Slitherine

Best joke of the year



Wanted to see how far the farce of calling this a simulation was going.

So decided to play Carrhae with the Romans just now.

First of all I deployed my troops on a frontal line stretching it both sides as far as I could. Cavalry on the sides of course.

The tactic was the move forward in a straight line and push the Parthians till the side of the map and crush him wondering if it would work.

Well didn't need to wait for that as the simple tactic is to box a few Parthians units at a time, crush them, move to the next few and so forth.

The amazing AI is happy to stay in place as long as it can shoot, so no need to charge the Parthian cavalry. Just move your units around units you can box in. Make sure to tie in the box neatly for which you can use your archers, slingers and other javelinmen. If you can't box it all just charge the one or two units in the way so to close the box.

Once in a box charge them with your legionaries, they will try to evade which they can't as totally surrounded, a few attacks then they break and dispersed as nowhere to run. Just need to make sure to move out units fragmented and replace them to keep the box tight.

The easiest to destroy are the Cataphracts as they are happy to charge you.

So ended up destroying 52% of the Parthians, kill Surena early enough in the game to see that it has, once more, zero impact and the troops are happy to fight till the bitter end.

Too bad there is a sunset or I would have killed 100% of the Parthians army giving time by just doing that... box a few units... squeeze... next.

"Accurate simulation of Ancient battle " can't stop laughing... pitiful.

Oh, sounds like it is time for you to go back to Rome Total War already.

See ya!

What an unpleasant chap.

Petiloup: so you did what Crassus was advised to do, but declined, and now blaming the game because it ended differently? lol anyway, i'd say, you need to study the battle a bit more.. because Romans were not destroyed during battle.. Battle was just a mere beginning.. out of 40000 Romans present, only 500 died in battle (and mostly to Cataphract charges), and another 2000 was wounded. another 5000 was wiped out together with Publius Crassus who got separated from main army (sent to chase horse archers just to get surrounded..)

Roman army was destroyed on the retreat from Carrhae town, when columns were divided into multiple small parts, which Parthians then chased down... 1/3 of army managed to get away actually commanded by Cassius, man who suggested that different battle tactics that would not allow horsearchers to surround them....

VERY unpleasant indeed!

He has a point in that I feel any game that tries to call itself a simulation of war is suspect. Certainly any IGO UGO system is going to create some strange situations, not to mention no one has reliable records if what battle was actually like and we can only speculate at best based on spase accounts. I have always felt that these are games first with a historical flavour attached to them.

The OP does fall into the fallacy of believing that just because a game does not recreate the exact outcome historically, that it is somehow a measure of the lack of authenticity with respect to the subject matter at hand

Carrhae was not a battle easily recreated with a game that mostly are about meeting engagement style battle. I'm not even sure Carrhae can be termed a real battle. A Roman army sitting on their asses doing nothing while enemy archers ride around shooting at them.

The Roman army had rather low casualties after the first day except for their cavalry, the army was picked apart during its panicked march. Neither of this is possible to depict in this game. The world does not end at the map edges and in the area where the two armies met there were no suitable terran for the Roman to fight in and it was impossible for them to engage the Parthian army on equal terms. The Parthias could simply harass them for days or weeks on end if they had wanted to. As I said, neither of this is even remotely possible to recreate with this game.

One of things devs could try is to give player a lot larger maps, but only allow him to use the middle of it, so corners would be far enough so player cannot use it against AI..

MikeC_81 wrote:He has a point in that I feel any game that tries to call itself a simulation of war is suspect. Certainly any IGO UGO system is going to create some strange situations, not to mention no one has reliable records if what battle was actually like and we can only speculate at best based on spase accounts. I have always felt that these are games first with a historical flavour attached to them.

I have been wondering for a while why IGOUGO is so common. Simultaneous turns with staged reactions seems much more realistic, especially since the player already has too much knowledge of and control over his units from turn to turn. For example, what he says about destroying enemies in detail would be very difficult in a John Tiller game, because you don't have static targets and free movement.
It's probably because players want to control their toys, but for a game to be a real simulation it ought to have simultaneous turns with a command system based on subcommanders and runners, etc. This is true for really any era, ancients probably wouldn't even recognize the birds eye view interface we use for all our maps.

You would be surprised how miserable those kind of games are to play.

MikeC_81 wrote:You would be surprised how miserable those kind of games are to play.

It'll be an FPS, too. Iraq War 2 sim.

Frankly, I am amazed.

Unless I misunderstood the scenario, and the second line of legions is actually on the Roman side.

The OP may have started out with some valid points to make, but the whole tone of his post is nasty and borders on trolling IMHO.

I agree with the previous poster who said that FoG II is, first and foremost, a game. But talking about these games as 'simulations' is common parlance in the games industry, and it seems particularly unfair to target this game - with all its wonderful plus points - for a swathe of negative comments. I do wonder what the OP's motivation is?

Cheers,
Bombax.

The OP was just passing through after finding he didn't like the game. The game is awesome but inevitably some people won't like it.
One of the unfortunate aspects of the modern era is that we cannot put together a warband and attack the village he lurks in to stop that kind of ugly comment from occurring ever again.
I reckon we need to accept his opinion and let this foul thread sink into the stinking morass of forgotten threads so newcomers to the forum don't read that utter rubbish post insulting one of the most realistic and fun war games about ancient warfare.

Bombax wrote:The OP may have started out with some valid points to make, but the whole tone of his post is nasty and borders on trolling IMHO.

I agree with the previous poster who said that FoG II is, first and foremost, a game. But talking about these games as 'simulations' is common parlance in the games industry, and it seems particularly unfair to target this game - with all its wonderful plus points - for a swathe of negative comments. I do wonder what the OP's motivation is?

Cheers,
Bombax.

There are some games that really are simulations, granting that no abstraction can convey the full detail or range of possibilities that occur in real life. But a sim based on anything before the 18th/19th century is really impossible, because the physical and written evidence is scanty to nonexistent, and what does survive is literally propaganda and mythology. A 'simulation' of ancient Roman or medieval warfare is going to be a bunch of guesses combined with some basic knowledge of physics.
We know much more about ancient government, religion and commerce than we do about their warfare, which means you could probably make a more realistic strategic game than a tactical game.
From the post-Napoleonic era, however, we have tons of detailed, rationalistic accounts written first-hand by all manner of people from privates to kings; we have actual examples of guns and detailed information on how they were produced. Pre-18th century historical evidence for everything combined is basically swamped by the evidence we have for the Napoleonic Wars alone.

Historians are often loathe to admit how much of their work is guessing.

Cheimison wrote:There are some games that really are simulations, granting that no abstraction can convey the full detail or range of possibilities that occur in real life. But a sim based on anything before the 18th/19th century is really impossible, because the physical and written evidence is scanty to nonexistent, and what does survive is literally propaganda and mythology. A 'simulation' of ancient Roman or medieval warfare is going to be a bunch of guesses combined with some basic knowledge of physics.
We know much more about ancient government, religion and commerce than we do about their warfare, which means you could probably make a more realistic strategic game than a tactical game.
From the post-Napoleonic era, however, we have tons of detailed, rationalistic accounts written first-hand by all manner of people from privates to kings; we have actual examples of guns and detailed information on how they were produced. Pre-18th century historical evidence for everything combined is basically swamped by the evidence we have for the Napoleonic Wars alone.

Historians are often loathe to admit how much of their work is guessing.

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. I am reading a book on Bosworth Field 1485 at the moment and it says that they know the exact whereabouts of only four out of about fifteen battles fought in the War of the Roses between 1455 and 1487. And for Bosworth they do not know, even within a thousand for either army, how many fought there, or died. And that is going back just 500+ years.

stockwellpete wrote:

Cheimison wrote:There are some games that really are simulations, granting that no abstraction can convey the full detail or range of possibilities that occur in real life. But a sim based on anything before the 18th/19th century is really impossible, because the physical and written evidence is scanty to nonexistent, and what does survive is literally propaganda and mythology. A 'simulation' of ancient Roman or medieval warfare is going to be a bunch of guesses combined with some basic knowledge of physics.
We know much more about ancient government, religion and commerce than we do about their warfare, which means you could probably make a more realistic strategic game than a tactical game.
From the post-Napoleonic era, however, we have tons of detailed, rationalistic accounts written first-hand by all manner of people from privates to kings; we have actual examples of guns and detailed information on how they were produced. Pre-18th century historical evidence for everything combined is basically swamped by the evidence we have for the Napoleonic Wars alone.

Historians are often loathe to admit how much of their work is guessing.

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. I am reading a book on Bosworth Field 1485 at the moment and it says that they know the exact whereabouts of only four out of about fifteen battles fought in the War of the Roses between 1455 and 1487. And for Bosworth they do not know, even within a thousand for either army, how many fought there, or died. And that is going back just 500+ years.

In many ways, the concept of 'history' as a non-religious account written for any reason other than political propaganda is something that only comes about with the Enlightenment. And still, in practice, it's rare. There are very few books written on any civil war or world war that aren't written with the aim of vindicating or prosecuting some person or alliance. This is not helped by the fact that most people (not just court historians) seem to have little interest in the messy facts of history and prefer fairy tales about how WE WUZ THE GUD GUYZ and THEY WUZ THE BAD GUYZ.

All of which is why I cringe mentally every time I see games advertise themselves as "simulations" of battles, in any period.

We still don't know to this day how American Civil War battles were really fought beyond the broad strokes. We have rough ideas given training manuals and first person accounts from participants but even they vary wildly on the effect and effectiveness of weapons. Entire volumes have been written as to whether rifled muskets for example were really a big deal or not.

Another thing that really tickles me is when I see players make declarations about how authentic a game is or isn't based on its ability to recreate the historical outcome.....every time. I guess it never occurred to those individuals that battles are fickle things, even today and upsets or things that run counter to expected outcomes happen all the time and had we a way to replay that moment in history a thousand times over, the historical outcome might have well been in the minority. Maybe Hannibal really just got lucky at Cannae

MikeC_81 wrote: Maybe Hannibal really just got lucky at Cannae

Have you ever read "Black Swan" by Nicholas Nassim Taleb, or any of his other books?
He discusses the fallacy of "habits of millionaires" style self-help books, in that while traits like hard work, thrift, and a regular schedule may contribute to accumulating wealth (and may even be necessary) these are not a sufficient explanation as to why some people make literally thousands of times more money. Yet if you look at all the buying, selling, investing and so forth that is going on you are BOUND to have some people that make a huge amount of money, even putting aside any predictable effects like government privileges or friendly relationships with bankers, etc.
The other thing he points out is that there are factors that are knowable unknowns (the Romans know that some of their supplies will be lost to theft and illegal sale by crooked commanders) and unknowable unknowns, things which simply have no regular or quantifiable existence or, if they do, an existence which has not made itself accessible to the minds of the people involved.
What this means is that Alexander and Hannibal may have been competent field commanders (probably were) but they might not have been as amazing as their feats make them seem. Think of how many Xionghnu raiders attacked China before the Mongol Khanate actually pulled off a conquest? Yet we forget the thousands of perfectly competent steppe warlords with entirely reasonable commands, and look at the one guy who - probably for many reasons entirely outside of his control - managed to pull it off. Chances are, Genghis Khan was no better a commander than Subotai, but he happened to be the 'boss' when the Turko-Mongol hordes really got on a roll.

Cheimison wrote:

MikeC_81 wrote: Maybe Hannibal really just got lucky at Cannae

Have you ever read "Black Swan" by Nicholas Nassim Taleb, or any of his other books?
He discusses the fallacy of "habits of millionaires" style self-help books, in that while traits like hard work, thrift, and a regular schedule may contribute to accumulating wealth (and may even be necessary) these are not a sufficient explanation as to why some people make literally thousands of times more money. Yet if you look at all the buying, selling, investing and so forth that is going on you are BOUND to have some people that make a huge amount of money, even putting aside any predictable effects like government privileges or friendly relationships with bankers, etc.
The other thing he points out is that there are factors that are knowable unknowns (the Romans know that some of their supplies will be lost to theft and illegal sale by crooked commanders) and unknowable unknowns, things which simply have no regular or quantifiable existence or, if they do, an existence which has not made itself accessible to the minds of the people involved.
What this means is that Alexander and Hannibal may have been competent field commanders (probably were) but they might not have been as amazing as their feats make them seem. Think of how many Xionghnu raiders attacked China before the Mongol Khanate actually pulled off a conquest? Yet we forget the thousands of perfectly competent steppe warlords with entirely reasonable commands, and look at the one guy who - probably for many reasons entirely outside of his control - managed to pull it off. Chances are, Genghis Khan was no better a commander than Subotai, but he happened to be the 'boss' when the Turko-Mongol hordes really got on a roll.

Wise words.