Re: combat de-bugging

From: KentCave <kentcave_at_...>
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 17:30:11 +0700

> Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 11:17:31 -0800 (PST)
> From: Bryan Thexton <bethexton_at_...>
> Subject: Re: I now remember why it's been so long...

> >
> > It was quite maddening. Admittedly, on one occasion I goofed and had
> > them skirmish instead of charge, but I think my last 5 raids/being
> > raided the Earthshakers appeared. Of those, I believe only 1 was
> > successful.
> >
> OK, combat de-bugging clinic is now in session, because something
> sounds wrong.
>
> Sixth, how many of your people are you getting to battle? When
> attacking you probably need to bring along extra carls
> beyond the default (they won't be happy about it, but they'll be less
> happy if you lose all your battles). I typically
> increase the default by half, going from half the available fyrd to
> three-quarters. I've not seen any negative side effects,
> aside from occasionally unhappy farmers. On defense are your patrols
> spotting the attackers? If not, make sure that
> you have a watch-tower built, strong outer patrols (I usually have a
> little under half my thanes on outer patrol), and as
> many hunters as you can support (recruit more cottars if you don't have
> enough people to support all of those hunters).
>

A formula that I perfected after 3 years of playing.. from my experience, always work flawlessly.

When raiding, I always bring "all" my weaponthanes and auxiliaries. As for the footmen, I always left around 50 to guard my tula. For instance, I bring 98/150 or 145/200. This formula "almost always" (90%) prevents neighbours from cattle raiding while I'm away. Always have all my wounded healed nicely too, if below 20. Try it and see how it goes, took me quite long time to figure it out.

As for patrol, I used to put 8 on outer, and the rest (above 12) on inner. But recent experience shows putting 12 on outer and the rest (above 12) on inner, works best.

Capturing land and captives are almost always my choice, as from my experience.. both that option (if successful) gain the same loot from plunder and kill as many, (if unsuccessful) then it will be just the same as plunder. Burning steads are just for fun, while destroying fortifications seems impossible to me (never happens when I was raiding the ducks). I always thought that bringing more men, seems to gain more loot, as more hands to leads the cows back home.

When defending, I almost always choose Charge and Kill as many as possible. As even if I lose, the dead from both side are feeding my crops. I hardly choose to capture captives nowadays, as keeping thralls has 2 huge disadvantages.

1. The clan seems unable to recognize thralls as farmers. For instance, you might have 300 farmers and 300 thralls, and working reasonable hides of land, to gain surplus of food. Yet the clan will "keep-on" complaining that you "do not" have enough farmers, when in fact "you do" if those thralls are counted as "they should".
2. Battles are too random in this game, that's a fact. While running joke games I sometimes lose even with 200+ magic scrolled all the way in battle. While running normal games, even a well-prepared tactics will failed. That's probably a fact of life, beautifully illustrated and should be accepted. The pain comes when you have 500+ thralls and when its your turn to lose, all of them will be gone, that instant. No matter if you got 20 thralls or 200 thralls, all of them will escape. It's probably better, game-wise, to let them escape in random numbers rather than "all".

There.. and that's why thou shalt not keep thralls. Painful risk and confusing record-keeping are huge deterrent. Treating captives as bonus goods is a much better way. You can never have enough goods in the early decades of the game.