"Victory Conditions - Army morale" Topic

What is your preferred mechanism for determining when an army will stop fighting?
1) No need – last man standing wins
2) Straight proportion of the army (eg DBA)
3) Weighted proportion of the army (To the Strongest assigns 'army points' to each unit and general, so a light unit is only worth 1 point, a large unit 3 points and most others 2).
4) Morale is calculated for each Command in an army, so that part of the army can collapse without causing the rest of the army losing heart (eg Armati).
5) Introducing a random element to the calculation so that a test has to be made depending on how many casualties have been lost (Koenigkrieg)
6) Something else.
What are the benefits of your preferred system?

6) OOther

QILS does not have a morale system. Morale iw a part of the victory points.

The more units you lose, the more VP you lose. This simulates both morale and commanders treating their people as humans beings that they care about.

The different levels of VP for achieving objectives (which can include annihilation) and protecting your own forces are so variable by the conditions that created the battle, the we feel such things are better defined scenario by scenario.

Depends. I think of an army break point as a scenario thing, and not integral to rules.
Straight-up fight between regular forces, a proportion of the army works nicely.
With loose alliances or tribal forces, you probably need a percentage of each army or tribe.
And if there are serious cultural differences--think Continentals and militia at Camden, for instance--you may want some sort of weighted system.
I am not generally in favor of a test. It makes the outcome of the battle dependent on a single die roll. But it may make sense in a skirmish game.

Overall, you want the simplest, easiest to calculate and least subjective one you can get away with for that scenario.

Etotheipi, how do QILS games end? Achievement of objectives, or reaching a time limit?

It depends, again by scenario.

Generally, when there is only one "side" remaining on the board through attrition, withdrawal, or both. You can also "call the game" by mutual agreement. The overwhelming maority of games I have run (for fun and playtest) came down to the last maneuver on the last turn.

F'r'ex in this game:

inlgames.com/stnavmib.htm

The MiB force collected enough objectives to win, but only barely were able to escape with theem.

Another approach is the demolition scenario. If you destroy the Nazi radio tower, you don't necessarily have to get home to win. Usually, though I would design the scenario so you couldn't just let all your resistance fighters die in the attempt. Still for a grim, dark, desperate scenario, you might want to make survival irrelevant.

Attrition can be an objective:

link

But it is best tempered with a need to perserve a portion of your forces. For OXI Day, the Greeks will probably win if you use the historical setup (vice the randomized ones). But, from history, we know the Italians are coming backk later (with Nazi reenforcements). So can you kick them out and still have enough forces for when they come back? (The Greeks didn't).

A route is also expected for Cinco de Mayo:

link
inlgames.com/puebla.htm

Victory for the French is determined not by winning, but by how far you get up the hill. The French can "win" with an end of game condition of having only French personnel in both forts at the end of the Mexican turn. This has happened only once.

Operation Nutcracker

inlgames.com/zdx.htm

Runs on a clock. Like the story, the game is over at dawn. Either the Rat King has captured the Princess or the Toy Soldiers have protected her. The clock, however is not a straight turn count.

Troll Ball

link

can be played to a goal count, but more often is a real world clock timer.

inlgames.com/hut.htm
inlgames.com/jwc.htm
inlgames.com/jwctd.htm

So … it depends?

It's a game thing! Show me in history where there was such a thing to where the battle ends based upon predetermined losses.

If you are playing a commander YOU should break it off based upon YOUR judgement. In one off games, how many have you seen go on until the last unit is gone?

The scenario could call out victory conditions and not a bad idea to attach a turn limit to achieve those conditions. That could represent receiving orders from above to do so.

Historical games should be based upon history and even "what if"s"

Most of our games end when one commander decides there is no chance of winning.
I often think we should use a campaign sort of thing where if a unit is heavily damaged or destroyed it should have a penalty next time it plays (Lower morale/shooting?)

I don't really care what the mechanism is, as long as there is one. It's best if the ending is somewhat unpredictable, so the game doesn't feel too deterministic. But it's also good if the ending can't accidentally come too suddenly or too soon.

Even option 1 (fight to the last man standing) is appropriate sometimes, if you're playing fanatics like the Medieval Swiss, French Foreign Legion, WWII Japanese, etc.

While the QILS rules use the word "dead" for a unit that is to be removed from the board, that was just for simplicity of terms.

If your figure represents a large number of people (like in the CdM above), it might be more appropriate to say "rendered combat ineffective, thus no longer a factor in the future game combat interactions". For CeM that mimght specifically mean limping awayfrom the forts, not in a combat stance.

A different scenario might have mission killed units throwing down arms and surrendering. Running away into the woods, never to be seen again. Lying in the dust beside his horse, nursing a sucking gut shot and unable to raise a hand in violence. But all that detail is scenario specific. Nothing in the rules needs to change to put that detail into your scenario.

Agree with Tom (Dye4minis)

It is up to the army commander, and you are the commander.

Lee at Gettysburg called it off when he realized there was no chance of winning. Hitler kept on fighting long past any sane general would.

Its your game, keep fighting if you want. Most games I play usually reach a point where on side or the other, using common sense and logic, simply says I have had enough, you win.

Thanks Tom

Kim

Assuming you want to fight it out to the bitter end, does your army want to?
I would suggest that a campaign battle is superior to a one off battle.
Lee broke off from Gettysburg for campaign purposes. Fighting a one off battle might encourage the Confederate commander to take more changes.
Also, game battle casualties do not reflect actual real life casualties. They basically reflect degradation of ability to fight.

I would suggest that the army should take an "Army Morale" test every time a unit fails. There will be low probability of army failure in the beginning. But the more Bad Things that happen, the higher the probability of failure and breaking.

It depends on level of game and period. For most of human history, armies fought until one side broke and ran, at which point most of the actual casualties were inflicted during the pursuit.

Things changed at some point in the nineteenth century as armies became ever larger and more dispersed.

'fighting to the last man' is very unusual outside of low level urban warfare, fighting until one side decides or is forced to withdraw is far more common, so some sort of army 'break' level seems sensible.

7) Whatever the rules say.

Don't think I ever played a game where I was unhappy with the given morale rules.

We've all heard about (or played) that game that ended on turn 1 or 2, when a lucky shot took out the C-in-C.

Most gamers have played at least one game that ended really early due to some kind of unlucky cascading morale failure – one unit fails a morale roll and routs, then one by one down the line each unit fails it's own "saw friends routing" test. It's no consolation that this may be phenomenally unlikely, when it actually occurs.

Most miniatures games are a fair amount of work to arrange, set up, and play. Nobody wants a game to end too early, not even the winner. (Admitting an exception for tournament players, who may be happy to win by extortion, bribery, or kidnapping.)

- Ix

Well said Yellow Admiral.

"We've all heard about (or played) that game that ended on turn 1 or 2, when a lucky shot took out the C-in-C."

Neither, sorry. I know one which ended that fast because one side failed to read and think about the victory conditions. (There was a hasty reboot.) I've been the victim of cascading morale once or twice by buying too-cheap armies in points-based games, but (a) it was my own fault, and (b) it still wasn't that fast.

But this all goes back to my assertion that a game you can win with one or two good die rolls is a poorly-designed game. (All coming down to one die roll at the end of the day is different.)

The primary reason for including a game system which impacts an entire army's ability to fight is used as a mechanism to stop the game and determine a victor. Its used when one side is doing rather poorly and the best course of action is to end the game. When implemented such a game system mechanism the key point to consider is it needs to be simple to track. Perhaps the simplest system is counting entire elements removed from the playing area, perhaps factoring in what is remaining on the playing area.

Agree with Tom (Dye4minis). None of my reading has shown this form or cause for an army to give up.

pfmodel has it it is an artifice, to be honest pointless in my opinion as its un-realistic.

Lets face it practically if an army is defeated the loss is more severe if the enemy is able to follow up. If the army did retreat in good order it would save a lot of men, depending on who and how armed and the terrain. A pointless die throw would not account for this anyway.

I would suggest that if a game finishes by lack of time and for some reason simple enjoyment is insufficient; then a "losses" vs survivors is the key. I won't say dead as we use Combat innefective, not all the troops are dead but are nolonger capable of effective fighting,

If gamers have little interest in identifying a victor in a game then there is little requirement for victory conditions or army demoralisation rules. Just play a game and have fun. For those who do want to determine a victor then some focus on victory condition and, if required, army demoralisation rules based on casualties is required.
Victory conditions based on casualties often results in players avoiding doing anything, with players hoping to win by not losing anything. The result is boring games. Casualties are not an optimal primary method of determining a victor, but can be used as a secondary method.
Objectives are optimal for victory conditions, but having objectives need players to complete a game. Army demoralisation rules based on casualties can assist in compensating for one player going slow, but if both players are slow it will not be effective. The final method is time clocks, which I do not like for figure gaming, but if dealing with slow players could be considered.

I was involved many moons ago with the Derby UK worlds wargame completion. We were the first to bring in the Swiss Chess system which in now very popular in UK wargame completions, as players get more game than a knockout.

In addition we changed victory completion winning system. We counted if I recall all of the enemy casualties plus half of your own losses, a pyrrhic victory. This encouraged aggressive play, rather than at the time, the winner being the man who took one figure off his opponent than stalled, walked off, referred continually to the umpire, so he could not lose a figure himself. This auto legislated against the rules lawyer as he would not have time to get a big score anyway.

I have long since given up on Competition games they no longer hold interest for me, too sterile in the long run for me and they became progressively divorced from proper history. Aztecs vs Romans???????!!!!