I was curious to see if the warband in the previous examples could do anything to turn the tables on the Romans, besides adding even more numbers to the battle - there are only so many warriors in a tribe. In this example the warband fight the legion in scattered woodland (bushes, copses of trees, thick grass, anything that somewhat disrupts the neat file-and-rank system of the Romans).
Turn 1. Rome.
The velites do their stuff, but this time suffer a -1 modifier for shooting into scattered woodland, dropping their 2 shooting hits down to 1.
Turn 1. Gaul.
The warband charge and acquire another shooting hit. This time, however, their morale doesn't drop since they have received a total of 2 shooting hits and 4 are needed to reduce morale by an interval.
The charge slams home and knocks a morale interval off the Romans.
Turn 1. Melee.
Legionaries and warband score equal hits in melee and - since everyone is firm - the fight is a draw, resulting in all units losing a morale and the Romans dropping to shaken. The Roman commander thus far hasn't committed to the fight so doesn't throw a die to check for injury. The Gallic commander hasn't had a scratch. Must be the magic potion.
Turn 2. Rome.
Line relief time. Roman morale returns to top firm. The Gauls don't do anything during their move so on to
Turn 2. Melee.
Another drawn fight and everyone drops a moral interval, with the Gauls now becoming shaken.
Neither Romans nor Gauls can do anything in turn 3, so straight to
Turn 3. Melee.
The Gauls are in deep lines so their shaken interval is upgraded to firm. The combat is a draw and both sides lose a morale interval and the Gauls rout. The Gallic commander remains unscathed but with his men gone that doesn't help him and he also decamps.
The legion units get two morale interval boosts, one from each warband unit that routed, since the Roman units are each adjacent to both.
The Roman units occupy the squares of the disappeared warband.
Turn 4. Rome.
Time to shoot up the second line of Gauls. They are also in scattered woodland so 2 shooting hits drops to 1.
Turn 4. Gaul.
The Gauls charge and a few javelins reach them.
The Romans take a beating in the charge, dropping a morale interval.
Turn 4. Melee.
A drawn fight and everyone drops a morale interval. The Romans are now shaken.
Nothing until
Turn 5. Melee.
The Romans on the left lose the morale fight and drop a morale interval. The Romans on the right have a commander to bolster their highest shaken morale interval to firm, drawing the fight. Both units drop a morale interval. In the thick of the fight the Gallic commander is wounded.
Straight to
Turn 6. Melee.
The legion units finally rout. The legion unit on the left fought as shaken against the Gallic firm, whilst the legion on the right could no longer get a boost from its commander as only the highest shaken interval can be upgraded to firm by a commander. In his moment of victory the Gallic commander is killed. Oh well, the bards will have a field day with his story.
The warband units boost up to full firm.
They then occupy the squares vacated by the Romans off on indefinite military leave. Without a commander to tell them what to do next they head for the Roman camp and the officers' wine casks. To the victor the spoils.
In conclusion then mid-Republican legions can handle warband in equal numbers without a problem but only in ideal circumstances if outnumbered 2:1. Which is historical enough.
Quiz question: who wins if the second line of warband is in open terrain?
I'll do some cavalry vs cavalry combat next.
Edit: Legions, like any unit, can vary in morale quality. A Caesarian legion for example would have 3 firm and 2 shaken intervals, giving 6 firm intervals with line relief taken into account. So Caesar's veterans will munch through the warband like pacmen.
Why didn't the legions throw pila like in your prior example? I think that may have turned the tables back to the Romans. No?
ReplyDeleteThe velites throw pila in all the examples, just they are less effective in this one thanks to the scattered woodland offering partial cover for the warband.
DeleteIn your prior example, velites threw as skirmishers and then you state that legion threw pila as the war bands close. I did not see this legion pila barrage in the clash this time.
DeleteOh, right. The velites are assumed to be part of the legion and are not represented by separate stands. So velites shooting = legion shooting. Actually, the hastati would chuck pila as well, so the legion's missile ability represents both of them.
DeleteIn this example (and IIRC the previous one) all the Romans do line relief together. Obviously, there are only two units, so what command level are you envisaging line relief at? Is it the whole line, of two units, or a group of two units in a hypothetical larger line?
ReplyDeleteGood question. Optio has two scales: 1 square width = 200 yards and 1 square width = 100 yards (same movement and shooting ranges for both). A legion occupied a frontage of about 200 yards so for the former scale 1 unit = 1 legion and for the latter 2 units = 1 legion. I let legions execute line relief independently of each other, but all units of a legion execute it together.
DeleteAgain a convincing outcome; I like the way units feel better when their opponents rout but recovering back up to 'fresh' seems improbable given they've gone a couple of rounds against the Roman mincing machine - do you have a historical rationale for this?
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to the cavalry case studies but still interested to see how a pike phalanx is handled.
I see "fresh" as "firm" in the sense of optimistic. I don't think fatigue was that much of a thing in hand to hand combat, certainly much less than is popularly supposed. REAL hand to hand fighting - as opposed to Hollywood and reenactors - is a very cautious thing when your life is on the line: you shelter behind your shield and launch occasional bouts of sparring against your opponent, then pause to catch your breath and recharge your adrenaline. Gauls did become fatigued, but that was to a large extent because they were wounded by the better protected Romans and were bleeding out.
DeleteIf you defeated an enemy line you certainly had time for a breather. That plus the elation of winning left you ready for anything. And it makes Optio even more unpredictable. ;-)
The pike phalanx gets special treatment in Optio. It draws in charge and melee combat against heavy infantry like legions, hoplites and warband, but if in deep formation (2x2 stands in a unit) it gets a +1 modifier in melee combat, meaning it will outfight anything (though it draws against elephants), BUT any ground except clear terrain negates this bonus, and bad terrain is positively lethal.
DeleteMy understanding of the pike phalanx is that it won its fights by othismos, with the phalangites shoving their sarissa points into the shields of their opponents and then pushing them backwards - the tacticians all describe this process. Problem is that it works only on level ground. Going up river banks, say, meant the phalangites couldn't line up properly to apply the othismic pressure. Which is why they did badly at Issus.
I take your point about recovering and being 'firm' rather than 'fresh' but how does that play at Zama where Hannibal seems to have relied on the first two lines to wear down the Roman infantry for his veterans to finish off?
DeleteAm I right in assuming that even if they recover to fully 'Firm' Romans cannot exchange / relieve the lines again i.e., it is once only per battle? That said would Carthaginian morale allow the third line of veterans to stand after the first two lines have gone the same way as their elephants and cavalry wings?
If Optio handles all of this then I really am very impressed.
Regarding pike phalanxes, I assume 'clear terrain' is one without any specific obstacles, slopes, rocks, bushes, trees, etc. rather than specially cleared terrain as sometimes prepared for scythed chariots. If so I agree to a point but have always found the 'difficult terrain' argument for Cynoscephalae unconvincing. The Macedonian right wing was winning and only defeated when attacked in the rear by elements from victorious Roman right wing. The Macedonian left was defeated as it had not yet fully deployed from 'march column' something Optio would surely punish them for. So I reckon the ground needs to be more than just uneven or sloping to disconcert a phalanx.
This is all great stuff. Please don't take my endless questions in a negative way; I am impressed and intrigued by Optio and asking questions is my way of testing my understanding.
Thanks Rob! Don't spare the questions or critiques. I need critical imput and have made quite a few modifications from playtesters' suggestions. To take your questions:
Delete1. Zama wasn't about wearing the Romans down. I did a video on the battle. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ7ExvFhJk0 Hannibal planned a double envelopment but was outfoxed by Scipio who IMHO was the most brilliant general in Antiquity since he wrongfooted every opponent including a genius like Hannibal.
2. Line relief is a once-off. It works on the assumption that the engaged line is being outfought and must hand over to the better-quality line behind it. This doesn't work in reverse: a better quality line trying to hand over to an inferior line that has ALREADY pulled out of the fight means that inferior line will quickly crumble. "What, us?"
3. Clear terrain is any terrain that allows the phalangites to project their pikes over the shoulders of the men in front of them into the enemy shields, and push against their comrades' backs to apply pressure to the enemy. That can work going downhill, even quite steeply downhill, but on seriously uneven ground like a riverbed with banks it doesn't work so well. Also the Cynoscephalae phalangites were pushing downhill as opposed to the Issus phalangites who were trying to push uphill. Big difference.
I watched the video, is the plan to envelop the Roman centre with the veterans supported anywhere in the ancient sources or is that your speculation as to what Hannibal had planned? There seems some question as to whether Hannibal realised Masinissa had joined Scipio when he drew up for battle.
DeleteAgree your phalanx comments and that the steep / deep river bank at Issus would pose a lot of problems for the phalanx.
My reconstruction is deductive from reading the primary sources, from which I drew the following:
Delete1. Hannibal didn't fight attritional battles since they didn't work. We tend to think of combat in Antiquity in modern terms, where hapless infantry are ground down by artillery and machine gun fire and have no option but to hug their trenches and hope for survival (running for it is instant suicide). In the past it was all about morale, and seeing whole lines in front of you get routed by the enemy was very bad for it.
2. Hannibal's three lines at Zama didn't look or behave like a Roman multi-line legion. There was no line relief which you would expect with a multi-line system (Hannibal had been in Italy long enough to know how it worked). When the Gauls were driven back the Carthaginian levies had no idea of how to let them through their line. Hannibal's veterans were deployed 200 yards behind the levies. Why? Support lines were directly behind the lines they supported. The veterans clearly weren't a support line. Furthermore they didn't act like one, refusing to let the levies through their ranks. Again, why? The only feasible answer is that they weren't configured for line relief (i.e. they weren't in open order) but for something else.
3. Scipio let Hannibal's captured spies view his camp after which they "escaped" with ease. Why? Massinissa hadn't arrived yet so they would tell Hannibal only the Roman cavalry were in the camp. Scipio had a history of pulling fast ones on his opponents, as he did with Hasdrubal at Illipa.
It's a jigsaw puzzle and the pieces fit neatly together in one particular configuration. There's a free article on the subject that appeared in Slingshot some time ago. You can find it here: https://www.soa.org.uk/joomla/downloads
I meant to ask what you think about possibly limiting the recovery of a unit's morale steps for routing enemy should be limited to one step per turn?
ReplyDeleteMy thinking here is that : 1) t takes tie to recover and 2) if you defeat the guys you're fighting is the neighbouring unit also routing their opponents going to add much?
Just a thought.
I have been thinking about that. So far my take is that fighting is all about morale, not so much about fatigue. Scipio's hastati chewed their way through Gauls and Carthaginian levies (who, contrary to popular opinion fought well) and then took on Hannibal's veterans, matching them toe-to-toe. If they weren't back at full morale when they reached them they wouldn't have stood a chance. The rout of an entire line should put the victors back to pristine morale (the Romans of course can't reverse line relief). It seems to work well but we'll see. Wanna playtest? ;-)
DeleteI thought the fight with the veterans was still ongoing when the Roman / Numidian cavalry returned to the battlefield and took them from behind? If this is the case they wouldn't necessarily need to be 100%, also I would expect Scipios legions to be rated pretty good so get some extra morale steps?
DeletePlay-testing would be interesting but not sure whether I could fit it into your schedule.
Sure, Scipio's legions were veteran so I would give them a morale of 3-2. But Hannibal's veterans were at least as good having campaigned with him for years in Italy. They were actually outfighting the legionaries (many of whom were already wounded) and Polybius makes clear the Roman and Numidians cavalry arrived in the nick of time.
DeleteIf you are interested in playtesting we could try PBEM with the VASSAL module and take it at both our speeds. A move a day or every other day or something like that. Up to you.