Quote Originally Posted by Tristan de Castelreng View Post
As to the second part, that is how I read the rules at first but Zim seemed to consider that the hand-over should be handled at the next council session and that until that time the province belonged to the conquering noble. Then it was either ratified and went to the King or became the start of a civil war, or was handed back to its rightful owner through lack of ratification.
OK, my bad. Re-reading the rules, I can see Zim's interpretation.

Also, the way the sally situation was played (regardless of Staufen's ownership) is that I don't think we should allow the players to play battles initiated by captain-led stacks even if their avatars are brought in as reinforcements.
I guess we need Zim's ruling on this, as I think the rules are ambiguous on this at present. In fact, now I can't even find in the rules how we decide which player fights the battle. I think we discussed it just before the game and agreed it was who the computer said commanded. That is fine for single stack battles, but leads to ambiguities in cases such as the now reversed Staufen sally. I agree there is a lot to be said for autoresolving Captain initiated attacks. We did not do that in KotR, but on reflection the main use of Captain initiated attacks seems to be exploit the weak (broken?) AI when facing a sally or to get around restrictions on historical army composition etc.

Factionheir got lots of credit for his use of cavalry without anyone questioning how he achieved such outstanding results, so I find these "accusations" (for lack of a better word) a bit bitter to swallow...

Though some may argue it is just a question of "when" rather than "how"...

And about difficulty, the exact reason why I'm fighting the way I do is to do just that : give myself some challenge that I would not have with a full stack under my command... It is only my avatar I'm putting at risk there, or mostly...
Sorry for opening a can of worms with my question about cavalry tactics. I was not making an accusation, just trying to understand the game mechanics. I never understood how Factionheir got the results he did with his cavalry (although until this PBM, it has never entered my mind to try to defeat whole armies with just one BG), so I was curious. I can understand withdrawing and re-charging to get the charge bonus. That just sounds like sound tactics. But is there something special about withdrawing on the moment of impact? Is it just a matter of min-maxing - allowing you to get one big hit on the spears and giving them at best only a little chance to hit back weakly at you? If that's all there is too it, it does not seem too much of an exploit, although I doubt in real life cavalry would be so precise.

I have a couple of follow up questions on game mechanics players might help me with:

(1) I always thought there were "reverse impact" casualties on charging cavalry (at least attacking spears frontally) - ie that cavalry lose extra men at the moment of impact. Is that people's experience too? Or is it just my imagination? If it you do lose cavalry on impact, surely that would raise the cost of repeatedly charging and withdrawing? Even if it were true, I guess the 2HPs of the BGs insulate you from that to some extent.

(2) I always thought braced spears negated the charge bonus of cavalry attacking them frontally. Is that true? If it is true, I can't see the charge and withdraw tactic having any benefit if applied frontally against them. If so, I guess FH and Tristan etc just avoid charging braced spears frontally. Or maybe it was only true in the older games (STW, MTW)?

Looking at the battle reports, my eyebrows do rise at seeing the King repeatedly leaving a decent army behind him to go and fight alone at 1-10 odds. It might be challenging for you, but it seems odd in character and out of character just brings home the feebleness of the AI. However, you can take that with a pinch of salt. I guess Philippe is just a bad ass (I have read historical accounts of a few knights defeating much larger numbers of foot). Players are free to play in the style they wish to. If we start telling each other what to do OOC, we will stop having fun. If I get a chance tonight, I may try out your tactics against the German remnants you mentioned in Flanders.