"Range of Motivation and Skill" Topic

A few related questions:

1. In your favoured rules, what is the spread between the best troops and the worst? In the Polemos Napoleonic rules I use, the spread is effectively 4 points on a D6 (raw -2, veteran +2) – or even 6 points if the veteran unit has a skirmish rating of 2 and the raw unit one of 0. As most of the rolls are opposed, then this is a big chunk, so you need a lot of environmental factors (terrain, support) to even it up.

2. How big do you think the spread should be?

3. Is that spread a human constant or should it vary between periods?

Regards

My rules are a bit different. There are virtually NO modifiers. The values of Troops must range between 1 and 5 for the areas of "movement" "Charge" "To Stand" "Rally" "fire" and "Range" but only canister from artillery has a fire of "5" and some troops have 0 in some areas meaning they can't use that. The only modifiers there are, is for terrain (light and heavy terrain is +1 to Rally and Stand. From combat, if a unit is disorganized all values are reduced by 1, and if broken all values reduced TO 1. You can't have more than one disorganization marker on you, any subsequent to the first are ignored. If you get two broken markers on a unit it's eliminated. Officers can add their ability (rated 1 to 5 to any ONE value of any unit in a turn, however it can never be raised to more than 5. So a six always fails.

Tha'ts it.

Typically Militia Infantry are 1,1,1,1,1,1
Lin Infantry are 2,2,2,2,2,1
Elite infantry (light of Grenadiers are 3,3,3,3,2,2
Heavy Cavalry are 4,5,3,3,0,0,
Light Cavalry are 5,2,1,1,1,1,
Dragoons are 4,3,3,3,3,1,1
Heavy Guns 1,0,1,1,4,4
Light Guns 2,0,1,1,2,4
Wagons 1,0,1,1,0,0

1) Like OSchmidt, different type of system. For QILS, I usually think of this type of metric in terms of Pk ratios, amortized linearly over range. Interestingly, I would scope your span of 4 points on a d6 (if I am sussing the intent right) as I can kill you with a 3+, but you can only kill me on a 6 (under the same conditions), so my Pk is 4/6 and yours is 1/6, giving me a 4:1 advantage. So the difference is … well … 4. :) In general, I do a lot of different type of games, so things like materiel and other capabilities are combined with troop quality. In the most common cases, that difference is in the 2:1 to 4:1 range.

2&3) I don't really think there is a given number, it is highly contextual. Even if you confine the games to historical or pseudo-realistic forces, there are numerous examples where small numbers of elite troops have been able to hold of larger numbers of troops with similar or lesser materiel.

And I think the meaning of skill difference as it affects raw combat ratios between Bronze Age swordsmen and Somali warbands is vastly different.

In my ruleset « Argad ! » it goes:

class 5: knights in full plate armour; commando
class 4: well trained
class 3: most of line troops
class 2: draft, militia, badly trained
class 1: civilians, camp-followers, non-combattants
and a "class 6" is possible for some heroes in optional rules.

That fits with 6-sided dice.

It works (for role-playing minded skirmish) with any historical or fantasy period.

…unfortunately… the rules are still in progress… since… 1996… :)

argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html

The gating factor is the dice. Whatever the scale of numbers on the die les two (one for the top of the range and one for the end of the range is the effective spread, no matter how many modifiers you crowd on. Thus is you use a 6 sided the range is 4, and if an 8 it is 6 and so on. Then again it depends on what you do with the result. If it's a strict arithmetic match up then OK. On the other hand if one number means somethint other than 1 more than the last, 1 less than the next that's a different story.

@Otto,

That is why I think it can be a key issue. If the spread of skill is 2 (+1 to -1) in a D6 based game, then that is a very different game when the spread is 4 (+2 to -2), as the best that the troops of the bottom can win by is '1' if they roll maximum and the opposing (best) troops roll minimum.

The large spread seems to imply a view fo combat that troop quality is a *very* large factor, not just an *important* factor.

Regards

I think there are real problems with seeing motivation and skill as a less-more continuum, like a unit's morale resembles having money, some have little to spend and some have a lot and combat spends/takes money until the unit has none.

Then to ask if this range is wide or narrow, constant or variable misses a great deal of human behavior and ends up being frustratingly too predictable or one-dimensional.

A unit with good morale/motivation/skill [the same things? I don't think so…] then will have this range of possible behaviors based on a roll of the die, and good and bad results will be a band of results that is above bad but lower than excellent.

I think it is a mistake to start by assuming the answer is a less or more of X answer. Rather it is what are the possible and likely behaviors of different troops and how did leaders/commanders/officers determine or calculate what behaviors they could depend on and influence.

As others have said, it really depends on the combat system, melee charts and tactical modifiers that you apply after rolling the dice.

troop quality is a *very* large factor, not just an *important* factor

Troop quality certainly is a very large factor when you are individually facing a big heavy bloke who wants to kill you with his two-handed axe or bayonet of whatever (in a skirmish). You may want to lessen this by considering unit cohesion, if you play some big battalions.

Dear Whirlwind

Yes I see what you mean. We have, however been batting numeric values around assumed to be constants. This is only natural to make these values constants as they mostly ARE in our game because we (rightly) don't want to go about recalculating values each game. But that brings up the problem in that the categories "skill" and "motivation" haven't been defined-- here in this post. We have gone along just mostly working with the defnitiions as they are "au-generic." This is what I think McLaddie is saying in his post.

The problem is that as far as I know all the participants in a REAL battle are human (except for the horse, an effective half-wit) and the occasional camel and elephant. As humans they are open to a wide range of "skill and motivation." Whatever the au-generic definition is, there are days when my skill is at a high ebb, and those where it's at a low ebb (my fingers seem to just snarl every time at the keyboard) and as for motivation there are days I REALLY don't want to go to work. Sometimes I drive myself to it through discipline, sometimes I give in.

The point is that they are obviously not constant. Get a large number of people together (army) and it's no different and some will be highly motivated and others even in the same unit and others not.

Now I could go on nattering in this vein for a long time, but suffice it to say that we often confuse in our view of things a Line Infantryman with a Line Infantry unit and assume the nature of the two to be transative and inter-changeable. That's not really the case. Further to illustrate the point let's take a case that will be known to almost everyone because it has had a wide currency and likely to be read by many- the rout of the Old Guard at Waterloo. Now I'm not going to go into any of the accounts because there are dozens and they all seem to say a different thing and put down a different chain of events as to who did it and why. All this says is that there were many people who were there and many who wrote about it and even more many more people who were NEAR there or ALMOST there and they too have a story. We have, however no account from Grenadier Claude DuPieces who said "It was me! I was the first one who cried out Save Quie Piet!" (or however it's spelled) "I started the rout because I had the trots and really had to go!"

So to try and REPRODUCE the methodology of the rout by modifiers becomes a thankless, endless job,and worthless to boot. All we know is that 1. The Old Guard did break. 2.Sometimes they broke before. That means that there always is in the question of critical morale of the Old Guard at some point that they CAN break. In most Napoleonic Rules the function of modifiers is to ensure that they DON't, and also to ensure that the French can walk on water (provided they aren't facing British on reverse slopes) blah blah blah.

It all comes down to the individual player and rules writer-game designer as to what he thinks is going on, and it goes back to your predispositions and prejudices. I am prejudiced in favor of two historical commentators. One was Clausewitz who said that warfare was that area of human activity most under the power of chance. (Not probability- mere happenstance). And the second is Von Moltke the Elder who said that "No play lasts more than 15 minutes after the meeting of the main body of the enemy." and also "Strategy is a system of expedients." That is, you make it up as you go along. This is why I use very very few modifiers in the game, but allow HUGE swings of fortune on a very simple roll of a six sided die.

One caveat. I don't like skirmish games at all, and for me anything less than half an army is a skirmish game. Therefore all my rules put the entry point of the player (the role he comes into the game as) at the wing commander of an army (left right or center) or the supreme commander. The game is therefore guaged to present to such persons only those decision sand things he would normally be concerned with, or have to deal with. He does not, nor cannot know if Sergeant Beitz has checked the mens flints that morning, or if Lieutenant Bloez sees the enemy lapping around his flank and echelons a company to take care of it. The affairs of the Beitz and Bloes is of no concern of him, only if the units of his army are still able to take part in his plan of action or if they have become a liability that must themselves now be protected.

Finally "the spread" assumes even less meaning in my rules because they are not "competative." The dice of opposing units aren't matched in combat to yield a probabilstic result of me beating you. The key values in combat are the "fire" and the "charge" values. These determine how many cards from the combat esults deck in your hand you may toss onto an enemy unit in the combat phase (fire and melee happen at once. (It's the only truly simultaneous combat system in the world). You do this for every unit on the field that can and wishes to fire or engage in melee. The enemy then uses his "to stand" value to try and roll these cards off. If he rolls less than or equal to this value he tosses the card off. Any he can't toss off are flipped over and revealed. The results range from

1. no effect
2. Retreat 1 measure 8" if you have 4 of these at once the unit is eliminated.
3. Disorganized (all values -1 till the marker is removed)You can only get 1 of these, if the unit takes two or more disorganized the excess over 1 is sent back to the decks.
4. Broken, (all values go down TO 1 till the marker is removed)If ou have two of these at once the unit is eliminated
5. Officer casualties, any general officer with the unit is removed from the field, injured or killed.
6. Shaken (can't move)
7. Out of Ammo(can't fire if it has fire values)
8. Fatigued (can't melee)
9. OUt of Control (won't listen to general officers. which means officers can't use teir ability to effect the unit.
10. Panicked rout – retreats three measures.
11. Disaster, pursue, exploit- all of these invoke very special cases in the game, and are rare.
12. Heroic Rally- takes all marker and retreat cards off.
13. ELIMINATED- Unit is gone, wiped out, Kaput, taken right off the field.

So-- yes-- If the Old Guard comes up and puts six cards on the Moscow militia, and the Moscow Militia put one card on the old Guard, the Moscow Militia could come out of it if they roll well (but they likely will not) with not one scratch where the Old guard, if that card is an eliminated card and they roll a 6 could be wiped out to a man. But they likely will not.

You have to be willing to take your chances in war.

That's the problem most gamers do not want to do.

You have to be willing to take your chances in war.
That's the problem most gamers do not want to do.

Ottoathome:
I agree with a great deal that you posted. Clauswitz is an invaluable source of experienced synthesis concerning combat. A great wargame could be modeled on just his book. However, I do want to provide a 'devil's advocate' counter to the popular observation above.

Gamers are absolutely and universally willing to take their chances. I know this because all wargames, beginning with Kriegspiel in 1824 have included dice and other elements of chance. Wargames that do not have that element have been few and far inbetween and not very popular. Remember The Complete Brigadier?

However, I think it is true of every gamer that they 1. want to calculate their chances [something Clauswitz discusses] and 2. thus control when and where those chance events appear and at what odds. In Sid Meier's words, "Games are a series of interesting decisions". If a game has such wild swings in chance that the player's decisions are negated or simply not allowed, it is no fun to play…i.e. making decisions. Ever played Piquet when you never get to move because of the chance cards or die rolls?

So wargamers accept the element of chance in games, it is a question of when, where and how much chance is involved. THAT is the difficult balance--what makes an exciting game, modeling real combat, while not generating chance events that take any results out of the control of the players.

It all comes down to the individual player and rules writer-game designer as to what he thinks is going on, and it goes back to your predispositions and prejudices.

Here I want to say, yes and no. We aren't attempting to model my predispositions and prejudices. I can do that right now, without any further thought. However, we are modeling history and real combat. That template is entirely based on the evidence available, invariably on the experiences of the combatants.

The question about the Old Guard, the chances of them failing in combat and routing is a statistical question. Yet, I haven't seen many wargame designers deal with it as a statistical question.

It would require finding all the instances of combat the Middle and/or Old Guard participated in over the years including Ligny and build a statistical model based on the collective outcomes. THEN you could determine and then model within some parameters what the odds were of the Guard 'recole'. Anything else isn't modeling history, but our predispositions and prejudices about history.

Clauswitz, with many experiences of combat, generalized, determining the models he presented in "On War." This was before statistical models, but that is all statistics do: It is a calculation of many instances [events, experiences etc.] and determines the odds of something happening in the future.

I know all the arguments about the lack of informaiton, sources and the ingrained prejudices of any and every observer, let alone later historians and wargamers. And most all are real problems and nothing new to any effort to build a statistical model. In fact, in a number of ways, statistical methods were developed as a solution to those inherent problems with ANY information concerning human beings and the events they generate.

The question about the Old Guard, the chances of them failing in combat and routing is a statistical question. Yet, I haven't seen many wargame designers deal with it as a statistical question.

Agreed, although with a caveat that the fact of designing a set of rules actually forces the designer to put a figure on it, no matter which particular mechanism they use.

IIRC the figures I have seen suggested in works about war (rather than wargaming) seem to suggest a 10-20% base motivational difference, although these would only apply to WW2 and after I suppose. These figures seem rather lower than those I have typically (but certainly not always) found in wargames rules.