Erfworld 66: page 60

[Scientivore]

I think you've got the basic idea. Ansom expected that ending turn in the middle of the remaining Donut of Doom dwagons, while not exactly being an ideal situation, would be survivable if he succeeded in taking out the wounded dwagons and the uncroaked warlords. Without warlords, they would have to fight every enemy unit they met. The previous example of that situation (Jillian using the orlies to screen off the other four dwagons while she took out the blue) implies that Ansom et al could control which units the incoming dwagons would fight (presumably the gumps, which seem to be the toughest).

Since Ansom doesn't know about Stanley's triniteyemancer (to coin a word), he probably has no idea the level of control that GK has with unled stacks. I doubt that anyone else can give more than a simple move order to non-warlords. Stanley can efficiently give a series of simple orders to pull together a flight of dwagons into a single hex, attack Jillian and return to GK. When my avatar was smirking like that, I think that he was picturing the remaining divided dwagons not having any warlords around to collect them into a single stack. In that imagining, at worst he would only face one small stack at a time -- if Stanley could even give them any orders at all.

The triniteyemancer is such a huge advantage, Stanley's predicament is looking more and more *facepalm*ingly self-inflicted.

[Rolan]

Turn-based strategy games in which more than one stack can attack at a time (assuming it makes any difference in the first place) are unplayably unbalanced as anyone on his turn can easily surround enemy formations and--using any supposed "flanking" bonus--destroy them. Whoever goes first wins, or it degenerates into a game of go, in which every player is trying to create large "blob" formations that cannot be advantageously surrounded, hollowing them out and puffing up like a puffer fish to make himself a larger target while hoping that the enemy cannot punch a hole through his line and eat him out from the inside. It's an interesting game but it is not Erfworld.

The Age of Wonders series (which borrows heavily from Master of Magic) has a good system for involving multiple stacks. It allows for surrounding and crushing isolated stacks left near high-move units, but only if you send a stack supportless into the close vicinity of enemy units.
Essentially, when a stack moves into an enemy stack, the game switches to a tactical mode like in HOMM or something. This tactical board is a huge hex with six edges. The defending stack goes in the center, then any neighboring stacks deploy on the appropriate edges (including the attacking stack). These neighbors can be enemies or friends, and stacks have a hard size limit (8 I think).
While I think facing is important in the tactical mode (it's been a while since I played), you wouldn't want to split a single 6-unit-stack just to attack from all sides. The six units do better close to each other, particularly if one's a healer. On the strategic map, with stacks generally being at the 8-unit limit, you want to put lots of units adjacent to the end of the enemy's flank, because you'll outnumber them in the resulting tactical battle. Keeping your stacks from being surrounded, and trying to gang up on exposed flanks, is pretty well balanced in Age Of Wonders.
I kinda hope units in Erfworld can enter neighboring combats if they have commanders. I really doubt it, but I've seen it work well in AoW.

[SteveMB]

Since Ansom doesn't know about Stanley's triniteyemancer (to coin a word), he probably has no idea the level of control that GK has with unled stacks. I doubt that anyone else can give more than a simple move order to non-warlords. Stanley can efficiently give a series of simple orders to pull together a flight of dwagons into a single hex, attack Jillian and return to GK. When my avatar was smirking like that, I think that he was picturing the remaining divided dwagons not having any warlords around to collect them into a single stack. So, at worst he would only face one small stack at a time -- if Stanley could even give them any orders at all.

Possible. It depends on whether Ansom has had an opportunity to see a enemy unit do something that it just shouldn't be able to do within the usual command-and-control limits. (Stanley doesn't strike me as clever enough to refrain from using a capability in order to conceal its existence.) Then again, the fog of war would make it difficult for Ansom to establish that a given enemy unit is warlord-less and to determine exactly what it did....

As you note, Jillian's capture is the best example, but that doesn't tell Ansom anything if her reports of how she got captured are as reliable as her reports of how she got away.

The triniteyemancer is such a huge advantage, Stanley's predicament is looking more and more *facepalm*ingly self-inflicted.

Based on his annoyance that Parson's hit-and-run tactic was denying the warlords a change to level up, I'd guess that Stanley's approach has been one focused on winning the battle (and generally not even managing to do that) while losing the war.

[ChowGuy]

The Age of Wonders series (which borrows heavily from Master of Magic) has a good system for involving multiple stacks. It allows for surrounding and crushing isolated stacks left near high-move units, but only if you send a stack supportless into the close vicinity of enemy units.
<much snippage>

Rolan's got the right of it, but the AoW system is by no means the only version of the "adjacent hex" rule. In many of the old Avalon Hill board games where each sides moves were divided into a "strategic movement" phase followed by a "combat resolution" phase, All units adjacent to an enemy at the start of the resolution phase were required to engage in combat, but could only be involved in one action per turn. Groups of co-adjacent units (allied or enemy) could be designated to a given action by the attacker, and it was not uncommon to send single, weak units to flank an enemy and engae a portion of their formation in a "suicide" attack, so as to improve the odds on the main attack.

In "Battle for Wesnoth" units with "backstab" ability get a bonus for attacking enemies, if another unit from their side is directly opposite.

Flanking and pincer movements are and have very much been a part of Turn-Based strategy games from the get-go. It is only in relatively simple systems like that of HoMM where tactical combat is emphasized over global strategy that their use is deprecated. (And even in HoMM2 I can recall, fondly, sending a "Warlock Bomb" or two in to soften up an otherwise impregnable city defense.)

[kabbor]

One reason for strange rules and situations is that (I think) this game was meant to be played (or maybe is being played) on the other side: The players are Ansoms forces, and they are attacking GK. The game has been going on for some time - long enough for several battles to be fought over all the other cites. Maybe the players have become complacent about the consistent bad strategy of the defending forces.

(I wonder if we will ever be shown the players? Who or where are they?)

[ChowGuy]

One reason for strange rules and situations is that (I think) this game was meant to be played (or maybe is being played) on the other side:

No, if you're referring to the apparent similarities between this and the game he was planning for his group, I got the impression from his first Klog that he was planning for them to take the side he's now on, while he as the sadistic DM handled the coalition in this no-win "Kobayashi Maru" scenario. On the other hand, if your referring to the irony of finding himself on the other side after his disparaging opinion of his player's ability, yeah I'll buy that.

[gatitcz]

Crap, ninja'ed. For whatever reason my browser wasn't showing all the posts. My old post has been spoilered for redundancy protection.

Spoiler

Show

DavidByron, yes, it's a story first, but for some of us, speculating about the rules adds enjoyment to the story as well as letting us guess about the repercusions of the two factions' actions. Any speculation is purely for our own entertainment. We realize the story takes precedence. We expect to be surprised occassionally. Rules just give us a frame of reference.

Besides, there aren't really that many contradictions. Most of the rules seem pretty clear. Point by point rebuttal:

How fast can leaders move? The uncroaked warlords Parson uses seem to have huge movement - far more even than dragons, but suddenly Ansom and Vinnie are stuck in a trap and have no movement left even though they can both fly. This makes sense as a story device, but not as a rule.

Warlords are using their mounts' movement, not their own. Vinnie and Ansom's mounts aren't out of move, they just don't have enough move to get back to their own forces. For instance, they chose not to enter the center hex - this decision is obviously tactical instead of sudden 0 move. Besides which, we already knew that heading into the pincers would use up nearly all their move. It's still their mounts' move that is about used up. Whether or not they still have their own move depends on mounted rules.

How easy is it to kill warlords? Stanley has uncroaked at least five warlords which implies they all died and subsequently their bodies were retrieved. That suggests that the warlords died while the hex they were in remained controlled by Stanley. If killing warlords is that easy why couldn't Stanley have selectively attacked Ansom with a big dwagon stack ages ago?

Selective attack seems to have a few downfalls. The main one seems to be that no one in Erfworld's really done it before Parson. All Stanley's uncroaked warlords died in battle, not assassination style.

Then there's the fact that it's probably hard to target units, especially units which are smaller and more mobile than siege engines.

Can you move attack, move attack in one turn? This has happened several times but such rules make the idea of a fort structure of six hexes void. A fort structure is used to stop the attacker when the rules say one move and one attack. Similarly the concept of a pincer attack is invalid when combat takes place within one hex. It is a concept that comes from games where the hexes are tactical sizes and a single unit fills one hex and attacks into adjacent hexes.

You can move attack, move attack. We saw this with the dragons earlier. But when you end your turn, move goes to 0. Parson's turn is over, Ansom's is continuing. 0 movement does not apply to movement within a hex - we've seen Ansom's people moving around in their camp after ending the turn, so we can assume movement refers to invisible walls between hexes - nor does it mean attack goes to 0 since units can still defend themselves.

The rules about what is know to Ansom and how he can issue commands would have to be unlike any turn based game I've ever seen. Ansom apparently doesn't know the results of battles automatically and he cannot issue commands automatically -- things which happen in every actual turn based hex game. I don't even know of real-time computer games that give you a fog of war so complete it covers the results of combat you initiated or the location of pieces you are moving.

This rule has been explained in comic. It's different than traditional RTS, but in any traditional RTS you directly control your units, so this makes sense. Traditional RTS doesn't try hiding this from you because there's no real way to hide it from you.

Apart from the rules, some "realistic" considerations are put aside in the interests of the storyline. For example it is clear that Ansom's lack of Lookamancers is a nearly crippling defect and there seems to be no reason he cannot just hire a Lookamancer, especially as his alliance consists of many different groups -- surely one of them could hire a Lookamancer?

We don't know enough about the magic system to be sure. We haven't seen that many casters, so their rarity seems to be a given. But you're right; this is mostly *PLOT*

Again there have been some disputes over the exact numbers of troops on both sides. Some have pointed to the rules about a maximum of just eight creatures on a squad and others have noted the illustrations where it seems thousands of creatures are present. It's a contradiction and that's fine because this is a story. Only the narrative has to be consistent.

Stacks don't max at 8, stack bonuses max at 8. So if you have 9 units, you still only get +8. But you can still have stacks of greater than 8 units, they just don't get the bonus.

I won't go into story rules. Too ephemeral to go into, but I agree with quite a bit of them.