How battles are rolled

[Poach]

Despite repeatedly explaining how I do battles, the myth that "tactics are worthless" continues to pop up again and again. It deeply, deeply annoys me that this lazy assumption keeps resurrecting itself because I put a lot of effort into rolling these battles for you all and I could do it in 5 minutes if I didn't bother reading your orders but I do.

If you're genuinely of the opinion that tactics are worthless I'm more than happy to oblige you all in that. It would mean substantially less work for me.

So I'm going to explain, in it's own thread, one last time how I do battles. If "tactics are worthless" comes back again, they will become worthless.

* * *

Two players send in their orders, with flank troop dispositions and the sort of tactics they want implemented.

Let's assume for a given flank I get these orders:

Army A wants their heavy infantry and polearms to advance and pin the enemy while their cavalry will seek out the enemy cavalry, allowing the light infantry behind the cavalry to attempt to outflank the enemy infantry and help their heavy infantry and polearm allies that way. The cavalry will attempt to wheel around the enemy line and strike them from behind.

Army B plays it cautiously, and has their light and heavy infantry hold position, with their polearms on the flank and their cavalry seeking to secure the wider flank and harass the enemy forces to assist in holding the line.

That becomes the following fights:

1. A Cavalry vs B Cavalry. This is the first move, as both armies have ordered their cavalry to attempt to sweep their opponents from the field. Let's assume A cavalry wins and it embarks on a long flanking move around the enemy line.

2. A Light Infantry vs B Polearms. Army A wants their light infantry to attack while the two cavalry forces are embroiled in battle. I'd have rolled to see if the LI get caught up in that or complete their flank attack, so assume I rolled successfully for them. Since Army B had their polearms watching the flank as a defensive move, the light infantry need to overcome them if they want to engage the main body of enemy troops. Let's assume they lose, with the polearms fending them off.

3. A Cavalry vs B Polearms. With the enemy light infantry successfully repulsed, A's cavalry can no longer outflank B uncontested, as the polearm troops are still in play. They're not unengaged any more so they might not get their +4 bonus against cavalry, I'd roll for success and base the chances on how well they beat the light infantry: a solid win gives them plenty time to form up against the enemy cavalry, a close call means they might not have the time. Let's assume the cavalry overrun the polearms.

4. A Cavalry and Heavy Infantry/Polearm group vs B Infantry. With B's plans for defending their infantry's flanks overcome, their infantry are now at the mercy of both the advancing A infantry and the A cavalry that successfully overran the polearm troops.

What does not get taken into account is flowery descriptions of formations. If you spend several paragraphs describing how your army is arranged in alternating blocks of infantry types with lines of archers spaced between the ranks but your orders still boil down to "my infantry will advance to fight their infantry" then one of the stages above is still going to be your infantry vs whatever their counter ends up being. On occasion bonuses will be given if I think something in the description actually offers a concrete tactical advantage and isn't just fluff, for example saying your forces are held within the forest and thus you'd get a bonus against the archers.

Sometimes I do get orders filled to the brim with fluff that contain 0 tactics. Sometimes it does boil down to "everything vs everything" in a single round, because sometimes people do send me orders saying "everything attacks en masse". I can't help that, that's on you as players giving me such basic orders.

I hope this, at long last, stops the totally unwarranted criticism I get from people who probably don't even know how the battle calculator works, never mind how I decide what goes into each sandbox stage.

[LillyanaKabal]

I personally belive that the claim is a lexicological misdemeanor. A more accurate statement would be, 'tactics have the possibility of being rendered useless'. Given the random nature of Random Number Generators (The clue is in the name ;p) it is entirely possible that, regardless of how Lelouche-esque your tactics are, there is a chance that the dice screw you over in favour of the enemy. The overarching claim that all tactics are universally useless is a highly flawed statement, but the conceptiual ideaology behind the phrase is one of slightly more solid ground.

[Poach]

It's far from the first time people have complained that tactics outright aren't accounted for by the battle system. It's not "rolls might screw me" it's "sending PMs with tactics in them isn't worth my while because you won't make any changes to account for them anyway".

[LillyanaKabal]

Well then the simple and obvious solution is that people are stupid and love to complain when the dice fall against them.