A Structured Review of Art de la Guerre after 4 identical battles

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Yes, important considerations when designing a game.  Still we have seen some serious evolution of ADLG (and DBx) in the name of simulation over the years. I always look forward to new ideas…perfection is a direction, not a destination! The pendulum between playability vs simulation always swings.

[Ethelred the Almost Ready]

I always find the maniple/formation or pip Talk exhausting. It would be even hard for a pc game to accurately simulate all these things. I think the main problem is the lagacy the old tt left. To be accurate, to be a simulation. I think sometimes is abstraction key to generate a great game. You can take a look at many classic board games (Chess, Ur, Go, Backgammon, Mancala games).
For me I stopped caring about historical correct ancient battles, because it’s often hard to say what’s historical correct. Paint and build your armies historical correct (hard enough in for a ancient TT gamer, not like Napo) and find a game that suits you.
Adlg is a competition  game, a successor to dbmm and fog, not a hardcore simulation. And I think it has a good flow, with a nice feel for that use/setting. If you read madaxemans reports it shows, feels like the successor to Lorenzo’s dbmm reports over from TAGMATA.


@Leftblank: nice idea, I’m exited to follow your journey.

Do the ends justify the means?
When I started gaming I was playing Napoleonic games.  I loved the history and initially the games were something of an academic exercise.  But trying to faithfully replicate small tactics and lower levels of command often add little to the game and often throw up anomalies that are not in any way historical.  Sensible abstraction can give a "feel" for the period and lead to "realistic" results.  Although I have not played it, I have been impressed with some of the game reports for Fortitude and Valour.  Very simplified and abstracted rules, but seem to give a very good game.

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

But trying to faithfully replicate small tactics and lower levels of command often add little to the game and often throw up anomalies that are not in any way historical.  Sensible abstraction can give a "feel" for the period and lead to "realistic" results.

Just as often abstractions and choices to not replicate small tactics distort the simulation and most importantly penalizes a player who tries to use historical tactics.  Hence my gripe about too strong a penalty for deploying a close order group with two or more ranks.  Historically,  these sort of formations were very common, used for good reasons, and using deploying in deep depth in close order formations only fell away when gunpowder artillery rendered them too dangerous to maintain.

A gamer with a bit of historical knowledge but a novice to ADLG‘s nuances can easily find himself into lots of trouble and perhaps even write off the game system.  If ADLG wishes to grow its community beyond just specialists in the game, this might help a little.

[madaxeman]

In ADLG, a Heavy Infantry vs Heavy Infantry battle where one side deploys as you suggest, at double-depth (2 bases deep, touching one another) and the other is only one rank of bases deep, the side that’s 2 deep will:

- have 75% more “hit points” (aka resilience, ability to take punishment, absorb casualties) in each unit-on-unit fight.  OK, it’s not 100% more because of that “rout-through” mechanic but 75% is a pretty hefty advantage..,
- will almost never have units who are overlapped by the enemy
- will almost never (even more rarely) have the enemy break through their formation, allowing them to turn into a flank and start to roll them up.

All of those things come from being double-depth, and in combination they would prove utterly decisive except in maybe the most extreme dice roll scenario imaginable.

There’s loads of abstractions in ADLG, and it - and indeed all DBx-derived game systems - have lots of things that some gamers don’t like, but the effectiveness of extra-deep formations and their ability to grind down an otherwise similarly equipped opponent isn’t really one of them IMO.

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

If we get  the cohesion hit, does that mean that the double line with it’s the tactical advantages as you outlined above  still worth having half the frontage in the command, with the 25% reduction in the second line’s endurance?  You now have potentially a whole lot more uncovered space on the far flanks or gaps between commands where your opponent can waltz past on the way to the camp with his light troops. In a game, I just don’t see the double line being very viable a tactic. Particularly when that 25% reduction in cohesion points also means that “fresh” line is already taking the equivalent effect of the overlap that you were trying to avoid with the tactic in the first place—your combat die still gets the  -1 on your die for the cohesion hit, which is a big deal in this game.  It may look scary but using the double line in AdLG will probably lose more games than it saves. What do you think?

[madaxeman]

If you choose to set up in a way which gives up your camp and both flanks to the enemy, that will I absolutely agree be a significant problem .. but that’s hardly an ADlG issue, it will be a big problem in any set of rules …or indeed real life too I imagine!

Even the Thebans at Leuctra (surely the textbook example of a deep formation tactic) managed to “go deep” in one part of the line where they wanted to smash through while also matching the enemy for width and delaying combat where they were weaker.

Stacking your best troops, or throwing greater numbers of troops than the enemy has in successive waves, at one point in your line while not giving up your flanks will work most times in most rulesets - provided the enemy plays ball like the Spartans did.

Each ruleset you could name no doubt will have some tactical tweaks to make that general picture more effective in-game, and ADLG is again no different in having its own tweaks (which are that it is generally better to have your 2nd line a little separated from the front line) - but the big picture stuff should always be the end result. Power through in one spot, delay elsewhere, don’t get outflanked.