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Post by timurilank on Jan 18, 2017 8:50:22 GMT
Improving the campaign system – Thebais I decided to stay within the timeline and move our game for tonight to the frontier of Egypt of the 5th century AD. The game will address plunder and its transport back home. Nobades forces were organized by clans and these will have similar characteristics as the “allied contingent” in the rule book.
Outcome of the campaign and evaluation should appear tomorrow or Friday.
dbagora.blogspot.nl/2017/01/improving-campaign-system-thebais.html
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Post by Berthier on Jan 19, 2017 0:54:42 GMT
Looks Interesting. Looking forward to the AAR.
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Post by timurilank on Jan 19, 2017 9:36:52 GMT
Looks Interesting. Looking forward to the AAR. Berthier,
This will be posted to the blog tomorrow morning.
Note: I can say the campaign was a nail-biter filled with eight intense months and three major battles. All finished within 2 1/2 hours.
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Post by timurilank on Jan 20, 2017 8:56:30 GMT
Improving the Campaign system – Nobades incursion. I have posted a brief history of the campaign game that took place last Wednesday. This was quite an exciting match-up with eight months of campaign, three battles and reaching a conclusion in 2 ½ hours. dbagora.blogspot.nl/2017/01/rome-and-nobades-incursion.html
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Post by timurilank on Jan 28, 2017 8:55:41 GMT
Improving the Campaign rules. Moving forward in the timeline, the next campaign will focus on events in Hispania during the years of 409 to 429 AD. From a scenario perspective, the period can be viewed as two parts, the Vandal domination of Hispania followed by the resurgence of the Suevi. This is particularly interesting as the Alan still play a minor role in the events as do the attempts by Rome to regain control of the peninsula.
The game will have players take the Vandal or Suevi tribes and the participation of the Alan and Rome becoming a non-player function with their activation taking place during the card game exchange. This will mean both players will serve a dual role on the game board.
The immediate problem is how best to compress ten years of conflict into an evening or two as the alternative (ten evenings for each year) is not appealing. This will most likely move through a process of trial and error, but finalized it will become a nice option for the campaign rule set opening its use for longer conflicts.
Those features developed during the previous campaign will be use here; inter-tribal rivalry for both Suevi and Vandal, marauding parties, and plunder. There are a few situations that will need some attention, such as the armed resistance by the inhabitants and piratical raids.
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Post by timurilank on Mar 12, 2017 8:58:02 GMT
Improving the Campaign System The final match of the Byzantine series has been posted to the blog and next week I will follow up with a two part series of events in Armenia of the 5th and 6th century.
I have done this so as to design a number scenarios or a campaign involving the mountain kingdoms of Lazica, Iberia and Albania.
These armies were completed nearly two years ago along with an (II/28c) Armenian Army of the same period, none of which have seen any use.
Searching for information about battles was difficult and those which I did find were brief descriptions of heavily outnumbered forces facing the Persians. Whether this was done as dramatic license is not known, but it did set me to thinking about how we currently determine winning and losing a battle.
No argument about the four element requirement in the standard game, but this may prove unworkable in a campaign setting. We will experiment with a variable threshold giving a player an option to break off a battle sooner rather than risk the loss of four elements.
Consider as defender you may find yourself in unfavourable terrain or march off and seek battle elsewhere. Or, during the battle, your losses have nearly reached the maximum and your opponent has incurred zero setting the possibility of victory out of reach. Would you continue the fight?
Naturally, making such choices would have its consequence and a few things come to mind; loss of prestige, risk of troops deserting or mutiny to name a few. This coming week we shall test a number of options in a campaign setting.
A report will follow.
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Post by timurilank on Mar 16, 2017 9:41:28 GMT
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Post by timurilank on May 18, 2017 10:29:23 GMT
Improving the Campaign rules. I have posted the start of a short campaign series covering Roman Britain (410 AD) and the barbarian invasions.
Part one gives an overview of rules features that will require modification and the part two is a test of the invasions and how the Romano-Briton deal with the situation.
If satisfied with the revision, then the next step is to apply this set to the Vandal, Alan and Suevi invasion of Hispania of 409 AD. dbagora.blogspot.nl/2017/05/migration-to-kingdom-roman-britain-410.html
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Post by timurilank on May 19, 2017 8:20:00 GMT
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Post by timurilank on May 21, 2017 8:28:40 GMT
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Post by timurilank on Jun 12, 2017 7:51:06 GMT
Improving the Campaign system – multiple day battles. In the Battle Report section of Fanaticus you will find a recent confrontation between Rome and Carthage resulting in an inconclusive battle.
Historically, such outcomes would find both sides resuming battle the following day having recovered their wounded during the night.
The campaign rules do allow for this, but generally there is substantial time between battles; such as a week or as much as a month or more. In this particular case, both sides fought equally as hard and so thought a near equal number should return to fight the next day. How many is now the question.
In the appendix section of ‘Caesar’ by T.A. Dodge, he lists 30 ancient battles and the casualties suffered by both sides. Using this as a guideline, each Roman and Carthaginian command which lost four elements, three elements would return to fight the next day. The target needed to bring their opponent to a demoralized state would remain unchanged, but they would have one less element in their command to do this.
The wounded general resumes his command; however no longer mounted he does take a command position (CP) on the field.
Day two will be fought later this week.
Additional note: The number of battles referenced should read 38 of which 4 lasted two days.
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Post by timurilank on Jun 26, 2017 10:13:15 GMT
Improving the Campaign System - using different size armies. In a recent posting I presented the Battle of Cannae with an option to spread the requirement for demoralization over a smaller number of groups.
The objective would simulate the gradual deterioration of an army’s strength as it happened historically.
I toyed with this idea when I began the Severan Project and other Fanatici had mentioned having experimented with a similar ideal. In essence this would allow players an even chance of victory while using armies of disproportionate size; history records many such confrontations such as large barbarian armies fighting smaller Roman forces.
Regarding barbarian armies, these were historically a confederation of sub-tribes and this was no different for the Alamanni, Marcomanni, Early Vandals or Goths. To bring this in a DBA perspective, a standard 12 element German force is divided in two groups of equal size. Each sub-tribe of six elements requires two casualties to become demoralised resulting in the following bound the expenditure of pips for single elements or groups to hold their ground or flee.
Using such a system will allow players to field larger armies to fight a standard size army of 12 elements. In a recent series of tests, I used three groups of Early Germans (18 elements) to fight a standard size Middle Imperial Roman army of 12. One die was used by each side which meant for the Germans a limited capacity to manoeuvre and therefore fought as large groups.
Three test battles were fought and their results will be posted tomorrow at the blog an assessment will follow shortly.
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Post by timurilank on Jun 27, 2017 9:18:19 GMT
Improving the Campaign System – fighting against odds. Using the standard DBA 12 element per side game some battles fall short of the image we have of large armies facing smaller disciplined forces. The Battle of Gaugamela comes to mind as we expect vast numbers of Persians should be fighting smaller Macedonian army.
In the recent campaigns set in the 4th and 5th century AD I had an opportunity to experiment with disproportionate size armies without resorting to vast numbers of figures.
Here are three games with large numbers of German barbarians face a smaller Roman army. dbagora.blogspot.nl/2017/06/experimenting-with-army-size.html
Next post will cover an assessment of the tests.
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Post by timurilank on Jun 28, 2017 8:15:58 GMT
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Post by timurilank on Jul 1, 2017 8:36:18 GMT
Improving the Campaign System – increasing the odds. Continuing with battles using armies of uneven numbers I used the Polybian Roman against a Gallic army for this series of tests.
The Gallic horde consists of three sub-tribes, one of these would have their number increased by an extra two elements bringing the total number to 20 versus 12. Full report with photos is at the blog: dbagora.blogspot.nl/2017/07/improving-campaign-system-increasing.html
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