Well
Joe, as you requested I’ve conducted some playtesting.
Not full battles you understand, but just small limited scenarios with half a dozen various elements a side.
Here are my preliminary observations, in reverse order (sorry about the long post).
Your Second Suggestion: “+1 PIP if foot contacting a Bow front-edge”Now that you have explained your reasoning for this, I fully understand what you are attempting to achieve.
You want to ‘encourage’ infantry to aim for other foot and shy away from the easily defeated bows, as they did in the HYW.
Your idea achieves this by making it PIP cheaper, and could be justified by ‘hesitancy’ when advancing into an arrow storm.
I have to admit that it does have the desired effect, in a limited sort of way, even if it seems counter-intuitive at first.
And it’s a lot simpler than trying to devise some other complicated rule to give the same result.
Instead of a convoluted mechanism that decides when our little metal soldiers may or may not shy away, it encourages
us the player-general to make that decision for them. And it’s the effect, not how you generate it, that matters.
There’s also a desirable side effect; instead of an extra +1 to shooters or a -1 for targets, it uses the overlap mechanism.
As shooting recoils and breaks-up large groups into smaller units, costing more PIP’s to get them into action, there is this
additional PIP as well, meaning attacking troops will often enter combat and be overlapped, giving the bows an extra boost.
But following on from what
Haardrada posted about the Swiss, perhaps your original suggestion should be amended to:-
“+1 PIP...if the element or group includes foot
other than Pike and is tying to move into frontal contact with
Bow...”
By the way, the effect for Hoplites against Early Persians (and this includes Indian and Chinese Bow heavy armies) is different.
Their Bows are usually in a long line with few other troops for the advancing Spears to aim for.
In these cases the heavy foot army has to concentrate all their PIP efforts on their centre, leaving little for flanking actions.
Which sounds pretty realistic to me...
However...
...this side effect can be got round, and indeed the whole concept can be exploited in its current form.
For example, what’s to stop the advancing heavy infantry from just rolling-and-rolling their PIP dice until they get a high score?
Yes, standing stationary lets them get peppered by arrows, but heavy foot just shrug off this inconvenience.
The shooters combat factor of 2 verses heavy foot’s 4,
and the TZ shooting priority stopping the bows from concentrating their
fire, means the heavy foot has only 6 chances out of 36 (or a 1 in 6 chance, 16.7%) of recoiling, and no chance of being killed.
So heavy foot will quite happily sit at close 1 BW range, shuffling the odd element back in line, until they get a big PIP roll and
all surge forward together in one big mass.
That doesn’t sound very realistic...
Perhaps what’s needed is one of the following suggestions
in addition to your +1 PIP in order to make it work properly:-
1) have a built-in time limit/set number of bounds in a game. Then the heavies can’t afford to wait too long due to nightfall.
(and no...I’m not promoting my “Time OF Day Display”...oops, I just did! ) 2) limit the TZ shooting priority to just compulsory targeting of
mounted in the TZ. Then the bows
could concentrate their fire.
With a CF of of 2 v 2, the heavies have 4 chances out of 36 (11%) of being killed. The longer they wait, the more they’ll lose.
(Mounted are too vulnerable to concentrated fire, and are the greatest threat according to the Combat Outcomes) Your First Suggestion: “Recoil from Pikes on an Equal Score”This has a very small effect, as barring overlaps side-support Spears and Blades will have 5 more chances out 36 (or about 1 in 6
chance, 13.9%) of recoiling more often. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t complain if it was introduced.
However......it means that solid auxiliaries will also recoil more often, and be subject to more overlaps when facing Pikes.
This will reduce the already underpowered 4Ax to being no better than 3Ax, and make them even weaker and more useless than
they already are (if such a thing were possible).
As the self-appointed chairman of the organisation known as the “Committee Representing Auxiliary Personnel” (who’s unfortunate
acronym is C.R.A.P.), my members strongly object to their rights and privileges being even further eroded in this way.
Still, it only occurs against Pikes, and only in Good Going, so maybe we can live with it by keeping in Rough Going.
(The auxiliaryman’s dream of facing Pk in Bad Going never happens, as no-one in their right mind ever puts Pk in such terrain)Some potentially useful player aids can be found here, such as the “Quick Reference Sheets” from the Society of Ancients,
and the new “Army List Corrections” file: fanaticus-dba.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Reference_sheets_and_epitomes
And this is the latest January 2018 FAQ: fanaticus-dba.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ_2018