"Can simulated fog of war replace dice?" Topic

I thought it an idea to copy this topic from the SoA forum.

Back to the old hoary chestnut. I had a discussion with my playtesting pal Peter at his place the other night. Like every wargamer on the planet he likes dice (he plays Memoir). The question arose: what do dice simulate, how well do they simulate it and can they be replaced by a simulated fog of war?

IMHO dice represent the following:

1. Imperfect knowledge by a player of the combat capabilities of his opponent's units

When confronting the enemy army, a player knows in general what the opposing units are capable of. So heavy foot will overall be better than light foot, or heavy cavalry than light horse. But he doesn't necessarily know if his heavy cavalry are better than his opponent's. His lot may have indigestion from a badly cooked breakfast, or their lot may have received a pay cut and are lacking in enthusiasm, or whatever. So when the two opposing HC units engage each other, their combat factors being equal, the dice represent all those imponderables, giving variable combat outcomes.

But:
A unit's combat capability, whatever the factors that have initially affected it, should remain constant throughout the battle (taking into account step attrition). So if my HC are inferior to his, that inferiority should continue from one combat to the next and not vary widely.

Solution:
Each unit has variable basic combat factors, known to the owning player or neither player. This combat factor is revealed only at the moment of the first round of combat. The variability is only as much as one would expect for that unit type. In Optio (my own system – gotta punt!) this could be represented by flipping over the morale counter until the unit starts fighting, then flipping it back to reveal the unit's moral calibre once the fighting starts. Morale counters of different calibres can be placed downwards before the game starts. They are mixed together and then one picked at random and placed with that unit. Both players will know the calibre of the unit only when it actually starts fighting.

2. Imperfect knowledge of the enemy's whereabouts and intentions

This (presumably) is represented by PIP dice, that allow parts of the army to move whilst other parts stay in place, simulating the uncertainty of commanders who wait until the enemy reveals himself more plainly and they know what to do (PIP dice certainly do not represent a highly variable enthusiasm by the commander for carrying out orders this turn, then not carrying them out in the next, then carrying them out in the next, and so on. That did not exist on a battlefield).

But:
Once the enemy's location and intentions are clear, indicated by a high PIP score meaning the commanders are now confident and able to move, that clarity should persist for the remainder of the battle. It doesn't make sense for commands to move freely one turn, then hardly move in the next, then freely in the following one, and so on.

Solution:
Partially or fully conceal the deployment of units at the beginning of the game. We discussed how this can be done in the range of human eyesight thread. Once revealed, units stay revealed. Each player will naturally move cautiously until he knows where the enemy is and then move more confidently thereafter.

3. Imperfect knowledge of terrain

This would cover the minus modifiers for rough and difficult ground which, combined with the dice throws, simulate that the player doesn't know exactly how bad that patch of forest is and hence the incertitude of the combat result. This is combined with his uncertainty about his or his opponent's troop quality.

But:
Same problem as for troop quality. Once it is revealed it must remain constant thereafter. If forest is really bad (the unit throws a 1 or 2 in combat) it should remain really bad.

Solution:
Just make terrain effects determined and known to both players from the outset. Why complicate a game more than necessary? There is one particular case though: the search for a fordable place on a river. Most rulesets resolve that with a die throw. Which I suppose is OK, but how about hiding under a section of river a note indicating there is a ford there or not? To keep both players in the dark, create several small notes, mix them together, and then randomly put one under each section of river. A unit reaches the riverbank, the player pulls out the note and sees if he can cross or not. More realistic.

On the first point, there is a lot of chance in combat; a lucky blow killing a commander could cause the weaker unit to rout the stronger one.
On the second point, command friction tends to increase once units engage in combat; just because you heave spotted the enemy and issued orders, it doesn't mean those orders will be understood or acted upon (maybe they are out of date, or maybe the messenger got lost)

Here's a bit of an esoteric thought, nothing is as you think it is, you only think that it is because it makes things simpler for you. There are alway unknown unknowns that will cause variability. This is what the dice are for. You can't throw too many dice it slows down the game so you may have to make some things fixed for the sake of speed. You will fix those things you think least variable, hopefully your opponent will agree [best to discuss this before the game].

I'd question all of your assumptions of what would remain constant, but we don't play each other so that doesn't matter.

On the first point, there is a lot of chance in combat; a lucky blow killing a commander could cause the weaker unit to rout the stronger one.

Sure, the death of a commander could very adversely affect the performance of a unit or the entire army: ask any Achaemenid Persian. But that aside, chance in combat pretty much evens out when you are talking about large bodies of men.

My favourite example is Spartans vs Athenians. In a hand-to-hand fight between two individuals, the superior Spartan might get unlucky, slipping on a stone for example and giving the inferior Athenian the opportunity to land a killing blow. But if 1000 Spartans fight 1000 Athenians the Spartans will win, every time. The only variable will be how many Spartans are killed before the Athenians rout. Any circumstance that is capable of changing the outcome of the battle can be represented as a modifier: presence of superior commander, uphill terrain, flanking attack, or whatever. No need to represent it with dice.

On the second point, command friction tends to increase once units engage in combat; just because you heave spotted the enemy and issued orders, it doesn't mean those orders will be understood or acted upon (maybe they are out of date, or maybe the messenger got lost)

The orders are issued before the battle begins, in the general's tent on the eve of the battle or – if the army is surprised – just before the fighting starts. After that there aren't any further orders (commanders in Antiquity didn't have cellphones) and everyone, general included, just gets on with the fighting. There is nothing in reality that would make a commander as variable in his performance as PIP dice make him.

The first question is what scale of conflict you are reproducing. If we are talking about DBMM/DBM reproducing a reasonably small battle, or a more strategic set of rules such as SPI's PRESTAGES, which can reproduce Cannae. The type of fog of war systems used will differ, but for the moment let's assume we are reproducing a historical battle.

A historical battle differs from a points based game by being asymmetrical on many levels. Force mixes, position, victory conditions and so on. When you enter a historical battle, with minimal knowledge of the original battle and with no play testing, you are in effect entering a fog of war. You have to work out, in an asymmetrical environment, what to do to win.

One method of achieving this is creating historical scenarios of battles which are generally unknown. These can be played a few times by a player before they become predictable, but it will work for those few games.

The other method is a system which creates a pseudo-historical scenario. I lean towards a card based system, where players use an army list, similar to the system using in DBMM, and then to use a random card pick which provides that players with unique advantages or disadvantages. This remains hidden and only revealed when its used.

I created a video discussing this in more detail, with the link below. However the rules you use is a key factor to consider. DBMM currently has a perfectly usable point's based system which is optimised for the game system. You would need to use a more board game like game system which is optimised to recreate a historical battle youtu.be/IEegvbSr8bQ

There is nothing in reality that would make a commander as variable in his performance as PIP dice make him.

There is no such thing as "variability" in a wargame. At least not in a general sense that we roll dice for every aspect of every thing. Discussing variability has to be done within the context of what the roll represents in the kill chain being represented.

Likewise, there is no such thing as "the same thereafter" in real combat. The size of the probability effect are as important as the scope.

Let's take a non-war military action and wargame it. I need to go to the range and quality on the QZ-13. I have to get 80 of 100 shots in the kill zone on the target at 50m. So I go to the range. I miss the kill zone. I miss the kill zone. Then I hit the kill zone. I can stop here now because my hits are 98 out of 100, since everything is the same after

@pfmodel: Interesting. My take is that in most cases you can't fight an historical battle as a game, only as a simulation, i.e. both players follow the historical deployment and make the historical moves and see if the outcome is the same or not (if not something is wrong with their OOB or ruleset – in other words historical simulations test the historical accuracy of their troop types).

The big problem with historical battles is that one side won either because it outsmarted the other or because the imbalance of forces was such the losing side had virtually no chance. You can't game the first and the second isn't much fun (unless you impose a handicap).

There are exceptions of course. I like Second Mantinea because even though Epaminondas got a jump on the Spartan coalition, the coalition cavalry with the Athenians were able to pull enough rabbits out the hat to get a drawn result, so in playing terms the game can go either way.

By fog of war I'm not thinking of the player's ignorance of historical tactics for an historical battle, but incomplete knowledge of the enemy's forces and possibly of the terrain. If you can access the SoA forum I suggest looking at the SoA thread on the topic.

I enjoyed your video BTW (gave you a thumbs up). Personally I'm not a fan of DBMM's stratagems as they seem to me an attempt to artifically graft on abilities and characteristics that should be integral to the army or possibly part of a campaign game – or shouldn't exist at all. Flank marches that affected a battle for example were very rare. The only one I can think of offhand is the arrival of the Prussians at Waterloo.

@etotheipi: don't quite follow you. In general I maintain that a large body of men will produce a predictable result each time if no external factor squiffs the result. An individual however is more variable though not massively so.

Fog of war generally slows a game, over complicating it, with too low a return on investment. Hidden deployment/movement is as deep as I've gone, as deep as I will go.

My experiences have taught me to be very cautious. It quickly bogs the game down, making it far too tedious to play. Try it for yourself. Cheers!

interesting but what is missing is the campaign leading up to the battle. Usually one side would be fighting because it thought it would win (or at least achieve its objective through fighting) while the other didn't want but had to e.g., Harold at Hastings who risked his reign being seen as illegitmate if he couldn't stop the Normans raiding his lands.
No-one ever fought battles just to see who was 'best' like some wargames, and certainly didn't strive to ensure their capabilities were evenly matched.
Sorting this seems more important than the battle mechanics.

Sgt Slag – While I agrtee with him in part, not in all of it. There is a diffrence which is due to in many cases to poor game design, uncertainty and fog of war gets confused in some minds. It there are two possible "solutions" to a battle that is not fog of war but uncertainty. Suc uncertainty is actually not fog of war that is real and needs no die but can be considered as fof of war. What applies is game therory, weighing up the odds of various solutions and decideing how to deal with all or at least some of the possible soutions, massively uincertain but not random.

In our own rules albiet moderen its p[oissible to create traffic jams without rules perfect solution say I, another opinion was No Way I just want to die for it.
We generally define accurately terrain and hill crests. We could do otherwise but to do it credibly a die does not do that, so would cost more time than the return is worth. Some terrain is deliberately somewhat random in its ability to be traveresed but that uncertainty is defined clearly as it speeds play while keeping the game in the set of interesting games. Too much random even if it were to be sort of real could turn a game from interesting to a hopeless lost cause for one side. Possibly real but of no interest whatsoever. Srg Slag is right too much uncertainty can cause paralysis and oe slow the game down without inproving it in proportion. Cards seem strange to me they are in effect just slightly diffrent suedo random generator depending on what happns to discards, personal opinion, just a gimic for new players tedious for experienced players..
Player standard is also an issue.

We have several levels depending on player ability. Top level only stuff moving is put on the board from the start. They have to discover the enemy by scouting or being shot at. less able players succumb to paralysis they cannot decide even how to scout or where game becomes unplayable.

#Further down attacker is on the board the defender marked by dummy/real markers. Too many dummies and paralysis sets in for inexperienced players, experienced players its pointless they immediately rule out the ones that pose no real threat real or otherwise. How much real fog is not a simple yes no decision.

I would take it one step farther than Sgt. Slag and suggest that miniature gaming is a game and is only very tangentially connected to simulation. That is why the cost/benefit calculation so much works against trying to represent fog of war. Considering that our lives are not in anyway risked in table top gaming and that our field of view is "God like" I don't think there can be any case for it being a simulation. I think dice do a great job of introducing a degree of uncertainty into our games and creating a kind of fog of war in the sense that we can't predict outcomes with any certainty. I certainly have come to appreciate the risk of battle through wargaming and the kind of courage it was would take for any commander to decide to fight it out at this particular moment on this piece of ground.

I like a level of uncertainty in a wargame but not to the extent that troops move in one turn and then not in the next. I prefer that they attempt to complete the order given unless given a new order. I also prefer that changes in orders are restricted to reactions to events the commander can actually see or has been made aware of by messenger. I also like variable movement through difficult terrain. I don't have an issue with the variability varying different units might have different issues traversing the same ground.

I don't accept at all that a combat between large bodies of men is predictable.
Yes, a better unit is likely to defeat a worse one, but not 100% of the time.
Nor do I accept that orders will be followed in the heat of battle. On the contrary, involuntary troop withdrawals, confusion and chaos will cause all sorts of issues.
Both of those are subject to chance. Lots of chance.
The idea that once the battle starts everything runs on rails is clearly not born out by history.

I agree with Dexter. What is the line: No plan survives contact with the enemy.

An example of the unpredictable nature of battle: At Cowpens a company of Virginia militia misinterpreted an order to turn and face a flank threat and begin to withdraw. Seeing this the British line charged interpreting this movement as the US line withdrawing, however the militia turned to face and sent a volley into the charging British halting them.

How to replicate this situation in a game? RNG ie; dice. Essentially rules introducing variability in difference phases of the game.

I'd have said "imperfect knowledge" as you describe it just involves someone else rolling dice before the game: OK if that's your objective, but I fail to see the improvement over current systems.

And I have very serious issues with the idea that, if you know both sides' capabilities and the nature of the terrain, combat results are 100% predictable. Few things are less so: commanders are incapacitated randomly, supplies are misrouted, or the wrong supplies arrive and insignificant terrain features become critical. I've never seen a set of rules written by a combat vet which didn't allow for a substantial degree of chance in combat results.

How did dice become a problem to solve, by the way?

@Dexter Ward and DeRuyter: The case of involuntary troop withdrawal and the Virginia militia company falling back instead of turning to the flank isn't, as far as I know, covered by any ruleset. PIP dice either allow a unit to move as the player wishes or if they don't it stays where it is (actually, in the case of routing elephants, I wouldn't mind a random movement mechanism).

My point is that in the real world once one unit actually engages another, all else being equal, the superior unit will defeat the inferior unit every time, i.e. if there is no significant extraneous factor that tilts the result then the result, as an expression of the units' innate abilities, cannot change. It's only when you consider squad level combat, where there is a legion of extraneous factors significantly affecting the performance of the individual soldiers or vehicles, that combat is truly unpredictable.

Not even our own game which is deliberately intended to be less random than a lot of wargames, can be said to "Run on Rails". while in many cases it is possible to guess who will win the relative casualtiy losses can cary significantly, similarly in a more even match it is not possible to predict who will win. If you have a decent game where players have the freedon to think and act (a 4 bound game to me does not give that flexability) then stokes of genious and utter cowerdice begin to show throug, it does not need dire it needs competent (or incomptent) commanders who can think and interpret orders. In our own games some considere it a fault that you need a plan in your head and you need to stick to it or a variation of it, massive re-deploymets/crass stupidity will destroy the implementing player, its not about die but the fundamntals of game desighm.

Marcus Brutus – that is such a hacknied and long outdated statement. You may play such games, many games have your asperations embodied in them. However it is the game designers aim not an intrinsic property of a wargame. Otherwise miliatary would not use them and I would not play them, way to boreing and usless as a means of understanding warfare.

@robert piepenbrink: dice became a problem to solve because after many years of wargaming, I came to the conclusion they don't adequately represent what they are supposed to represent.

Taking your example of commanders, I would agree that since the commander is an individual and what happens to individuals is unpredictable, one should allow for a degree of randomness in his case. In my own gaming system, a commander may be obliged to throw a D6 after being involved in a round of combat. A 6 wounds him. A second 6 later in the game kills him.

But that doesn't apply to a large body of men. In that case the variability of individual combats evens out, and the overall capacity of the unit can be quantified, and that capacity doesn't go up and down arbitrarily during the battle. My HC charges and routs his HI with a 6:2. Next turn it is driven back by LI with a 1:6. No, no, just no. A unit doesn't fight like a lion in turn 1, then like a lamb in turn 2, then like a lion again in turn 3. But that's what dice make it do.

Taking your other examples, misrouted supplies don't directly affect combat and if they do it will be as a constant modifier (troops are hungry therefore demoralised). Insignificant terrain features becoming critical is fog of war – one player doesn't know there are there. Or quite simply they are left out of a player's calculations and tip a delicate fight in one direction. No need for dice in either case.

I have a determinist combat mechanism that is unpredictable in the sense that there are enough modifiers to make combat outcomes impossible to calculate even more than one turn ahead, e.g. his unit is inferior to mine so he should lose this fight, but one of my nearby units rout, giving him a morale boost and he wins the fight after all. The course of a battle can see-saw right to the last critical rout. But the combat results are logical all the way through. If nothing else, it works as a game. ;-)

"…once one unit actually engages another, all else being equal, the superior unit will defeat the inferior unit every time…It's only when you consider squad level combat…that combat is truly unpredictable."

You have got to be kidding!

And when I wrote of dead commanders, I was not thinking of that lone general figure which we (optimistically) believe magically improves combat performance by adding himself to a charging unit. I'm seeing a rifle company no longer led by the Old Man, but by some lieutenant most of the men couldn't pick out of a line-up. That captain is far too lowly a person to be represented if you're commanding even a modern brigade on a tabletop, but if you shove three stands representing platoons against some microscale strongpoint, his presence or absence can be critical in the success of that company--and he can do the same thing 50 times and be killed stone dead the 51st. It's called "running out of luck" for a reason.

If you think supplies "don't directly affect combat" you are cordially invited to provide fire support with the 155mm shells provided to your 105mm guns. In the words of a pretty good artillery battalion commander "people generally keep a pretty sharp eye on the special weapons [nuke] officer, but the ammo officer can really mess you up."

As Kipling wrote, generals get blamed for so many things over which they have no control at all that it's only fair they should sometimes pass off good luck and brilliant planning. ("Drums of the Fore and Aft.")

If you're happy with your system, enjoy it. But from here, it looks like an effort to deny one of the most obvious things about warfare--that things keep happening a general can't foresee or control, but which play hob with his plans. (Can you say "rope harness?")

@robert piepenbrink: I think we're talking past each other. I have in mind combat in Antiquity, not the modern era (this being the Ancients discussion part of the forum). In Antiquity a lot of men form up in line and fight each other in hand-to-hand combat supported by missile fire. A typical Roman, Macedonian, Punic, Greek, Seleucid, etc, battleline was composed of files of which the chap in the front was the file leader and best fighter in the file. Behind him was the second-best fighter and his number three was the file closer at the back, there to keep the men in order and stop them from bolting. Even with "barbarian" armies this applied as some sort of structure was crucial for a battleline to fight effectively. A more senior officer was either safely behind the line or was one of the file leaders. In either case his death didn't substantially affect the performance of the battleline. So long as it kept order it fought. The death of the general however is a different matter. Lose the King of Kings and an Achaemenid army will automatically bolt for the hills. But who wargames that?

It's different in modern warfare, where armies are far more spread out along a front line hundreds of miles long, and combat generally consists of small units vs small units, where an individual commander can make all the difference in that sector of the front.

The supplies bit: troops carried their own weapons in the past – by supplies I thought you meant food.

My take is that in most cases you can't fight an historical battle as a game, only as a simulation

You are correct to an extent; however this is where victory conditions and special rules come in. Cannae is a very hard scenario, so the victory conditions need to encourage the romans to take the risk of being encircled. A player can do something more logical, but the victory conditions would result in that player losing. Examples could be the Romans have to break through the centre after a certain number of game turns to win, thus the roman player is encourage to throw everything into the centre. Lost Battles rules go into that process in a lot more detail.

Where historical battles fail is you can only play a scenario a few times and then it would be exhausted. As the effort of creating a scenario is massive, this is a poor ROI for you effort. When I refight a scenario using Lost Battles or PRESTAGES, after a few games it becomes automatic and boring.

As for flank marches, for ancients you are correct and they are rare. The only one I can think of off-hand is Trebia. For Napoleonic battles they were a lot more common. Leipzig, Eyalu and Waterloo are classic example. Wagram and Jena–Auerstedt could have had a flank attack, it was just too late.

An interesting thread

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Once the enemy's location and intentions are clear, indicated by a high PIP score meaning the commanders are now confident and able to move, that clarity should persist for the remainder of the battle. It doesn't make sense for commands to move freely one turn, then hardly move in the next, then freely in the following one, and so on.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Most PIP systems represent the global army command not just the insights of the C-in-C.

DBx explicitly mentions it's a substitute for more detailed rules that use messengers, delay and dicing for interpretation and so on.

So your commander might now understand what he wants to do, but do his sub-generals? (who perhaps can not see what the great man can from their present position) Can the unit commanders who are a bit busy at the moment keeping their men in order while the enemy skirmish with them somehow divine the commanders new intent?

And then you have the imponderable of unexpected events – the enemy reveals an ambush and so on _ after_ the commander think he knows what he is doing.

In the DBx system and its imitators PIPs are also a store of battlefield success – if you have got your guys in the right position and the enemy is recoiling all over the place (or taking hits if ADLG) he needs to use PIPs to maintain or restore his position while you have more freedom to press home an advantage.

In this case the clarity of your plan is not relevant, both sides are striving to keep their army in one piece.

Variable PIPs can also set up risk / reward scenarios – I'll attack a flank with too few or too weak troops (while husbanding my resources for success elsewhere) hoping the enemy's command does not efficiently respond to it. Ie he has a bad PIP score at some point.

Having said that, I agree that the idea for random terrain difficulty makes sense and appears in a few rules, many more allow for testing the difficulty of rivers.

The concept could be linked to game set-up, if the armies are determined to have marched quickly to their deployment position, maybe they haven't scouted all the terrain so in these types of battles you dice for terrain – and those woods protecting your flank turn out to be open and no delay to the enemy. And so on.

regards

D F M Brown

Remember Rumsfeld saying: "There are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns." Clausewitz had it right with his "Everything is simple in war; but even the simplest things become difficult." Enter friction, fog of war, and yes, luck. Napoleon cared only for "the lucky ones. "The medievals portrayed Fortuna(Lady Luck) with a big wheel. What is up today will be down tomorrow. Battle has been compared to a roll of the dice or a game of cards. So yes, dice, cards, and other randomizers are part and parcel of a war game or simulation. If you want a deterministic experience, play chess, go, or checkers.

If you want a deterministic experience, play chess, go, or checkers.

This is Accurate

Regardless of what period you are playing, one thing always remains the same- Man. No two men are ever exactly the same. What are units made up of? Men. Therefore no two units can ever be the same. Before training got standardized, (Late 19th century?) training and experience of the men serving under these leaders (and visa versa) how long the unit has worked together determines the value of the unit's ability to remain under control. Again, take any period of history and you will find instances of units running away with little or no casualties and others that fought nearly to the last man. For me, the concept that units being equal is merely a game thing as it does not reflect the historical record. Too many rules systems rely on casualties and morale checks – mechanics that have plagued us since the 60's. It's time for a change!

At the heart of the deterministic vs randomisation combat mechanisms is the question of when the variability of individuals evens out in the mass and the unit as a whole acts in a quantifiable way.*

To take Dye4minis, "No two men are ever exactly the same." Sure. But in a formation of 500 or 1000 men that doesn't matter (remember, we're talking about warfare in Antiquity where large amounts of men fought on small areas of ground). If a good man dies, even if a section leader dies, the unit continues to function pretty much the same.

In a unit of 50 to 100 men the characteristics of the individual will affect the unit more, and in a squad of 5 to 10 men it's all about the individual.

So what is the point of transition? Dunno, but for sure when talking about one big infantry line fighting another big infantry line, we are in deterministic terrain.

If you want a deterministic experience, play chess, go, or checkers.

Rather, if you want chess, go or checkers, then play chess, go or checkers. These are highly abstract games with very simple movement and combat mechanisms and only one piece moves per turn. So it's possible to plan many moves ahead based on pure calculation. With a wargame using deterministic movement and combat mechanisms, it's very different. I can speak only of my own system since it's the only deterministic wargame I am familiar with, and I guarantee that it is impossible to calculate more than about a move ahead: all units can move in a turn (no PIP dice to freeze most of the army in place) and several things affect combat like current morale, depth, disorder, presence of commander, terrain and routing nearby units. You have to rely on general tactical principles and look for opportunities as they arise. This makes a game full of surprises and it can be impossible to determine the outcome right until the end. Very unchesslike. ;-)

*This applies to modern warfare as well. Germany lost WW2, not because dynamic company commanders were killed, but because her military industrial output was exceeded by the Allies who could produce more tanks, guns and planes than she could. All very quantifiable.

Before training got standardized, (Late 19th century?) training and experience of the men serving under these leaders (and visa versa) how long the unit has worked together determines the value of the unit's ability to remain under control. Again, take any period of history and you will find instances of units running away with little or no casualties and others that fought nearly to the last man. For me, the concept that units being equal is merely a game thing as it does not reflect the historical record.

But most rulesets cater for that, sorting units into veteran, average and raw, with more classifications possible. Thing is, if a unit is poorly trained or poorly motivated, it remains so for the duration of a battle and this is quantifiable. Variable dice certainly do not represent it.

Most PIP systems represent the global army command not just the insights of the C-in-C.

DBx explicitly mentions it's a substitute for more detailed rules that use messengers, delay and dicing for interpretation and so on.

IMHO PIP dice don't represent anything. Phil Barker experimented with them and found out they tended to oblige players to keep their stands in continuous lines to prevent a fragmented army from grinding to a halt. And they were simpler than orders. This was seen as desirable since armies historically moved in continuous lines and didn't break up into lone ranger squads each off on its own mission (the RTW AI is terrible for that).

But this means that the variability of the dice (which is at the heart of using dice) doesn't correspond to any variability in the army itself – it's just a ploy to oblige players to keep their armies in as few groups as possible. The bit about messengers is a red herring: a general in Antiquity didn't use messengers to give changing instructions to his commanders in the course of a battle – that belongs to the Napoleonic era. He gave his orders to his commanders before the battle began, and then sometimes used a signal like trumpets to time the execution of those orders. The signals were designed to be easily perceived and recognised and they were used sparingly – the initial orders were simple so didn't need a lot of signalling to control their timing.

I use a different mechanism to keep units in lines: a unit is in command only if part of a battleline or column in which one of the units is accompanied by a general or commander (there are no command ranges). If part of a battleline/column a unit cannot split off and act independently – the battleline/column behaves as a single unit. A unit falls out of command if it is unable to keep up with the battleline/column, e.g. impassible terrain in its way, or if the unit with the general/commander charges an enemy unit (the general/commander is no longer able to control the battleline as he is engaged in the fighting). Units OOC are capable of limited movement. It works.

If you want a completely dice less experience of Army Command with more fog of war than you'd believe, try Phil Sabins Kartenspiel. I've run it several times with up to ten players.

If you want a completely dice less experience of Army Command with more fog of war than you'd believe, try Phil Sabins Kartenspiel. I've run it several times with up to ten players.

Interesting. Ta.

I'm afraid that your contention that massed combat in antiquity is 100% predictable is simply not supported by history. You say a unit couldn't fight well one minute and badly a bit later. But that is exactly what happened on occasion.

I'm afraid that your contention that massed combat in antiquity is 100% predictable is simply not supported by history. You say a unit couldn't fight well one minute and badly a bit later. But that is exactly what happened on occasion.

I didn't say that massed combat in Antiquity is 100% predictable. I said that combat between large units was not randomly variable in the way dice make it. Unpredictability arose from fog of war: imperfect knowledge of terrain, the whereabouts of the enemy, the capabilities of enemy units and one's own units.

Any historical examples of a unit fighting well one moment, then badly the next, then well the next moment after that?

I see fog of war as being the unknowns leading up to or perhaps faulty intelligence leading up to the battle. The Tigers being reported as Mark IVs and alike. I see the dice representing the uncertainty and chaos on the battlefield so I don't see them being replaced for that reason and that as we game players want to roll dice 🎲.

Examples of a unit fighting well, then badly, then well?
Roman legions at the battle of Sambre (and at a few others battles too, Ruspina springs to mind). Another example would be the Seleucid phalanx at Raphia, or Eumenes men at Paraitakene.
The unpredictability is not due to fog of war; it is due to the inherent randomness of combat.

Roman legions at the battle of Sambre (and at a few others battles too, Ruspina springs to mind). Another example would be the Seleucid phalanx at Raphia, or Eumenes men at Paraitakene.

Was any of this due to external factors that can be represented as combat modifiers or was it due to an organic random variability in the troops' combat capability?

Or to put it another way: on the wargaming table can the changes of fortune be represented by disruption from or of enemy units, attacks by fresh enemy units, routs of nearby enemy or friendly units, or anything else that would not require any variation in the unit's own combat factor?

Why does it matter what the exact causes are? Surely what matters is the end result. The causes are unlikely to be knowable given the sparse accounts we have of ancient battles. Dice are as good a way as any of incorporating those chance factors which we can never know. For later periods, when we have much more information, we know that small, seemingly unimportant events can swing a combat. There is no reason to believe that ancient combats were any different

My apologies, Bolingar. I focused too much on "game design" and not enough on "ancients." Confine your argument to large battles, and I think it's defensible. If the smallest unit moved is, say, 500 hoplites, then maybe performance is predictable enough. At some lower level, individual performances and microterrain make randomness inescapable. I'd say Sphacteria, for example, was too small to game without dice, while Amphipolis might be just big enough for your system.

Why does it matter what the exact causes are?

It very much matters if you are playing a chanceless wargame where the causes are all determinate but their ultimate effects are impossible to calculate and the player concentrates on general tactics, short term effects and seizing opportunities, as opposed to a chance-driven wargame where the effects are largely random and the player makes a simple plan, crosses his fingers, and casts the cubes. It creates two very different kinds of gameplay, believe me.

The causes are unlikely to be knowable given the sparse accounts we have of ancient battles.

My take is that the causes that are significant enough to tip a battle can be known. There are not actually that many of them.

For later periods, when we have much more information, we know that small, seemingly unimportant events can swing a combat. There is no reason to believe that ancient combats were any different.

Which events would those be?

My apologies, Bolingar. I focused too much on "game design" and not enough on "ancients." Confine your argument to large battles, and I think it's defensible. If the smallest unit moved is, say, 500 hoplites, then maybe performance is predictable enough. At some lower level, individual performances and microterrain make randomness inescapable. I'd say Sphacteria, for example, was too small to game without dice, while Amphipolis might be just big enough for your system.

No problem Robert. I realised later that I had crossposted to the game design section of the forum, so talking about chance or non-chance in wargames in general is quite legit.

I agree with the rest of what you say, just with the caveat that chanceless combat works fine as a game at any level.

But most rulesets cater for that, sorting units into veteran, average and raw, with more classifications possible. Thing is, if a unit is poorly trained or poorly motivated, it remains so for the duration of a battle and this is quantifiable. Variable dice certainly do not represent it.

How would you differentiate troops in ancient battles then considering the paucity of sources? And frankly your attempt to differentiate on this basis works against your fog of war principle since I would argue the army commander probably doesn't even really know the quality of his own units to a high degree let alone his opponents.

How would differentiate troops in ancient battles then considering the paucity of sources?

One can form a general idea, enough to create functional OBs. If you want to incorporate dice, use them to decide the quality of a troop type before the game starts. That quality level remains with that troop type for the rest of the game. It doesn't fluctuate between one round of combat and the next.

And frankly your attempt to differentiate on this basis works against your fog of war principle since I would argue the army commander probably doesn't even really know the quality of his own units to a high degree let alone his opponents.

You really must come to the SoA forum and read the discussion we are having on the topic. We raised exactly this point, with the idea that a troop type could have variable levels of quality, assigned at random to those stands before deployment and revealed only at the first round of combat. Commanders indeed did not always have a perfect idea of their own troops' capabilities or that of their opponent.

Marcus Brutus – that is such a hacknied and long outdated statement. You may play such games, many games have your asperations embodied in them. However it is the game designers aim not an intrinsic property of a wargame. Otherwise miliatary would not use them and I would not play them, way to boreing and usless as a means of understanding warfare.

Your comment reminds me of professional wrestling and kayefabe with kayefabe being the attempt to keep up the appearance or illusion of it being real. So I appreciate your trying keep the appearance of wargaming as something approaching a true simulation and keeping its kayefabe up but in truth wargaming has only tendential connections to being a true simulation and functions best when everyone understands that it is first a game. Again that leads us back to fog of war and the cost/benefit analysis of whether it is really worth the work. I think dice does a good job of producing the necessary amount of uncertainty in a game. Even then, I have never been a great fan of random movement rates using a base move plus a die roll (the old Ancient Empires did that.) It produces too much work for the benefit it creates.

You really must come to the SoA forum and read the discussion we are having on the topic. We raised exactly this point, with the idea that a troop type could have variable levels of quality, assigned at random to those stands before deployment and revealed only at the first round of combat. Commanders indeed did not always have a perfect idea of their own troops' capabilities or that of their opponent.

You already have essentially variable quality in the dice rolling for the average unit. The base rating is the average unit and the dice represent variation. One unit of Hastati defeats a unit of Carthaginian HI and the next unit of Hastati loses to the same type of unit because of the die rolling. Wouldn't that essentially represent four units of variable quality? It is not obvious to me how the bar is moved forward by the approach you are suggesting.

I have played a lot of baseball table top games over the years and the approach in these games is to take the total stats of a player and distribute them in a such a way that the dice rolled many times will reproduce the player's results. Now of course, over a long season the actual player's ability varies considerably based a multitude of factors. That seems to me to be impossible to accurately reproduce and wouldn't be worth the effort even if one could. And baseball is a streak game and it is frustratingly hard to predict. It seems to me that dice do a great job of reproducing the distribution of results without trying determine what exact state the player is in at any particular moment. Translate that to an ancient battle unit and I think the same challenge exists without the kind of data one can get from MLB stats.

You already have essentially variable quality in the dice rolling for the average unit. The base rating is the average unit and the dice represent variation. One unit of Hastati defeats a unit of Carthaginian HI and the next unit of Hastati loses to the same type of unit because of the die rolling. Wouldn't that essentially represent four units of variable quality? It is not obvious to me how the bar is moved forward by the approach you are suggesting.

As I mentioned earlier, the quality of a unit, once determined, does not change for the remainder of the game. So if the player discovers that his LH stand is inferior (through some mechanism or other) then inferior it is thereafter. It isn't inferior in one turn thanks to a die roll of 2, then superior in the next turn thanks to a 6, then average the next turn from a 4, then superior the next turn from another 6, and so on. There cannot be a constant mutation of troop quality thanks to a random die roll. Well, yeah, sure there can if you're looking at it purely from the POV of a fun game.

I have played a lot of baseball table top games over the years and the approach in these games is to take the total stats of a player and distribute them in a such a way that the dice rolled many times will reproduce the player's results. Now of course, over a long season the actual player's ability varies considerably based a multitude of factors. That seems to me to be impossible to accurately reproduce and wouldn't be worth the effort even if one could. And baseball is a streak game and it is frustratingly hard to predict. It seems to me that dice do a great job of reproducing the distribution of results without trying determine what exact state the player is in at any particular moment. Translate that to an ancient battle unit and I think the same challenge exists without the kind of data one can get from MLB stats.

As I mentioned earlier, there is genuine unpredictability with an individual since there are too many factors affecting an individual's performance to be able to quantify them as modifiers. But with a large body of men the variation in the individuals averages out and the body of men acts in a determined and quantifiable way.

As I mentioned earlier, there is genuine unpredictability with an individual since there are too many factors affecting an individual's performance to be able to quantify them as modifiers. But with a large body of men the variation in the individuals averages out and the body of men acts in a determined and quantifiable way.

It is interesting to me that baseball teams have a great deal of unpredictability attached to them that makes firm predictions of performance hard to gauge. Of course, you could make the argument that this is still a small sample size but I think larger groups of people have something approach a "group spirit" that fluctuates. So I don't think I accept your basic axiom on this. At Blenheim the Gendarmes uncharacteristically underperformed at the battle. They had an off day. It happens. It happens in baseball and at a piano recital. The Stonewall Brigade performed well most of the time but there were occasions where they didn't. Performance is always somewhat precarious even in units.

You assert that a given unit will fight in a deterministic way during a battle.
You also assert that units will follow orders even during the heat of battle.
Do you actually have any evidence to support those assertions?

At Blenheim the Gendarmes uncharacteristically underperformed at the battle. They had an off day. It happens.

Fine. But note that they underperformed during the entire battle, i.e. they were having an off day and so dropped a notch in unit quality. But they didn't underperform in turn 1 with a die roll of 2, then overperform in turn 2 with a 6, then perform so-so in turn 3 with a 4, and so on.

Dice are simply no good for simulating off days.