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Post by kaptainkobold on May 16, 2017 13:09:52 GMT
Alan, The article was interesting in that enclosures signified private ownership in contrast to the open fields or common land. Reading the DBM and DBR books yesterday, I found Phil had offered more terrain feature options than what we have currently for DBA (vineyards, orchards and more).
Certainly in Britain the use of enclosures was a move away from the old common land to private land. I suspect DBA uses the term in a more general sense to refer to farmland (be it horticulture or pasture) which is delineated in some way by things which count as an obstacle to movement, whereas plough is just open farmland. Hence my mystification about enclosures having to be rounded. (As a total aside, I found a minor redundancy in the terrain rules today. The rules for rivers list terrain types that they cannot cross, one of which is an oasis. But an oasis only occurs in Dry terrain, which doesn't include the option of a river. The two things can never be on the same board )
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Post by kaptainkobold on May 16, 2017 6:44:05 GMT
Here is a useful link that describes the open-field system and enclosures. The paragraph on crops and production is particularly useful for players wishing to add colour to their game board.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-field_system Sounds like that fits the Plough terrain type.
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Post by kaptainkobold on May 16, 2017 6:27:55 GMT
Nothing wrong with aesthetics. But I look forward to the day when I lay down some rocky ground for an Arable army in a tournament, and wait for someone to complain it's not legal And I still reckon that enclosures have the *possibility* of straight edges. Straight edges are still optional for plough and BUA, which are the other two man-made area terrain features. As you say, variety is good, and a rough terrain that differs from the other is certainly variety. Do you think that could happen at a tournament? If so, one more reason not to play tournaments... I think it's highly unlikely, but if I ever play a tournament I'll try it out and let you know how I get on
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Post by kaptainkobold on May 15, 2017 23:33:37 GMT
Enclosures are not fields surrounded by walls. They are rice paddies and " fields subdivided by stone walls, hedges, ditches ..." I don't see the problem with a variety of types of rough going. What's wrong with a little bit of aesthetics. If you want you can just put out a brown piece of felt call it rough. Or you can do some nice design and create a variety of scrub and Rocky and bog. Can't you find anything better to complain about then the variety of rough going :-) Nothing wrong with aesthetics. But I look forward to the day when I lay down some rocky ground for an Arable army in a tournament, and wait for someone to complain it's not legal And I still reckon that enclosures have the *possibility* of straight edges. Straight edges are still optional for plough and BUA, which are the other two man-made area terrain features. As you say, variety is good, and a rough terrain that differs from the other is certainly variety.
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Post by kaptainkobold on May 15, 2017 20:44:58 GMT
As for waterway beaches, we don’t use them, but yes, let the defender deploy a beach if they want. However, I’d suggest that other terrain can be placed on top of a beach, as they are ‘good going’ (after all, you don’t want a wide 2 BW beach to be used just as an excuse to discard terrain…which would be another way of weakening the auxiliary and psiloi by robbing them of somewhere to hide).
I assumed that the beach is part of the waterway, so other terrain can't be laid across it, aside from rivers and roads. So, yes, it's a way of ensuring more flat good going. Alan
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Post by kaptainkobold on May 15, 2017 12:26:45 GMT
Aside from simple look, what's the difference between Scrub, Rocky, Boggy and Enclosures? They are all rough, all rounded and none of them have any specific rules applying to them (that I've found). So why does Arable terrain go to great lengths to tell me I can have Scrub, Boggy or Enclosures but not Rocks?
(And why do Enclosures have to be rounded anyway? Plough doesn't have to be, and Enclosures aren't a lot different. By allowing them straight edges Enclosures would at least have one point of difference from Rocks, Scrub and Bogs.)
Alan
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Post by kaptainkobold on May 15, 2017 12:03:47 GMT
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Post by kaptainkobold on May 15, 2017 5:37:24 GMT
I have mentioned several times in both this thread and others my intense dislike of the ‘shopping basket’ approach to terrain selection, as if the defender were simply walking down the aisle of a supermarket picking exactly the items they want (“Oh look, marshes are on special offer in this region, I’ll definitely pop a couple of those in my shopping trolley!”). Armies in reality did not have such luxury.
So I created the following “Randomly Generated Terrain Chart”.
I love this chart! It seems, at first glance, to strike the right balance between randomness and choice. One immediate reservation I had, though, was that difficult hills seem quite common in Arable, since they are in the Harsh and Undulating columns. Perhaps Undulating should just be Gentle Hills? I know the player has the choice of Difficult or Gentle there already, but maybe it's a choice too far? One minor extra that could be worth sticking in - a Waterway can have an optional Good Going beach along its length. Should the existence of this be diced for, or is its presence left to the player to decide?
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Post by kaptainkobold on May 12, 2017 5:47:19 GMT
Strangely enough, although I started this thread, I too am coming round to Joe Collins point of view, but for different reasons. It all boils down to terrain dominance. Who ever gets to choose and place the terrain has an advantage. This could be through a simple system like the Aggression Factor currently used in DBA 3.0, or through a more detailed system like WADBAG’s ‘Manoeuver Rating’, where each individual army has it’s own special factor. But why have a complex system that has the same effect as a simple system? Whoever wins the right to choose and deploy the terrain has the advantage, no matter what the method of selection. Ah, but there is an alternative…’terrain compromise’, where both sides has some influence on terrain placement. I am speaking of an adapted version kaptainkobold’s suggestion… …let the defender choose the terrain but the invader places it!.
That's certainly something I thought of, but thought that it pushed things maybe a step too far in the other direction. I still like the idea of there being uncertainty about who gets to place the terrain. My original thoughts had it right at the start. I was thinking that it could be built into the placement rolls. So: Terrain choice is made by the defender. Each piece is then rolled for, again, as in the rules, but with the change that on a 5 or 6 the attacker gets to place the piece. So, on a 1-4 the defender places the piece in the appropriate sector, if they can. On a 5, the defender chooses a sector, but the attacker decides on the placement. On a 6 the attacker gets to choose a sector and place the terrain (including being able to choose a sector where the placement isn't allowed, just as they currently can). In this way the defender has some certainty about their terrain choice an placement, but it's less certain that at present.
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Post by kaptainkobold on May 10, 2017 4:10:08 GMT
*In fact it's probably greater than 50% that the attacker will get to choose, since a higher roll will tend to . I'm sure people with better brains than mine can work the arithmetic, but I do rather like the idea that the attacker at least chooses the nature of the country they are advancing through. Actually if the difference between the Aggression scores is two or more, the system doesn't work very well at all, so I need to rethink it That's what I get for brain-dumping my commuter thoughts without working them through first.
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Post by kaptainkobold on May 10, 2017 0:36:15 GMT
I have used the straight from the book rules and a 'house' adaption and found they work well. Do you have a link for Alan Saunders version? Have you looked at Bob Corderys 'Portable Wargame'? These use grids and are quick and (deceptively) simple. Very easy to put together an ECW version. Have a look at Bobs 'Wargaming Miscellany' blog for the development history of the PW. I'm four months late to the party here, but a link to the rules can be found about halfway down this page: hordesofthethings.blogspot.com.au/p/free-stuff.html
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Post by kaptainkobold on May 9, 2017 23:47:54 GMT
It's an interesting idea, but it does add a whole extra set of numbers to the lists, and requires and extra roll as well. However I do like the idea of the attacker influencing the terrain in some way, even to the level of choosing the battlefield, especially if you have armies that are almost always likely to defend and can place 'fortress terrain' plus a road in order to ensure the same battlefield layout and orientation every time. I was thinking about this on the train and came up with a simple tweak to add *some* variety: (i) Both sides roll a D6 and add aggression to determine the home terrain, attacker and defender (unchanged). (ii) The player who rolled the highest score on the D6 chooses the terrain pieces from the available list. If the scores were the same then the defender chooses. (iii) The defender rolls for an places the selected terrain (unchanged). Basically Step 2 adds in a roughly 50/50 chance that the attacker gets to choose the nature of the battlefield*, even if the defender still always gets to choose how the terrain is placed. Yes, it doesn't take into account the propensity of particular armies to seemingly always choose their battlefields, but it does take away some more control from the defender whilst still working within the existing terrain rules. And there's no extra die-rolling required. *In fact it's probably greater than 50% that the attacker will get to choose, since a higher roll will tend to . I'm sure people with better brains than mine can work the arithmetic, but I do rather like the idea that the attacker at least chooses the nature of the country they are advancing through.
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Post by kaptainkobold on May 9, 2017 5:58:19 GMT
As I read the rules on Deployment (page 8) the defender (whose home terrain is Littorial)can place 2-3 elements he/she has held in reserve at the the start of their 1st bound in a single group along the waterway as long as one element is touching the waterway, before dicing for PIPs.Then as I understand it the defender completes their 1st bound. If the attacker also has Littorial home terrain they can do likewise and possibly land at the same spot as the defender and attack him from behind. To me this suggests if the defender knows that the attacker is able to do this and has not deployed all 12 of their elements already they are running the risk of their littorial landing being countered or that the attacker was intending to do a littorial landing in the first place. I've only just started playing DBA 3.0 properly, and actually had a double littoral landing in an early game - Picts vs Scots-Irish. The Picts landed light horse, who immediately moved to attack the Irish flank, failed to kill anything and then died to the chariots the Irish landed behind them. Part of the problem for the Picts was that the plan was to bring up elements from the main army to cover their attack, but the landing has to be made *before* PIPs are rolled and there weren't enough PIPs to do it. This left the light horse fighting alone. As we saw it, the landings do allow a lot of flexibility, but both sides can see any reserved troops and, since you know one of both sides can make a landing, you make your army deployments with that in mind.
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Post by kaptainkobold on Dec 12, 2016 7:27:57 GMT
Yes enemy does shoot back. I agree though it does favour in cover the shooting element. Quite a lot. In DBA/HOTT the target element gets +2, but in this set the firer gets between -1 and -3 (average -2). Whilst the chance of winning or losing is basically the same, the chances of the element not in cover being doubled are greatly increased. Was this a deliberate design decision? The original rules make the element in cover harder to kill. These make it more likely the element outside the cover will be killed. Thanks. Alan
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Post by kaptainkobold on Dec 12, 2016 3:28:56 GMT
excuse me, can you play solo HOTT GAME? Hmm, interesting method. HOTT is extremely easy to play solo. Some people like to use some kind of programmed player for one or both sides, but since there is no hidden information in the game, and there are no simultaneous actions, it's entirely possible just to set up a game and play each side to the best of your ability. I do it a lot.
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