dictating the terms of battle

[John Meunier]

Not a new idea, I'm sure.

For an upcoming Punic War campaign, I'm going to change the aggression rules. I don't think treating the "invading" player as the invader for deployment (as per the campaign rules) makes sense for this campaign. Being the aggressor did not mean Hannibal gave the choice of the field of battle to his foes.

I want Hannibal to be able to do what he did historically -- choose his field of battle more often than not.

So, the winner of the die roll gets to choose whether to deploy as attacker or defender. (It almost seems to me that Hannibal should get to both pick terrain and deploy second.)

Anyway, the question is do aggression ratings for the non-Punic players seem to be good reflections of historical strategic ability to impose battle on the enemy at the place of the army's choosing?

Roman -- 1
Gallic -- 0
Spanish -- 0
Numidian -- 1
Campanian -- 1

(These are not the armies as per the list in the rule book.)

On the plus side, these armies don't have a clear advantage over each other. In effect, who would get to choose to be attacker or defender in each case would be nearly even odds.

I forsee also allowing an army after deployment to decline battle and retreat without losses. This might encourage defenders to not totally screw the enemy if they really want a fight.

Thoughts welcome.

[fathom]

You might consider assigning each general an aggression rating. This way you could make Hannibal superior to everybody, Scipio superior to everybody but Hannibal, and the rest of the Barcids and a few of the better Romans in a spectrum above the generic Iberian, Numidian and Gallic leaders.

Another thought - give the setup choice to the higher Ag rating, and use the die roll only when Ag ratings are tied. If you use the die roll every time and Hannibal only has a +1 or +2 advantage over the Roman players, you can bet even money that your Hannibal player will be some unlucky guy who loses the Ag die roll every battle like clockwork. I don't know about you, but I find that Murphy's Law applies to rules systems in spades. If you leave a 1 in a million chance for a player to roll a low-frequency event, that event will occur 5 times each game. Lady Luck is heartless and irrational.