Slitherine

After Warfare at Reading, I am thinking along these lines....

Big Units (in theory "8+", but typically "8" in most armies) - Advantages:
1. Each general can improve more bases in combat
2. Able to deploy in more than 2 ranks to give greater resilence against shooting.
3. Will take a -1 CT modifier for "lost 25%" less often
4. Easier to provide rear support to.

Small Units (i.e. 4's) - Advantages
1. Makes army break point higher
2. More maneuverable (to hit flanks)
3. More deployment flexibility - can be split if needed aross the table, or deployment order can be shuffled more easily
4. Less likely to lose combats by 2 hits and take the resulting CT -1 (as their oponents is at best rolling only 4 dice against a unit of 4 in each combat)
5. The impact of those "catastrophic bad-luck" CT dice rolls (those 1,1's - that re-roll as 1,2's - to cause you to lose a unit or drop a level or two) is less severe as you lose both a smaller proportion of your army's units and create a smaller hole in your line as well.
6. It's almost impossible to lose bases from shooting as a 2 wide unit (in line) is fairly unlikely to be shot at by 3 dice, never mind take 3 hits.
7. Much less likely to lose bases when winning combats (as above)
8. The -1 for "one hit per 3" needs 2 hits (from at most 4 dice) to achieve on a unit of 2(sorry - corrected, I mean 4), but only 3 hits (from eight) to achieve on a unit of 8
9. NEW!! - another aspect of the "its harder to beat them by 2 when you only roll 4 dice against them" is that a modofied CT score of 2 or less after combat will drop you 2 cohesion levels if you were beaten by 2 or more casualties, but only 1 level if you were only beaten by 1.

Of the "big unit" advantages:
1. OK - but putting generals in has its own risks. And a big unit with a general can also easily take 2 hits even when it wins, which a small unit won't - see No7 on the Small Unit Advantages
2. Balanced out by No 6. on the "small unit" list
3. More than offset by 4, 6, 7 and 8 on the "small units" list
4. At 800 AP very few armies have enough units to cover even 2/3 the table without including any rear support, and as most units you'd usually want to commit to combat are superior you have even less chance of finding a spare superior unit lying around to form up behind your main line - so it hard to see a slight improvement in being able to claim rear support as a material advanage.

Of the "small unit" advantages
1. V important
2. Crucial. Hitting a flank is pretty much the only time you will ever see a ++/-- combat advantage in a game, and it causes a "free" cohesion test drop as well. Being ++/-- up is the best you can do to reduce the luck element in combats and it also gets best value out of cheap troops.
3. OK - but there are some risks of not being in coherent lines.
4. V Important. If you are only fighting with 3 or 4 dice each, your chances of losing by 2 hits look pretty slim.
5. Important Bad luck happens. Minimise its impact. If you only have 12 or 13 units, 2 bits of bad luck can totally ruin your plan. If you have 20, losing 3 or 4 small units is likely to spread the bad luck around - and enemy pursuing your unluckly troops may well also expose a flank to some of your other 16+ units as well.
6. Nice to have. Most shooting (in the classical era at least) seems to come from skirmishers, not bowmen, so they shoot 1 dice per frontage. If you have a frontage of 2 bases and keep a solid line, you will really struggle to ever lose a base to shooting.
7. Important. 2x4 who win will be able to take 2 hits each and have no chance of losing bases. 1x8 has a 1/3 chance of losing a base in the same situation.
8. Another "nice to have" mathematical CT modifier advantage for the 4's over the 8's
9. NEW!! - ditto

My clear conclusion - if you have the luxury of choice in your army list , the balance of pro's and con's says take lots of small units every time.

Am I right?

tim

Can we have another option Tim?

I agree that there are advantages to small BGs but I still take armies with large BGs and am more than happy with their performance.

I would presonally vote "While I appreciate the advantages of small BGs that doesn't stop me regularly using and winning with armies where I have deliberately picked large BGs"

hammy wrote:Can we have another option Tim?

I agree that there are advantages to small BGs but I still take armies with large BGs and am more than happy with their performance.

I would presonally vote "While I appreciate the advantages of small BGs that doesn't stop me regularly using and winning with armies where I have deliberately picked large BGs"

I tried to have more options, but the site didnt include them in my post - and I cant add them retrospectively!

I can see strategies for large units, but generally I now think that where you have a choice of "few large vs many small" for the same troop type in any given army, (ie Roman legionaries) it's pretty much always better to choose multiple small units instead of fewer larger ones.

madaxeman wrote:

hammy wrote:Can we have another option Tim?

I agree that there are advantages to small BGs but I still take armies with large BGs and am more than happy with their performance.

I would presonally vote "While I appreciate the advantages of small BGs that doesn't stop me regularly using and winning with armies where I have deliberately picked large BGs"

I tried to have more options, but the site didnt include them in my post - and I cant add them retrospectively!

I can see strategies for large units, but generally I now think that where you have a choice of "few large vs many small" for the same troop type in any given army, (ie Roman legionaries) it's pretty much always better to choose multiple small units instead of fewer larger ones.

I have to say that my experience of 4 base BGs is not always positive. The -1 CT for losing one base and if they are average (which a lot of the mob armies end up having to be) the autobreak on 2 base losses really hurt IMO.

I can see the point that 2 4s have advantages over 1 8 but at a bit of a cost.

I have not seen the weekends results and unlike Britcon I don't have all the BG sizes for each army but I would like to do some stats if I can get that info. Did Dave Allen do well with 21 tiny BGs in the 25mm comp?

If the issue is that Graham Evans is winning everything then I am not sure that in itself is surprising, he has pretty much always been a good player. The issue would be if A P Ondlife can take Grahams army and smash A D Ecentplayer reliably.

I have only played Graham once at FoG and I have to say he was very good at getting the best out of his not so hot troops. That said I am fairly sure that Martin and I edged the game in the end.

n to 1 match ups favour the big BG as (assuming equal troops fighting on evens)

the owner of the big BG is only risking 2 APs for the nx2 APs
even if the overall fight is a draw the chances are 1 of the n will lose a combat and need to test
if one of the n break then suddenly the big BG has a big advantage.


If you are using bgs of 4 and your opponent is using BGs of 6, you have to comit 2 BGs to fight them.

12 elements agains 12 elements in 3x4 or 2 x6

you end up with 2x4 against 6 and 4a against 6. there is a reasonable chance that one of the 2x4 against the 6 will lose a combat or 2 and take some damage, even if the 6 gets broken. The 6 v 4 obviously favours the 6. Both the 4s then have to be comited to take on the 6, likely resulting in more damage for one of the 4s, and if one breaks the other is probably toast.

if the rest of the army is equal eg 10 v 11 bgs, the loss of 6 APs is a lot more painful than the loss of 2 APS.

My experience over the weekend was that my bgs of 6 taking on bgs of 4 kinghts (equivalent of 8s really) suffered badly as one of them always seemed to lose slightly, even with an overall draw. This is painful for spearmen, cos if they disrupt it gets really nasty.

madaxeman wrote:
Small Units (i.e. 4's) - Advantages
1. Makes army break point higher
2. More maneuverable (to hit flanks)
3. More deployment flexibility - can be split if needed aross the table, or deployment order can be shuffled more easily
4. Less likely to lose combats by 2 hits and take the resulting CT -1 (as their oponents is at best rolling only 4 dice against a unit of 4 in each combat)
5. The impact of those "catastrophic bad-luck" CT dice rolls (those 1,1's - that re-roll as 1,2's - to cause you to lose a unit or drop a level or two) is less severe as you lose both a smaller proportion of your army's units and create a smaller hole in your line as well.
6. It's almost impossible to lose bases from shooting as a 2 wide unit (in line) is fairly unlikely to be shot at by 3 dice, never mind take 3 hits.
7. Much less likely to lose bases when winning combats (as above)
8. The -1 for "one hit per 3" needs 2 hits (from at most 4 dice) to achieve on a unit of 2, but only 3 hits (from eight) to achieve on a unit of 8

Excellent work, Tim! Truly fantastic analysis, and it makes me wonder if that Rom Dom Swarm may yet be the wave of the future.

There are just so many good points here that I had not even thought about. Thanks so much!

Just in passing, I think there's one small typo. In your point #8 above, the phrase "to achieve on a unit of 2", which I have bolded, that's supposed to read "to achieve on a unit of 4", right?

paulcummins wrote: even if the overall fight is a draw the chances are 1 of the n will lose a combat and need to test
.....
12 elements agains 12 elements in 3x4 or 2 x6

you end up with 2x4 against 6 and 4a against 6. there is a reasonable chance that one of the 2x4 against the 6 will lose a combat or 2 and take some damage, even if the 6 gets broken.
..
if the rest of the army is equal eg 10 v 11 bgs, the loss of 6 APs is a lot more painful than the loss of 2 APS.
...
My experience over the weekend was that my bgs of 6 taking on bgs of 4 kinghts (equivalent of 8s really) suffered badly as one of them always seemed to lose slightly, even with an overall draw. This is painful for spearmen, cos if they disrupt it gets really nasty.

in reverse order...

I agree that with troops that absolutely need to keep cohesion in order to do well, ie spears and pikes, big is better as once any part of the line weakens, its all going to be toast pretty quickly anyway - if you put all your eggs in one basket, make it a big strong basket and ask a general to carry it as well if you can! But this is specific to speak and pike I think.

One of the points of having lots of small units is that the rest of the army will NOT be equal. Use lots of 4-strong units and your army creeps up towards 20 units - use 8's and you struggle to get past 12 or 13.

I can see that lots of small battle groups will mean some of them may well lose each turn - but my theory is that if a small unit loses a combat and needs to take a test it is less likely to fail than a big unit because is is less likley to suffer the deadly "-1 for losing by 2 casulaties" when it takes the test, AND (which I've just remembered) its also less likely to drop 2 cohesion leves as a result of a traumatic "double-1" type roll, as even if you end up with a CT score of 2 or less, you only drop one level unless you have suffered 2 more casulaties than inflicted.


Hard as nails troops like Romans should generally win or be evens against most things, so its purely down to chance if they lose. The secret seems to be to avoid being unlucky (ahem), or to minimise the impact of bad luck.

Easy maths says for two (small) units to both lose a combat at the same time is less likley than just one (big unit) losing, but more likley that one out of two (small units) losing.

Once you have lost however, the chances of failing the resulting CT is higher for the big unit (due to the "-1 for 2 more" factor and the related "double 1" factor), the impact of losing on their combat effectiveness is greater (compared to just one of the smaller units losing), and the chances of their effectiveness being eroded anyway - even if they win - is far greater.

Basically, in an open competition I want as big an army as possible to be able to absorb punishment long enough to crack the enemy army. Additionally, it allows you to be more aggressive than usual as losses aren't critical. This would tend to favour the lots of small units approach but a more balanced army tends to be significantly better.

To summarise, you want lots of small, cheap and manoeuverable BGs to boost army size and several large battle-winning BGs for your generals to lead to victory. For example, 4 base BGs of drilled MF, xb combined with poor LF in the medieval Iberian lists are a great support to 6 base BGs of superior knights with a TC. The former's primary role is to stay alive and then help the knights get to where they need to be to make a big hole in the enemy line.

Julian

Statistics says that a combat involving fewer dice is more likely to have a surprise result than a large one is. Which would argue that going small is more of a risk for troops with good POAs who when rolling 16 dice v 16 dice would be unlikely to suffer a surprise defeat, but would be more at risk of a shock when rolling 8 dice v 8 dice.

Are 2 units (shouldn't that be Battle Groups) of 4 better than 1 of 8

Depends what it is. I, where possible, use mounted in the smallest BG size possible. I would take them all as 2's. Foot I try not to use. However the odd time I have used them I would not like them to have been in smaller than 8 for my Picts but 4's for any proper hard troops is good. LF in 8's are great, much better than 4's.
Pay your points and take your choice. I would not like to be, at the same points army size, BG of MF Armd Av Drilled Lt Sp Sw in 4's against 10's of Picts. But then for the same points you can only get 6 picts, who would still hurt them.

LambertSimnel wrote:Statistics says that a combat involving fewer dice is more likely to have a surprise result than a large one is. Which would argue that going small is more of a risk for troops with good POAs who when rolling 16 dice v 16 dice would be unlikely to suffer a surprise defeat, but would be more at risk of a shock when rolling 8 dice v 8 dice.

Yep, I agree that "shock results" should happen more with rolling less dice, but in combat any result where there is a difference in hits of 2 will happen a lot more with more dice as well. And they are the real killers as you get a -1 in CTs, which is where you lose the game. Small units are also often excluded from "bad luck" in death rolls when they win or draw combats, as anyone being hit with 4 dice can only suffer casualties if they win 4:3 or draw 3:3/4:4 (which is unlikley). A unit of 8 can potentially suffer casualties every time they win or draw and take 3 or more hits in the process (statistically average, even if they are POA up).

The other issue is that everyone rolls the same number of dice in cohesion tests - which are where you actually get badly hurt by bad results in FoG.

Minimising unit size means the effect on your army is less in two separate ways - bigger army size, and also a smaller hole to plug - when bad CT stuff happens.