The Battle of the Basileis

**GeneralHankerchief** · 04-16-2009, 19:57

General:

The Battle of the Basileis is actually three separate battles, however, as they are all occurring simultaneously I have decided to group them all in this thread for aesthetic purposes. The three individual conflicts are as follows:

The Battle of the Coastal Road:
Helarionas Anargiros (YLC)
vs
Arintheos Voutoumatis (Zim)
Ioannis Komnenos III (Ignoramus)

The Battle of the Rear Guard:
Isaakios Komnenos (flyd)
vs
Ioannis Erotikas (Ramses II CP)

The Battle of Antioch (three way conflict):
Kousinos Sophianos (Cecil XIX)
vs
Andronikos Komnenos (woad&fangs)
Nikitas Moschos (Ituralde)
vs
Ioannis Tagaris (TheFlax)
Vartholomaios Ksiros (Rowan)

The Battle of the Coastal Road and the Battle of Antioch will your standard Throne Room Tabletop PvP battle, umpired by me (with assistance from TinCow) and in the style of previous battles such as Trent, the Iron Bridge, and, specifically in the case of Antioch, Bern. The Battle of the Rear Guard will be fought by flyd and Ramses online in Total War multiplayer, under specific guidelines. They will then report the results back to myself and/or TinCow. As such, much of what is posted here does not apply to them.

Orders and resolution:

Players are to draft concise, in-character orders every turn and send them to me along with a map diagramming their movements. If orders are too complicated they run a risk of confusing the division commander and causing inaction. All divisions, unless being one of the two nearest the commanding general, are subject to an orders test (my rolling the die). 2-6, orders are executed, 1, they are not and the units are inactive for that turn.

To properly simulate medieval combat, orders will be given on a divisional level rather than a regimental one. Refer to the Word document (see below) to see a list of proposed divisions. Division commanders are generally experienced people and know how to execute operations such as wheeling, pivoting, and flanking. If you tell them to flank the left side of the line, they don’t need more information, such has how to do it in detail.

An ideal example of how to give orders is provided below:

Originally Posted by GeneralHankerchief

BILLYBOB'S ORDERS
Infantry: Advance in line with the rest of the army and attack the enemy's infantry in front of you. We outnumber them by one regiment of DFKs so I want them to wrap around and hit them on the flank.

Archers: All fire is to be concentrated on the enemy general unit. If you are charged then fall back to the spearmen.

Spearmen: Guard the archers, but if it becomes apparent that the enemy cavalry is going to make an attack then shadow them and respond as necessary.

Cavalry: Once the enemy flank is engaged then swing around and hit the enemy's rear.

~~~~~~~~~

include the map of course as well.

Should combat arise, either TinCow or I, depending on real-life schedules, will resolve it via playing both sides from a custom battle in M2TW and sending the results to me, where they will be implemented at my discretion. We will be using the custom PvPMod that I mentioned in the Edessa thread that gives Egypt (a dead faction in-game) Byzantine units to make things fairer. All combat, unless it is a large infantry engagement, usually along the main battle line, will only take one turn to resolve. This includes operations that unbalance the line, such as throwing in reserves or a flank/rear attack. Losing units will be removed from the map, and victorious units, if necessary, will face a fractional reduction of their numbers.

Battle structure:

The sides and what turns they may arrive are as follows:

Coastal Road:

Tagarians:

Helarionas Anargios (YLC) - deploys immediately, may withdraw after Turn 2.

Ioannian Komnenians:

Arintheos Voutoumatis (Zim) - deploys immediately, may withdraw after Turn 2.
Ioannis Komnenos III (Ignoramus) - has a chance of reinforcement starting Turn 2, latest possible chance is Turn 4.

Antioch:

Tagarians:

Ioannis Tagaris (TheFlax) or Vartholomaios Ksiros (Rowan)

Andronikian Komnenians:

Andronikos Komnenos (woad&fangs)
Nikitas Moschos (Ituralde)

Kousimos Sophianos/Constantinos Ksanthopoulos (hereby referred to as the former for the duration of the battle):

Kousimos Sophianos (Cecil XIX)

In Antioch, all armies may deploy at the start of the battle.

The turn structure is the standard PvP turn structure with no changes:

Turn 0: Deployments
Turn 1: Early morning
Turn 2: Mid-morning (earliest chance Ioannis Komnenos III has of deploying)
Turn 3: Late morning
Turn 4: Early afternoon (latest possible time Ioannis Komnenos III will deploy)
Turn 5: Mid-afternoon
Turn 6: Late afternoon
Turn 7: Early evening

A night turn and additional day turns will be added as needed.

Antioch errata:

As the Coastal Road is a standard field battle between two sides, no unique features/mechanics are required. However, this is a different story for Antioch, as the fact that it is a city battle between three hostile sides makes things quite complicated.

First of all, Andronikos and Nikitas, being prepared for a city assault, have constructed several engines. Woad and Ituralde must figure out for themselves which regiments (if any) will carry their ladders, battering rams, and siege towers. Please make a little designation on your map by using the letters L for ladders, R for rams, and T for towers and putting them next to the appropriate regiments. You may not exceed three of any siege engine, although you can choose to use less.

Secondly, there is some ambiguity as to who commands the Tagarian forces inside Antioch. While Ioannis Tagaris is the faction leader for the Tagarians, he only got one regiment aside from his own bodyguard out from the Iron Bridge: a unit of archers. On the flip side, Vartholomaios Tagaris answers to his Basileus, but most of the armed defenders of Antioch answer to him. As there aren't enough troops to split up between the two of them, the two commanders must work out who will take direct command of the battle and PM me with their decision. In the case of the designated commander being inactive, the second commander may send in orders for the army, however, the orders test will be made more difficult to pass.

Finally, as this is a three-way battle, there is bound to be some on-the-spot diplomacy and dealmaking. Any commanding general may communicate with an enemy commanding general if there is a free line of communication. Even then, these missives will face the standard orders test:

Roll 1: Communication gets intercepted by the third party.
Roll 2: Communication gets lost.
Roll 3-6: Communication arrives safely.

In summation, if there are soldiers in the way of sending a communication, there is no possible chance of it getting through. If there are none, then the result varies as above. The thing to remember about this is that ALL INTER-ARMY COMMUNICATIONS ARE TO BE SENT TO ME ONLY. DO NOT DIRECTLY PM THE OTHER COMMANDER UNLESS I SPECIFICALLY ALLOW IT. If you don't go through me first and I find out, the penalty will be harsh.

In addition, commanders may want to fake messages as being sent by one of the opposing generals. The same rules apply (although make sure the general you wish to "emulate" has a clear line of communication with the general you send the message to, otherwise the receiver will be pretty suspicious), albeit with a slightly altered orders test:

Roll 1-2: The receiving general's agents recognize it is a fraud.
Roll 3: Communication lost.
Roll 4-6: Communication goes through undetected.

If "opposing" armies are near each other but without orders to attack each other (say, for example, the generals have an agreement with each other), they still stand a 33% of attacking each other without orders. After all, battlefield diplomacy is a very shaky thing and much less reliable than standard diplomacy.

Divisions and deployment:

Attached in the Word Document below is a list of pre-created divisions for every army. You may rearrange these as you see fit, however, there are restrictions as you will see in the document. Mainly it comes down to the amount of divisions every general is allowed to have: Aspiring Basileis command six, everybody else commands five. More divisions, more army flexibility. You will be copy-pasting these regiments directly from the Document onto the map and sending it to me along with your orders for every turn.

Forces:

All forces listed here are tentative and subject to my adjustment. The units pasted in the Word document below are the final ones.

Battle of the Coastal Road:

Helarionas Anargios (YLC):