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Post by Mercia(andreas) on Jun 10, 2016 2:34:18 GMT
But the purpose of War is not the same as in EIA, there are no critically important PP required for campaign victory, there is no reason not to stomp your enemies at ratios of units more than 5:1, and victory of war in EIA was equally about grinding the enemy armies to dust rather than winning battles.
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Post by Godfred Thraw BayardsKing(GT) on Jun 10, 2016 8:53:55 GMT
Levy vs standing army. Two separate things. So yes, I could trade my standing army in, and still have access to levy with +1.5 morale. "Hybrid" domains get the full advantage of both parts, and doesnt really pay anything for it, once the magical network is up and running. Why do caster realms need landed lords to support them? We can agree to disagree. My assertions that certain spells should be higher level still stands. They are too good for small armies, so making them difficult to cast, and increasing the base cost is balancing. However if it should be 1, 2 or 3 lvls that is something I do not know. Otherwise, the morale boost could be lowered. In EiA where the war rules are from, most fights have morale 3 to 3.5, with the french being a notable exception with 4-4.2 (and the turks with 2-2.5, which they make up for with one shot pursuits if they win the fight). That 1 difference means the french win 3/4 if not more. If you have a morale difference of about 2, then you need to outpick someone, roll good, and the enemy needs to roll bad. All three at the same time is an exceedingly rare event. all notes that French have morale 4 ... i am proud ....
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Post by Maelgwyn ap Cadwgan (TOG) on Jun 11, 2016 6:53:12 GMT
La Grande Armée was indeed that.
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Post by Linde (x-GM) on Jun 11, 2016 12:31:02 GMT
Quite a lot of feedback! Thanks. Will go through it in detail throughout the next week:)
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Post by Linde (x-GM) on Jun 11, 2016 14:52:17 GMT
OK I have tried to sum up questions and points and will try to address them one by one, please repost questions or points not addressed in this thread: 1. If you want to hold the field then morale is king, seriously armies of undead just don't shift no matter how much damage you do the units around them. A: Correct. Morale is king in determining victory in battles. 2. Pursuits are anaemic, they do very little damage until you have a lot of cavalry. Cavalry is a nice thing to have, but I do not know what dmg they do compared to normal units. Linde? A: Cavalry does up to a maximum of 25 hits per victorious cavalry unit in pursuit damage, but 2-6 hits are far more likely. During battles they give out just as many hits as any other unit would. But it could be revised now that recovery is faster. I will look into that. 3 In line with the above the Defensive trait is underpowered. A: Defensive trait is by far the least powerful of all the traits. But it also affects sieges so I think it is worthwhile anyway. If Pursuit is boosted this trait will also become more vital, so I will not look into changing defensive as much as I will look into boosting pursuits. 4 Having trait bonuses is massive (I.e. Heavy, Cavalry, etc.). A: Yes, it is the difference between winning and loosing battles. 5 The Goblin army list is overpowered (for it's cost), compare Infantry/Hobgoblin Infantry, cheapest Bow unit (both trait and muster), (equal) cheapest Cavalry unit and Wolf Riders are better than Outriders hand down. I'd also rank Ogres as the best unit in the game. A: This is intentional to make goblins a greater threat. I will revise after turn 5 if they prove too powerful. 6 Outflank to negate Outflank is silly (to me at least), why can't one side succeed and the other fail (I.e. your army doesn't get lost and his does). A: I agree that it can be viewed as silly, but this is how standard EIA resolves Outflank vs Outflank, and it gives an advantage to the best army in those cases, and arguments can also be made that if two armies try the same tactic, then the best army should have the advantage. So don’t expect a change to the way outflank vs outflank is resolved. 7 Random draw (effectively) to choose attacker/defender chit's is silly. It negates the benefit of having highly trained/skilled characters and allows a player who understands the system to mathematically game his chances (even though he might have a worse general). A: I have no problem changing the rules to: If you haven’t submitted a strategy you will always use x strategy depending on your domain (that strategy of cause being a domain secret) What do you guys think? 8 Apart from sharing damage around I didn't notice any benefit to having sub-commanders. Do you get the benefit of all Blood Abilities across all the leaders with an army or only the general? A: There are two effects of sub commanders: 1: Sharing damage. 2: All blood abilities are used 9 Summoned unit mortality doesn't make sense to me, as a general I'd be putting summoned units into the most dangerous positions (because they may not hang around for the entire campaign). A: Mortality is set in tiers depending on morale. Within those tiers the units with highest move have the highest mortality. In the case of ties, the most expensive unit is generally the one with the highest mortality. Summons are subject to those same rules for determining mortality. 10 TL:DR - Magic OP, nerf it in general, much less so for temples. I would suggest giving all magic wielders -1/-1/-1 base in their warfare scores, since they are not warriors, and very likely have spent all their time on other things than studying the art of war. Access to magic is more than enough to make up for this, and you can always get a LT to lead your army. Remember, going the other way, to hire a magic LT and use him to cast spells for warfare is almost impossible. A: I don’t think that magic in general is too powerful. But I can see how it feels limiting to a player without access to magic. If a wizard spends resources getting expertise in warfare he will be no less an expert in warfare than a fighter. He will just have spent more resources getting there. So I see no reason to adversely affect a spell casters warfare stat. But I will keep it in mind and look it over again. 11 Is it possible to ready mustering, in a similar way to preparing these summoning spells? A: You can always make a readied action. In the case of mustering it is a court action unless you are waging war, so you can't spend the action on anything else. 12 Beyond Blessings (fairly standard for birthright), GLFs summons, ToBs undead, and a missing relic, what realm magic have we actually seen? The most notable powerful example I can think of is the Pirate King's max-prosperity & loyalty magic, but he is secondary to the story at any rate. A: There has been cast the spells described in your post along with 4-5 different 1st level spells a few 3rd lvl spell and 2-3 2nd lvl spells. The exact spells are not something I am going to post publicly 13: Higher level summons are overpriced/underpowered except for Undeads that are underpriced/overpowered. Low level summons are underpriced/overpowered. A: I’ll look into summons. 14: Simplify rules for capture/kill A: I will look into this. I thought the rules rather simple already. 15: The whole: magic users have access to nasty tricks in combat that other players doesn’t discussion. A: Every domain have access to something that other domains doesn’t, be it extra resources, cheap units, awesome characters, or spells. And yes! Magic is awesome in combat. 16: Purpose of war vs system chosen to conduct war. A: I can see the issues with using a system that rewarded people for making lesser forces and then removing that reward. I will keep this in mind and see if I can make a fix. (A fix would probably be something along the lines of a hard cap on units = command of the general)
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Post by X-Nemeth on Jun 11, 2016 22:05:46 GMT
2: Perhaps even out the damage more, so they are more consistent?
7: Perhaps decide on a favorite chit for each NPC realms, and two other they tend to use. The last sixth chance can then leave the choice up to you? Unless the choice is an obvious retreat.
10: Problem is you use caster main stats for warfare, which is an inherent buff to them. So in fact the caster will have spent less resources getting there.
16: You are right, but I would suggest giving -1 to morale/dmg tables when you command too many units or less morale for your units (bad logistics?). Options are nice, so try to avoid removing them. And there will be situations where larger armies are key.
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Post by Mercia(andreas) on Jun 11, 2016 22:21:38 GMT
Or maybe rather than punishing casters, allow spending RP's to boost some form of warfare capability, since casters that casts are starved of RP while regents who don't spend as much RP can use it in warfare much more liberally.
This could be a rally of your forces healing your army of a little morale damage during a battle( would be a preplanned trigger tough), or spending RP to modifying a warfare dice roll by 1, or inspiring an army to force march moving further in a WM
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Post by Aethor of Helna (ST) on Jun 11, 2016 22:50:47 GMT
Or maybe rather than punishing casters, allow spending RP's to boost some form of warfare capability, since casters that casts are starved of RP while regents who don't spend as much RP can use it in warfare much more liberally. This could be a rally of your forces healing your army of a little morale damage during a battle( would be a preplanned trigger tough), or spending RP to modifying a warfare dice roll by 1, or inspiring an army to force march moving further in a WM That's actually covered by battle magic in the realm magic rules, under offense, defense and utility battle magic.
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Post by X-Nemeth on Jun 11, 2016 22:58:53 GMT
Or maybe rather than punishing casters, allow spending RP's to boost some form of warfare capability, since casters that casts are starved of RP while regents who don't spend as much RP can use it in warfare much more liberally. This could be a rally of your forces healing your army of a little morale damage during a battle( would be a preplanned trigger tough), or spending RP to modifying a warfare dice roll by 1, or inspiring an army to force march moving further in a WM That's actually covered by battle magic in the realm magic rules, under offense, defense and utility battle magic. Those are only possible to do with the realm magic feat. Which only spell casters can get. What Mercia suggests is to have something akin to battle magic, which is fueled by RP, but is not magic. Like spending influence to procure better food for the soldiers before a fight, so that their spirits are lifted (+morale).
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Post by Linde (x-GM) on Jun 11, 2016 23:20:44 GMT
2: well, the high damage is when an army breaks in round 1 while inflicting under 1 morale in damage, you have a cavalry general and roll a 6. In that event it is fair that your cavalry kick ass. I don't think it need to be evened out.
7: I already have a favorite chit for NPC's and pick all their chits either before hand, or randomize based on that favoritism if turns are delivered before I write up my plans. So good idea (The completely random chits I choose are when players fail to inform me of what they want. And that is what I am trying to address.)
10: The important stats for an arcane caster are cha/int con, dex If the caster is a cleric the important stats are Wis, Cha & str/con
The important stats for a fighter is str/dex & con, so they are free to choose their tertiary stat from what they want.
The importance of a fighters main stats are also less than that of a spell caster as they don't need to plan on having at least 19 in any single stat. Furthermore fighters gain more ability increases and thus have higher stats once leveled up. That combined with the lesser need to boost a single stat means a fighter will always come out ahead.
Also a fighter can get expertise warfare without spending a feat on it, so they can both have expertise in warfare and in an important skill for their domain while spending all their ability ups at increasing warfare related stats.
A caster trying to keep up as a general might be almost as good as the fighter, but he will have paid with his ability to effectively run his domain.
The caster would also need to have somewhere between 4 and 10 more in con to keep up with the fighter in hp and stay as survivable in combats.
In conclusion: I don't get your point.
16: well, the more units you have the worse your drm will get anyways, so it is substituting one penalty for another. And the effect of rolling lower is you do less damage, the effect of lower tables is that you do less damage. And it is counter intuitive for me that a larger army is more likely to run away. Another way of limiting would be to require more commanders to aid in larger armies, but that is just adding bookkeeping as it will surely result in more commanders rather than smaller armies. The more I think of it I am convincing myself that higher rate of mortality will reduce the overall size of armies as large scale battles will become unsustainable. (As in basing damage on hits of a unit rather than number of units.)
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Post by Linde (x-GM) on Jun 11, 2016 23:26:09 GMT
Or maybe rather than punishing casters, allow spending RP's to boost some form of warfare capability, since casters that casts are starved of RP while regents who don't spend as much RP can use it in warfare much more liberally. This could be a rally of your forces healing your army of a little morale damage during a battle( would be a preplanned trigger tough), or spending RP to modifying a warfare dice roll by 1, or inspiring an army to force march moving further in a WM I see no need to punish casters, neither by reducing their base stats, nor by requiring them to spend additional expendable resources on being generals
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Post by Maelgwyn ap Cadwgan (TOG) on Jun 12, 2016 19:25:22 GMT
7 Sounds good.
16 What actually happens when there are more than two seperate armies opposing eachother in this system? With for instance allied armies under different commanders. Say a hard cap is in place and Caerleon, Mercia and TOG each show up with their army to fight Lothia on a field. Will you have a 1 v 3 battle where the 3 have seperate morale tracks?
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Post by Linde (x-GM) on Jun 13, 2016 23:59:10 GMT
16: I was just thinking out loud. The more I think of it a cap on army size isn't needed. Instead I think higher mortality will work to limit the size of armies. (I may yet be proven wrong)
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Post by Aethor of Helna (ST) on Jun 14, 2016 0:12:07 GMT
16: I was just thinking out loud. The more I think of it a cap on army size isn't needed. Instead I think higher mortality will work to limit the size of armies. (I may yet be proven wrong) Is there currently a way for a general to limit the size of the field of battle?
e.g. could a skilled general take a group of 5 outriders and face an overwhelming army of 30 militia, and limit the field of battle to 5v5?
I believe the original rules allow for it.
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Post by Linde (x-GM) on Jun 14, 2016 0:33:51 GMT
Only if the other side failed their wage war action.
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