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Yes & No...

 
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joncleaves
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PostPosted: Thu May 02, 2002 11:40 pm    Post subject: Re: Yes & No...


Well it really wasn't a question directly to you, Chris, and I knew the
answer already from playtesting:

1. No matter what a command's 'breakpoint', competition players will
optimize.
2. The smaller the breakpoint, the faster the game.

There is no answer to the question 'in history, at what point did command's
typically break?' - we don't have that kind of data for 99% of fights as
'command' is a somewhat arbitrary grouping. Demoralization in Warrior is a
design for effect rule: the effect is twofold -

A. reduce somewhat the power of LI from the previous version of the game
engine
B. show the effects of worsening cohesion in an army

67% did as well as 50% for B, but to get A and a generally 'faster' game, we
chose 50%. And it was one of the best decisions we made.

J


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Chris Damour
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PostPosted: Fri May 03, 2002 3:30 am    Post subject: Yes & No...


On Thu, 2 May 2002 scribblerjohn@... wrote:
> Doesn't the Damour method fall down with the new command break rules. Now
> only half the command has to go for the entire command to demoralize. I think
> that is the rule, any way.

On Thu, 2 May 2002 JonCleaves@... wrote:
> Ahhh, John , so very astute of you. I wondered who would be first to
> mention this, and I am certainly looking forward to Chris' explanation
> of how this does not affect him....

I am not sure how to answer these. Quite obviously, the change in
demoralization from 2/3 to 1/2 does "affect" me, but it does not
"invalidate" my playing style. Let me use as an example the Viking list
that I typically use. (Obviously, with the new list out this one is no
longer valid.) I normally play the CinC as a 6 man Huscarle unit who also
commands 2 units of 12 LI and five units of 36 Bondi. Under the
"old" rules this command would retreat after it lost six units, now when
it loses four. The SG commands himself (a 6 man Huscarle unit), four
units of 6 Huscarles with 6 Berserk (detachment) and two units of 6 Gall
Gael. This command used to retreat after losing five units and now does so
when it loses four.
I played this list at Siege of Augusta and the reduced number of
units to make it retreat did not really effect the way it
played. If you keep the CinC out of the battleline (usually a good
idea) and use the LI to guard against a flank march, your opponent
has to shake/rout four out of five Bondi units. That does not
seem to be a bad deal to me. Plus, if one of my commands goes on retreat,
I've normally lost the game anyway, or it is one heck of a bloody draw.
Now, I do indeed plan to alter the way that I organise an army. In
the past where I had a two unit command, I will make that a three unit
command. But I do not forsee that I will have to change my "tactical
doctrine". Does that address the issue Jon or did I miss your point?

--
Chris Damour

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Ewan McNay
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PostPosted: Fri May 03, 2002 4:38 am    Post subject: Re: Yes & No...


On Thu, 2 May 2002 JonCleaves@... wrote:
> A. reduce somewhat the power of LI from the previous version of the game
> engine

Jon, I do enjoy the circumlocutions you will employ to avoid saying '7th.'

I actually think that the change in breakpoint would work both ways for
LI. My guess is that my Imperialists, for instance, will have a lot of
4-man reg LI units @ 22 points who never go near to the enemy but serve to
boost breakpoints. (OK, actually, I don't see this; I just assume that I
will never lose units, so breakpoints are almost irrelevant to me... but
another with less arrogance and equal sleaze might do this... calling
Scott... Wink ). I do agree that the LI screen becomes a more risky tactic
in some cases - but not much, honestly; it's a pretty rare game, in my
experience, where the LI screen is actually killed off rather than pushed
out of the way (because the thing to kill it with is LC, but then the
screener charges through the LI into the LC, and routing LC causes
wavers while routing LI does not.)

And I can say all this without any actual playtesting whatsoever; caveat
emptor :)

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joncleaves
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PostPosted: Fri May 03, 2002 5:07 am    Post subject: Re: Re: Yes & No...


Man, Ewan, you and I need to play each other.

And I am not talking about 7th... :)


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joncleaves
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PostPosted: Fri May 03, 2002 10:43 am    Post subject: Re: Yes & No...


A baggage camp, if one is using 14.0 for a comp game, being destroyed or
broken counts against ALL command's breakpoints, not just the one it deployed
with.


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scott holder
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PostPosted: Fri May 03, 2002 2:20 pm    Post subject: Re: Yes & No...


I am not sure how to answer these. Quite obviously, the change in
demoralization from 2/3 to 1/2 does "affect" me, but it does not
"invalidate" my playing style.

>Chris and I play the same style of game, ie., we're willing to roll
waver tests in situations that many other "good" players would cringe at
the mere thought of. In fact, much of our game revolves around this
sorta "big risk big reward" strategy. Jon saw that at Cold Wars with
the Spanish. And like Chris, when we stopped charing forward
impetuously, game over dooood.

>And the demoralization rules don't really change things. I mean I used
Chris' Spanish list from the "earlier" set of rules which had 2/3 level.
All I did here was re-organize it into odd numbers.

>And, don't forget (I did) that one's baggage camp counts toward
demoralization of the command it's associated with. Therefore, that's
another factor into army organization.

>The 2/3-1/2 rule probably affects me more with Khmer than anything else
because of my use of EL detachments to LHI, to include the general with
the EL detachment. Horribly expensive commands who's unit level changes
depending on whether the detachment is attached or not. I still haven't
figured out a new organizational scheme for them but since I have
trouble playing an army more than in one tourney before switching to
something else, I figure I have about 3-4 years before cycling back to
the mighty Khmer.

Scott
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scott holder
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PostPosted: Fri May 03, 2002 2:33 pm    Post subject: Re: Yes & No...


There is no answer to the question 'in history, at what point did
command's
typically break?' - we don't have that kind of data for 99% of fights as

'command' is a somewhat arbitrary grouping. Demoralization in Warrior
is a
design for effect rule: the effect is twofold -
A. reduce somewhat the power of LI from the previous version of the
game
engine
B. show the effects of worsening cohesion in an army
67% did as well as 50% for B, but to get A and a generally 'faster'
game, we
chose 50%. And it was one of the best decisions we made.

>The following are design philosophy comments, nothing more.

>Lemme put this another way, I was a playtester for DBM. The DBM break
rules are/were extremely draconian, at least to the Northern VA playtest
group originally involved with that system. We communicated that fact
repeatedly to Phil but to no avail. My feeling is that he swung the
pendulum too hard the other way from what was then "the" system, 7th.
The 67% break point *was* absurd, armies never broke.

>And this was really hammered home when we began using 7th as a campaign
system for fighting battles. People like Scott McDonald can comment on
how agonizingly looooooong it took to fight battles in a campaign, many
of which were close to their historical predecessors in composition,
said predecessors not taking that amount of time to come to a
conclusion. That's one reason why, in later ancients campaigns, we
switched to DBM as strictly a campaign battles system despite it's
demoralization flaw. And my reading of the historical record suggested
that in fact, 7th *was* out of alignment with the general consensus
among both the military historians and game designers in terms of army
"break points".

>So, when we entered into this redesign of the system, I communicated
(to a very receptive audience obvoiusly) that we needed to find some
type of middle ground between the two extremes, hence the 50% rule.

>Keep in mind the X-rule for determining a victor in FW could have some
applicability here should it modified to fit a Warrior construct.

Scott
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PostPosted: Fri May 03, 2002 2:36 pm    Post subject: Re: Yes & No...


(OK, actually, I don't see this; I just assume that I
will never lose units,

>You play a different game than me and Chris, we assume we'll lose
units, I prefer to call that "investments in the future".

so breakpoints are almost irrelevant to me... but
another with less arrogance and equal sleaze might do this... calling
Scott... Wink ).

>I *do* like that:)SmileSmile Actually, think of such LI as "flank
protection". Since I always seem to pick armies that are highly
susceptible to being flanked, having hordes of LI loitering around back
there has *some* justification. Heh heh, right.

Scott
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Ewan McNay
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PostPosted: Fri May 03, 2002 4:43 pm    Post subject: Re: Yes & No...


"Holder, Scott " wrote:
> so breakpoints are almost irrelevant to me... but
> another with less arrogance and equal sleaze might do this... calling
> Scott... Wink ).
>
> >I *do* like that:)SmileSmile Actually, think of such LI as "flank
> protection". Since I always seem to pick armies that are highly
> susceptible to being flanked, having hordes of LI loitering around back
> there has *some* justification. Heh heh, right.

Glad to please Smile. Dave Stiers plays this way: he roughly always has a
couple of 4 or 8-man reg LI units sitting around on the flank,
preferably in terrain. They're dead, but he's winning the game
elsewhere. All they do is buy time.

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