Art De La Guerre

[KevinD]

Combats in terrain tend to be more decisive (resolve quicker or inflict more army cohesion points on the combatants) than combat in the open. This is because units fighting in terrain tend to have fewer CPs (2 or 3) compared to combats in the open (3 or 4), and perhaps combatants in terrain are less likely to be armored or elite. Some units also lack ZOCs in terrain which can mean such troops are a bit more vulnerable to flank attacks or other tricky maneuvers.

This seems slightly odd, as historically fighting in bad terrain on the periphery of the main battlefield was often less decisive.

This means that actions in terrain on the flanks tends to resolve quicker than fighting in the open - especially infantry combat.

Does this strike anyone else as odd?

[Hazelbark]

Well i am not as certain it ends up that way in game terms although i accept your point about differential in cohesion. Similarly you tend to not have large large differentials in combat factors often having similar troops. Mostly the situation is similar forces. This yields even combats that may not swing quickly.

Practically you usually have asymmetric forces meet in rough. 3 bow hit by 4 MI impetuous well that would be the same in the open.

Rarely do people send in disadvantaged troops into terrain.

Now send HI or mounted into Difficult is going to be slow from movement.

Then what is the table terrain representing. IMHO players wildly distort this to be whatever suits their belief or need or argument. Historically say 19th century to present the idea of fighting in woods is largely a long slow fight where troops go to ground and progress is slow. My view is that is impassable terrain in most of our period rules. Probably our battlefields have lots of isolated terrain things and undulations that are nor modelled except in the die roll. The designated rough and difficult bits are consistently worse.

But in pure game play terms i am hard pressed to think of times where assaults even by better forces move faster through contested terrain than the open confrontation of heavy units. In my final game at lisbon there was a central plantation that did exactly the opposite both sides were feeding in two and three cohesion units and they kept dissapearing in the plantation which was central. It served as a hornets nest that neither side ended up being able to sustain power projection out the opposite side.

[KevinD]

I agree with most of what you say, but draw a different conclusion: The hornet’s nest that consumes units turns out to be where the game is decided as units getting quickly chewed up there pushes armies towards 50% losses and premature demoralization even as the heavier troops in the open have suffered far lower percentage losses - or maybe this is just my own fault by perhaps being overly aggressive with lighter troops of the sorts who contest the hornet’s nest…

[Hazelbark]

In my specific example both armies were nearly entirely consisting of units with only 2 or 3 cohesion so that would have been the same factor anywhere.

Well as you get around to playing tournaments across a spectrum of opponents and continents you can try your strategy and see what happens.

[Mark G Fry]

[Hazelbark]

[madaxeman]

[babyshark]

This does not really follow my experience.

On the other hand, the notion that an action the opposing generals thought would be a sideshow to the "real" battle could turn into the decisive event doesn't surprise me either. In fact, it seems quite historical.

Marc