like Cablenexus, for me, the painted figurines are 50%+ of the charm. I may be old school but wargames without hexagons don't seem right. Pike&Shot is more sophisticated than FoG but that does not translate into a better gaming experience, or even a more historical outcome. How the game relates to the original tabletop version is irrelevant. What I can ascertain is that FoG system for medieval/early renaissance is superior to that of Pike&Shot, having created scenarios of the same battles in both games. FOG2 will probably be very good at what it does but if it is based on the P&S system, I'm not convinced I will be won over, especially if it requires a lot of computing resources and forces me to ditch my trustworthy old Vaio laptop (they don't make those high end classic anymore)! While perfectly happy with the old RB version, my hope is the Unity version will eventually get sorted out. FoG remains the best money I've ever spent, as enjoyable today as when i got it six years ago.

I definitely feel it is time to move on from the original FOG and I am very pleased that Richard Bodley-Scott is working on FOG2. Although FOG1 has given me thousands of hours entertainment, its shortcomings now really irritate me. Luck with the dice is too big a factor in the game and this is accentuated in matches between players of similar abilities. Attempting to produce historical behaviours is not rewarded in the game whereas all sorts of "gamey" tactics can enable players to prevail.

Just to give a few examples, archer fire (particularly longbows) is much weaker than it should be, although the supply of arrows should be finite, and shooting and moving in the same turn should suffer accuracy penalties; the command and control rules are very under-developed and the medieval way of warfare using formations consisting of distinct "battles" is not represented. Skirmishers hop about all over the place throughout a battle when really they should only be deployed in specific circumstances (again their supply of projectiles should be limited). And finally, melees are not represented historically. Soldiers may have arrived at the battlefield in separate contingents (i.e. units), but once the battle was underway and a melee was formed then they became part of a much larger formation and their morale and ability to fight depended on the situation of that larger body of men. Retreat or rout was usually collective, one side eventually was forced back and then it broke and it was then that the worst of the killing was done. "Units" did not generally flee individually while others were still seeking to join the melee (although this did happen on some occasions).

It is quite clear to me that if you look at what is offered in Pike and Shot and now Sengoku Jidai, there is significant progress in addressing some of the issues that concern me. The "luck" issue has been effectively dealt with. Melees are a lot more attritional and there are not the ludicrous swings in melee results that you get in FOG. Skirmishers are not so prevalent either although I would like to see a situation where skirmishers were deployed from, and recalled to, a larger body of soldiers (as in John Tiller's Renaissance warfare game). However, attempting to reproduce historical behaviours is still sometimes poorly rewarded in Pike and Shot. For example, if you are fighting a 17thC battle and deploy your infantry in the historic chequerboard formation you are likely to lose because your opponent will often deploy ahistorically in an extended line and quickly shoot up the front row of your chequerboard. So that is still an issue for me. Also in Pike and Shot, because there are no leaders or supply wagons (again handled very simply and effectively by John Tiller's game) or camps, the armies have no centre (or "core") and battles tend to disintegrate quickly into chaotic shambles with no discernible army lines. Sengoku Jidai handles this a bit better because it has the command post "Honjin" for armies to protect and this does give armies a proper centre, and some leaders only have control over specific soldiers so players have to pay much more attention to maintaining their original organisation throughout the battle. This would work well in a medieval setting with regards to the traditional "battles" deployment of armies (vanguard, centre/reserve, rearguard) and I expect we will see something like this in FOG2. The questions of supply and what might be called a "collective morale" in melee have not yet been addressed in P+S or SJ and they may not be in FOG2. I think a basic form of supply rules could be quite easily introduced without over complicating things and forcing players to micro-manage their armies, but the "collective morale" issue I suspect is a lot more problematic (and players may not think it is desirable at all).

stockwellpete wrote:I definitely feel it is time to move on from the original FOG and I am very pleased that Richard Bodley-Scott is working on FOG2. Although FOG1 has given me thousands of hours entertainment, its shortcomings now really irritate me. Luck with the dice is too big a factor in the game and this is accentuated in matches between players of similar abilities. Attempting to produce historical behaviours is not rewarded in the game whereas all sorts of "gamey" tactics can enable players to prevail.

pike and shot is no better when it comes to gamey tactics. and just watch for morale tests that can cripple your big units; and since they're so few of them, the effect of a bad die is magnified. besides the dice routine can easily be tweaked. remember that Fog(U) was supposed to be easily modified as opposed to the FoG (RB) code that cannot be accessed with the departure of the original developer.

stockwellpete wrote:Just to give a few examples, archer fire (particularly longbows) is much weaker than it should be, although the supply of arrows should be finite, and shooting and moving in the same turn should suffer accuracy penalties;

no offence but englishmen always find longbows are underpowered in games...

stockwellpete wrote: the command and control rules are very under-developed and the medieval way of warfare using formations consisting of distinct "battles" is not represented. Skirmishers hop about all over the place throughout a battle when really they should only be deployed in specific circumstances (again their supply of projectiles should be limited). And finally, melees are not represented historically. Soldiers may have arrived at the battlefield in separate contingents (i.e. units), but once the battle was underway and a melee was formed then they became part of a much larger formation and their morale and ability to fight depended on the situation of that larger body of men. Retreat or rout was usually collective, one side eventually was forced back and then it broke and it was then that the worst of the killing was done. "Units" did not generally flee individually while others were still seeking to join the melee (although this did happen on some occasions).

first, 'battles' are a schematic way for medieval chroniclers to make sense of the chaos of combat; it is as much a literary device as it is a description of a reality that many of them were cognizant only through hearsay. It is well know in military historiography that what appears to be well defined phases and formations in battle accounts are simply an attempt by the writer to fit many overlapping events (many of which he is ignorant of) into a narrative driven by preconceptions and political propaganda. Second, let's suppose the two armies coalesced into two big masses flinging at each other. In gaming terms, that's two multi-hex units melee-ing one another. Who wants to play a game with two big units? This is why NO games tried to implement that or ever will.

my take on skirmishers is that they should be abstracted since their role is primarily pre and post battle. easy fix, don't play with them. problem solved.

hey maybe FOG2 will be the greatest thing ever, I'm certainly hoping for that to be true because we all win but there's one thing it won't have: miniatures and that alone will never make FoG obsolete. Someone remarked that pike and shot looks like table top. No it doesn't. In table top, the painted miniatures are the focus and the terrain is abstracted and basic. In pike and shot on the other hand the terrain is glorious and overwhelms the units that are mere digital polygons. It may look more realistic but it is not table top. FoG wins there with its beautiful units and bland terrain.

fogman wrote: pike and shot is no better when it comes to gamey tactics. and just watch for morale tests that can cripple your big units; and since they're so few of them, the effect of a bad die is magnified. besides the dice routine can easily be tweaked. remember that Fog(U) was supposed to be easily modified as opposed to the FoG (RB) code that cannot be accessed with the departure of the original developer.

I don't know what it is about Pike and Shot. I quite like playing it, but it doesn't really grab me in the way that FOG did. Maybe it is just the period covered by the game. I have always been more interested in the medieval period than anything else. I never feel that I get particularly bad dice in Pike and Shot, but I feel that trying to play historically usually dooms you to defeat. In my previous example of what often happens if I deploy in a chequerboard fashion, I don't actually blame my opponent for deploying in an extended line to maximise shooting opportunities. In fact, the whole tactical imperative in this period was to find ways exactly of doing that, but the end result is that my 17thC army ends up being shot to pieces by an army using 18th or early 19thC tactics. Somehow the game needs to be designed so that there are advantages for trying to replicate historical behaviours.

no offence but englishmen always find longbows are underpowered in games...

Well, if knights were the "tanks" on the medieval battlefield then longbowmen were the "machine gunners" for about 150 years (when the English were about, at any rate). It would be an interesting statistic to compare the casualties caused by archer fire in FOG battles at the moment with what might happen if archer fire was made more historically accurate (but the supply of ammunition was limited).

first, 'battles' are a schematic way for medieval chroniclers to make sense of the chaos of combat; it is as much a literary device as it is a description of a reality that many of them were cognizant only through hearsay. It is well know in military historiography that what appears to be well defined phases and formations in battle accounts are simply an attempt by the writer to fit many overlapping events (many of which he is ignorant of) into a narrative driven by preconceptions and political propaganda. Second, let's suppose the two armies coalesced into two big masses flinging at each other. In gaming terms, that's two multi-hex units melee-ing one another. Who wants to play a game with two big units? This is why NO games tried to implement that or ever will.

Interesting. I can accept that point although I think sometimes the "battles" characterisation is still appropriate, but on other occasions I agree that things were a lot more chaotic e.g. Bosworth Field when contingents came from all directions.

No, we don't want to end up with just one big unit on each side, but are there ways to move closer to a more accurate depiction of what actually happened on the battlefield? I think both Pike and Shot and Sengoku Jidai are trying to get to grips with this, particularly the "loss of control" during the heat of battle where commanders are not actually deciding what their "units" do after they have made a successful breakthrough.

I can envisage a situation where individual "units" would not rout once they had joined a melee unless their whole "battle" or army had routed. It is difficult to explain it in a post like this but it would involve units at the front of a melee in contact with the enemy being topped back up to 100% after every turn, with the units behind them suffering the losses as casualties mounted. This is what happened in real battles, I believe. Men in the front ranks died and they were replaced by men from contingents behind them. So, with this idea, "units" would, in effect, cease to be "individual units" once they were in melee, but would become part of a larger entity. Calculations for loss of morale ("disruption" and "fragmentation") would be based on all the units in the melee, not on individual units, so when the critical point was reached the whole of one side would start to rout. Whether something like this is programmable, I don't know, but it is certainly worth thinking about, I would say.

my take on skirmishers is that they should be abstracted since their role is primarily pre and post battle. easy fix, don't play with them. problem solved.

FOG gets skirmishers hopelessly wrong. John Tiller's Renaissance game has the best method that I have come across so far. skirmishers could be deployed from larger formations of soldiers when required and they were also able to re-join their larger formations when their skirmishing was done. FOG2 should copy that.

hey maybe FOG2 will be the greatest thing ever, I'm certainly hoping for that to be true because we all win but there's one thing it won't have: miniatures and that alone will never make FoG obsolete. Someone remarked that pike and shot looks like table top. No it doesn't. In table top, the painted miniatures are the focus and the terrain is abstracted and basic. In pike and shot on the other hand the terrain is glorious and overwhelms the units that are mere digital polygons. It may look more realistic but it is not table top. FoG wins there with its beautiful units and bland terrain.

Some of the miniature artwork in FOG is superb, some of it is a bit dodgy. Some figures look much bigger than others, some units have all three figures adopting the same ridiculous posture, and there are some Anglo-Saxons that seem to be dressed in very fetching pink outfits!

stockwellpete wrote: Well, if knights were the "tanks" on the medieval battlefield then longbowmen were the "machine gunners" for about 150 years (when the English were about, at any rate). It would be an interesting statistic to compare the casualties caused by archer fire in FOG battles at the moment with what might happen if archer fire was made more historically accurate (but the supply of ammunition was limited).

this parallel is more rhetorical than real. if anything, longbowmen were the modern equivalent of artillery. how would one know the historical rate of casualties by longbows to make a comparison? nobody knows how many were killed by arrows at agincourt, or even what ratio of total casualties.

stockwellpete wrote: FOG gets skirmishers hopelessly wrong. John Tiller's Renaissance game has the best method that I have come across so far. skirmishers could be deployed from larger formations of soldiers when required and they were also able to re-join their larger formations when their skirmishing was done. FOG2 should copy that.

tiller's game is based on his napoleonic design where infantry battalions did historically have light companies that deployed as skirmishers to screen the advance as part of a defined military doctrine. there is no such doctrine in medieval military practice. people have complained about the rambo nature of those skirmishers in his napoleonic games.

stockwellpete wrote: Some of the miniature artwork in FOG is superb, some of it is a bit dodgy. Some figures look much bigger than others, some units have all three figures adopting the same ridiculous posture, and there are some Anglo-Saxons that seem to be dressed in very fetching pink outfits!

there must be hundreds of figures from different companies; something is bound to not be perfect. does not detract from the overall positive impression.

fogman wrote: this parallel is more rhetorical than real. if anything, longbowmen were the modern equivalent of artillery. how would one know the historical rate of casualties by longbows to make a comparison? nobody knows how many were killed by arrows at agincourt, or even what ratio of total casualties.

Well, we know something about the rate of fire. In medieval battles most of the archery firing happened at the beginning of a battle when the enemy moved into contact with the English. Some of that shooting would have been at longer range ("artillery"), a lot of it at much shorter range ("machine gun"). Then the melee would take place - and, often, archers would then join in the hand to hand fighting.

In terms of casualties, I think the English longbowmen would have killed lots of Scots because they were generally unarmoured. They would have killed far fewer French because they were more likely to be armoured although, for example, the Genoese crossbowmen with the French at Crecy suffered very badly at the start of the battle. The impact of longbow fire on the French at, say, Agincourt was more to "disrupt" their advance and cause their formations to bunch together where they floundered in the mud and were more easily dealt with by English infantrymen.

So, historically there was a big difference in the impact of longbow fire on the Scottish and French armies, although as you say, we cannot be precise about the number of casualties. But FOG does not try to represent the way in which the longbow was used at all (i.e. archers positioned in large groups all firing together). Instead archers often roam about individually shooting at will throughout the course of a battle. I think that can be improved upon, probably by giving them slightly longer range; giving them bonuses for firing in historical formations; increasing the likelihood of their causing disruption against armoured opponents and increasing their lethality against unarmoured soldiers; and by restricting the amount of ammunition available to them during the course of a battle.

fogman wrote: tiller's game is based on his napoleonic design where infantry battalions did historically have light companies that deployed as skirmishers to screen the advance as part of a defined military doctrine. there is no such doctrine in medieval military practice. people have complained about the rambo nature of those skirmishers in his napoleonic games.

I don't know his Napoleonic game but it seemed a very tidy solution in the few Renaissance games I played.

In terms of the medieval period, there may not have been a formal military doctrine as such, but in practical terms, what did the soldiers who are designated as "skirmishers" in FOG actually do in the course of a battle? Handgunners, for example, would have been at the front of the army at the beginning of the battle and they would have fired off their weapons a few times before withdrawing to the rear. Then what did they do? Probably nothing if they were on the winning side, fighting for their lives in melee/retreat if they were on the losing side. Take another example, Irish kerns. Given the nature of Irish warfare and terrain, they may well have skirmished/ambushed at the beginning of a battle but then what did they do? Wait at the rear because they were specialised troops? Unlikely I would say, it is much more likely that they would have then joined in the main melee.

So how might this "informal" dual role that some medieval soldiers fulfilled be represented in FOG? I think Tiller's method is one possible answer. Are there any others that you can think of?

stockwellpete wrote: I don't know his Napoleonic game but it seemed a very tidy solution in the few Renaissance games I played.

In terms of the medieval period, there may not have been a formal military doctrine as such, but in practical terms, what did the soldiers who are designated as "skirmishers" in FOG actually do in the course of a battle? Handgunners, for example, would have been at the front of the army at the beginning of the battle and they would have fired off their weapons a few times before withdrawing to the rear. Then what did they do? Probably nothing if they were on the winning side, fighting for their lives in melee/retreat if they were on the losing side. Take another example, Irish kerns. Given the nature of Irish warfare and terrain, they may well have skirmished/ambushed at the beginning of a battle but then what did they do? Wait at the rear because they were specialised troops? Unlikely I would say, it is much more likely that they would have then joined in the main melee.

So how might this "informal" dual role that some medieval soldiers fulfilled be represented in FOG? I think Tiller's method is one possible answer. Are there any others that you can think of?

i don't frame the problem in terms of doctrine, but in terms of gameplay. it's very simple: what is preventing those skirmishers units from "going commando"? i.e. infiltrating frontlines, cutting retreat paths, even standing up to cavalry charges in the open. looking at major battles, their ability to influence outcomes is nil. I'm happy with abstracting them. it may not be fully realistic but more tenable than having them running around making themselves a bigger nuisance than they really were.

in a similar vein, i'm not crazy about mf designation. because of their speed, they can be used as some sort of mechanized units in ww2 games. speed allocation should be a matter of initiative, not sheer physical ability. those english archers can really move around in the game, while in reality, their combat tactics is stationary.

fortunately, nothing that can't be fixed with the editor. it's why i only play custom crafted scenarios.