Invaders and Terrain

[Sarduri II]

As a sad fan of the Urartu army (I/39b)I'm saddled with a high agression (3!) and too many Auxilia, and thus frequently wind up "attacking" places which are very flat (2 roads at angles, 1 river at another edge- legal for Arrable, and very depressing :( ).

I've been looking for ways to get round this , but the post by Fabio on campaign terrain selection got me thinking.

Now I've just been kicking this around in my head for 5 mins, but, what if we roll for invader as usual (d6+Aggression, and the higher score can choose either:

A:Roll for prefered edge, set up second and move first, whith the defender setting the terrain and deploying first (ie normal)

or

B:Set up the Terrain, deploy second,and move second, but with the terrain selected from the defenders home country.

This simulates the invader offering battle in a place of his choosing.(If we're a mountain people we invade you down the hilliest route we can find, but that does restrict our initiative)

Some thought suggests a further refinement: the "invadee" gives the invader the minimum terrain pieces from his list, which the invader may add to(where legal) but not substitute.

Example 1.
Urartu (lots of Aux) invades Assyia (Hch, Hch, Hch -and Arrable), and ellects to defend.

The Assyrian player gives over one road (compulsary) plus another road and a gentle hill (optional) to keep the battlefield open.
The Urartian adds 1 (Big) Steep hill (optional) and a BUA (compulsary.)
[who controls this BUA? the invader- (it's just been captured), the invadee (its still holding out). Whole new question, but I favour the invader.Late thought, controlled by the one who chose it!]
This is not great but at least has some cover, and careful placement of the river will help, though the Assyrians will get to dice for their base edge, and move first.

Example 2. (using it the other way round)
Polybian Romans(Blds) invade the Samnites ( Hilly with even more Aux) and elect to defend

The Samnites select 1 (Big!) Steep Hill(Compusary)
and 2 Woods (optional). The Roman decides not to add another steep hill from the compulsory list, but might reasonably add a road (or a BUA - think tempory fort).
The Roman player can then arrange the terrain to keep much of the battlefield open, but has surrendered the initiative to the native Samnites who will choose their approach.

I would really apreciate some feedback on this, as I haven't tried this out (just thinking aloud) but it seems like it might be a good thing.

Final thought; Consider the English 100 years war, generally the invader (high Agg) but offering battle where the (French) terrain suited them, and adopting a defensive tactical posture. This approach should cover that quite well.

[Jonathan Jackson]

We've actually tried out a variant on this.

Invader places 0-1 compulsory and 0-1 optional pieces from defender's topography. The defender then places all remaining options. The only exception is that invader may not place BUA.

We based this on PB's commentary in DBM. Roughly put he said that invaders choose path of invasion (e.g. along hills like you said) and defender chose where along that path to offer battle.

This really makes terrain dependant armies more viable. I'd like to hear what others think.

[Fabio]

There are infinite combinations of set-up variation.
I like both the ideas you have expressed but, if I can say my humble opinion, I think that of Jackson is more compatible with the intentional semplicity of DBA.
The solution of Sarduri is more realistic but I think that a simpler method is more universally acceptable (I, playing almost always solitaire, will use this without difficulty).
The problem in this rule (the original I mean) is that put in a lone dice roll 2 distinct idea: the probability that an army fight on his own territory and the ability of the general of choosing a battlefield most suited to his army.
The aggression factor is good for choosing the type of terrain (in the Hundred Years War the British fought almost always in France) but not for the deployment (the British chose the actual battlefield in most engagements).
Now I'm thinking on the spot: a possible solution might be also to leave the aggression roll as now for choosing the type of terrain, and make a second roll for determine who has the initiative: the winner choose if want to be the "attacker" or the "defender" (again, the British in the Hundred Years War generally chose the battlefield but let the French the initiative).
This second roll should have no modifier unless you are playing a specific historical situation with known generals'qualities, or might be fixed by the compiler of the armies'list for balancing reasons (or whatever reason he deems appropriate).
The main advantage of this system is that don't add any complexity, you must only roll 2 times.
The disadvantage is that may disrupt the balancing of some armies (but in previous editions this was the rule, no?).

[Redwilde]

Most any terrain selection system is flawed, because there are so many different historical examples. The English in France chose their battlefields. At Thermopolai, the defending Greeks chose the site.

While no terrain choosing system is perfect, the current DBA one seems a little perverse because all else being equal, it rewards low aggression armies.

Here's an option I've been mulling over:
*The defender chooses the terrain pieces
*The attacker places all of these (within legal limits)
*The defender can move 1 (within legal limits)
*The attacker rolls for entry side as usual

[Badger]

Somewhere on the Fanaticus resource page regarding rules variants there is (or was?) a variant addressing this in which the number of "bad-going troops" on each side was compared, and the side with more of them (Aux, Ps, and now Wb) got to add more pieces of bad-going terrain... or something. I'm sketchy on the details now, but it looked viable. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet, though.

[John Meunier]

I like the spirit of the original suggestion. Aggression measures the historical proclivity of the army to invade, not necessarily a tactical decision to march into a bog to get at the enemy.

The Hannibal situation is a good example. He clearly was aggressive in terms of invading, and yet, many or most of the battles were fought on ground of his choosing. Indeed, he relied on aggressive Roman generals attacking into his traps for his great victories.

Of course, in those battles Hannibal didn't get to set up second. If you are going to let the attacker more choice in choosing terrain, you might need to mitigate the set up advantage some how.

One nice mechanic in DBM, particularly the current version of the rules, randomizes the terrain set up. The attacker chooses how to invade -- so can place a waterway, road, or steep hills (if such terrain available) -- then the defender places a number of pieces, but the exact spot of all pieces is randomized by die rolls that are intended to push most terrain to the edges of the battlefield. Such a system could be adapted to DBA or BBDBA without too much effort.

JFM

[etJake]

A warhammer 'arrow' die and 2d6 is an easy war to move terrain a random amount.

[Chris Brantley]

This thread reminds me of a previous discussion of the differences between attacker-defender and invader-invadee.

So how about a simplistic system that lets the winner of the aggression roll (i.e. the invader) decide whether to attack or defend, just like the football coin toss lets you elect to kick-off or receive.

If attacking, then opponent gets to set terrain and deploy second.

If defending, then invader gets to set terrain and deploy second.

In both cases, use the terrain type of the invadee.

[ July 06, 2003, 12:39: Message edited by: Chris Brantley ]

[Sarduri II]

Just giving the winner of the die roll the straight choice between attacker(set up second) and defender (set up terrain) would indeed be the simplest system. This is fine if we are trying to favour a High agression bad going army, who could invade, then choose to "defend" in the hills, forests etc.
Unfortunately it seems to me to go too far, since the low agression bad going army, which gets invaded, will probably find it gets no terrain to play with in its own home country.

Where one army is highly dependant on, or vulnerable to, terrain, the advantage of getting to choose the lay out of the board, seems substantially more important than a chance of getting your chosen base edge and the advntage of setting up second.

I was looking for a way to allow a degree of compromise and variety in the terrain. It very hard to see why, taking my pet armies of Assyria (Hch) and Urartu (Aux), the Assyrians should not always deploy as open and featureless a plain as possible (two roads and a tiny gentle hill), while Urartu would always deploy two steep hills and two woods (maybe a BUA if you play that), and as symetrically as possible.

While I agree that no terrain system is going to cater with all the possible situations, I feel that we could improve on the situation at the moment where a battle could be won or lost on the aggression die roll, and where terrain placement can become formulaic.

Even in a "by the book" campaign situation, anomalies arise. There is nothing to prevent me from defending city x from enemy A (Aux/Ps), on as open a field as I can legally achieve,(featuring the city itself as a BUA), and then beating off a subequent attack by enemy B (Lh/Kn) with as much terrain as I can squeeze on (and also featuring the same BUA!).

I would consider that since the set up only takes place once, at the begining of the battle, we could accomodate a little more complexity there, in order to produce a more challenging selection of terrain.