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Post by richard4th on Jul 4, 2020 16:45:38 GMT
Sorry if I've missed it but I can't see the answer to this...
The rules say for BUA say that a city/fort can be on a hill (line 2, top of page 7) and also that a City/fort can be 'combined as 1 feature' with a larger hill...
Am I correct that the fort/hill combo is placed as one terrain feature?
For example if the terrain were 'HILLY' then you could select one difficult hill + one difficult hill with fort?
Thanks..stay safe..
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Post by stevie on Jul 4, 2020 23:48:10 GMT
An interesting question Richard4th, so let’s see what the rules say. AREA TERRAIN FEATURES [page 6, paragraph 6]:- "A city or fort can be combined as 1 feature with a hill that is also permitted." BUA [page 7, paragraph 1]:- "A city or fort on a hill includes the hill in its tactical factor so occupiers do not count as uphill nor do assaulters count as being in bad going." From the above I get the impression that having a city or fort on a hill is purely decorative, and the the BUA + hill are one and the same feature, so just being in contact with the base of the hill is the same as being in contact with the defensive walls when assaulting the place. So yes, technically you should only have a city or fort on a hill if you first placed a hill... ...but doing so gives no tactical advantage, as it’s only a visual thing that has no extra benefit. In fact, insisting that the BUA + hill uses up one of your hill placements would cause you to have one less terrain feature, so why would you bother with it? (apart from looking nice that is). The city or fort is the important bit. The fact that it’s also on a hill (or has towers along the walls) is just for show. Some Helpful Downloads can be found here: fanaticus-dba.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Reference_sheets_and_epitomes
And here is the latest Jan 2020 FAQ: ancientwargaming.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/dba_faq_q1_2020_final.pdf |
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Post by jim1973 on Jul 5, 2020 7:52:26 GMT
The easy way around it is to model your BUA on a hill and just call it "BUA". That was my solution for the Thracian and Celtic Hill Forts.
Cheers
Jim
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Post by paddy649 on Jul 5, 2020 9:06:11 GMT
Ah Stevie, but check what the rules actually say:
AREA TERRAIN FEATURES [page 6, paragraph 6]:-
"A city or fort can be combined as 1 feature with a hill that is also permitted."
Note that this doesn’t say anything about the size of the hill or where it is a normal or difficult hill. It also doesn’t say that the hill needs to have been previously placed. All it says is that your army needs to be permitted to deploy a hill. So as long as the hill complied to normal constraints it is legal. So this allows you to place a massive maximum size hill or difficult hill (say 6BW x 3 BW) with a minimum fort (say 1BW x 1 BW) and this counts as a single terrain choice. Also as this is technically a BUA it can be placed next to the table edge. The opportunities this offers for breaking up the battlefield are huge. I think the only constraint is that if it is a difficult hill it needs a path to the fort’s gate.
BUA [page 7, paragraph 1]:-
"A city or fort on a hill includes the hill in its tactical factor so occupiers do not count as uphill
nor do assaulters count as being in bad going."
Note this applies only to defenders in the fort. Defenders on the hill outside the fort do count as being uphill.
No I’m not sure this is what PB intended but it’s what he wrote and as you often say “I didn’t write the rules.”
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Post by stevie on Jul 5, 2020 11:34:23 GMT
Good points Paddy... ...but let us look at some of the absurdities of having a tiny city/fort on a large difficult hill. You could have a large circular difficult hill (say 4½ by 4½ BW in size) with a small city/fort (say 3 by 1½ BW or even 1 by 1 BW in size) plopped right in the centre of that hill. The result?: assaulters would have to move through bad going to reach the walls, effectively:- * slowing their movement so that it takes more bounds to reach the walls... * costing the assaulters more PIPs as they can’t move through bad going as a group... * and even causing command range PIP problems (4 BW if entirely within a difficult hill). Thus having a small city/fort on a large difficult hill has distinct advantages, something that the defenders of Forest, Tropical and Steppe regions cannot do as they aren’t allowed difficult hills. But all this is treating the difficult hill as a separate entity from the city/fort, and goes against the spirit of the rule which says “A city or fort can be combined as 1 feature with a hill“, which implies that the city/fort and the hill are of the same size, and are treated as a single item. So yes, although it’s not specifically excluded in the rules...but nor is having a city/fort with a zig-zag perimeter shaped like a wild west sheriff’s badge, purely to make it difficult for any assaulters to get multiple elements into front-edge contact with the walls. But I’m pretty sure most players would object if their opponent tried such a trick. 
(Anyway, Vauban style ‘star forts’ didn’t come into existence until the mid 1500’s.
See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastion_fort#/media/File:Fortbourtange.jpg ) |
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Post by richard4th on Jul 5, 2020 16:21:23 GMT
Thanks everyone for their very interesting and informative replies.
Initially my intention with the “fort on hill” was to benefit from a tactical factor for being uphill. Had I read more closely I would have found that this is a non-runner and is already included.
Rethinking this I then thought that the hill would at least slow down attackers but as has been pointed out this is also a non runner as the fort “can be combined as 1 feature with a larger hill” - presumably the attackers start beseiging the fort when they reach the bottom of the hill as the hill and the fort are all one feature.
My conclusion is that a for on a hill is as much use as a chocolate fireguard - although it looks nice..
Thanks once again..stay safe..
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Post by paddy649 on Jul 5, 2020 16:38:17 GMT
Stevie,
You are normally the one taking the rules as they are written rather than taking a view of the sprit of the rules or any implications they may infer.
All the rules say is that a “A city or fort can be combined as 1 feature with a hill“ it doesn’t imply that the city/fort and the hill are of the same size but it does say they are treated as a single item.So I would argue that it is not just not “specifically excluded in the rules” but is actually exactly what the rules allow.
As you say having a city/fort with a zig-zag perimeter is also allowed which prevents multiple elements into front-edge contact with the walls......I seem to remember you using semi- circular forts in competition once for similar reasons.
I’m not saying that doing this isn’t gamesmanship - but it is allowed by the rules. I also don’t think it is what PB intended but it is what he wrote! Just one of those anomalies within DBA 3.0 we love so much!
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Post by stevie on Jul 5, 2020 18:28:12 GMT
Ha!...guilty as charged Paddy.  Although recently I’ve begun to change my opinion. You see, not all of the myriad situations that can occur in a game are covered by the rules as written, as shown here fanaticus.boards.net/thread/2667/interesting-recoil-discussion and also TZ’s here fanaticus.boards.net/post/31634 . Trying to apply vague general rules which were never intended to cover these unusual situations often leads to weird unrealistic nonsensical outcomes.Thus I find it is usually better to place ourselves in an ancient warrior’s shoes so that we do get sensible effects on our wargames table...even if the rules themselves don’t specifically cover that particular situation and may inadvertently imply otherwise. As for cities/forts/camps with zig-zag perimeters, the rules do quite clearly state that BUA’s and Plough can have straight or curved edges, and this does indeed give sensible effects. A zig-zag perimeter is not curved, nor would I consider it to be straight either. (Believe me, if I could get away with having zig-zag walls I would do so...but I know damn well that
no tournament organiser or opponent would ever allow such an exploitative gimmick)Oh, one more thing about having tiny cities and forts in the middle of a large difficult hill:- It makes them practically immune to shooting, as the range is reduced to only ½ BW in such terrain. And Artillery cannot even enter bad going off-road! (Now there’s an exploitative tactic for protecting cities from Artillery that I’m sure was never intended...
...and it won’t happen if you apply the rules as written and have the city/fort + hill as 1 same sized feature) |
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Post by bluestone28 on Jul 6, 2020 7:26:55 GMT
Hi!! i'm not sure rules talk about difficult hill, but more about gentle hill... in fact if you talk tournament, you have to be fair. if you talk about scenario or friendly games, you can imagine specific scenario rules... with a different deployment and maybe a fort/city on Difficult hill, but for me you must add road to go to the fort doors at last! |
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Post by redrob on Jul 6, 2020 21:49:54 GMT
"(Anyway, Vauban style ‘star forts’ didn’t come into existence until the mid 1500’s. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastion_fort#/media/File:Fortbourtange.jpg )" Not actually true. Vauban was Louis the 14ths' engineer- so that makes it 1660 ish. And there were plenty of people before him designing "Bastion Trace' fortifications. "Bastion Trace" as a concept started in the 1420's in Bohemia where low walled fortifications protected by large round earth filled bastions (usually at the corners) were developed. This idea morphed into the angular bastions developed in Italy from the 1490's onwards. By the mid 1500's they were the only fortification game in town. Being frightfully expensive it meant that the militarily independent noble was rapidly reduced to political intrigue rather than fighting as he could no longer protect his home. And please don't call them 'star forts' its a very silly term since no body could see them from above and so would never describe them in such terms And Bourtange was seriously develped in the 18th century. Plus your suggestion about attacking such a fortification is so wide of the mark that even trying to model it for DBA would fry what brains you have! We will not talk of this again! |
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Post by stevie on Jul 7, 2020 5:32:58 GMT
You are quite right Redrod...nobody in the Renaissance period called such fortifications as ‘star forts’. And they certainly didn’t describe them as “shaped like a wild west sheriff’s badge” either! Nonetheless, I doubt that many people today would understand what a “bastion trace” actually is... ...and as we don’t live in the Renaissance period, calling them ‘star forts’ perfectly describes them to modern readers (hence the picture of Bourtange in its 1742 condition, merely to show how such a ‘star fort’ might appear on our wargames table so that players can understand what I'm talking about). Anyway, all this is pretty academic. I was simply saying that the idea of having zig-zag walls is nothing more than an exploitative positional gimmick in order to gain an unrealistic advantage in a set of abstract ancient wargaming rules. And while we're at it, I doubt that anybody in the Medieval period called their skirmishers "Psiloi", apart from the Greek speaking Byzantines that is. |
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Post by medievalthomas on Jul 9, 2020 16:13:52 GMT
The rule does say combined with a larger Hill so this seems to contemplate a larger Hill that you have to slog through to reach the BUA but once reaching it you are no longer "downhill" or in Difficult Going for Combat purposes.
But Phil is notoriously casual about terrain rules and we had great difficulty getting him to tighten them up and alerting him to some of the 2.2 terrain set problems.
Phil has always allowed too much flexibility as to terrain size so that players can make it too large or too small depending on need. We warned him that the upward size limit was too great and could create some game breaking constructs such as that discussed above but at that point he had had enough of our advice.
For home games I suggest no terrain area terrain feature can have a dimension greater than 5BW or smaller than 3BW (measured at any angle diagonal etc.)
It might be wise to limit the BUA/Hill combo to Castles (and Hamlets?)
We have also found that dividing the table into three equal "strips" numbered 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 produces more evenly placed and interesting terrain. (BUAs can only go in 1-2 or 5-6 so can't get in the center - you can also use this concept to keep certain terrain out of the center strip if that's how you envision a given historical battlefield.) We have uses both the quarter and the strip system in the playtest group and they much prefer the strip system.
TomT
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Post by richard4th on Jul 9, 2020 16:20:35 GMT
Tom T
Going a bit off topic now but still on terrain...
Am I correct that an edifice - an 'isolated large building such as a Amerindian pyramid etc etc' has to be less than 4BW total if you want to use it as your camp?
So a 2BW x 2BW pyramid - I've seen bigger....
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Post by martin on Jul 9, 2020 17:30:11 GMT
Am I correct that an edifice - an 'isolated large building such as a Amerindian pyramid etc etc' has to be less than 4BW total if you want to use it as your camp? So a 2BW x 2BW pyramid - I've seen bigger.... Correct. The rules author was not keen for players to use stone structures for camps (which many of us did/do). He seems to have felt that effectively transporting edifices around as an army’s camp/baggage ‘looked wrong’....however, to pacify those of us modellers who wanted such things he ‘allowed’ an edifice to be ‘converted’ into a camp. Previous debates suggest that this can only occur if by chance the edifice conforms to camp size requirements AND you’re lucky enough to find the edifice in a legal position to act as a camp on your base line (or waterway edge baseline). In practice you’d rarely find an opponent who would object to you using such a model of an edifice as your camp, without it having been a chosen BUA terrain feature, just so long as you didn’t try to insist upon it having edifice properties, too. |
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Post by lkmjbc on Jul 9, 2020 19:18:51 GMT
Phil was not too keen on Pyramids in England...or other such silliness...
That was primarily at what this was aimed.
Joe Collins
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