The Hero, The Traitor and The Barbarian - an AJE PBEM Beginner AAR

[Narwhal]

One more turn from Loki

November 87 - Ponti eunt domus

In Northern Italy, I carry on trying to take Ariminum



In the south, my slightly battered fleet returns to Tarentum to recover organisation



And I decide its time to end the Pontic menace in Sicily. My force at Messana is as strong as it ever will be and my army in Syracusa is running short of supplies.

 

[Soulstrider]

I noticed the Optimates have as locked generals the Numidian and the Ptolmaic kings however in my Optimates playthrough It seems there isn't a way to unlock them, what are they there for? A similar thing happened in the 5 Emperor scenario with the Parthians except they weren't locked but surrounded by uncrossable land and therefore useless.

 

[Narwhal]

I noticed the Optimates have as locked generals the Numidian and the Ptolmaic kings however in my Optimates playthrough It seems there isn't a way to unlock them, what are they there for? A similar thing happened in the 5 Emperor scenario with the Parthians except they weren't locked but surrounded by uncrossable land and therefore useless.

I have honestly no idea. Maybe the Ptolemeic king can be triggered by Lucullus ; as for the Seulecid king, he will "die" by event and Pontus will absorb his realm. I suppose there is an off-chance that Pontus cannot seize the Seulecid empire ?

The NUmidian king can only be activated by Populares action.

 

[Stuyvesant]

Good couple of updates since I last commented. Both good stuff game-wise, as well as the usual detailed and helpful disection of the game mechanics by Narwhal. Thanks! Now, if only I had the time to play CKII and AJE and post on the forums - well, life would be pretty sweet then.

PS: I believe loki's off to Italy for some clambering up/falling down dangerous rocks. Perhaps he's doing field research for his Sardinia-Piemont PON AAR?

 

[Nikephorus16]

I wish I could play this game but my laptop at school isn't powerful enough to handle something as complex as this! I hope you don't mind me living vicariously through your gaming experiences...

 

[Narwhal]

December 88 – Frustration vented

In December 88, once again, the Pontics manage to partially evade my frustration, thus frustrating me even more. Happily enough, by the end of the month, I fall on a group of Phalanxes…

I killed them all.

Most of the Pontics still evaded me, and I could not catch a leader. I have no idea why this force South, which used to be led by Archaleos, is now without leader. Did I died in the assault (not showed) of Thebae ?

I decide to accelerate my moves :

In Italy, my small “scouting force” found Marius himself :

Fortunately, despite being outnumbered 3 : 1 , I could fell back without much damage due to my conservative orders.

This force is going to go back to Rome.

Finally, in the South, I have Grand Plan. Here is my target :

Fertile, wealthy and, I suppose, completely without defense.

I will regroup my forces for a naval landing :

Finally, I will not get any more ships, as Lucullus failed to convince the Ptolemeics to join me :

Lucullus is now slowly joining the rest of the forces.

Beginner’s Corner : Frontage

One of my few issues with AGEOD games is that battles are a bit of a blackbox. You know what gets in, you get a result, but you do not know what happened. AGEOD has been trying to improve this in the last games, but battles are still complex events, hard to decipher.
Right now, we are going to talk about frontage ; when knowing who won a battle, troop quality or leader quality is obvious, but frontage is less so.

Frontage is the number of troops (or more accurately, the number of points of “frontage weight” of troops) that can take part in a given round in a battle. As you know, there is little point outnumbering your opponent 10 000 to 300 if your opponent is holding a pass where only 300 men can stand. Well, yes there is a point because you can replace your men that fell, but you get the idea.
Each terrain in the game has, for a given weather, a “maximum” frontage and a “frontage weight” by type of troops.

This information is in your AE/GameData/Terrain in notepad file, here is for instance the effect of Hills by clear weather for frontage :

The important information is the unit weight by type and the maximum frontage for combat unit [Combat_Units_Quota].
There is also a maximum frontage for support unit (siege weapons, supply wagons, HQ units), but AJE is not Revolution Under Siege, so you will never or almost never reach the maximum frontage in a batlle, so I will ignore it. Basically, it works just like “combat frontage”.
Finally, there is a “Combat_Units_OffCost” data. It is a malus for units in attack in frontage – mostly used for crossing, assault of cities, … In this case, there is no malus (100%), except for support units but remember, in AJE we don’t care for support units

The “type” of units from the Frontage point of view is the movement type. Here are two examples :

Note that, for this purpose, “Line Infantry” means “Medium Infantry”. Don’t ask me why.

I opened a new Sulla vs Marius scenario and I am going to now launch a few clashes on hilly terrain with clear weather between the starting armies of Archelaos and Sulla. Archelaos is on offense (this is important, we will see that later).

Here is the weight of every element involved :

Note that I did not mention the Legatus Legionis element of the legion. I did not because it is considered a support unit, and thus would be on the support unit frontage, if it ever engaged – which it does not. You can see it there :

Now, here is the result of our first test (detailed information) :

On the detailed sheet, you have the number of elements committed for each unit. This allows you to check that the maximum frontage of 130 is respected by both sides.

There is a small quirk with the Romans, as I don’t know, for Legions, whether cavalry or cohorts committed. Yet, since there is 10 cohorts for one cavalry element, I can suppose that only 1 cavalry element committed out of the 11 legion elements. In any case, the results are the same.

Now, let’s suppose another scenario : the Roman attack the Pontics, who are then in defense. The battle occurs, and the Pontics are getting beaten silly, as usually.

So here is the calculation for frontage weight committed:

As you can see, the Pontics went well beyond the 130 limit for frontage. Why ? Because Archeleos has a deployment bonus when in defense :

This trait adds 20% to his frontage, if and only if he is in defense.

130 * 1,2 = 156, so the frontage limit is actually respected in this battle. Note that the Romans are stuck at 130 frontage.

Now, let’s see a last case. Clear terrain, mud (=rain) :

Archelaos is once again in attack, in clear terrain. And here are the results :

The number of elements involved is obviously way above what the frontage would allow. Why ?

There is special bonus to know ; in open terrain only (clear, prairie, desert, wood), the Units Quotas are modified by leader rank and offensive / defensive whether he in offensive or defensive posture:

• Combat Units Quota : bonus of 25 * [Rank + Rating] bonus frontage
• Support Units Quota: bonus of 10 * [Rank + Rating] bonus frontage

Given this information, here is a calculation of the maximum frontage :

The frontage rule is respected.

Should I remember all this ?

No !

What you should remember, though, is that :

- You won’t beat legions (or Caesar’s veterans, or Sulla's crack troops) by number alone, you will beat them by number IF you can find a place where you can bring your superior number AND a leader with a strong skill

- Clear terrain with no rain is a must if you are playing number against quality

As you can see, in clear terrain by clear weather the maximum frontage does not change but the “weight” of units is almost half of the one rainy weather. The two initial forces of Archaleos and Sulla can commit at 100% if you ever did this – and Archaleos gets a beating

- Mixing poor quality units with good quality units can be a bad idea, as your poor quality units will use up frontage without the punch.

IMPORTANT NOTE : To take the examples in this AAR, I used the beta version of the Terrain files. As of 1.00, those have changed :

Hill frontage is now 200
Clear terrain frontage is now 270.
The weights have not changed.

 

[Stuyvesant]

The Pontics are a bit of a punching bag, but there are just an awful lot of them to go through before you're done with them.

Very detailed breakdown of the frontage rules and all the different factors that affect them. As always, your technical disection of the game is much appreciated for a better understanding.

 

[Arilou]

...And that is the reason I can't play AGEOD games Just too many modifiers I go crazy.

 

[Malurous]

The image limit for an AAR update is 20. Please keep this in mind in the future.

 

[Merrick Chance']

And this is why I like AGEOD games. All of the levels of complexity make it a lot harder to game the system, and makes the game feel more qualitative, more like a simulation than something that you can game (like in, say, Starcraft where you're very much playing a game and you go to certain strategies that have more to do with the game's structure than what is going on within the game)

 

[Narwhal]

One more turn from Loki. He should be back soon :

December 87 - Situation improving

So, I am still trying to take advantage of Sulla’s main force being tied down in Greece.



But in Italy, things improve. A rather strange attempt to take Perugia is readily beaten off



And I retain some control of the area north of Rome



And my heroic forces in Sicily raise the siege of Syracusa



This frees up the legion I have been training there. I decide to follow up next turn and see if I can end the Pontic menace – I mean its not as if Narwhal is doing much to help.



In effect, my hope is to clear Sicily and move that force north, finish training about 4 new legions and retake Rome before Sulla arrives.

 

[Narwhal]

January 86 - More frustration and an unexpected family event

I hate the Pontics.
I really do.
I sent Sulla to destroy the Pontic armies in Thessalonica. Thessalonica is assaulted, but the Pontics moved out when they saw Sulla coming (generals who believe they have not a chance may avoid battle on their own).

And meanwhile, Archelaos is back South.

Oh well, on my way back to intercept him I suppose.

Now I am doing this AAR, I understand I should have split Sulla’s force, one legion with some auxiliaries would have been enough to cover my back and hamper Archelaos from regrouping, while Sulla would wipe them all out. The Legions are powerful enough for this (but are not going to remain so – a very welcome nerf is coming). Oh well.

In Italy, absolutely nothing is happening. I am preparing my landing in Africa :

And the old fool finally dies. Too bad I could not kill him myself !

Beginner’s Corner – Combat II : Fire phase

Now we have seen the frontage rule, I am going to carry on and explain how combat itself is processed. But combat is quite long, so this first part will be about the combat until the end of the ranged combat only. Melee with be a third beginner’s corner, routing the last.
As we are in AJE, ranged combat has an extremely minor impact – but it is of course much much more important for other AJE games. In addition, it allows you to have a good idea of how a battle work on other items (initiative, command test,…).
For our little test, we are going to run a game where a unit Pontic (Hellenistic) Sagittarii is meeting a unit Optimates Cretan archers in front of Epirus. The Romans are without leader, while the Pontics have Archelaos leading the stack, and Diogenes merged with the unit. The Romans are in defense.
The Roman unit has 3 archer elements, while the Pontic unit has 2 javelinmen elements and one slinger elements.

Here are they :

Now, I put my game in “debug” mode (option/system/error logging) so the game generates a “battle log” after each battle. I am going to use it to illustrate the battle.

Here are the different phases of the battle :

Administrative phase

In this phase, the game will first check the terrain, the forces in presences, the skills that are going to be used etc… No decision is made.

13:31:18 (Reporting) <<<-----START----->>>
19:00:47 (Reporting) Starting CheckBattles, a battle occurs in region Epirus at day 25
19:00:47 (Reporting) Outside terrain only (used only for range and Abies): Wooded Hills effects on Max Range: 4 Range Mod: 0 Weather: Fair
19:00:47 (Reporting) Checking Battle Abilities given by 1004421 Sagittarii I (Cre) The Sagittarii units has a special ability

19:00:47 (Reporting) Unit Sagittarii I (Cre) [7/Skirmisher] Off: 100 Def: 100 Aslt: 100 Init: 1 Basically, this trait gives +1 initiative, but keeps Offensive and Defensive at 100% of their base value
19:00:47 (Reporting) ---> ROF: 0 Prot: 0 Disc(TQ): 0 Turns out “skirmisher” has no impact on ROF, Protection, Discipline either…
19:00:47 (Reporting) ---> LandingPerc: 100 CrossingPerc: 100 ChargerMod: 0 CChargeMod: 0 …nor on all these things (the landing / crossing mali, the charge bonus and the counter-charge bonus)

I cut here, but he does the same with all the units / stacks

19:00:47 (Reporting) GetRound SubList 8 SUs can be involved during this round..In this round, 8 elements can be involved – so the garrison is left out as it is in the structure. The 8 elements are the two leaders, the 3 archers, 2 javelinmen and the slinger
19:00:47 (Reporting) Round: 0 Optimates is committing 3 Lines SUs and 0 Supports SUs
19:00:47 (Reporting) Round: 0 Pontus is committing 3 Lines SUs and 1 Supports SUs

Command Test

You remember the “out of command” malus when you do not have enough Command Point in the stack – the little number in red going from 5% to 25%. Well, it plays a role here.

Each stack with a command malus have ALL its elements run two tests with a chance of failure equal to the command malus :
- Failure of the first test makes the element lose one in rate of fire
- Failure of the second test makes the element lose one or two (depending on the command malus) in initiative.

In addition, each element must do a “quality test” under its initiative. If it fails, all is not lost, the element can “save” by making a test under the offensive / defensive of the leader. If even this is failed, the unit loses one more in ROF (I suppose this make more sense in 18th century warfare, but the impact is neglectable in AJE so it was kept in)

The engine will also use this opportunity to select which elements will fill-up the frontage in order to respect the frontage limit. This is random, but units already committed in an earlier round has an higher chance to have their elements picked up, while wounded / incohesive units have less chance.

19:00:47 (Reporting) PON 1004381 Hellenistic Javelinmen [Line] Round ROF: 1 Round Initiative: 7 BattleGround: Wooded Hills
19:00:47 (Reporting) OPT 1004376 Hellenistic Archer [Line] Round ROF: 2 Round Initiative: 8 BattleGround: Wooded Hills
19:00:47 (Reporting) OPT 1004377 Hellenistic Archer [Line] Round ROF: 2 Round Initiative: 8 BattleGround: Wooded Hills
19:00:47 (Reporting) OPT 1004375 Hellenistic Archer [Line] Round ROF: 2 Round Initiative: 8 BattleGround: Wooded Hills
19:00:47 (Reporting) PON 1004382 Hellenistic Javelinmen [Line] Round ROF: 1 Round Initiative: 7 BattleGround: Wooded Hills
19:00:47 (Reporting) PON 1004380 Hellenistic Slinger [Line] Round ROF: 2 Round Initiative: 8 BattleGround: Wooded Hills
19:00:47 (Reporting) PON 1002451 Archelaos [Support] Round ROF: 1 Round Initiative: 10 BattleGround: Wooded Hills

Everyone passed the test. If they did not, you would see something like this (failure of the initiative test : )

13:31:18 (Reporting) Failed TQ in battle Hellenistic Archer Adj Quality 5 Leader bonus 0
13:31:18 (Reporting) OPT 1004376 Hellenistic Archer [Line] Round ROF: 1 Round Initiative: 8 BattleGround: Hills As you can see, ROF is one instead of two

Firing phase

The first round of the battle will start at the highest possible range. In this battle, you can see that the terrain allows a range of 4, the Roman archers have a range of 2 and the Pontics a range of 1. Thus, the first round will start at range 2 – and only the Romans will fire.

Let’s take the first shoot, which targets the slingers :

19:00:47 (Reporting) *** Start of action # 1 1004375 Hellenistic Archer vs 1004380 Hellenistic Slinger ***
19:00:47 (Reporting) Attacker belong to a defending group SubType: Regular Defender belong to a attacking group SubType: Regular

The engine will pick among the eligible elements one, proceed to make it shoot at another element on the other side.
The chance to hit are calculated taking into account the following :
- Offensive (or defensive, if in defense) fire
- Terrain bonus (see below)
- Leader bonus (+10% per point of the relevant skill (Offense / defense) of the stack AND the unit leader as of 1.00)
- A bonus of discipline – 5% by point of difference between the discipline of the unit and 5.
- Malus due to insufficient cohesion
- Malus due to insufficient losses
The final result is multiplied by 250% (in AJE) to get the chances to hit.
Well, usually, the protection kicks in at this moment, but the slingers have none, so we will ignore that.

So obviously, we need to know what the terrain bonuses are. Here are they, in the GameDate/Terrain once again, depending on the type of element :

The two first numbers are the Fire bonus / malus to shooting (in %) to the attacker / defender
The two following are the Protection bonus / malus given to the attacker / defender
Finally, the two last are the TQ (discipline) bonus / malus given to the attacker / defender in melee. Not useful for now.

So let’s try to value the chance for a Roman archer :

Let’s check this in the engine :

19:00:47 (Reporting) Battle effectiveness with leader rating: 100.00%
19:00:47 (Reporting) Firer value with leader tactical rating: 7.50
19:00:47 (Reporting) Firer value with TQ correction: 7.50
19:00:47 (Reporting) Firer value with cohesion: 7.50
19:00:47 (Reporting) Firer value with penalty from losses: 7.50
19:00:47 (Reporting) Firer final fire value: 7.50
19:00:47 (Reporting) Receiver base protection: 0.00
19:00:47 (Reporting) Receiver protection with terrain: -1.00
19:00:47 (Reporting) Receiver protection with entrenchment: -1.00
19:00:47 (Reporting) Receiver final Prot value: -1.00
19:00:47 (Reporting) ToHitCoeff %: 250 ATK ROE %: 100 DEF ROE %: 100
19:00:47 (Reporting) Attacker final To Hit (%): 19.00

If hit, the unit loses 1 “strength point” and 5 “cohesion points” as indicated in the “detailed panel” of the element, at the line “Ranged damage”.
Check :

19:00:47 (Reporting) Attacker DmgDone: 1 CohDone: 5 AsltDmgDone 1 AsltCohDone: 5
19:00:47 (Reporting) Attacker ToHit: 19.00 rolled a 19 scoring a hit Defender remaining Health&Cohesion 9 / 71

Once all the archers have fired as much as they have in rate of fire, the range decrease by one (we are now in range 1), and everyone starts again to shoot.

19:00:47 (Reporting) Round: 0 Battle is now at range 1
19:00:47 (Reporting) There are 6 SU eligibles to attack at this range (1).
19:00:47 (Reporting) Picked: PON Archelaos' Army 1004382 Hellenistic Javelinmen firing

[I don’t want to deal the retreat attempts in this Corner – so I did not mention them for now]

This time, the javelinmen and the slingers are at range, so initiative has a role. I cannot show it with the log, but the developer explained me that all the elements are put in a “randomizing bag”, and one element is randomly picked, each element being “weighted” according to its initiative.

What would be good for me to illustrate the combats would be for a Pontic to be …

19:00:47 (Reporting) *** Start of action # 7 1004382 Hellenistic Javelinmen vs 1004377 Hellenistic Archer ***

… oh ! Great !
So let’s calculate the final fire value for our javelimen :

Check :

19:00:47 (Reporting) Firer base fire: 9.00
19:00:47 (Reporting) Firer value with terrain: 7.20
19:00:47 (Reporting) Hellenistic Javelinmen - Commander: Archelaos Cmd Coeff. %: 140
19:00:47 (Reporting) Hellenistic Javelinmen - Unit Commander: Diogenes Cmd Coeff. %: 120
19:00:47 (Reporting) Battle effectiveness with leader rating: 160.00%
19:00:47 (Reporting) Firer value with leader tactical rating: 11.52
19:00:47 (Reporting) Firer value with TQ correction: 10.94
19:00:47 (Reporting) Firer value with cohesion: 10.94
19:00:47 (Reporting) Firer value with penalty from losses: 10.94
19:00:47 (Reporting) Firer final fire value: 10.94

Now, there is something different here – our unit has protection.

The protection is calculated the following way :
- Base protection of the unit
- protection malus due to terrain,
- protection bonus due to entrenchment

Each point of this “final protection” reduce by 10% each time the chance to hit (so 2 in protection reduce by 10%, and then the result by another 10% - not by straight 20% ; the impact is minimal for ground troops but significant for ships which have high protection). There is no malus for negative protection.

Here is our calculation for this unit :

Check :

19:00:47 (Reporting) Attacker final To Hit (%): 25.00
19:00:47 (Reporting) Attacker rolled a 63 and failed to hit

Well, that’s all for the examples.

After all the attacks at range 1 are finished, it is range 0 – assault ; which is for the next episode.

After the assault phase, the round ends, and a new round starts. The starting range of the following range is the same starting range as the previous round, minus one (so if all your melee units engaged in the first round, and all your archers engaged in the second, that’s bad news - unlikely to happen). The initial range of a round, though, can never be below 1.

A final note on the cohesion and losses effect :

As long as your element has 60% of its initial cohesion, your unit will have no ill effect in firing. Afterward, it will decrease rather sharply.

As for losses, the first malus only triggers when the element has 30% of less of its health, because before then the less experimented guys died first. When the element has less than 15% of its health (so 1 strength point left), let’s just say that the element has a “crippled” malus that basically makes it useless.

 

[Narwhal]

And yet another turn from Loki100. I have one more in reserve, but he comes back soon, I think.


January 86 - Vacancy in power

Well at least my sieges are going fairly well



Unlike my attempt to finish off the Pontics



I’ll settle for protecting Syracusa till the new legion is ready and then they can have the island to play around with.

Marius dies



Don’t believe the image, here is the truth of what really happened. Anyway, Cinna decides to celebrate by speeding up the siege at Ancona.

 

[Mr. Capiatlist]

Just a heads up, splitting images over multiple posts does not get around the 20 image limit.
Just in case you have another update up your sleeve.

 

[Narwhal]

Good couple of updates since I last commented. Both good stuff game-wise, as well as the usual detailed and helpful disection of the game mechanics by Narwhal. Thanks! Now, if only I had the time to play CKII and AJE and post on the forums - well, life would be pretty sweet then.

Actually, I don't even understand how you can read and comment on that many AAR ; so that you can at least choose between CKII and AJE after that baffles me.

I wish I could play this game but my laptop at school isn't powerful enough to handle something as complex as this! I hope you don't mind me living vicariously through your gaming experiences...

Well, to be honest the game still has some balance issue. It will be perfect when you will have a new computer.

The Pontics are a bit of a punching bag, but there are just an awful lot of them to go through before you're done with them.

Well, the Romans are overpowered against non-Roman faction, but from the beta forum this is gonna change, and Optimates player are going to have a surprise...

Very detailed breakdown of the frontage rules and all the different factors that affect them. As always, your technical disection of the game is much appreciated for a better understanding.

I like it - actually the developpers asked me to send the word file to make a gamehelp from me.

...And that is the reason I can't play AGEOD games Just too many modifiers I go crazy.

Except maybe on supply, playing on instinct is quite enough. I am just the sort of guy that dismounted everything except the car in my parents house to understand how it worked. I even "broke" a computer like this - and still did not understand how it worked (down to the detail). Well, it is not broken, it is just that the parts don't seem to fit together

The image limit for an AAR update is 20. Please keep this in mind in the future.

Sorry for this. We AGEODer managed to keep a low profile so far and I know I often was dangerously close to the 20 rule. I completely forget it this time.

And this is why I like AGEOD games. All of the levels of complexity make it a lot harder to game the system, and makes the game feel more qualitative, more like a simulation than something that you can game (like in, say, Starcraft where you're very much playing a game and you go to certain strategies that have more to do with the game's structure than what is going on within the game)

Well, only you don't have firm grasp on the system - between the loyalty shifting, the generals not engaging when you want them to, the weather, the frontage picking the wrong units, it is almost no use micromanaging everything.

Just a heads up, splitting images over multiple posts does not get around the 20 image limit.
Just in case you have another update up your sleeve.

That was not the intent (I posted on Loki100's behalf) but of course I understand the issue and the fact that the name of the poster is the only thing that matters.

Good to see you follow this thread Or maybe you have an alert or something

 

[Praetonia]

I have nothing in particular to say, but noticing a slow-down in comments I thought I would let you know that people are still reading and appreciating this. You've also persuaded me to buy RoP

 

[Crimson]

Bought AJE because of your AAR and enjoying every second of it

 

[Narwhal]

You may want to take some time to vote :



Even if you don't like this particular AAR (actually, it is my least favorite of any I did because the Optimates are extremely unbalanced so it is a walk in the park for me so far), vote for your favorite, it's a good opportunity!

 

[unmerged(564045)]

Just wanted to tell you that I'm following your AAR. Many thanks for the great work - and especially for the beginners section, which also helped me to understand Birth of America better I agree, up to now the Optimates are much stronger, but still it's interesting to see, what a human player can do to slow down Supersulla a little

 

[Narwhal]

Just a small head-up : the reason for the AAR being slow lately is that I try to collect as much information s possible from testing and the dev on combat for the developper corner. Once the serie on combat is over, it will go fast again. Sorry for that.