About Rivers...

[PaulWRoberts]

Most of my wargaming experience is with systems that used hexsides rather than full hexes to represent rivers and canals. Getting my head around TOAW's system is causing me headaches, especially since I'm currently trying the river-heavy "Market-Garden 44" scenario.

Questions:

If I attack an enemy in a river hex, am I always considered to be making a river crossing? (What if I attack from the other side of the same hex later in the turn? Is this also a crossing?)

Is all movement into a river hex considered a crossing? What if I'm moving laterally from one river hex to the next downstream?

In general, how do I know which side of a river obstacle a unit is on?

Finally, is there any advantage to using full-hex rivers over a hexside system? My assumption is that TOAW's river are just the legacy of an older model of wargaming, and that hexsides would be both more realistic and more functional. Am I wrong?

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Paul Roberts

If I attack an enemy in a river hex, am I always considered to be making a river crossing? (What if I attack from the other side of the same hex later in the turn? Is this also a crossing?)

When a unit attacks from a river hex, it suffers a penalty.

Finally, is there any advantage to using full-hex rivers over a hexside system? My assumption is that TOAW's river are just the legacy of an older model of wargaming, and that hexsides would be both more realistic and more functional.

I'd say that "an older model of wargaming" tended to have hexside rivers. The reason TOAW doesn't I think has a great deal to do with ease of programming.

[Capitaine]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious


I'd say that "an older model of wargaming" tended to have hexside rivers. The reason TOAW doesn't I think has a great deal to do with ease of programming.

The earliest Avalon Hill "classics" (e.g., "Waterloo", "Stalingrad") had in-hex rivers. Most all later games I know of abandoned these and embraced the more logical hexside variety. I agree that the in-hex rivers of TOAW have to do with "ease" of programming and/or pleasant graphical depiction (also easier to code), but it was a sad and lazy decision to have made and it really mars the design to me. YMMV...

[rhondabrwn]

This is probably the biggest single gripe about the Operational Art of War series. It is also, unfortunately, a "fix" that would require massive redesign and programming as well as substantial modification of all scenarios.

I wouldn't hold my breath on this one. [:(]

[Menschenfresser]

When playing TOAW, I tend to think of rivers as switching sides. If you're in a hex and attacking west, the river is on the west side of the hex (or your forces are on the east bank). If you're defending next to a line of river hexes, you pull the river toward you.

[jimwinsor]

Escarpments are hexsides...and they are programmed to impede movement and influence combat. So I wouldn't think adding hexside rivers would be all THAT tricky, from a programmming angle. Just need to add an escarpment-like terrain feature for rivers, with appropriate move/combat effects.

Or I am I missing something? Couldn't really have riverine units in a scenario that uses them, I suppose, THAT would be hard to program. Just keep the old style rivers too, for that reason and for those that prefer them (and to negate the need for a redesign of all scenarios on the planet!).

ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn

This is probably the biggest single gripe about the Operational Art of War series. It is also, unfortunately, a "fix" that would require massive redesign and programming as well as substantial modification of all scenarios.

I wouldn't hold my breath on this one. [:(]

[rhondabrwn]

ORIGINAL: jimwinsor

Escarpments are hexsides...and they are programmed to impede movement and influence combat. So I wouldn't think adding hexside rivers would be all THAT tricky, from a programmming angle. Just need to add an escarpment-like terrain feature for rivers, with appropriate move/combat effects.

Or I am I missing something? Couldn't really have riverine units in a scenario that uses them, I suppose, THAT would be hard to program. Just keep the old style rivers too, for that reason and for those that prefer them (and to negate the need for a redesign of all scenarios on the planet!).

ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn

This is probably the biggest single gripe about the Operational Art of War series. It is also, unfortunately, a "fix" that would require massive redesign and programming as well as substantial modification of all scenarios.

I wouldn't hold my breath on this one. [:(]

Sounds logical to me, but I'm just repeated conventional wisdom that I have seen on a variety of sites that it would be difficult to do. Others could respond to this better than I.

[geozero]

At some point in time, we need to move FORWARD, and hope that TOAW 4 will embrace new features. To play with the same game engine, graphics and GUI for nearly 8 years is not IMO wise from a gaming perspective as well as a marketing perspective.

I think that gamers want more out of their games.

[JAMiAM]

ORIGINAL: jimwinsor

Escarpments are hexsides...and they are programmed to impede movement and influence combat. So I wouldn't think adding hexside rivers would be all THAT tricky, from a programmming angle. Just need to add an escarpment-like terrain feature for rivers, with appropriate move/combat effects.

Or I am I missing something?

How would you handle bridges?

How would you blow a bridge? New UI needed to direct tasks to a particular hexside.

How would you repair a bridge? Likewise.

What would be the regime for ferry capacity? Engineering assets on the hex that the units are moving from? To? Some combination of both?

What exactly do hexside rivers gain you, that hex rivers don't? Definitive positioning, with respect to what side of the river you're on? You have that with hex rivers. Just position your units on one side or the other. Plus, with hex rivers, you have the state of being "in transition" or straddling the river, which you cannot achieve with hex-side rivers.

Hex-side rivers offer no substantial game play enhancements that hex rivers lack, and finally...

...hex-side rivers are ugly!

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn

This is probably the biggest single gripe about the Operational Art of War series.

As Churchill would say, except for all the others.

[PaulWRoberts]

ORIGINAL: JAMiAM

How would you handle bridges?

How would you blow a bridge? New UI needed to direct tasks to a particular hexside.

How would you repair a bridge? Likewise.

What would be the regime for ferry capacity? Engineering assets on the hex that the units are moving from? To? Some combination of both?

John Tiller does it, and the interface is intuitive and simple.

What exactly do hexside rivers gain you, that hex rivers don't? Definitive positioning, with respect to what side of the river you're on? You have that with hex rivers. Just position your units on one side or the other. Plus, with hex rivers, you have the state of being "in transition" or straddling the river, which you cannot achieve with hex-side rivers.

But in-hex rivers cause some absurd situations. Consider a one-hex town straddling a river, surrounded by clear hexes, something not at all uncommon on operational-scale maps. To defend against a crossing, defenders would have to be placed OUTSIDE the town, so that attackers from the other side would be faced with the penalty for attacking FROM a river hex. But then the defenders are out in the clear and do not gain the defensive benefits of the town. In TOAW it's impossible to depict defenders defending a bridge in town.

As for "transition," the effect of in-hex rivers is to make a defender magically jump from one side of the river to another, depending on where attackers are coming from. Plus, the combat mechanics imply that the unit is jumping TO the side where the enemy is coming from (since the enemy doesn't get a penalty for attacking into the river hex)!

Tiller does the "transition" part by making units use Travel Mode to cross a river (via engineers in the starting hex) or to use a bridge hexside. This mode makes the attackers more vulnerable to enemy fire, just as units crossing a water obstacle should be.

Hex-side rivers offer no substantial game play enhancements that hex rivers lack...

I guess it's a matter of design philosophy, but it seems to me that in-hex rivers don't offer anything that hexsides lack, and that the cost is some weirdness in modelling unit positions. I'm not trying to hold Tiller as the end-all be-all of wargame design, but his system is a good one for illustrating hexsides. I'd love to have a wargame that combines the Panzer Campaigns' movement and terrain systems with TOAW's unit composition and combat systems.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Paul Roberts

But in-hex rivers cause some absurd situations. Consider a one-hex town straddling a river, surrounded by clear hexes, something not at all uncommon on operational-scale maps. To defend against a crossing, defenders would have to be placed OUTSIDE the town, so that attackers from the other side would be faced with the penalty for attacking FROM a river hex. But then the defenders are out in the clear and do not gain the defensive benefits of the town. In TOAW it's impossible to depict defenders defending a bridge in town.

You could just put your defenders in the town.

Consider the absurd situation if you have hexside rivers: Either the town is on one side of the river, and half the time the player can't use the town without sticking his unit on the wrong side of the river, or else the designer is forced to place two urban hexes, which is usually excessive.

In-hex rivers allow you to put a town which straddles a river in the right place- and it's still possible to put a town which is on one side of the river in the right place too. You can usually only do the latter with hexside rivers.

I'm not saying that in-hex rivers are necessarily superior. But it's not entirely black and white.

[Chuck2]

Can we get a non-destroyable bridge option if the hex side rivers are out? Many roads follow the course of a river but don't necessarily cross them.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Chuck2

Can we get a non-destroyable bridge option if the hex side rivers are out? Many roads follow the course of a river but don't necessarily cross them.

Yeah.

[Ratbag55]

ORIGINAL: geozero

At some point in time, we need to move FORWARD, and hope that TOAW 4 will embrace new features. To play with the same game engine, graphics and GUI for nearly 8 years is not IMO wise from a gaming perspective as well as a marketing perspective.

I think that gamers want more out of their games.

Hear hear!

/Ratbag

[wolflars]

second that

[wolflars]

my second that was for chuck2 suggestion about bridges lol

[Captain Cruft]

I must admit that before I owned TOAW I had read that it had in-hex rivers, and I was to be honest rather dismayed.

However! After actually playing the beast for a bit now I think it's OK. Not perhaps ideal, but OK. I can live with it, and I really like the riverine units.

What might partially solve the "town on river" problem described above would be to add a negative attack adjustment for moving into a river hex as well as moving out of one. Perhaps not as much of a reduction, maybe 0.9 instead of 0.7. Combined with the defensive bonus provided by the urban terrain itself it might work out OK. Would need a lot of testing though.

[hank]

After playing several games with hexes, I can't make my feable mind accept the reasons why in-hex rivers are superior to hex side rivers.  Its not a maker or breaker for me, I enjoy playing TOAW either way the rivers are modelled. 
 
But, my $0.02 is: what of hex scale?  Many sce's are built around 10, 15 or even 25 kilometer hexes.  Where is the river at in a 25 Km hex?  (dead center through the hex? ... along one edge or the other?).  IMHO, to model a situation related to a river you have to have two sides (my side and your side) ... and to cross over the river to my side you have to cross a hex side (thus a penalty).  If you're in a river hex (with in-hex rivers) what side are you on?  ... the side you entered the hex from or did you cross the river.  If you don't "cross" the river you should not be charged with a penalty but in toaw you'll get charged with that penalty whether you cross it or not.  I suppose another problem I see with TOAW's engine is that you can have various hex sizes of from 2.5 Km to 25 Km normally which also affects the realism or lack of realism related to rivers.
 
Just another stinking suggestion but ... if there is a terrain feature that is specifically a hex side feature (like the escarpment thingy someone else mentioned above) what problems other than map art would be caused if you modified that hex side feature to mimic rivers?
Just curious.
 
By the way, another "new" hex based war game with hex side rivers is BiN or BiI from SSG.  ... and as one person mentioned the dreaded PzC games seem to model river affects fairly well with their hex side rivers.
 
... But let me reiterate ... its not a maker or breaker ... this is just an observation
 
... oh gosh ... my first critique of a game I like playing ... I'll check back to see what kind of beating I'll receive over this one.  
 

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

However! After actually playing the beast for a bit now I think it's OK. Not perhaps ideal, but OK. I can live with it, and I really like the riverine units.

Riverine units don't really work properly in TOAW. What do you like about them?