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Post by primuspilus on Jan 4, 2021 18:47:46 GMT
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Post by primuspilus on Apr 23, 2020 16:41:59 GMT
We can discuss all the rules modifications we like but I do draw the line at round bases! Yes Roland. Elliptical with a straight front edge is clearly the better choice!
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Post by primuspilus on Apr 23, 2020 16:38:56 GMT
Martin, thanks for the kind words. Stevie's credibility... It's tricky isn't? We don't want to be obnoxious or unpleasant, or create a bad atmosphere. Bit late for that, Arnopov, I will do you the courtesy of acknowledging that your post is every bit as offensive as you intended it to be. Now you are going to have to own it, I suppose. I have been wargaming since 1981 (so I am admittedly a neophyte) but by 2019, I had owned and extensively played (well, at club level) the following: TRC (my first love), ASL (the entire system, my main game), 3R, A3R, SL/CoI/CoD/GIAoV, Anzio, AK, WaP, SoN, Flight Leader, SPI's Air War (TSR edition), RAF, Air Force, Aces High, Waterloo, Gettysburg (both), Storm over Arnhem, PB/PL/AIW, BKN, TK '99, TNW, Hannibal Rome vs Carthage, Napoleonic 20 (all of them, Commands and Colors Ancients, Platoon, A House Divided, Napoleon (AH and VG editions), Desert Rats, Tobruk, Advanced Tobruk, Stalingrad (CH version), Paths of Glory, Midway, Wooden SHips and Iron Men, Cambrai to Sinai, Clash of Empires, If the Lord Spares Us, Fletcher-Pratt, and several more I have forgotten. I am sure you get the picture. I was the first person I know of to crack Totaler Krieg '99 edition (did it in March '00) that the "East First" option was totally broken and gave the Axis ridiculous chances of winning WW2, every time. I communicated this to one of the key testers and developers at the time. It was an interesting back and forth for a while. I was correct. Axis win with probability 5/6, REGARDLESS of what ANY dice roll in the game prior to Spring 1943 turned out to be. I was also instrumental in the success of the design of an award-winning and ridiculously successful WW2 tactical game (I'll furnish you with the name and the designer/developer's contact details, and the two KEY innovations I introduced that knocked it out of the park, should you wish to follow up with me on this). So I do happen to know (and have a market-place pedigree in) maybe just a few wee things about game design, planning complex maneuvers in high and low complexity games, and how to gather and execute on game data, and how to make reasoned assessments. How many award-winning wargame designs have you been part of building? Do you have any game designs or builds you have published? Genuinely curious, as I can clearly learn much from you! The "Lessons from History" book represents the loving devotion and Herculean efforts of very dedicated DBA gamers, who have poured countless unpaid hours into doing the research into the historical accounts (the same accounts all professional historians use), testing the results, compiling them in a book for which we receive ZERO compensation. In my case, I took huge risk doing so, in the midst of a critical project at work. Many late nights and long hours. Your implication that somehow this committed and dedicated work and attention to detail is of the level of " Friday Amateur Boxing Night" is beyond comprehension, quite frankly.
And to boot, it is clearly and explicitly stated that there is ZERO intent that the rules in the book MUST be taken as a complete set, but they are a collection of a set of house rules we have found work together quite well, for those who wish more historical outcomes in some of their games. The research to back it up is provided to guide and inform our choices. Your hostility to this is bordering on the personal and the bizarre.
We have stretched, pulled, and exhaustively tested all of the items within said book, for playability, balance, and effective alignment with the historical accounts (which, again, are the same historical accounts available to all). On this site, Arnopov, I am sure you have actually made positive, constructive contributions, but it says something about your style that I can't recall anything offhand, don't you think? I do find myself wondering whether you have more positive contributions to make, instead of casting passive-aggressive aspersions at the massive commitment and incredible efforts of others - on things that unlike the TZ shooting rule, actually have been thoroughly thought through and tested.
How easy it is to jeer from the cheap seats.
Anyway, I am not sure I should really continue with any of this. It is clearly creating division, is not wanted, and I really do have things I could be doing that pay me infinitely more for my efforts ('cause, you know, Arnopov, dividing by zero and all, get it? )
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Post by primuspilus on Apr 22, 2020 19:32:19 GMT
Tell you what...try it for yourself. Line up 6 units with a CF of 5 (be they Blades, Daleks or Shermans), and pit 6 units with CF 3 against them. Repeat this several times and see how you get on. Now try again with CF 4 v CF 5...remembering in both cases to seek out double-overlaps. See which of these results in a longer but ultimately losing fight, that matches the five battles mentioned above, and which is a complete and utter walkover.
Your problem is that you are exclusively considering the worst case situation for the Bw. In actual play, there are many actions that the Bw player can take to improve, considerably I must add, its chances: mostly based around terrain, but also various tactics (synergies, counterpunch or threat thereof, dancing, delaying...) some more effective than others. In fairness, the HI player has also some tactics (principally based around Ps screening, which is not so easy to implement btw), but not as many, not as good, and terrain is far more likely to favour Bw.
In 2018, I took an Early Sui army to the Autumn PAWS tournament: 3x4Kn+4x8Bw+4x4Bw+1xArt. Ended up wining it with 5 wins out of 5 (I think, not entirely sure now, might have been a draw). My early intuition was to go with Koguryo+Paekche Ally maxing out fast HI (1X3Bd+6x3Pk), but preliminary games quickly showed that even that amount of fast foot was at a disadvantage against so much firepower, and so it proved at the actual tourney. With Agg3, it was not even terrain that made the Bws so formidable, but the shear number of shooting, the synergy with the 4Kns, and the threat of counterpunch. Have you got any experience of shooty armies in DBA? In fact, do you have much experience of DBX in general? Many of your comments are quite naive and do not indicate a long familiarity with the system.
I'm not trying to be offensive, there is no shame, everybody has to start somewhere.
Ummm ... hundreds of games of shooty armies vs all manner of armies with Kn, armies with Pk and cannon, armies with Bd, armies with Sp. Starting in Jan 2013, and going all the way to June 2018 (when I moved). In tourneys, campaigns, club nights. Your claim of this being "edge cases" is simply nonsense. Fast Bd are the worst! You have zero chance of materially delaying Classical a Bd(F) force with a Bw force. None. And as you know, the place you WANT to hang out as the shooty guys (in rough, where you can still shoot) or marsh (where you'd like to still shoot ... except you can't) are a problem. Only chance you have is to deploy IN a wood. Which is why folks like Stevie and I are saying that solid Bw in DBA behave more like WW2 LMG's than like historical Heavy Archers. Play around 50 tests of Marathon and Plataea. See what happens. Come to think of it, I am surprised the Greeks bothered to show up with any kind of army to face Xerxes - his force was clearly so useless, half the Greek army should have stayed home and made tzatziki all day. Heck they should have just faced him with Ps, perhaps ...
I get why people like the '+1 PIP' to approaching a Bw element. It reminds me of the WW2 boardgame 'Thunder at Cassino' by Avalon Hill. In this game, German MG's were a 'movement impediment' and increased the MP cost of entering certain covered areas. They didn't do "defensive fire" as such. But there is an easier way, that REDUCES the rules overhead, and accomplishes the same effect on average: Get rid of the stupid TZ shooting rule.
As it stands now, for some reason I cannot fathom, folks have developed a momentary blindspot for the attrition mechanism of DBA shooting (i.e. the occasional doubling result) and feel that the TZ rule SHOULD be there, 'cause, you know, like it seems like a good idea, seems logical... but then we need to add a compensating '+1' for close shooting. So rather than actually reduce rule count (something everyone seems to want) now we increase rule count, and which is worse, we add in a second rule to counteract the unintended actual results of the first? This is sloppy and bad game design, and I suspect would net you poor grade on your assignment in Alan Emrich's College-level course in wargame design, or in Phil Sabin's course in wargame design at King's College... It is redundant, self-contradictory, and requires more rules to address its own unintended effects.
We set this rule aside on day (we never could remember it anyway). And still you will find Bw underpowered in a great many engagements against any kind of decent foot. Sure, they can machine-gun many a mounted army. But even that I find debatable as a desirable outcome.
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Post by primuspilus on Apr 21, 2020 19:27:47 GMT
Yes there is: Persian 8Bw don't fight historically as they did. The need an extra TF so they aren't vapourised in a single bound. Plataea and Marathon were both long drawn out affairs. The Persians didn't simply drop their weapons and run at the sight of a hoplite glaring at them. Sure. but Persian 8Bw are not exactly your vanilla, archetypal bows, outliers really. Even in DBM/M which has a richer inbuilt granularity, they had to have a special category, Bw(X), X for exception. Is it really wise thus to use their performance to derive mods for ALL solid Bw? Would it not be more precise to focus on 8Bw only and do something with them? Instead of risking unintended consequences (actually pretty obvious) and "pollute" other periods and theatres?
Bw armies perform pretty well in tournaments, at least in the UK. I shudder to imagine what a Sung army would do with your mod, monstruous.
Have you actually read the "Lessons from History"? Have you reviewed what is actually proposed? 8Bw gain conditional +1, and LOSE the side support! This is to reflect that their front rank is more like Sp than Bw. If you have read and studied the "Lessons", could you give us your actual battle results with the Sung? Because as I have mentioned before, the only thing I am seriously after here is hard data. Not one or two anecdotal games, or general speculation on what might happen.
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Post by primuspilus on Apr 21, 2020 0:29:35 GMT
My take on Agincourt is that it's not so much a need to enhance the English as it is to penalise the French. The French general disorder is probably worth -2 to their main foot (Bd) in the battle. This disorder comprises various things: their own disarray producing the 'scrum of doom', and the mud combined with decreased visibility, oxygen, weight of armour, etc. Put the French Bd at -2 and see how they fare. I prefer the more granular approach to terrain modifiers where Rough Going confers -1 instead of 0 CC penalty, and Bad Going confers -2. This assists certain HYW battles as I've already explained, and would seem to add an equivalent touch of realism to other battles. Removing the solid Bd side support for solid Bw wouldn't hurt, as the rule does seem a band-aid for an 'under-performance' with a previous version of the rules inadequately addressed by more suitable means. As to conditionally increasing the CC factor of solid Bw to 3, I'm OK with that so long as we're also talking about non-HYW bowmen also being more accurately represented in this way, with historic accounts to back this up. So ancient solid Bw should equally be represented this way. I'm pretty sure Primuspilus and Stevie have already justified this with examples, but in light of the recent HYW diversion it might need another refresher. The suggestion to conditionally increase the CC factor of solid Ax to 4 already has my support. Snowcat, read Lessons from History to see where the rationale and research are to support the conditional TF for 4/8 Bw and 4Ax.
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Post by primuspilus on Apr 21, 2020 0:27:41 GMT
Then it wouldn’t be Agincourt or Poitiers would it. There were no difficult hills in these engagements.
Agincourt: there was a hill, and there was mud that appears to have been a major contribution to the dismounted MAA's performance; that makes that hill very plausibly difficult, at that moment. And it recreates the situation quite nicely, without having to resort to hare-brained mods (I do quite like Primus's +1 for Aux, but for Bw? no need)
Yes there is: Persian 8Bw don't fight historically as they did. The need an extra TF so they aren't vapourised in a single bound. Plataea and Marathon were both long drawn out affairs. The Persians didn't simply drop their weapons and run at the sight of a hoplite glaring at them.
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Post by primuspilus on Apr 20, 2020 15:28:11 GMT
Bingo. By the way, Medieval Martial Arts fighters (it's a big sport in Russia, I hear) seem to say the armour really doesn't weigh all that much - not enough to render you sluggish and slow and have a major impact on your fighting ability. (Remember these guys fight team combat with dulled edged weapons and concussive weapons, with the aim of KOing your opponent, or injuring a limb. Kinda like playing rugby in Wales.) So whilst not deadly combat, it is enough to show one weather the weight was a factor in combat. It did not appear to have been a decisive factor. Sounds to me like an after the fact French excuse.
It does however restrict your vision. And if you were wearing it, and attacked by swarms of dagger-armed men, your face and throat would take a beating!
I think the French fell victim to classic Sun Tzu: "cast the army into fatal terrain ... with no escape" and the men will fight desparately, to the death.
The lightly armed English had more skin in the game than the French. All the French had to do was not lose. They seemed to have been a bit half-hearted perhaps? I mean in that deep down spot in your psyche that houses your inner savage. Pure speculation on my part though.
I think the entire point of the muddy terrain was (a) to nullify the French horse, and (b) to turn it from a planned, orderly fight into a barroom brawl, thet the English knew the French would suck at, being highly fancily-dressed Glory Boys, rather than savage thugs!
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Post by primuspilus on Apr 19, 2020 19:50:12 GMT
When I played DBA campaigns solo I tried always having 12 elements, but filling the line in a battle with fast Hd, or Ps if regular troops were unavailable.
It was promising. The 12-12 line up is key in a game in which hard flanking is such a powerful battle decider.
I think another way to do it is to use the excess "dead" elements as usual in the next battle, but all such elements fight as if from a broken command, to reflect losses? Or maybe they fight at TF -1?
Anyway, that's an aside. I vehemently disagree that 12 elements a side is somehow "rubbish" as history. Very few of the battle diagrams in any of the books I have read, show a lot more than 5 or 6 "blocks" of troops, at least for the classical period. More granularity just claims historical certainty that simply isn't backed up by the accounts.
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Post by primuspilus on Apr 19, 2020 0:06:35 GMT
The Bd-Lb interaction is somewhat addressed through the reduction of Bd combat factor if shot at down to 4 (from 5), shooting into and out of overlap, as well as the plough turning into mud on a 1 for first PIPs, plus Lessons from History's removal of the bone-headed TZ shooting rule. Oh and you only need LoS to a half base section on the target. So a recoiled Bd can still be shot at using concentrated bowfire.
If you as a Bd are slogging toward a line of Lb that are blasting away at your centre element at 2 vs 2, and that can always get 2 vs 2 because we have suspended the absolutely ludicrous TZ rule, then you have at least two full bounds on closing, and on any recoils, there are even more shots. Shooting is free, so you are always running the gauntlet.
Now are we also claiming that of the fields weren't so muddy, then the Bd would still have gotten massacred in the same way? Maybe. But perhaps for Agincourt, you need to deploy rough going everywhere as Boggy just to be sure. Of course then the Bd will avoid it on deployment, since he'll know before he puts his troops down, exactly where the muddy bits are.
Decisions decisions.
Meantime, 4Ax and 8Bw remain a serious challenge across the board. By the way, making solid Bow +1 against Bd actually further helps your case at Agincourt. Check out Lessons from History on this point?
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Post by primuspilus on Apr 18, 2020 18:23:44 GMT
I have never been a fan of scenario special rules for the DBA system. To me its "agnosticism" is its big draw. YMMV and will!
So my issue is not "if there were 100 parallel universes and in 50 of those, the English bow were ridden down by French gallantry at Agincourt" but rather what a-priori probability does the system assign to that event, and does the game play data suggest Agincourt was all but impossible under that probability.
I fully support Bayesian reasoning (we do it when we design a game, and use a less informed prior) but the question is, from canonical Bayes ...
"when/how/where do you update your posterior probabilities?" ...
The above items Stevie mentions are fine examples of updating the posterior probabilities on the arrival of new research and new game data.
By the way, everyone here should pick up John Curry's reprint of DBA 2.2. It includes prior versions of DBA back to v1.0, and even v0, the one-pager fiven out at the SoA game day back in 1989.
Then come tell us DBA should have all the items Stevie mentioned, but that my +1 mod is a step way too far ...
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Post by primuspilus on Apr 16, 2020 17:29:46 GMT
I like the idea of leaving 8Sp as is for Thebans. Otherwise the Spartans will leverage their 20/20 hindsight and simply stack up equivalently opposite them!
Epaminondas really was a revolutionary thinker when it came to hoplite phalanx depth.
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Post by primuspilus on Apr 15, 2020 13:55:37 GMT
You make a great point about the interplay between DBE (like 8Sp) which legitimately represent a unique situation or two, vs the general dilemma of deep vs wide.
Also any increase in the rate at which centre foot elements kill each other reduces the need for maneuvering/assigning resources appropriately, which is what DBA is asking us to master, as players.
To that end I am would suggest still keeping the DBEs (Thebans are a special case, but to be honest that reflects more of a scenario special case than ancient doctrine perhaps? still I like it too!) and going with more elements getting rear support?
So to be at a 5, a Sp needs side as well as rear support. To be at a 5, Bd need rear support.
That being said, I am mindful of still having single ranked be playable, and not hopeless against a double ranked foe?
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Post by primuspilus on Apr 13, 2020 15:00:22 GMT
You know, Stevie's CF reduction is becoming more and more interesting to me. Tested it (far from a rigorous set of games so far though) but it has promise. It is perhaps the least "knock-on" heavy of the changes. If anything, things get a little simpler, for example where Wb no longer need rear support, so we actually remove an exception.
My suggestion was for all foot to receive +1 rear support though, so everyone has to choose between doubling up in the centre to break through, or to extend the line.
It is simpler in many ways, and adds the challenge of depth vs width that plagued every ancient general, not just Pk and Wb generals.
I plan to test this more. At least if not everyone getting a rear rank +1, then at least double ranked HI win all ties against single ranked HI.
This may be the conceptually simplest, in that it has a good chance of reducing all the exceptions currently in play, and it eliminates the Bd vs Bd perpetual motion machine in one elegant shot.
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Post by primuspilus on Apr 13, 2020 13:37:14 GMT
So with 4/3 CF, would 4Ax still kill Ps on a double? Also are they the equal of hoplites or legions under bowfire? Or do you make two more exceptions for them besides -1in BGo? And if your Bw are as stated, do they get any change in bad going? Do you keep side support for Bw, or do they now need an exception as well?
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