Slitherine

Recently I am playing a multiplayer match versus a friend in field of glory 2 and he discovered a weird thing, that I found worth mentioning.

He attacked my light skirmishers one tile away with nobel lancers and they could escape anyway. I'm just wondering how to justify that logically, since the cavalry started the attack just one tile away and should be noticeably faster than skirmishers on foot? He was quite angry about this incident.

Skirmishers may not start moving when cav is right in front of them. They could start moving while they see cav and find they are in danger.

Skirmishers may not start moving when cav is right in front of them.

But my friends cavalry was directly in front of my skirmishers at the beginning of the turn, so something here is wrong.

It's very rare for skirmishers to not stand and fight horses when the horses are directly adjacent. They weren't facing away and there wasn't a tile's gap, was there?

When they do run, skirmishers can occasionally run like the wind, and the heavy cavalry sometimes don't pursue that enthusiastically. I've seen light infantry escape light cavalry when the light cavalry had a tile between themselves and the light infantry when they started charging. It can be hard to chase the pests down unless you're sitting right on top of them and the skirmishers are facing your direction.

They weren't facing away and there wasn't a tile's gap, was there?

The cavalry was facing directly the skirmishers and there surely was no gap between them. The only mentionworth thing is, that the skirmishers faced another unit on their right and not directly my cavalry, but for me this gives no realistic explanation how they could escape.

Imagine this way, the cavalry will keep some sort of formation and not disperse in all directions like fleeing skirmishers. Once skinishers scatter, the pursuers will only catch a few as they have to keep formation. The rest of the skimishers will regroup afterwards. Skimishers are not your typical unit. They don’t keep formation. The soldiers are naturally dispersed. They perform Hit and Run tactics. The results reflect this. It’s not about who’s faster or not. Else the results would depict these units as just lightly armed units that keep formation (as some games do... this is not ideal).

Witan wrote:

Skirmishers may not start moving when cav is right in front of them.

But my friends cavalry was directly in front of my skirmishers at the beginning of the turn, so something here is wrong.

They‘d better change the animation to make the skirmisher moving at the same time with the cav. If they don't move, they shall stand and fight.

I am playing a scenario now and my Calvary cannot escape the pursuing skirmishers. It seems odd that horses cannot out run Skirmishers.

Imagine this way, the cavalry will keep some sort of formation and not disperse in all directions like fleeing skirmishers. Once skinishers scatter, the pursuers will only catch a few as they have to keep formation. The rest of the skimishers will regroup afterwards.

This. Horses are not especially maneuverable moving at speed. Also, they tire quickly. And get in each other's way much more easily than slow but nimble bipeds like ourselves.

What I find curious is that the skirmishers bolted at all. I've never seen a unit of skirmishers that had cavalry directly facing it flee unless there were infantry they could run behind just nearby.

Nijis wrote:

Imagine this way, the cavalry will keep some sort of formation and not disperse in all directions like fleeing skirmishers. Once skinishers scatter, the pursuers will only catch a few as they have to keep formation. The rest of the skimishers will regroup afterwards.

This. Horses are not especially maneuverable moving at speed. Also, they tire quickly. And get in each other's way much more easily than slow but nimble bipeds like ourselves.

Disagree, 4 legs are better than two!

Army 1920's footage of army cavalry training https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOyvimZuF5o

Also check out all the videos of modern "barrel racing" .

There is no fatigue in the game. No units get tired ever. Maybe, just maybe bad game design?

Archaeologist1970 wrote:There is no fatigue in the game. No units get tired ever. Maybe, just maybe bad game design?

Why always so negative? There are very few tactical war games that have fatigue anyhow. I would like hear how You would implement in this game. How and when would it acrue? Does it represent actual physical fatigue? (Winded) or some type of ptsd? What would the effects be?

Ludendorf wrote:What I find curious is that the skirmishers bolted at all. I've never seen a unit of skirmishers that had cavalry directly facing it flee unless there were infantry they could run behind just nearby.

From what he says it was a flank attack from an adjacent tile.

Disagree, 4 legs are better than two!

Army 1920's footage of army cavalry training https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOyvimZuF5o

Also check out all the videos of modern "barrel racing" .

Very impressive on the ravines, but that barrel racing turn radius is only remarkable because it's a horse doing it, imho.

TheGrayMouser wrote:

Archaeologist1970 wrote:There is no fatigue in the game. No units get tired ever. Maybe, just maybe bad game design?

Why always so negative? There are very few tactical war games that have fatigue anyhow. I would like hear how You would implement in this game. How and when would it acrue? Does it represent actual physical fatigue? (Winded) or some type of ptsd? What would the effects be?

I just think the units play out like little chess men. If you were in one of these units and ordered to charge again and again, the whole unit would not only be exhausted, but would likely suffer from serious cohesion issues. I'm negative because the general build of the game is pretty good, but because the designer is so stuck within the field of glory framework, that I believe it prevents this game from truly shining. Look through the threads, every time someone brings up a weird mechanic that just seems off like pushback or pursuit, the response is always written as intended, so tough luck if you dont like it.

Archaeologist1970 wrote: the designer is so stuck within the field of glory framework

Given the game is clearly called... Field of Glory II I guess that explains it!

every time someone brings up a weird mechanic that just seems off like pushback or pursuit, the response is always written as intended, so tough luck if you dont like it.

As I understand, the game is build on 40+ years of trial and error with miniatures systems. Apparently fatigue systems have been tried in a number of games and tend to yield ahistorical results. The design philosophy hinges on getting the overall effect right, not on ensuring every variable or factor plays its role.

For me, much of the appeal of the game isn't so much that it's a simulator, but that the system has been playtested so thoroughly. Other historical games, like the EU system, are constantly experimenting and often improve things but also sometimes get things very, very wrong. For FoG2, I think the "If it ain't broke, don't break anything by trying to fix it" approach is much more justified.

Fatigue is to some extent represented by casualties and a tendency for weakened units to disrupt/fragment more easily. Units become steadily less effective and more prone to panic.

Archaeologist1970 wrote:

TheGrayMouser wrote:

Archaeologist1970 wrote:There is no fatigue in the game. No units get tired ever. Maybe, just maybe bad game design?

Why always so negative? There are very few tactical war games that have fatigue anyhow. I would like hear how You would implement in this game. How and when would it acrue? Does it represent actual physical fatigue? (Winded) or some type of ptsd? What would the effects be?

I just think the units play out like little chess men. If you were in one of these units and ordered to charge again and again, the whole unit would not only be exhausted, but would likely suffer from serious cohesion issues. I'm negative because the general build of the game is pretty good, but because the designer is so stuck within the field of glory framework, that I believe it prevents this game from truly shining. Look through the threads, every time someone brings up a weird mechanic that just seems off like pushback or pursuit, the response is always written as intended, so tough luck if you dont like it.

As always it comes down to you thinking you know what it was like back in the day when really you don't know any more than anyone else does as to what is reasonably realistic or not.

So when a game system isn't working in the way you envision what ancient battles were like, its automatically bad design, rather than a design choice that doesn't fit your particular interpretation of how the ancients fought.
As always, you have no sources, so you just come in to chirp like a little boy every now and then because you are too immature to find a wargame system that you do like.