Two questions on capabilities, and one on tactics

[rs2excelsior]

Hello all! I recently got the DLC for FOG2 (yay summer sale), and I've been having fun playing the new army lists. I do have a couple of questions, though:

1. Do the pavaises (sp?) used by Persian infantry have any effect vs. arrow fire? Or is that factored into their armor rating? It seems like they wouldn't really be useful in melee, but I don't know if the game could support a different rating vs melee and ranged attacks.

2. When a unit is only partially armed with a weapon, how does that affect their POA or other performance in combat? It seems like a unit with, say 50% swordsmen gets half the usual POA of a sword-armed unit, but I'm not sure.

3. Not really related to new unit types, but I'm curious how other people use Roman armies deployed in their triplex acies formation. As I advance I usually bring up the second line even with the first and impact with one solid line and a single reserve line, which has worked pretty well, but to my understanding isn't really accurate to how Roman armies deployed. There are accounts of the first line engaging, and then the second line being brought up fresh as they got worn out, but leaving gaps in your first line when attacking means every other unit could be fighting a 1:3 battle, which seems problematic. Of course, on the flip side, we really don't know for sure how the Romans went from their checkerboard deployment into solid lines (or even if they did, though in my opinion it seems like they must have), or how they swapped the first and second lines in battle, so us actually employing their formation in a game like this is up for some interpretation anyway.

[jomni]

1. Is that the Sparabara? It’s already considered in armour rating.

2. 50% swords though there are special cases (pls check the manual)

3. Romans swapping tactic is abstracted in their quality rating.

[Blastom1016]

1. No. All decorations are just for visual. All capabilities of a unit are shown in its introduction.

2. For 50% sword, they confer 50% PoA of sword (50 PoA against most of the targets, 25 PoA against steady spears/pikes).
The exceptions are on impact phase, % weapons act like 100% (as the spears, heavy weapons will line up at the front to receive the impact and protect the backline).

3. It's hard to recreate the situations in ancient times. But I think after the front formations received the impact, the second line will follow up in melee instead of watching them getting swarmed.
The advantage of checkboard formation, I found in the game, is that you can easily change your line up by walking horizontally before the contact. I'll try to explain later.

[Blastom1016]

For example if you line up like below:
The green ones are raw troops and the red ones are elite troops.

AA.png (1.69 KiB) Viewed 1820 times

The you see your opponent concentrated their elite force or groups on your right and tries to break your right wing and your raw troops cannot hold that for sure.
You can just turn every aside.

BB.png (2.81 KiB) Viewed 1820 times

Then horizontally move your elites to the right and raw to the left without coliding any of the units.

CC.png (2.46 KiB) Viewed 1820 times

It's just a example. As if the distance permits, you can move them diagonally to keep advancing while changing your formation.

[rs2excelsior]

1. No. All decorations are just for visual. All capabilities of a unit are shown in its introduction.

Good to know, thanks! I think it would make more historical sense to offer them better protection against projectiles than melee, but it’s a pretty minor difference overall.

2. For 50% sword, they confer 50% PoA of sword (50 PoA against most of the targets, 25 PoA against steady spears/pikes).
The exceptions are on impact phase, % weapons act like 100% (as the spears, heavy weapons will line up at the front to receive the impact and protect the backline).

Again, good to know. I suspected that was the case. Didn’t know about impact, though, that’s good for units partially armed with impact focused weapons like lances.

3. It's hard to recreate the situations in ancient times. But I think after the front formations received the impact, the second line will follow up in melee instead of watching them getting swarmed.
The advantage of checkboard formation, I found in the game, is that you can easily change your line up by walking horizontally before the contact. I'll try to explain later.

That is very interesting, I like it. Might have to give it a try sometime.

[jomni]

For example if you line up like below:
The green ones are raw troops and the red ones are elite troops.
AA.png

The you see your opponent concentrated their elite force or groups on your right and tries to break your right wing and your raw troops cannot hold that for sure.
You can just turn every aside.
BB.png

Then horizontally move your elites to the right and raw to the left without coliding any of the units.
CC.png

It's just a example. As if the distance permits, you can move them diagonally to keep advancing while changing your formation.

Good tip

[Byron01]

For example if you line up like below:
The green ones are raw troops and the red ones are elite troops.
AA.png

The you see your opponent concentrated their elite force or groups on your right and tries to break your right wing and your raw troops cannot hold that for sure.
You can just turn every aside.
BB.png

Then horizontally move your elites to the right and raw to the left without coliding any of the units.
CC.png

It's just a example. As if the distance permits, you can move them diagonally to keep advancing while changing your formation.

That's brilliant! I'm under the impression (others can chime in to correct me if I'm wrong) that historians are not quite sure how the checkerboard formation worked in practice, or exactly what purpose it served. That's the best explanation I've seen, with the added bonus that it can be applied directly to the game. Thanks!

[vakarr]

The checkerboard formation is also useful if you have patches of disordering terrain on the battlefield - when you deploy you can't be sure how to match up to your opponent and also how you will get the right sort of troops onto the disordering terrain. Putting the medium infantry in the second rank in a chequer board formation allows it to move to the front rank to replace the heavy infantry or vice versa when needed, prior to contact. You can also use this formation to catch enemy that are following up your troops in the flank, or to prevent that from happening to your own troops.