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Army of Liberty: a Fantasy Revolutionary Warfare Quest
- Thread starter Photomajig
- Start date
- Fantasy Historic
- Location
- Derna
It's a clever thought but I'm not interested in doing the cavalry-blocking move. Besides it feeling weird and really kind of cheesy, using our cavalry for blocking instead of capturing would drag the retreat out for…I'm not sure how long? At least one extra turn, maybe more than that. Von T's army is already functionally destroyed and we already have our decisive victory, I don't really want to spend extra real-life time pinning down every unit of Trained chaff.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
I do not believe that this would drag out the turn more.
The rules state that routed units that cannot retreat surrender and im pretty sure that we can rout all the units left on the field even with only one cavalry.
So doing the cavalry blocking move wouldnt take more time.
If it does then yeah, you cant catch all of the infantry literally this turn and both my cavalry line and the prior proposal to capture all visible units don't work for you, they both rely on surrenders to not take another turn
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Chimeraguard
We do deserve to exist.
Yeah, let's not do any funny business and just play normally.
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- They/Them
Intentionally not capturing enemies and allowing the enemy to get off with meaningfully lower losses just because we, "Don't want to play unfair" is annoying because, like, we're going to be facing all of these mofos again! If you'd like to suggest an extra resource we get from going out of our way to do worse just to save a turn of action, leaving multiple enemies to escape, then... do so? But I'm not seeing it.
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- They/Them
Also... how is cavalry blocking "funny business"? Like, in a moment where the enemy doesn't have cavalry available and you do, that's absolutely the time when you SHOULD be able to run people down and create an absolute slaughter of things. Now, realistically the "Scatter" thing would be more likely than full-on captures, but we don't have that mechanism (yet, at least.)
E:
Hmm, vague thoughts for a "Scatter" mechanism.
We make it harder to capture units, not sure how.
But in exchange, we create "Scatter." It can only be used when it's in the "routing/retreat" phase of the combat, and only against enemy units that are routing.
Basically, it's an attack that deals 10% or 100 or something casualties on top of whatever it rolls for it, then the unit dissolves. As in, it doesn't leave the battlefield, it disappears. Some percentage based on things like Leader Unit traits or Army Drill or etc of that number then disappear after the battle, and casualty recovery is basically nonexistent for the unit... however, barring a complete collapse of an entirely unready unit in a shit-tier army, some fraction of a shell of a unit will go back with the army. So a routing Infantry with 900 people left gets hit, is reduced down to 750, is in a good army so maybe the losses post-Scatter are low, just a hundred or two, and then that remnant eventually limps away after reforming off-screen or etc, etc.
But that'd leave an enemy literally at half-strength. Which then has weight for us going, "Yeah, we fucked 'em."
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- Location
- Derna
Run people down and create an absolute slaughter is one thing, guarantee the capture of the entire enemy army is another.
Like, if we're talking realism-wise, a couple hundred cavalrymen simply isn't enough mass to stop thousands of retreating troops. Hitting retreating formations and cutting troops down definitely, cutting off some units and forcing them to surrender sure, but a squadron of cavalry herding a whole army, sitting on a road and telling more than 10x their own number that they can't pass? I just can't see it. Even if they're not in fighting shape you'd expect the sheer inertia of that many retreating men to be able to move past an obstacle that weak.
And mechanically I can't see this kind of maneuver being something anybody really wants. Even if von T had unrouted troops breaking those kinds of cavalry blockades would be very difficult thanks to momentum. Is that really how we want the average battle to end - the winning side having a couple cavalry units somewhere on the map allows them to capture every single infantryman in the retreating army, almost without fail?
Its true that we don't want to fight this army again, both like, in a tactical/strategic sense and also as players who like seeing new threats and new situations and such, but I feel like that can already be handled well enough by morale cratering to 0, desertion casualties and such. The Army of the Centre is going to be incapable of anything but the rearmost of rear echelon duties for a good while.
We've achieved functional destruction of the army's ability to fight. Achieving total, actual destruction of the army after such a back-and-forth battle because 10,000 troops have no answer for 1,000 cavalry thinly spread across an arbitrary map line would just feel game-shatteringly absurd to me.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ok, I made one last edit tweak.
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- They/Them
It seems pretty straightforward to say that they do have the mass to herd them, because horses are honestly kinda scary. I mean, horses are afraid of us as we are of them, but still.
Neither "herding" nor "Scattering" are actually things we can do, even though both seem liable to be a thing. If a cavalry charges you and routs you badly in the middle of a blowout, you're probably going to be fleeing in the OTHER direction rather than cleverly trying to go by them.
E: Because to be clear, the way things are right now the VAST majority of the casualties inflicted will be during the battle and not in the aftermath, even with capturing the 17th. That... doesn't feel particularly realistic?
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- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
The strategy of having the cavalry line doesn't actually significantly change the amount of stuff we capture.
The cavalry line simply guarantees that we capture unseen enemies like the 31st.
My normal plan where we just rout and capture all visible enemies is weaker only in that it has to make a decision where it has to let one unit of trained infantry escape for each unseen unit we want to try capture.
Except tbh trying these captures is just the line manoeuvre again, cause covering the far west and east is super excessive, you can just have two cavalry in the plains west of the roads and they'll naturally form a line that's pretty much identical to the full on line in effext.
Also generally it's not that lopsided, it's more like 300-500 cavalrykin telling 800-1000 infantrykin not to go past.
I don't think Von Trotha has 10.000 kin left on the battlefield.
But also yeah, something like a scatter mechanic would be great so you can run units down for big rout damage but also not just capture half the enemy army.
Tbh I really would like to know how irl armies without cavalry managed to flee from armies with cavalry, it seems super hard
The cavalry line simply guarantees that we capture unseen enemies like the 31st.
My normal plan where we just rout and capture all visible enemies is weaker only in that it has to make a decision where it has to let one unit of trained infantry escape for each unseen unit we want to try capture.
Except tbh trying these captures is just the line manoeuvre again, cause covering the far west and east is super excessive, you can just have two cavalry in the plains west of the roads and they'll naturally form a line that's pretty much identical to the full on line in effext.
Also generally it's not that lopsided, it's more like 300-500 cavalrykin telling 800-1000 infantrykin not to go past.
I don't think Von Trotha has 10.000 kin left on the battlefield.
But also yeah, something like a scatter mechanic would be great so you can run units down for big rout damage but also not just capture half the enemy army.
Tbh I really would like to know how irl armies without cavalry managed to flee from armies with cavalry, it seems super hard
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
The other way around, from it being a mechanism that winning armies do, is to have "Scatter" be a, "Give up/button" that turns the attacks on the next turn into super-effective but then dissolves the formation/escapes. Sorta, like, "I'll take my lumps, because the alternative is even worse" or something?
Narratively that wouldn't entirely be sensible, in that nobody DECIDES to scatter per se, but mechanically it'd be reasonably eloquent, and you can create conditions to keep every single enemy unit from escaping[1], or have unit-based differences: artillery always lose their pieces when they scatter, Cavalry take fewer losses when scattering because they're fucking cavalry, that sort of thing.
Or even have rolls for 'extra losses', IE an infantry unit has to roll to see if something happens to their commander (wounded/dead/deserted (if they have a shit trait), or if they throw down enough of their arms to create a "unit" of recovered weapons.
[1] Not sure what they are, but they could exist.
Narratively that wouldn't entirely be sensible, in that nobody DECIDES to scatter per se, but mechanically it'd be reasonably eloquent, and you can create conditions to keep every single enemy unit from escaping[1], or have unit-based differences: artillery always lose their pieces when they scatter, Cavalry take fewer losses when scattering because they're fucking cavalry, that sort of thing.
Or even have rolls for 'extra losses', IE an infantry unit has to roll to see if something happens to their commander (wounded/dead/deserted (if they have a shit trait), or if they throw down enough of their arms to create a "unit" of recovered weapons.
[1] Not sure what they are, but they could exist.
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Chimeraguard
We do deserve to exist.
From what I recall, cavalry, unless you had exceptionally disciplined cavalry, were often fire-and-forget weapons where you had them charge and they basically became uncontrollable afterwards as they chased after whatever other units they put to flight initially or went to loot the enemy baggage train. So the victor might not actually have cavalry in a state where they can launch an organized pusuit properly if they haven't specifically kept cavalry back for that purpose.
A retreating army was also often retreating over familiar, friendly territory, which would give pursuers good reason to be cautious.
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That said, I don't think it's unrealistic per se that a huge number of casualties in battles of the era came during a retreat.
Often you can have a situation where the actual battle had roughly equal losses on both sides up until the collapse, and then after that the matter swings massively in favor of the winning side as the enemy army basically dissolves and collapses.
Often you can have a situation where the actual battle had roughly equal losses on both sides up until the collapse, and then after that the matter swings massively in favor of the winning side as the enemy army basically dissolves and collapses.
Chimeraguard
We do deserve to exist.
The thing is that most battles in this era weren't like that from what I can tell. Armies didn't seem to be able to maintain the cohesion necessary to launch an organized pursuit of a defeated enemy. There's battles with like, 3-4k dead or wounded on each side and then something like 300 people, total, captured.
I mean, yes. But one army taking thousands of prisoners is not really what was happening, right?
I do agree with the idea that this dissolution of the enemy army would better be modeled by a mechanic in which units on the losing side shatter and are lost, but not captured. I'd imagine this is pretty much what often ended up happening: once the retreat becomes a Rout, it is every Kin for themselves and the organized Units dissolve into thousands of panicked individuals. Capturing thousands of fleeing individuals who are not listening to orders is likely to be impossible, even with cavalry.
In game mechanics, this would cause the Unit to cease to exist completely, with a certain portion of it's strength eventually ending up in the retreating army's recruitment pool, possibly with some discounts to recruitment cost. Equipment is lost, and the CO is either lost as well or maybe risks ending up with a negative trait if recovered.
Note that this would put the enemy army out of play conpletely in the short term, since they would have to reconstitute and retrain lost units from scratch. How punishing this is in the long term would depend on how many of the lost Kin would end up in the recruitment pool, and how quickly. This could heavily depend on campaign factors, with large penalties for Units that were Shattered deep in enemy territory.
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From what I can tell, and maybe I'm wrong, the dead and wounded did tend to pile up at the end... which is to be fair at least partially captured by the "momentum" system, which can very much be a "win harder" system.
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- He/Him
Oh hey, this is up in Lore! Poor Fantasy Combo Belgium-Netherlands. You never had to deal with Fantasy!Spain domination, but have to deal with being a pawn in the English-French-Prussian counterpart's fight for hegemony in its place.
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Like, frankly even if we're not capturing every unit out of a belief that this is wrong because it feels a bit cheaty, I don't really believe that there's any way we can't find a plan that at least gets some more damage onto the routing enemies and causing disarray among those who haven't yet fled.
...also it's *possible* that the HQ hasn't left the premises yet, though I doubt we're gonna capture the General.
...also it's *possible* that the HQ hasn't left the premises yet, though I doubt we're gonna capture the General.
Chimeraguard
We do deserve to exist.
Frankly I just want to prioritize killing the artillery and that last regiment of Human Infantry with a good CO. I don't really care enough about going after shitty provincial infantry who don't have have good quality COs to make it worthwhile until we've done literally everything else.
That artillery represents a lot of Influence we could gain, which we can rapidly turn into experienced recruits that we can make into regiments (particularly infantry regiments, we could really use a bunch more to form a proper line.)
That artillery represents a lot of Influence we could gain, which we can rapidly turn into experienced recruits that we can make into regiments (particularly infantry regiments, we could really use a bunch more to form a proper line.)
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
I dont really know how i can do better to explain our possibilites except actually make the plan i guess. Discussing about focusing on the artillery is senseless.
If you think the cavalry wall is good, its trivial to make a plan capturing all units currently present on the map.
If you dont think we should do it, i have illustrated how we capture all enemy artillery already, you can just switch guillorys hussars from chasing infantry in the northeast to chasing the 31st or change the 55th from chasing the HQ to chasing the 31st.
If you think the cavalry wall is good, its trivial to make a plan capturing all units currently present on the map.
If you dont think we should do it, i have illustrated how we capture all enemy artillery already, you can just switch guillorys hussars from chasing infantry in the northeast to chasing the 31st or change the 55th from chasing the HQ to chasing the 31st.
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Like, again, this would be a well and fine point if it was a choice, if there really was a way that the artillery could get away if we closed in on them. Except, barring the Horse Artillery, I don't think they can get away. If they begin retreating after this coming turn, it would be with our entire army bearing down on them and having already suffered several charges/attacks just from the cavalry units down south.
- Location
- Derna
For the record I'm not opposed to capturing more infantry or HQ hunting or things of that sort. Perfectly happy to go after the 20th or the 74th or some unspotted unit. I just really dislike the cavalry edge-blocking maneuver and would rather avoid it.
Like, ~2000 dead/wounded ~3000 captured, dozens of guns lost is disastrous but very believable. Those're like, Austerlitz numbers. Entire army captured to a man (except cavalry) without terrain features blocking retreat or encirclement by another force or weather or some other special circumstance - much harder for me, feels like an exploit instead of a deserved victory.
edit: kind of sad we can't use the lancers to HQ hunt, Bonnaire's streak will end
Like, ~2000 dead/wounded ~3000 captured, dozens of guns lost is disastrous but very believable. Those're like, Austerlitz numbers. Entire army captured to a man (except cavalry) without terrain features blocking retreat or encirclement by another force or weather or some other special circumstance - much harder for me, feels like an exploit instead of a deserved victory.
edit: kind of sad we can't use the lancers to HQ hunt, Bonnaire's streak will end
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- They/Them
Do you think a written version of the "Little Dark Age" trailer for this Quest would start at the very beginning, or at the 'grenade' and resignation and then work their way backwards and forward?
Or is there not enough to work on yet, you think?
Or is there not enough to work on yet, you think?
- Location
- United States
Have we had word from the QM on if cavalry can block the return of the entire enemy army?