Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: baboune

Jimmer, the caveat effect of a trivial combat (5:1) was that there was no political points involved.

Good point. I forgot that detail.

ORIGINAL: KenClark
You can't reinforce it anyway usually because at 5:1 on the 5-2 chart you get vapourized very quickly (1 round).

In the method you outlined (army vs. 1-factor corps), yes. But, the same is not true of other sized corps.

For example, we had a battle where Napoleon's main army (at the time, about 90+ factors) tried to stomp a single corps led by Blucher. The Prussian corps had 3 cav factors and nothing else.

However, the Prussian corps WON the battle (assault vs. defend). In fact, he killed more French factors than he had (4 cav) in his lone corps (the french punted twice, and the pursuit wound up being the maximum of 3, plus the one lost in normal combat).

So, it definitely is not always true that the big army will always smash the little one. Yes, in battles against 1-factor screening corps, it normally will (although, there is still the possibility of the attacker getting 0% loss on the first or later rounds). The other thing to remember is that reinforcement could happen after any round of combat. That includes rounds in which one side was defeated (as long as he was not obliterated). (This rule has not been implemented in EIANW, but it certainly would apply to the case you present under the old rules.)

I guess you are partly right as trivial battles the minimum damage is 10% so really you'd need 10:1 to make it a certainty. 

[:D]
3 cav = 3000 men
90 Inf = 180 000 men

Quite an impossible result

ORIGINAL: KenClark

I guess you are partly right as trivial battles the minimum damage is 10% so really you'd need 10:1 to make it a certainty. 

No, 5:1 would still kill A factor. But, 100 to 20 could require two rounds.

ORIGINAL: baboune

[:D]
3 cav = 3000 men
90 Inf = 180 000 men

Quite an impossible result

This is a game, not real life. Lots of impossible things happen in a game. The question is, is it PLAUSIBLE. I submit that it is.

Also, you are not displaying the numbers correctly. 90 I = 90,000 - 180,000 men. 3 C = 3000 - 6000 men. Any reason you chose to use the high range for one, but the low for the other?

60,000 vs 6,000 (not too far from that ratio) has actually happened. So yes, it is indeed plausible. Not likely, but plausible.

None of this really excuses leaving out an important optional like this.

I seemed to remember the original manual stating 2000 for I an M and only 1000 for C and G ...  But I could be wrong.

ORIGINAL: Jimmer

ORIGINAL: baboune

Jimmer, the caveat effect of a trivial combat (5:1) was that there was no political points involved.

Good point. I forgot that detail.

Actually, I'm going to retract this. The point of the 5:1 rule is to save time. It was USED (by some) to allow them nearly unlimited screening capability at no political cost. But, that wasn't the main reason for it.

ORIGINAL: baboune

I seemed to remember the original manual stating 2000 for I an M and only 1000 for C and G ...  But I could be wrong.

1000 - 2000. It was dependent upon the nation, actually, but they never explained what they meant by that.

ORIGINAL: Jimmer

ORIGINAL: KenClark
You can't reinforce it anyway usually because at 5:1 on the 5-2 chart you get vapourized very quickly (1 round).

In the method you outlined (army vs. 1-factor corps), yes. But, the same is not true of other sized corps.

For example, we had a battle where Napoleon's main army (at the time, about 90+ factors) tried to stomp a single corps led by Blucher. The Prussian corps had 3 cav factors and nothing else.

However, the Prussian corps WON the battle (assault vs. defend). In fact, he killed more French factors than he had (4 cav) in his lone corps (the french punted twice, and the pursuit wound up being the maximum of 3, plus the one lost in normal combat).

So, it definitely is not always true that the big army will always smash the little one. Yes, in battles against 1-factor screening corps, it normally will (although, there is still the possibility of the attacker getting 0% loss on the first or later rounds). The other thing to remember is that reinforcement could happen after any round of combat. That includes rounds in which one side was defeated (as long as he was not obliterated). (This rule has not been implemented in EIANW, but it certainly would apply to the case you present under the old rules.)

This example confuses me. The lowest result on any damage table is 5%. Even if Nappy rolled a 1, 5% damage of 90 factors equals 4.5 damage rounded up to 5 means in round 1 the 3 Prussian Cav factors would have been eliminated and Blucher captured. Something doesn't add up here. This would definately fall under trivial combat.

ORIGINAL: timewalker03

This example confuses me. The lowest result on any damage table is 5%. Even if Nappy rolled a 1, 5% damage of 90 factors equals 4.5 damage rounded up to 5 means in round 1 the 3 Prussian Cav factors would have been eliminated and Blucher captured. Something doesn't add up here. This would definately fall under trivial combat.

Actually, there are several 0% results available on many tables.

NOTE: This was a real combat that actually occurred, not just an example.

ORIGINAL: Soapy Frog

None of this really excuses leaving out an important optional like this.

What you don't seem to accept, is that it is NOT an important rule to many players. Perhaps the game designer(s) were in this group.

Plus, the designer(s) of EIANW may have chosen to implement this by the act of having small battle be resolved by computer. This was a reasonable direction to take if they didn't realize that the political point issue was important to some people.

It's an important optional. I have never played with a group that didn't use it. You are the first person I have heard who doesn't think it's important. But all that said, it's an important OPTIONAL, and had it been included as it should have we wouldn't be having this discussion with your bizarre edge case examples of 3 prussian cav beating Napoleon. The exception that proves the rule if you ask me.

ORIGINAL: Soapy Frog

None of this really excuses leaving out an important optional like this.

I hear what you are saying but I cannot remember ANYBODY insisting on this in all of the years that I have been in this project. In fact, I never played the 5:1 rule and was not aware of it. I don't have an excuse for leaving it out other than I never planned to add it!
Good or bad there it is.

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

ORIGINAL: Soapy Frog

None of this really excuses leaving out an important optional like this.

I hear what you are saying but I cannot remember ANYBODY insisting on this in all of the years that I have been in this project. In fact, I never played the 5:1 rule and was not aware of it. I don't have an excuse for leaving it out other than I never planned to add it!
Good or bad there it is.

Don't fault yourself.

This rule was an added, optional rule that came only as part of an errata article. They were only available to you if you knew about the General articles of which they were a part (from one or more of issues 23/4, 24/4, 25/4, and/or 27/2). Our group tried it once, and immediately realized it was not very well thought out. So, we abandoned it.

This does bring up a question, though: Do (or, did) you have access to the errata articles? Or, was that lost when Avalon Hill was bought by your competitor? There are several other rule changes in there that you might want to be aware of, if you have not, to date, had access to these.

By the way, the REASON we abandoned it would not apply to the computer game. Essentially, we had no way to know whether 5:1 applied until after chits were chosen. Our thinking was that if we had already done all the hard work, why backtrack? Part of the reason for this is because we kept all corps strengths secret.
 
But, the computer could deal with that in the background. You've already implemented this piece of the rule.
 
The part that the other people arguing for this rule want is the "no political point change" portion. 5:1 is implemented by forcing the battle to be a trivial combat. Trivial combats don't have PP changes. So, people can use the tactic of avoiding combat (or, avoiding it in certain locations) by placing 1-factor corps to screen with. This then costs them only the prices of the factors; no PP loss is incurred.

ORIGINAL: Jimmer
Don't fault yourself.

This rule was an added, optional rule that came only as part of an errata article. They were only available to you if you knew about the General articles of which they were a part (from one or more of issues 23/4, 24/4, 25/4, and/or 27/2). Our group tried it once, and immediately realized it was not very well thought out. So, we abandoned it.

This does bring up a question, though: Do (or, did) you have access to the errata articles? Or, was that lost when Avalon Hill was bought by your competitor? There are several other rule changes in there that you might want to be aware of, if you have not, to date, had access to these.

Of course you would say that, you never tried it. Where you get off making comments like "it was not well thought out" is beyond me. Why you think Marshall wouldn't have access to the official errata as well just boggles my mind.

I have played in at least 4 or 5 different gaming groups in three different cities and everyone used this rule once they learned of it. I was in a group once that didn't use this rule until we found out about the errata. Then we tried it, and the game blossomed from an exercise in superstacking into a much better rounded game where information and strategy mattered. We never went back.

I'm not saying it should be mandatory, but in my mind it's a critical rule and makes the game far more enjoyable than without it. I have posted the immense strategic implications here more than once and you just ignore them with a back-of-the-hand dismissal that shows your ignorance of how the game is played with this rule.

Marshall, given how easy it would be to implement this rule and make a significant set of gamers very happy, do you think it would be possible to add it to the list of to-dos for a future patch?

Personally, I had never mentioned this because I forgot it was an optional rule. We played with this IMPORTANT optional rule EVERY TIME we played.

Jimmer: You are way off base, this rule is VERY well thought out and makes perfect sense. It really fits the mechanics of the game a lot better than 95% of the "optional" rules Matrix has decided to make non-optional in EiANW.

The EiA errata are super easy to find. Look what google found me in about 2.5 seconds: http://eia.xnetz.com/rules/errata.html