KOTF OOC Thread

[Ignoramus]

OverKnight: You'll have to undo that sally. Armies led by non-avatars have to be auto-resolved.

[OverKnight]

Hugues and his army were in the battle as reinforcements. I initiated the attack from Staufen to have the castle as the battle site.

If this is a problem, I can fall back to the last save.

Edit: I fought in a similar fashion relieving Adana in KotR.

[Ignoramus]

Mea culpa. I just saw the screenshot of the battle results in the Seneschal's thread, and it only list the Captain, not Hugues.

[_Tristan_]

There's still a problem with that battle but we can keep it all IC : OK initiate the battle with units from Staufen which belongs to the King's demesne and Philippe's SOT proscribes such usage of his units ("do not move").

But as I said all this can be solved IC... I see no true rules violation here, only a non-respect of Philippe's SOT

[OverKnight]

@ Igno: No worries, this is a grey area. If I wasn't facing horrible odds, I probably wouldn't have done it.

Edit:

There's still a problem with that battle but we can keep it all IC : OK initiate the battle with units from Staufen which belongs to the King's demesne and Philippe's SOT proscribes such usage of his units ("do not move").

But as I said all this can be solved IC... I see no true rules violation here, only a non-respect of Philippe's SOT

Ummm, they were going to die anyway? I hadn't even thought of that.

Bad vassal, no biscuit.

[Zim]

Staufen hasn't been the object of any edicts for conquest, has it? So while it awaits ratification any troops in it would belong to Hugues.

[OverKnight]

Unfortunately, having reviewed the rules, if this is true, there's not supposed to be any recruitment at an "unsanctioned" settlement before its ratification. The peasant archers of the garrison were recruited at Staufen.

So, either I've violated Tristan's SoT post, or I used an illegally recruited unit in the battle. I asked AG IC to recruit the unit so Staufen wouldn't be steam rolled and to slow the Germans. So if it hadn't been recruited, and the rule followed, Staufen would have fallen on the previous AI turn.

My brain hurts.


Edit:
The relevant passage:

(b). - Gaining and Losing Provinces: All conquered provinces must be ratified by an edict, which can be passed at the session before the conquest or be applied retroactively at the first session after. If a province is not ratified in this manner by the end of the very next session after it was made, it must be given away or abandoned. While a province is not ratified taxes must be set to the highest level possible and no recruitment can be made in that settlement. Any province conquered and ratified becomes part of the King's Demesne. At the time of conquest, the conquering noble can refuse to hand the province over to the King, but this puts him in a state of Civil War with the King. The King can be prevented from giving any province in the Demesne to another Noble by a two-thirds majority vote of the Council.

[_Tristan_]

OK, from my point of view, you're right in saying that the unit has been illegally recruited, though Staufen belongs to you.

So in fact Staufen should have fallen... This can still be corrected if we go back to the previous save and if we provoke a sally which results in a defeat...

I'll take Staufen out of my SOT...

[OverKnight]

So Staufen belongs to me, but it fell a turn ago?

Yay?

Let's see what Zim has to say. For now I've put spoiler tags around my Conseil comment after the battle since it may not have happened.

[AussieGiant]

I certainly realised that Staufen should not have had any troops recruited in it.

Ramses, called me on it and I said he can take it IC and we could thrash it out. I have a pretty good IC case to present. Subsequently that is as far as it went.

Now, having one of us play a battle where a non-avatar was leading, seems like bending our rule set to allow us to yet again thrash the AI.

I don't agree with that.

The last thing we need right now is to begin "greying" up things which then allow us to exploit our ability to reach incredible results on the battle field.

I mean it's about 20 to 1 casualty rates to date, which is why I'm also a little dubious with Tristan explaining how he charges head on into set spear units and wins causing total destruction.

I didn't make any further comment before after making my initial comment, but, are we trying to make this difficult for ourselves or not?

Because our actions seem inconsistent if we are in fact trying to make it difficult for ourselves. Of course it needs to be determined IF that is our aim.

If Tristan has the ability to use the "pause" button to effect this tactic so precisely, then my question would be.

If you were not to use the "pause" button, would you still engage in this tactic?

This is a moral debate and it's in good faith from me to simply ask questions which relate to what we are "about" in this game.

Are we power gaming? Are we getting too competitive amongst ourselves, are we trying to give the AI a fighting chance? Because if the AI presents absolutely no threat, at all, we might have some long term issues.

It goes towards playing ahead with the save as well. Are we doing this?

So, this should be interesting.

[OverKnight]

Yurgh. . .good points.

Well, let's revert to the last save then. I'm not going to argue since it turns out I'm on dubious ground to begin with.

I apologize for the inconvenience and for holding up the game.

AG, when you take the real save, could you move Hugues to the Moselle ford, the one south of Metz?

Edit: Zim still has the save, FYI.

[_Tristan_]

To refer to my use of the "pause" button, I use it somply because I'm no computer... I cannot compute in real time and click and I'm not the only one that is using the option seeing some of the screenshots in the battle reports thread...

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...

And I think I've done everything I could to up the difficulty by slowing recruitment (Edict 1.1) or declaring war at the worst of times against one of te most powerful factions of the game...

[AussieGiant]

Hi Tristan,

I asked point blank how FH got his results. He never told me.

I think he realised I would have asked him why he finds it necessary to use a pause function to micro manage something that is certainly not a design of the game.

At least I'd like to get that out of the way.

I guess we will agree to disagree, I use the pause button because you are correct, I need to co-ordinate my units and it gets too hectic on many occasions.

What I do not do, is use it to achieve results that can only be accomplished by using it.

If you can pull if off not using the pause button then all power to you, but that would be much harder proposition I would assume as it requires the pause button to achieve.

If you could do it without using the pause button then it would draw massive amounts of your attention away from a full stack battle to achieve this...which would probably lead to other issues with the rest of the battle. This could be seen as an acceptable consequence of trying to achieve such results with cavalry.

So I am genuinely curious, can you do this without using the pause button? And what do you think your odds would be with, or without using the pause function as a comparison?

[_Tristan_]

I can do it without using the pause button and in fact do most times... It frankly depends on where the camera is pointing at the moment of the shock.

If it is placed behind the victims of the charge and I can send the charging unit right back, I won't use Pause... But if I have to turn the camera around to face an unoccupied section of the battlefield, then I'll use Pause...

I should never have answered Econ's question and explained how I did it... Being Frank doesn't pay...(pardon the pun)

[Zim]

Looks like Staufen should have fallen. Perhaps from an IC perspective we could pretend that peasant archers were recruited, but as the settlement had not been in French hands long they were disloyal and opened the gates...

[econ21]

I think the rules are pretty clear that a player can fight a battle started by a captain; the player just has to be "involved" rather than initiate the attack:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

(c). - Battles: A player whose avatar leads an army that is involved in a battle will be expected to fight that battle. This will involve downloading the savegame of the battle, playing it and then uploading the resulting savegame. Uploading the post-battle save must be done within 48 hours of the pre-battle savegame being uploaded. If the deadline expires, the battle is autoresolved. If a player cannot fight a battle that is assigned to them, the battle may also be fought by any player whose avatar will also be present in the battle. Under no circumstances will a battle be fought by a player whose avatar is not present in the battle. If there is no player available to fight a battle, it must be autoresolved. If there are no allocated avatars involved in the battle at all, it must be autoresolved.

However, they are also pretty clear that we cannot recruit in provinces that are not ratified:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

(b). - Gaining and Losing Provinces: All conquered provinces must be ratified by an edict, which can be passed at the session before the conquest or be applied retroactively at the first session after. If a province is not ratified in this manner by the end of the very next session after it was made, it must be given away or abandoned. While a province is not ratified taxes must be set to the highest level possible and no recruitment can be made in that settlement. Any province conquered and ratified becomes part of the King's Demesne. At the time of conquest, the conquering noble can refuse to hand the province over to the King, but this puts him in a state of Civil War with the King. The King can be prevented from giving any province in the Demesne to another Noble by a two-thirds majority vote of the Council.

Conquered rebel provinces can be regarded as ratified, but not German. I think this rule was supposed to represent "physics" rather than "politics" and to slow us down vs the AI. So I am not sure we should "play on" and deal with it in character. Staufen seems to be a prime case of where we are really stretching things to rush the AI - not even properly defending our conquests - so us taking a hit seems justified. I vote we back up before OKs move and delete the archer recruit.

BTW, I think by the rules Staufen is the King's unless OK refused to hand it over at the time of conquest. The timing matters here - we debated it and although there was disagreement, I think the rules as written reflect the onus on a "rebel" noble to come out and openly defy the King at the time of conquest rather play a waiting game.

[_Tristan_]

I vote we back up before OKs move and delete the archer recruit.

BTW, I think by the rules Staufen is the King's unless OK refused to hand it over at the time of conquest. The timing matters here - we debated it and although there was disagreement, I think the rules as written reflect the onus on a "rebel" noble to come out and openly defy the King at the time of conquest rather play a waiting game.

The first part is hardly doable as it would mean going back to the final save of 1092 and have most of us re-do our moves, including Ramses' fight against Mandorf (which would be shame, with those cool pics). Better to move Ok back and make a sally with the Staufen garrison, sally which is doomed to fail on auto-resolve thus handing Staufen on a platter to te Germans.


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.

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. Let them initiate those battles... Different from when an avatar is brought in as reinforcement through an AI assault on a captain-led stack... Then we should (and we did) allow for the avatar to play the battle...

[AussieGiant]

I agree with Tristan's points in his post above.

I realise now I should have not recruited at all, which means there would have been no siege for the Germans to conduct. Tristan's solution is the best "current" save solution.

The land allocation is also how I've been reading it and dealing with construction and recruitment, except of course Staufen.

I'd prefer us to have the player avatar lead the attack, therefore limiting us in some fashion.

@ Tristan, I am glad you were frank about the situation.

I might not agree with it, but certainly confirming you can pull if off without the pause button on occasion makes things a little more palatable.

I'd just prefer you didn't use the pause button at all to conduct this tactic.

-EDIT-

I wont get to the save until Friday early evening Swiss time so there will be some time for reorganising the save for everyone.

[Vladimir]

While I think the charge trick is neat it seems like we're getting a bit gamey. Is this the norm because Vladimir loves the ballista sally.

[AussieGiant]

While I think the charge trick is neat it seems like we're getting a bit gamey. Is this the norm because Vladimir loves the ballista sally.

wtf is the ballista sally?

[_Tristan_]

You don't want to know...

Some things are better left unsaid...

[AussieGiant]

You don't want to know...

Some things are better left unsaid...

I certainly have that thought flittering through my head Tristan

I'd say the description would lead to statements I made regarding playing ahead with the save as well.

Still I have the ability to "know", and not use.

[Ituralde]

Having our sallying forces die seems to be the right decision at this junction. It's a learning process and nobody was hurt, so that should be the smoothest solution.

Concerning the gamey debate. I'd put my own position as leaning towards AG. I'm glad we haven't seen any single character take down entire cities as happened way too often for my taste in LotR, so I'm happy with that. Then again I don't mind people fighting the AI the best way they know how. There's a certain risk involved in Tristans tactic for example, and also a certain amount of skill. I'm sure I'd get my general slaugthered in no time that way. To each his own as long as it doesn't end up too lopsided it's fine by me.

And if the AI is no challenge there's always Civil War too!

[econ21]

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.

[_Tristan_]

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.

Exactly... That's how I see it works... Been doing it since Methodios' times and with success...
You'll notice that my BG unit generally doesn't leave the field unscathed, nor does Philippe (who is two steps up the scars trait line...).

I'll agree that in RL there is no way a charge could be so precise but with so many other things ingame which would be different in RL, I don't think this matters much... Put it down to excellent command

To answer your questions, Econ :

1/ That may be true but differs on experience. Ramses seems to have observed this happening while I didn't notice it. All the casualties, Philippe's BG incurred were due to the withdrawal maneuver or simply remaining too long into the spears.

2/I don't know if spears negate the charge bonus but get a charge into braced spears (not pikes, mind you) and you'll still make a killing. A thing I try to avoid to the best of my abilities, still. I mostly try to get my charges when the spears are reforming or in movement, thus catching them "un-braced"...

As to Philippe going to fight by himself, the first battle was Reims (and was an IC ambush as detailed in the battle report), the second was fighting remnants of the Antwerp siege relief force, a task that Philippe thought was his alone.

I see him as a true warrior-king, intent on preserving the lives of his soldiers and putting his life on the line for that. As for OOC concerns, if you are amazed at my antics, I'm much more amazed by what Ramses or OK are able to accomplish...

Good luck in your German hunting...

[Ramses II CP]

A 'ballista sally' isn't all that bad, really, because anytime you sally against the AI you're abusing. The AI's sally behavior can best be described as: Pull back out of tower range, form up, and wait. Respond only to massive casualties or the loss of all ranged troops. It's the nature of the game that if you sally you are taking advantage of bad AI and you simply can't help it.

It's called a ballista (Or catapult, or any extra long range troops, or cannon towers) sally because if you have a ballista the AI will sit there and let you kill them until you run out of ammo. Cannon towers are, IMHO, a horrific exploit of the AI under almost all circumstances and we should GA to never build them and sell them when we capture them at settlements. I sallied out of a cannon tower city in KotR, towers built by the Danish AI IIRC, and I abandoned the walls as fast as possible specifically so I could avoid the cannon tower abuse.

I do use pause, but if there were a way to turn it off for all players I would be okay with that. It would definitely change the way I approach battles involving more than 5 companies on each side, because when you get that large you can't manage all those men in the spread out manner necessary to correctly manipulate the AI for heavy cavalry charges. When I can get the Marseille battle posted you'll see what I mean.

Unfortunately, with replays working inconsistently, if we take out pause it will be difficult to get good screenshots for battle reports. I'm kinda okay with that, although I do love reading them, because it's about playing the game first, right? I remember some of FH's battles, and (IMHO) FH was a master of manipulating AI morale. If you understand exactly the factors involved in a unit's morale equation you can probably cause it to rout almost before it has a chance to kill any of your men. The AI does little or nothing to 'protect' it's morale situation.

As far as Staufen, I did call AG 'in character' on it, but I saw it more as leverage and less as a rules violation. Staufen belongs to the King, and I presumed if the King ordered something done there that it was okay to do it... but I'm not the rules expert. I thought prioritized recruitment had to go ahead of construction, but I can't find that anywhere in the rules either.

[Ramses II CP]

...

(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.

1. If you watch a cavalry charge striking a line of set spears in slow motion you'll see that a certain percentage of the cavalry are unhorsed on impact (They fly right over the horse's head). One of the reasons that other mods, Stainless Steel for example, made heavy cavalry companies smaller is so that this number would have a larger effect. Even 2 HP cavalry (Or more than 2, ala Broken Crescent) suffer this effect, hitpoints are no guard against it. I believe it happens even to generals, although I don't have any direct evidence in screenshots to prove it, but it's pretty simple to avoid losing your general. Make your cavalry line so that your general is lined up to 'wrap' the edge of the spear formation. That way his charge doesn't hit the front of the line and he won't be unhorsed.

2. To the extent of my knowledge this is correct only at the moment of impact, as soon as the formation breaks open, which happens almost instantly, the remaining cavalry complete their charge as normal. The more dense the formation the better it holds form against cavalry. Actually the best way to take a BG's charge, from a player's perspective, is to have to overlapping companies of spears set at an angel (A wide V for 2 companies, or for schiltrom one braced square and two bobs o_o). The charge will only strike one company of spears properly, and as soon as the charge hits you order the second company to engage at will against targets that are still trying to fight their way into the braced spears.

You need to keep in mind that, even with this info, spears do far better against a charge than other infantry. I had two companies of mounted sergeants charge some DFKs at Marseille. They lost 3men and left only 6 of the DFKs behind because the DFKs had effectively no defense. If I had pulled the charge trick off correctly I wouldn't have needed to lose any men, or perhaps just one as they withdrew, but I was watching another part of the battle.

[Cecil XIX]

I think it would be a good idea to keep a list of OOC Rules changes to propose next session. I already mentioned forbidding us from converting castles/cities, and I think we should also forbid any captain-led stacks from initiating battles. I definitely agree with AG's speech on making things hard for us.

I'm actually rather worried about our rate of expansion. In KotR we took three settlements our first ten turns, in LotR it was eleven. So far we stand at nine, but there's still time for another two. It's worrisome.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

I think Captain led stacks could be used against brigands on our lands but not against other factions.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Seconded.

-edit- re: Cecil's post.