"Stopping players doing everything at once" Topic

This is a bit of a strange one for me, as I hate putting any sort of unreasonable / gamey restrictions on a player… but: things in real life happened slowly, whereas we wargamers tend to do everything at once. This is especially relevant in campaign games and sieges – the average player will declare: "OK – today, I'm digging that trench, knocking down that building, doing four sallies tonight, burning those fishing boats, demolishing that bridge…" whereas, in reality, these things would have happened over a period of weeks or months.

So how to solve it? If I (as the player) say: "OK – I want to do x y and z today", what is the best way to slow this all down? It is not logical to say he can only do one thing at once, as he will retort that he has hundreds / thousands of men, and can issue them orders to act concurrently and RIGHT NOW.

Leaving it to chance seems gamey too – "I want to raid that enemy outpost tonight" … "OK – roll a dice, and thats how many days later the raid takes place". Errr – OK – but why? Sure, this would slow things down, but I'm the one issuing the orders and it should not be a surprise to me when the attack starts (within reason).

This is something I have banged my head against for years, and still do not have a satisfactory answer to it. It is not a case of extending the time taken to do these things – a raid against an enemy siege gun or forward position COULD have taken place every single night in theory – it would only have taken a few hours afterall, and only involved a fraction of the player's forces. But, in reality, they didn't.

The examples I have given are slanted towards a campaign / siege, but hold equally true for larger battles too – things, for one reason or another, just seemed to happen much more slowly in real life: a real life general would not be doing dozens of things at once – he would be more likely to work more methodically, taking one enemy position after another, for example, and only doing B after A was finished etc.

So how best to recreate this? Basically, how do we slow our games down?

Limit their resources per game period and then ask them to spend those resources to do the things they want. They will be able to assign the available assets as they desire, but they won't have enough to do everything they want in the same game period.

As bas' says, it's about resources. In this case 'command resources.'

If you are playing a horse and musket, or later campaign, where everything can be done at once because a player can write simple orders to do so then your command structure is wrong. Clauswitz gives virtually a whole chapter of his book over to what he calls,from memory, "friction in war." The gist is that nothing is simple to do in a war and everything takes longer than it would not in a war. Everything takes a huge amount of time to organise and even then things often go wrong and slow everything up.

For example blowing a bridge: It takes staff time to process intelligence regarding the bridge. You don't want to blow the wrong bridge, or get there to find half a division guarding it. You need to make sure that the engineers will show up in the right place, at the right time, with the right equipment, with the right supporting troops. Everything needs to be co-ordinated. Orders need to be written and transmitted to every unit. Every officer then needs to be briefed on what to do. When all that is done the troops can get on with the job. The amount of staff work, even for quite limited non routine offensive operations is complex and time consuming.

Command resource points might be the answer. It costs 5 points per operation per unit plus extra cost if 'special orders, etc.' is needed. Then give X points per side depending on the historical ability of the commander and his staff.

You might find it takes almost all of an army of 13 units with, say, 24 command pips to simply order the march in column from A – B (one operation – 5 pips) of an army (ten units inc. briding train – 10 pips) with bridging troops at the head of the column (1 pip) with a very rudimentary cavalry screen (three units all using different routes – which is six pips). The army command can do this, with two pips to spare.

This kind of thing can slow things up rather nicely.

Yes. Lack of resources is the key.

I've just been reading a book about Wellington's artillery. The thing that really stands out is the problems encountered in moving guns. They had plenty of guns and plenty of men. They were ALWAYS short of horses. The Commander of the Royal Artillery was constantly juggling his resources to get guns and supplies to where they were supposed to be. Then he has to suddenly give up 300 horses to the bridging train…..

Then there are the problems with terrain and weather, roads being worse than reported, orders being delayed etc etc etc. The list is endless.

Resources and fatigue. Troops need rest.

This is funny. There was a guy complaining on another thread that some rules prevented his troops from doing everything at once! ;-)

A good wargame is about decisions. Will I do this or that ? Things that use energy (like digging a trench) is more difficult than blowing up a bridge (if you have the proper people and material for that). So you can make the cost of digging a trench a second time that day higher than the first one. Therefore you will probably first blow the bridge and then start to dig (but you have lost time !). Olicana's suggestion clearly fits the bill. And add "chance cards" or a "chance table" or something like that. Every time a player throws a certain combination (let's say one uses two D6 and the result is two sixes) he (or she) has to take a card or throw a die (dice) to have a sudden problem created.

As a starting point get a copy of the Field Service Pocket book 1914. The section on Field Engineering tells you how long it takes to do things like dig a communication trench and how many men are needed (eg it takes a man about 1 3/4 hours to dig a fire trench for himself 2 paces long. Typically troops involved in physical labour/marching rest 5 minutes in every hour, with workers relieved every 1 3/4 to 2 hours, depending on conditions).

Players have a tendency to over work their troops and should be punished for doing so.

Of course, horse and musket troops wouldn't carry that many spades around with the unit. Most would probably be found with the siege train or the sappers. It wouldn't be as easy as just shouting for a hundred shovels when you needed them – the supply of a useful amount of spades would have to be organised by someone.

As a little twist, give them resources to spend on activities, but the more you spend the higher the chance of failure due to mis-communication, orders getting to people latter than you think. Straight up incompetence of subordinates, etc.

Set a threshold and roll for anything after that threshold. ie. you get 30 resource points, you can issue 10 with no problems, anything over 10 gets a +5% cumulative chance of failure.

Some great points but I think a couple of posters have misunderstood what I meant.

An infantry battalion attack might take x hours to plan and y hours to do and z hours to recover from…. but it is not as though every single battalion would attack every single x + y + z hours. History shows there was an awful lot of hanging about between such things… I think I read somewhere that war is 99% boredom and 1% terror. Our wargames tend to have a rather different balance.

It is not really a case of how long things will take, but rather trying to stop / slow down the player from doing everything at once, or as fast as the rules permit him to do.

To take an example: during the Siege of Ladysmith, the British mounted two raids on Boer guns (plus a couple of other raids here and there) but basically, two major sallies. This in a siege which lasted near-as-damn-it four months.
So it is not a case of simply saying that such a raid takes 12 hours to plan and 12 hours to conduct and 48 hours to recover from (for example) – even with these timings, any self-respecting wargamer would have conducted dozens (if not hundreds) of such raids during a re-fight of the siege (bearing in mind that the raids were conducted by a fraction of the forces available).

So its more a case of understanding WHY the British didn't mount more such raids and then replicating this into a wargame. Was it because the British Commander was much more fearful of what would happen if a raid went wrong than his wargaming counterpart would be? Was it because he had no real reason to take any such risks, whereas we would find playing a game in which we sat out four months and then got relieved to be dreadfully boring?

On the other side of the fence, the Boers only mounted two semi-serious attempts to storm the town – so again, how could that lethargic rate of progress be represented? What would you tell the Boer player is the reason why he cannot mount an attack at least once a week? In reality, it took great skill and leadership to persuade the fractous and independent Boers to agree to do anything, but that is very hard to recreate in a set of rules – unless you just take the gamey way out, and say he has to draw a certain card, or roll a double-six to be allowed to attack. You might get a more historically accurate set of delays / time period, but at the cost of there being precious little skill / tactics involved.

To take a higher level example: I have never played a WW2 strategy game where is WASN'T a good idea for the German player to simply turn on France the moment he was done with Poland. There was simply no benefit to be gained / no reason to hang about for a few months like happened in reality.

Good points in the discussion.

There was a relevant quote in one of the Command Decision books: A lot can happen in ten minutes, but a lot doesn't happen *every* ten minutes!

Give the player a small number of reliable, competent commanders he can give orders to and a larger number of commanders that will be unreliable, slow or unlikely to succeed.

You can do everything you want but then, you'll risk screwing up many of them.

"Of course, horse and musket troops wouldn't carry that many spades around with the unit."

Actually, about 1/3 of the rankers in a Russian grenadier or infantry battalion of the Napoleonic era had entrenching tools. They were assigned to the soldiers of the second rank (who were the youngest/least-experienced in the battalion). Russian jδgers dragoons had a slightly smaller issue. These were government-issued standard tools with metal fittings. A regiment could make up as many more as they might want (as there was a carpenter and a "gunstock-maker" – actually a general artisan – assigned to each company, with more such "non-combatant" assets at the regiment level of command).

The French did not have this kind of thing officially (there were, on the other hand, pretty careful to assign a sapper company to each infantry division and (infantry) corps headquarters. I have often thought that un-official equipping with entrenching tools might have also occurred – for obvious good reasons.

I don't know about nations.

- Sasha

tuscaloosa

I think you summed up what I meant better in one sentence than I have in 20 paragraphs!

I think that one thing that might slow things down in sieges is waiting for a propitious opportunity. This might mean the light is right, when the enemy sentries have been lulled into a false sense of security, when certain preparations have been made or equipment available, when the right officer is out of the sick bay, etc. Or even waiting for the stars to be in the right place. This waiting for the right moment can get exaggerated if the commander is a cautious type.

Sallies and assaults are very costly in resources – and morale if they fail. It isn't surprising that they were not frequent – or that there is a tendency to wait for when the conditions were most favourable. This frame of mind is difficult to recreate in a wargame, of course. You might bring more extraneous factors into play – weather, morale, supplies, sickness – with a degree of random variation, so that players are tempted to wait until things are better.

In battles it is different – time is limited and you tend to run with what you've got. Here the factor is command friction – the management of information in a reality that is much more confusing than the tabletop. Also I wonder if prolonged raised adrenaline levels does something to ability to think through more complex plans. There are tried and tested wargames mechanisms for dealing with these – limited command resources, and a random activation step.

Real life decisions – as opposed to decisions in a game – have to do with assessing risk. In a game, we know we will have a 60% chance of an action to succeed, and so we go for it.
In real life, the commander doesn't know there is a 60% chance of success. It might be 5%, it might be 95%. But by gathering intelligence, by making good plans, by training troops, by pondering on every alternative, he knows his chances will go up. When the commander has enough confidence that he did everything he could do, and that whatever chance of success he has, it will not get any better – then is the time to attack. Even at the time, they do not know whether their rate of success is 60%. The only thing they know is that they are well prepared.
Also, resources might be limited, and you might have only one shot. If D-day did not succeed, when would the next attempt be? Perhaps only one year later? So, you better be sure you take all the time you need before starting to squander resources.

The problem in games is that all this activity of assessing the situation and trying to figure out whether one should go for it, has been precomputed in a % score in the gaming engine.
A wargame is designed to resolve the action once the decision is made. A wargame is not designed to simulate the process of deciding what decision has to be made.

Sasha,

If I'm not mistaken, the Russians did a lot more digging than most. My interest is in the SYW, and even then they were the only army to fortify a position with earthworks (Kunnersdorf, etc.) to any great extent. Except in sieges, most units would only have enough in their baggage to dig their latrines – though this is supposition and I stand to be corrected on this.

Green leader, perhaps you need to change your time scale or have more than one time scale.

Okay, the problem is clearer now. The question is "How many independent actions can one army HQ organise at any one time and how do I enforce the restriction?"

A simple way to do this is to allocate each army a CinC and a number of staff officer figures/counters. The better the staff work the more figures/counters you get. Any independent action requires a staff officer to be allocated to it. Once he's supervised that action, he can go on and supervise another.

Players have a tendency to over work their troops and should be punished for doing so.

Trebian hits the nail on the head: Your OP seems to indicate a siege scenario, which essentially requires an umpire. As the latter, if a player becomes argumentative about doing everything at once, let him try, then apply penalties to the quality of intelligence, the clarity of written orders issued by overworked staff officers, the reticence of sub-commanders to spend the night on duty, the health, alertness and morale of troops kept constantly on their toes, and the intense use of resources such as food, shoes, horsepower (sickness), tools (spades do break) – all without necessarily informing him of the details, which will only appear as reports start to trickle in… If he doesn't get the message, an epidemic or mutiny is likely to sweep his camp and put an end to operations.

There was a siege game which dealt with this even more elegantly by essentially focussing on the allocation of the commander's time and attention, but I forget the name.

Something that hasn't been mentioned is planning. a coordinated assault (which means everybody doing things at once) requires a lot of preparation, staff work, briefing, etc. So you would expect such an all-out assault to be preceded by a pause.

On the battlefield this was usually on practical before the battle started, when the attacking side might be working to a plan. So a game might start with a lot of pre-distributed orders.

In a siege a coordinated assault is likely to be preceded by some days of preparation. This might be sort-of simulated by allowing command points to accumulate so that you launch your assault when you have a big pile. But this is tricky to get right in practice. Allowing delayed action orders so that elements of a D-day plan build up over days may be better.

Since campaigning and engaging in battle has been reduced to "probability and outcome", the only possible way for the players to be spared actual knowledge of the chances for success is the omniscience of the GM. Lacking a GM, the players are raised to the status of demigods possessing knowledge that no mortal ever has. This really is an either-or situation. Either you have a GM, who conceals all of the actual probabilities from the players, OR, you play the game sans GM and all of the players know their final odds for success/failure.

That said, the obvious solution to how much or how often a given player can attempt anything should rest on the cards or the dice. Roll the number(s) or pick the relevant card, and you can now embark on that sneaky strategy of yours. Greater command structure, resource exploitation, etc., raises the probability of the desired number-card coming up, ergo more actions embarked upon. A regular army known for its logistical and intelligence structures would offer the commander far more opportunities than an irregular or poorly run army. "Home ground" advantage of an irregular force would probably offset what they otherwise lack in terms of professional structure. I'm thinking of an example in the (Muammar Gaddafi backed) film "Lion of the Desert", where General Graziani raises his binoculars to watch Omar Mukhtar perform his ambushes and says, "That old man is good!" Yes, on his own turf he was good. He could draw "cards" or roll the numbers he needed to get his men to perform.

Take the "Lion" out of his domain, however, and he and his men have no resources of knowledge upon which to base operations. They would be as helpless as fish in failing water.

Instead of needing, for example, a six through twelve to allow the player character to do what he is planning, a twelve is all the chance he gets. Whereas, the Italian general PC, with a modern army, can go anywhere and try his pet plan whenever he rolls a nine through twelve (this is, after all, an Italian army, not a German one, which would get to try whatever they want on a six through twelve; Americans on an eight through twelve, Brits on a seven through twelve, etc., YMMV, arguably, of course). Once General Graziani rolls his needed nine or better, he can string that barbed wire "wall from the Mediterranean south deep into the Sahara Desert, and choke off Omar's line of supply with Egypt. It might take months to get that chance.

Another way to limit the chances is to allow a 50/50 flat chance, but make time the variable factor. Graziani, far from home, can only roll for his barbed wire wall once every three months. Omar can roll for (his limited options) once every month. The player(s) have to know what their options are and are not. Wild imagination gets them nowhere….

It is probably not feasible for the command structure in the majority of historical armies to execute more than a couple of initiatives at one time--meaning a period of months in duration. Greater success comes from focussed efforts than from diluted efforts. Multitasking is often a poor compromise.

Also, the manpower cost of a battle will take time to recover, for winner as well as loser.

In a campaign game, you can find any justification for allowing each side as little as one active effort per week.

Regarding the particular case of sieges, it is worth keeping in mind that a lot of historical sieges did not end up with dramatic (and costly) assaults. Significant element of sieges was simply blockading the fortress/city, and then sit down and wait until shortage of supplies or morale would convince the defenders to surrender. If the defenders had a good supply situation to begin with, they could also simply sit down and wait for reinforcements to raise the blockade – sometimes simple disease in the besieging camp could result in the same.

So if the besiegers plan is to simply starve out the defenders, they can very well historically sit down and wait. And if the defenders have a good morale and supply situation, they might not have particular need to launch sorties (except maybe to get some messengers through). This sort of siege can make for poor gaming opportunities, at least until the reinforcement show up to try to raise a siege.

On the other hand, attacker might from the very beginning be interested in taking out the fortifications as quickly as possibly, which could result in a flurry of action in the first days – bombardments, sorties, hasty fieldworks, constructing assault ladders, preparing for an assault etc. and in this sort of games there might be a lot happening every day (depending on how well the attackers are organised).

So if you are trying to game a historical blocking action, where actual confrontations were pretty rare, then one reason might be that both sides assumed that they would be better served by starving out the opponent, not necessarily by inherent issues of command structures that would have slowed down their ability to act.

If it's a medieval battle, it seems any action should include a 15% chance of the local warlord turning traitor and 15% of them just leaving :)

Indeed, its a question of structure, the player represents a level of command, army, corps, battalion commander, whatever. Are the requests he is making suitable for his level?
If they are not, ie. A corps Co demanding the precise placement of an individual weapon, then that may or may not occur….its simply not his decision but that of a subordinate, ….I never cease to be amazed by how many wargamers simply fail to grasp this basic premise of how armies actualy work…..especialy when the same principles apply in our daily lives..its very rare for the CEO of a company to trot down to the coalface and tell folk how to do their jobs in minute detail, generals are no different.

In a siege situation, I'd also make sure the players held enough troops for their watches in reserve, in addition to however many troops in the sally, troops assigned to prevent the townsfolk from stealing from the stores, etc.

That means SHIFTS of troops on the 'staying home' group, not just "I have 16 watchposts so I need 16 men on watch." It's more like "I have 16 watchposts and 4 hour watches, so I need (16x6=)96 men to stand watch, assuming that the guys not on watch are available to respond immediately." And that is just for the basic number of troops needed to guard the camp, not counting those you'd send out on sallies or other work.

That also doesn't count higher alert states where your entire force is half-on/half-off.

Basically, make the idiot who wants to send all his troops all over the place write a watchbill. How many troops does he have standing security at any given time? (then multiply by at least 3 to get how many total troops standing guard). Don't forget that roughly 1 man in 10 is needed for kitchen duties. How many men are assigned to probe the encirclement at night? How many horses (limits how many troops can ride out on a raid)? How many troops assigned to take care of the horses? etc. Very quickly they'll discover that they have maybe 1 in 5 soldiers available for a sally/raid.

And then you can add morale effects to failing a sally/raid if you so desire.

If you don't want to track resources, have a cumulative penalty for success for each action taken, possibly weighted by type of action. A few simple actions or one complex one are simple to command and get right. If you start overreaching your ability to command those thousands of troops all doing different things, your attempts start failing more often.

Christot, this is true, and soldiers and officers get on with there jobs. But they don't tend to march where they want, take a position in a line where they want, launch major attacks without superior orders, or start digging siege lines where they please. Staff work is carried out at all levels and officers of every rank still need to be briefed about the nature of daily operations outside their 'daily routine', which is where some of the delay and lulls occur. This is hard to simulate in game terms because except in a club situation most gamers are playing games with perhaps two players and an umpire.

Because of this an abstract formula has to be applied to create delay. The player is usually playing the part of the most senior officer present and so the abstract formula must stem from that.

Also, my experience of the military has led me to strongly believe that soldiers dislike acting on their own initiative, without superior orders, except in an immediate crisis situation. Most people regardless of the job they do are much the same because it's all too easy for them to find themselves out of a job if they get things wrong – if it's routine it gets done, if it's not they need to be told to do it.

This is a thorny question.

It took me years but I finally figured it out.

You have to give enormous and careful attention to scope and this involves the question of where does "the gamer" setp into the game. That is, what position does the player assume when he playes the game, and carefully, and BRUTALLY, and RUTHLESSLY limiting the options of his actions to that level. For example, in my game of "Oh God! Anything But a Six!" the player is assuemd to be the army commnander or a wing commander of an army (the wings being left right center, AND NO MORE PLAYERS after that, so the general maximum you can have in a game is eight players, four on each side. (left, right, center, and a general commander who manages the other commanders, and no troops, except maybe a reserve). When you are at this level you do not care if Sergeant Beitz has seen to it that his men have properly sharpened their flints or scraped down the powder sediment from their barralles, or if Lietenant Bloez has taken caution to detail and refuse two sections of men to guard the flank. All these arrangement of Beitz and Bloezare beneath you so we don't bother at all with the folderol of mounting/dismounting/ this formation or that formation or all of the minutia and chinoiserie of military bric-a-brac that agmers love to stuff their rules with. You have basic manuever units of regiments and squadrons and that is that and all you are interested in is if an element can still perform its normal battlefield functions and be part of your plan and an asset to your side, or is it now a detriment or a weakeness, something that now has to be protected on its own, etc.

Once you do this your rule book shrinks to about a tenth of the normal size these things tend to be and the game goes quicker.

2.INCREASE MOVEMENT. The problem with most games out there is that they take inordinate amounts of real-life time to go trough these vast bits of rigamarole that result in troops making "ittily-bittily" movements on the table top which slow down the game and give players the illusion they can do all these thigs. The result is that after 8 hours of gaming it's quite likely your two sides have just gotten into musket range and the battle is the inevitable face-saving highly unsatisfactory "draw" or decision as to who woulda-shoulda-coulda-oughta-mightha won.

In my game the side with initiative van move as far as his leedle ole heart desires which means from one edge of the table to the other so long as he makes his movement rolls and he doesnt run afoul of light or heavy terrain, or come within the zone of control of an enemy unit (8"). If he does he stops. The side without initiative is limited to one measure (8") for infantry and 2 measures for cavalry.

Things happen real fast and you are in the fight of your life from tne get go. This means that you don't have time for all these pirouetts of brilliance players like to think or the complicated do-se-do of maneuver they are fond of.
You're wildly lookign around for reserves and unengaged troops you can throw in here or there, or "if I only had two more infantry regiments I could crash through that gap I just made and win the battle! And that brings up the third point.

3.HAVE MEANINGFUL AND CATASTROPHIC RESULTS. Cant tell you the time I've seen games where we go through thirty minutes of rules-reading, referencing, debate and die rolling to see if you get a +1 modifier or which results in a unit going from "Shaken" to troubled by existential doubt. In my geme whole units get blasted into oblivion at the blink of an eye if things go bad. or units run away off the field (don't worry they come back at the worst possible time) and things happen QUICKLY. This makes the game exciting because it is an endless kaleidescope of disasters followed by opportunities and wide swings of fortune. This is provided not only by the fast movement but by the potential for wild combat results. I don't mean 1 in 100 but 20% of the time.

Remember finally in my game each turn represents and hour or so of hypothetical game time, but about 15 minutes to 1/2 hour of actual time to play a turn.

You should also take in account troop fatigue. Yes you can attack every night, but even if succesfull, after one month of continuous fight even the winning troopers would be exhausted, both from mental and phisical fatigue.
Another point. In most wargame' battles you dont need to care about the next battle, so as long as you arent playing a campaign, you can expend your troops, missiles, whatever. In real battles, after winning that siege, the commander still need his troops, so even if he can launch an attack every night, he wont, either because he is succesfull with the first one, or if he fails, after two attacks he will lost too many troops to launch a third attack.

But the mental fatigue of his army is very important. When you play a historical battle, usually the moral and fatigue of each army is based on previous events that you as a gamer dont care about or just dont know. In this siege, you are playing those "previous events". Each assault should have an effect in the moral and general status of the troops, and the next assault. It takes time to reorganizate (sorry about my english ) the assaulting troops. In modern times, an assaulting troop taking an enemy position would be very weak to stop a counterattack just after its succesful assault. It needs to reallocate ammo, know where is everybody take care of the wounded and missing..
Of course in tabletop games, you assault the enemy trenches, and fight off the enemy counterattack without any problem

Oh, and commanders have mental fatigue too, especially in ancient times if they were with their troops

Ottoathome: What war/time period do your rules cover? and at what level of command? (Sounds like army HQ level.)

Lots of great ideas coming in – thanks to all. Again, however, I do not think it is as simple as saying an HQ can only organise x number of 'events' in a given period, though obviously that is a step in the right direction… the point I am trying to make is that whatever number this ends up being, 99 players out of a 100 will do the absolute maximum amount every single time, so if this is your only control, you would need to make these numbers implausibly silly: take the example I gave above about Ladysmith (yes, the example is a Siege, but it applies equally to any campaign or perhaps even major battle) – to get the historical result of the number of night raids which were carried out, you would have to tell the British player that his Divisional HQ is only capable of planning and executing a sub-battalion-sized night raid once every two months. Any player is going to say: WHY!? (especially given that the two raids they did carry out happened within a 48 hour period).

I think a couple of posters have perhaps got closer, and that is (in my opinion) to make the impact of a failed action much greater than it currently is in most wargames. We are not dealing with real flesh and blood, so if a (eg) battalion-sized sally goes wrong, we can afford to shrug our shoulders, and say: well, I still have another 12 battalions. The imapct on the real life commander would have been immeasureably greater, and (again, to use the Ladysmith example) might well have resulted in the surrender of the town or something.

So I think the points about waiting for the 'perfect' time are good… maybe the player can say he wants to do x… and then each time period there is some sort of a chance of the stars aligning: sure, he can take a risk and launch his attack on any night, but if he is patient and waits, then he might get a clear, moonlit night just after his scouts report the enemy have been drinking heavily all day – thus doubling his chances of success or something.

And this should not just be the old +1 nonsense, but a real, meaningful modifier which has a large impact on the chances of success. To return to the example of WW2 strategy games, I have played dozens of different ones on my PC, yet have never felt the need to play differently in winter (for example) and half the time don't even know if it IS winter (this is usually at 0400 hours when I've been playing for 2 days straight) – which clearly shows the modifers in the game are not severe enough.

As Ottathome suggests, the result of launching your raid / assault / attack on the 'wrong' night / at the wrong time should be potentially catastrophic – perhaps this is the only way to get a player to be a little more cautious and watchful?

I'm not at all familiar with the siege of Ladysmith, but perhaps there was a reason why so few night raids were made -- such as, maybe they didn't work (cost more than they were worth in casualties, etc.)? If so, that should be the limiting factor. As in, you can try it if you want to but (perhaps unknown to the players) the odds of obtaining valuable results are not high and/or of obtaining damaging results are quite high. There could also be a built-in law of diminishing returns -- the more you try to do, the less successful each attempt will be.

I tried to put on an RPG campaign where the players were leading small contingents of cavalry and foot in the First Crusade.

One guy made it clear that he didn't like his troop mix, especially going up against horse archers. He tried to compel the game into letting him turn his troops into horse archers. But he wanted this to happen fast. "Doing everything at once" involved getting horses and bows and arrows and pushing his men into the saddle and practicing daily at the mark as they tried to gallop past. When I humored him enough to get a handful of captured ponies and find some bows and arrows, he tried out the morphing of this beginning company by insisting that they devote fulltime to the use of their unfamiliar weapons. Some of his men injured themselves. Some demanded that he, the leader, provide their rations, since they had no time to devote to foraging. But mostly his outrageous demands seemed increasingly irrational as they advanced into Byzantine territory and faced Alexius' Patzinak "police", who already knew the job of horse archery. Some of his better trained followers deserted to the Byzantines. Some of them simply vanished, no doubt joining other contingents that were led by comprehensible lords. I was accused of being unreasonable. What I was up against was the player wanting to "do everything all at once" and be blessed with automatic success. It didn't work with me. And alas, my First Crusade RPG also did not work. It remains one of my most poignant failures….

donlowry

Both raids were highly successful. But lets not get focused on that example – I think the fact is that, simply and as a general rule, a lot less things happen in reality than theoretically COULD happen.

We wargamers tend to use rules that show how many things COULD happen rather than how many DID happen. I think that is the sort of mind-set change that would be needed to slow everything down a bit.

Some solutions (some, not all) to these problems can be incredibly simple, and built in to most rules without causing too much fuss.
take a simple mechanic used in countless rule sets.

A general gives a plus 1 within x inches.

In the particular Napoleonic set I play this has been slightly expanded, so that in order for charges to be declared, the commander, or the relevant subordinate, has to be within that range.
A very simple rule.
but when the average formation (division) may have a dozen infantry units, a cavalry regt, and a battery, but only a single commander (no brigade commanders) it focuses the players attention into the job in hand.
In practice it stops the players splitting off a bttn or a couple of squadrons to sneak off in some cheesy flank March, which should be the job of a complete formation, obviously, for some games, different armies can be given different levels of command, or different commanders different command radii to allow some forces greater or lesser flexibility.
mo

Most of the time if a player is demanding his troops do x,y and z, and if the rules and or umpire say they can only do x and half of y, then the fault usually lies with the player, not elsewhere.

Another simple point common in all armies but rarely seen on the wargames table is that of operational boundaries, and that units within a structure don't swap around Willy nilly or whiz off to join in an action being performed by another formation.
so to go back to the ops original siege, perhaps, yes he has got 4 units of engineers, but they are split between 4 different divisions…and if they are operating in one sector, they can't operate in another, and some tasks will take 1 unit much longer than if he 2 units, etc, etc.
I play regularly in some very large WWII games which take a distinctly draconian approach to this, whereby brigade sized formations have clearly defined areas of operation drawn onto a map of the table, and cannot move or shoot at all into adjacent friendly areas. Players grumble occasionally when there are bizarre situations with units unable to attack enemy right next to them, but it creates the situation of rewarding correctly supporting units, and that of finding an enemies boundary between formations.

And this should not just be the old +1 nonsense, but a real, meaningful modifier which has a large impact on the chances of success. To return to the example of WW2 strategy games, I have played dozens of different ones on my PC, yet have never felt the need to play differently in winter (for example) and half the time don't even know if it IS winter (this is usually at 0400 hours when I've been playing for 2 days straight) – which clearly shows the modifers in the game are not severe enough.

Me too (although I did notice that not attacking in the Alps in winter tended to be a good move, in the end). I think it is just a matter of re-calibration of certain things:

1 – Attrition takes time.

2 – It would be no bad thing to say that an unprepared attack of any kind will fail nearly 100% of the time*. Conversely, properly-prepared activities very often succeed (was it the British in WW2 who claimed that a battalion with 8 hours to prepare should always succeed?). This should have the effect of attckers choosing to wait, reconnoitre, plan, attrit and ll those good things.

3 – Put substantial fog of war mechanisms in your games. This changes player behaviour like nothing else.

*As a function of surprise. Ad hoc attacks against prepared defences will almost certainly be surprised. Surprise is a combat modifier like almost no other and surprised forces will generally be beaten unless it is their very lucky day.

christot and Whirlwind

Lots of great points in your posts.

I think the biggest one of all is fog-of-war… in 99% of wargames, a player can look at an option and work out if it is 'worth' launching an attack (ie. statistically likely to succeed). To return (yet again – my apologies) to the Ladysmith example, General White was not sitting there thinking, "I only need to roll a 4 or more to take out that pesky gun", but probably rather thinking more along the lines of: "that howitzer up on Gun Hill is a bit of a pain, but it has not done much damage really and I have no idea what sort of defenses are dug in around it and it is only really the townspeople who are complaining… and if I attack it, I will have to draw the troops over on the western sector in case things go wrong and I have heard reports of Boer activity in the North and… and… and…"

There is, with regards the siege, the principle of 'the eight o'clock raid'. there are several instances in history where certain things, done by the enemy, were predictable: They might send out patrols every night, etc. But certain things would cause the attacker loss more than the defender if his attack was expected. Big lulls between attacks would increase the surprise factor. Have you thought about that aspect?

Also, with regards to sieges and sallies. How much logistics do your rules encompass? when you are besieged your ammunition, etc. is probably finite. How many major operations can the besieged muster? A bullet shot is a bullet spent, when you run out, bend over!

To return to the example of WW2 strategy games, I have played dozens of different ones on my PC, yet have never felt the need to play differently in winter (for example) and half the time don't even know if it IS winter (this is usually at 0400 hours when I've been playing for 2 days straight) – which clearly shows the modifers in the game are not severe enough.

Some computer games do provide better simulations of winter and other issues, like Pride of Nations. However, that game system revolves around military units requiring a certain amount of cohesion and supply in order to take any action, along with weather and climate and the capacity to find forage and supply lines. Lose supply or cohesion and the unit will not move, or an attack will fail. Throw in "modifiers" based on commander abilities, and actions might not even take place. Or an order might be given and an action will not occur because the game hates the player. Ships that move during winter time will arrive at their destinations heavily damaged and missing most of their supply. One way to replicate that in a strategic-level game would be to allocate dice each turn for each unit based upon supply levels, climate, size of army/unit staff, commander abilities, etc., and require each unit to roll a certain number or higher to be able to attempt an action. The more dice, the more likely it will happen. (or an inverse by requiring a certain number or lower, and adding dice according to all of the negative elements occurring for that turn).

Change the time scale?

Dear Don Lowry

Basically 18th century-Nappy, but slight variations take it back to the Renaissance. As I said in the post, the player steps into the game as a commander of a wing of an army or the supreme commanders. My Between the Wars Game is at the same level, army or army group commander.

The figures for the OGABAS game are 25-33mm and 20mm for the modern game.

In a siege keeping track of supplies, especially food is important for both sides. The other thing I think is missing is a risk assessment. Try this: At the start of the siege both sides have an "Expectation of Success" of 12 on 2d6. That is, both sides expect to succeed at either breaking the siege or capturing the position. Everytime the commander tries something substantial, like raids, assaults or bombardments if the event isn't successful the player's Expectation of Success goes down by one and he rolls 2d6. If he rolls the number or higher he either marches off or surrenders depending on his side. Things that would raise the Expectation would be messengers sneaking through or reinforcements. I think players would be far more careful with their assets if they knew that if they failed their general may give up.

Murvhill, nail and head.

Limited resources.

You can do everything you want every turn but you use up resources that get replenished either very slowly or not at all.

Make a lack of resources a negative modifier and watch them be husbanded and the amount of tasks being carried out drop.

@Murvihill: nice idea!

Murvihill

Great idea – really like it.

I think that could work really well – the player would have to have a very good reason to take a risk… rather than just thinking 'the worst that can happen is my raiding force gets cut off, so I might lose 500 men', he will instead think: 'if this backfires, it might shatter the morale of the garrison / townspeople… do I really want to risk it?'

Now to translate that great idea to non-siege situations.