What the hell is going on with the dice role?
I know that Rome is very dependant on the quality of your generals but as I said before the dice role combined with attrition and now the ping pong fix seems to be able to generate a situation where any army can be transformed from a victorious to a seriously defeated one in the blink of an eye and in many cases because of the ping pong fix you run the real risk of being ultimately destroyed by a game mechanic (dice role) that the player has no control over.
I know games cant cover every situation but if the overall game play has changed enough to make battles a lot harder to avoid I think its essential that you do not allow luck to influence the outcome of a battle to this degree.
In Rome I find I am watching the enemy approach and wondering whats the dice role going to do because in many cases there is bugger all else I can do but wait and just waiting could hardly be described as tactical game play.
I see three major issues with the game at present, firstly less maneuverability for armies compared to EU3 which means battles are harder to avoid, secondly the influence of the dice role on the outcome of any battle and thirdly the affect of attrition.
In a lot of situations an army that on paper should win a battle ends up losing because the dice role paralyzes the HI making them ineffective and because your morale takes hits from depleted units it is critical that your HI can get at those depleted units quickly and wipe them out. A bad dice effectively stops this happening. The best way of describing battles in Rome for me is the unreliability of your own forces in any battle.
On top of this the resulting attrition from a defeat can be quite harsh depending on the time it takes to retreat from a province but as I pointed out in another thread it also has a serious affect on you overall ability to reinforce other armies that are not even in the same theatre. So even though you could get a good dice role in one battle a few bad roles elsewhere and your capability to reinforce your armies is gone.
It wont be long before armies cannot reinforce themselves. If you hit a 10,000 army with a 15,000 army and get a good dice role you could knock two thousand men out of that army, as this army retreats it loses more men to attrition and by the time it reaches another province it could easily be heading for the 2-1 ratio but at least its morale would have increased.
I am now curious how this will work in In Nomine because I am beginning to think that even though retreating to another province should be faster this will also mean your morale wont have increase substantially before another army follows up with an attack. So the risk of the complete destruction of an army from a bad dice role in the first battle could conceivable be worse in IN because your morale will be so low in the second battle.
The main point I am making and this could also be a question, is the luck of the dice role becoming more influential on the overall campaign then was first intended.
I know that Rome is very dependant on the quality of your generals but as I said before the dice role combined with attrition and now the ping pong fix seems to be able to generate a situation where any army can be transformed from a victorious to a seriously defeated one in the blink of an eye and in many cases because of the ping pong fix you run the real risk of being ultimately destroyed by a game mechanic (dice role) that the player has no control over.
I know games cant cover every situation but if the overall game play has changed enough to make battles a lot harder to avoid I think its essential that you do not allow luck to influence the outcome of a battle to this degree.
In Rome I find I am watching the enemy approach and wondering whats the dice role going to do because in many cases there is bugger all else I can do but wait and just waiting could hardly be described as tactical game play.
I see three major issues with the game at present, firstly less maneuverability for armies compared to EU3 which means battles are harder to avoid, secondly the influence of the dice role on the outcome of any battle and thirdly the affect of attrition.
In a lot of situations an army that on paper should win a battle ends up losing because the dice role paralyzes the HI making them ineffective and because your morale takes hits from depleted units it is critical that your HI can get at those depleted units quickly and wipe them out. A bad dice effectively stops this happening. The best way of describing battles in Rome for me is the unreliability of your own forces in any battle.
On top of this the resulting attrition from a defeat can be quite harsh depending on the time it takes to retreat from a province but as I pointed out in another thread it also has a serious affect on you overall ability to reinforce other armies that are not even in the same theatre. So even though you could get a good dice role in one battle a few bad roles elsewhere and your capability to reinforce your armies is gone.
It wont be long before armies cannot reinforce themselves. If you hit a 10,000 army with a 15,000 army and get a good dice role you could knock two thousand men out of that army, as this army retreats it loses more men to attrition and by the time it reaches another province it could easily be heading for the 2-1 ratio but at least its morale would have increased.
I am now curious how this will work in In Nomine because I am beginning to think that even though retreating to another province should be faster this will also mean your morale wont have increase substantially before another army follows up with an attack. So the risk of the complete destruction of an army from a bad dice role in the first battle could conceivable be worse in IN because your morale will be so low in the second battle.
The main point I am making and this could also be a question, is the luck of the dice role becoming more influential on the overall campaign then was first intended.
