Towards DBA 3.1

How much longer may it make a game.
Mine can be over in ten min so no worries but in a tourney with a time limit may it make the game that much longer?

One thing though is that Ps tend to flee more tha actually die. Is this people’s experience? So not losing them isn’t such a big advantage? It would make a big difference in Ps heavy armies though ...

For those of you still not entirely convinced abut the merits of this “first Ps lost doesn’t count” idea, perhaps I can persuade you with the following thoughts.

Would the Spartans really shed any tears and rout if they saw their Helot serfs being cut down?

And take a Roman civil war engagement.
Half way through a hard fought battle, one side has lost three Bd, while the other has lost two Bd and a Ps.
Which army would you say would have the lower morale, and be closest to defeat?




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

Answer: No idea, really. That factor depends on a HELL of a lot of other variables.

I thought Spartan helots are 7Hd in v3, so no, the Spartans really DO NOT shed tears when their helots are cut down

How many physical troops did the lost Bds actually represent (we know in the Civil War, numbers were frequently mismatched). How good were the opposing Ps? Remember we have factored out missile fire, so one way to "represent" the effects of the light troops is to punish you for losing them, since the enemy lights now have "carte-blanche" to pepper you with missiles and you cannot reply.

Who is tired and hungry, who is fresh? Is the General's cousin fighting in/near one of the Bd elements that is lost, etc... I steer more to the overall effects: And I am thinking about cases where you have say a Thracian force trying to fight Alexandrian Macedonian. Now the Thracians have, like, ZERO chance to beat the Phalanx. But they can concentrate their efforts elsewhere - picking off the Cretan Archers (Ps), and the Prodromoi (LH) say. Politically, I would wager it was far, far easier for the Thracians to shrug off losses in the stone-throwing Ps teams, than it was for Alex to write to Crete and tell them their sons died in Thrace so that Alexander could have a secured Northern Border...

So the trouble with this rule is that it really doesn't shift the balance in cases such as this. But i have an idea I have been playing with. It is simple, it is a shameless steal from Joe, and it encourages the kind of "hit and run" tactics we want to see from light armies:

Command Range: 20 BW for LH (actually I favour unlimited)
                           12 BW for Cv and Cm
                           8 BW Ps, 3Ax, 3Bw
                           4 BW for everyone else.

Note: I know I am ignoring terrain reductions, but (a) is this not a simpler and more workable solution (only a single measurement per troop type) and (b) we already suffer from lack of group moves for all but Ps in bad going. Just a thought. My issue with overall shorter command radii is that the game quickly grinds to a halt, as it is not really worth using your light troops in the bad terrain at that point.

If you couple this with a change for 4Ax as follows:
Name "Auxilia": Move 2BW, in all going. Fight with 4/3 CF. -1 TF in bad going, and if shot at. QKed in close combat in good going vs Kn. Do not QK Elephants. Ps flee from them if doubled. In other words, like Sp but no side support, and not QKed by Wb. 

Now you get something that looks like Roman Auxilia, or older, more experienced but out-of-practice hoplites or phalangites, or Spanish Scutarii, say... I like this model better than solid Auxilia. 

3Ax should be "light infantry"... i.e. not skirmishers, but hit-and-run tribal troops, say. Irregular javelin-equipped foot. 

BTW Tom, I am very short on time, but trying to see how a translate of DBX works in the Ancients/Classical space. 
                            

Pure opinion: I think if you’re going to be mucking with 1/2 or 1.5 elements, better to keep the 1st double ranked element is 2 and 1st Ps is 0. I prefer round numbers

But again, Greedo, unless this rule addresses a major imbalance in some way (and I am not seeing how it does) I am not sure what the purpose is. If the purpose is to assist Ps-heavy armies against non-Ps-heavy armies, as my example of Thracians vs Alexander shows, this doesn't really do it. In fact relatively, this rule seems to disproportionately favour HI armies with a single Ps in battle against an army with more. They basically get all the benefits of having a Ps, but with the cost of it being a Hd.

I am not seeing the big win here (as one who has actually played dozens of FtF games with exactly this kind of fix in play...)

It was just more funkiness in the victory conditions, and it didn't have anywhere near the effects you think it is going to have. It is an idea that seems far better as written than it actually plays out in many cases. Not saying it's terrible, but you are going to want to stress test it in the situations you are NOT currently thinking about.

Stevie seems to suggest that Bd-heavy armies should decide the battle in any and all cases by Bd vs Bd, not allowing for the possibility of squeaking out a victory with a weaker army by targeting the support troops. With a rule like this, I predict that Thrace will be utterly screwed. What your really want is a rule that benefits Ps-heavy armies, and not armies that have only one or two...

Again, this may be a fine rule, but what is the big win with it?