Solo Gaming - down to the nitty gritty

Well the nitty certainly, perhaps not the gritty just yet.  Due to finding the work I did a decade (or possibly two) ago, I have made more progress on this project than I expected to have done.  What I have so far is a mechanism for deciding if the AI army will fight and in general terms how it will fight, it isn't clever and it's definitely not an elegant solution, but it seems to work.  It uses a set of factors to arrive at a measure of the base aggression of the army.  For the lack of anything else to call it I have termed it a fight or flight test.  It uses ten sets of factors some of which measure the difference between the AI and the player's forces while others look at a single variable.  Each factor generates a score which when added together  give a total which is checked against a table of battlefield grand tactical options.  A high positive result shows a high aggression and willingness to attack and a minus a low aggression and more likelihood of fighting defensively (or withdrawing).

Here is the Fight or Fly decision table.  The scores are from a set of factors

I have given you the results table before the ten tables of factors so you can have some sense of how I have weighted each of the following ten sets of circumstances that build up to the total.  The maximum and minimum that could be theoretically achieved are higher than plus 25 to minus 31 range represented on the table above.   In the tables which follow the green highlighted options are the commonest expected outcomes.

The first two input tables

Table 1 looks at the balance of numbers between the two armies as a ratio, it doesn't consider troop types simply overall numbers.

Table 2 deals with the ability/reputation of the two overall commanders.  It is creating a differential so an outstanding AI commander generates five points but a good player commander then deducts three points for a net comparison of plus two.  You will see this mechanism in a number of the following tables.  If in doubt assume the AI general doesn't consider the player as highly as it should and down grade the player.  Rather like Napoleon dismissing Wellington as merely a 'Sepoy General'.

Table 3 considers the relative morale of the two sides.  Again this is checking for the difference between the two sides.  You could use results from previous battles in a campaign or the morale rating from the rules of your choice or a mixture of both.

Table 4 asks what are the chances of avoiding combat.  Not whether either side wants to do so but could they.  An infantry heavy army facing a highly mobile opponent would be an example of an army where avoiding combat is impossible, although seeking better ground may be an option.

Table 5.  This is considering the effect of the overall strategic position on the AI commanders options.  Rather like Rupert at Marston Moor feeling like he had to attack because of Charles' poorly drafted instructions.  If there are no overarching orders from High Command use the Fight if victory probable option.

Table 6 looks at the relative pugnacity of the two commanders.  An aggressive general facing a defensive opponent is more likely to take the fight to them if all other factors are neutral.

The next two tables look for the effect of different levels of training and combat experience between the two armies.

Table 7 looks at the comparative levels of training of the two armies.  Untrained are civilians pressed into service with no training beyond stand there and try not to die!  Militia are troops with basic training or tribesmen with basic weapon skills as part of their culture.  Trained are Greek city hoplites called out when needed and required to drill at regular intervals during the year.  Regulars are full time professional soldiers.

Table 8 considers the amount of combat experience they have.  Raw troops have never experienced battle.  Experienced have fought at least one engagement while Veterans have fought and survived multiple combats.

Table 9 requires some creative thinking as the AI knows what re-enforcements it expects but has to guess whether the opponent will be getting more troops.  The scouting rules from your tabletop or campaign rules may help with this otherwise use your judgement.

Table 10 takes a look at the lay of the land but only in very general terms.  I'm not fully happy with this and will be playing around with it.  Ignore the player options and only use the top three options for the time being.

There is one remaining factor but it isn't a table like those above.  Its a random factor created by rolling two D6.  One dice is designated plus and one minus add the results together to get a random final figure.

As you can tell from the cut and pasted tables I use a spreadsheet, the factor used boxes are manually calculated and entered but those are picked up and totalled, along with the random factor, by the spreadsheet to give the final score for the fight or flight decision.

What I have here is more like a toolkit and concepts but it allows you guys to tinker with things.  If you don't agree with the weighting of the factors I have created change them.  Alternatively you can change the results table scores for each action.  I tested them against some actual battles treating both sides as if they were the AI side to see how close the result came to the initial plan of the actual commanders.  It gives a reasonable but not 100% match to what I think the original plan was, so it's broadly where I want it to be.  Its a case of tinkering with the balance now.  Have a play and let me know if it seems to work as you would expect.

New Years Eve 2024

Well 2024 has been the usual mixed bag.  The high spot was playing in Jolly Broom Man's English Civil War campaign at the start of the year and winning!  It was a really interesting system that left me feeling like an actual senior commander.  I made the strategic moves on the campaign map and selected the troops and gave the grand tactical orders needed to fight any battles, but after that had no input to the actual tactical level of field actions as JBM fought those solo following the remote player's plans.  What clinched it was King Charles dying early in 1643 following the defeat at Winterton Field.  I played a few solo games using my quick play Pike and Shot rules and in the aftermath of Christmas played a family game of Lord of the Ring's Risk.  If you haven't come across that game it is a different take on Risk and gives a good afternoon's fun.  I'm saying that even though I had my Ass (other equines are available) handed to me by the forces of evil.  It's a game which really deserves a post all of it's own and I will see what I can do in that respect in the New Year.  I also regained my painting Mojo which is a huge relief.

Real Life has been a bit of a bugger in 2024.  In part it's the inevitable legacy of getting older, I have lost a number of friend's from my misspent youth over the last few months.  It's to be expected I suppose, but it is an unwelcome reminder that none of us live forever!

I didn't really set myself any major objectives at the start of the year but I did say something about getting to some wargame shows, playing more games, posting more on the blog and painting more figures.  I got to a show so I'm calling that done, I posted slightly less than 2023 but hey that's close enough for Jazz, I don't have the data on games played over the two years but I was involved in a fair few this year.  Painting was an overall win as I end the year with less unpainted stuff than I started with so that's a result.

The big question of course is what objectives am I setting for 2025?  In no particular order then:

• Complete the following DBA armies and ideally extend them to ADLG size: Early Byzantine Army (its about half way there), Goths (Ostro and Visi),  Hunnic and some infantry based Germanic types probably Franks.
• Finish the year with less unpainted stuff than I started with!
• Rebase my 6mm British Civil war troops
• Build a couple of 2mm armies for Strength and Honour and get a game or two in.
• Play some ADLG
• Put together some sort of AI system for use in solo games

Last and very much not least.  Thanks for stopping by and reading my ramblings.  I wish all of you a very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year for 2025.

Giving ADLG a proper go

I only have the edition of ADLG prior to the current one and other than a couple of games against Paul Dawson I haven't really played many games with these, or the current version of the rules.  However, I got to thinking (dangerous as always) that building a couple or three 120pt armies from my existing troops wasn't too much of a stretch after building a standard DBA Army.  This is also known as rampant expansionism, mission creep or a simple 'ooh shiny complex'.  The only issue I can see is the almost automatic urge to just add a few more options to cover all the bases to build a standard 200pt ADLG army.  Before you know it I could be up to DBM/DBMM figure counts!

The difference between the figure counts is less pronounced with cavalry heavy armies as these use a single base in both ADLG and DBA.  Infantry heavy armies with two bases for heavy and medium infantry in ADLG are where things really show up.  Lets have a look at the difference using a Late Imperial Roman force as an example (because it is somewhere in the middle as a 'combined arms force).

There isn't a great deal in the way of alternatives in the DBA army list for the Western Late Imperials.  Two legionary elements, three auxilia, two light cavalry and two cavalry (which include the general) are mandatory which covers 75% of the army!  The remaining three elements provide options as follow.  Firstly two of Auxilia Palatina or Velites (can be one of each), then lastly one from Clibanarii (3Kn), Catafractarii/Alans (4Kn), legionaries, bolt shooters, Lanciarii (3Bd) or warband .  So optional choices are limited.  For my last three elements I went with options of 1 x Auxilia Palatina, 1 x Velites and 1 x Catafracts (4Kn).  Oh and for what it's worth the Eastern Empires options are even less flexible!

Late Imperial Romans as a 12 Element DBA 3.0 army plus camp

One thing I have noted is that the Late Imperial Roman army list defines Clibanarii as 4Kn and Catafracts as 3Kn, I think this is the wrong way around as most lists show cataphracts as 4Kn which is why I changed them in the last paragraph! 

Late Imperial Romans as a 200pt ADLG force with two commands

Next lets look at the ADLG version, I excluded Foederati (Huns, Goths etc) to make the comparison closer, My selection still only has 12 units. However, it looks bigger as it has separate bases for it's two generals and of course the heavy and medium infantry are double based. What is less obvious is that this army has two commands so it's more like Big Battle DBA, it also has a fortified camp which prevents Light Cavalry raids on it. On top of which it has paid points for special capabilities for some units.

The Final selections were; First command   a brilliant general, 1 x Elite Heavy cavalry (Impact), 1 x Equites Sagittarii Light cavalry, 1 x Elite Cataphracts, 1 x Equites Heavy Cavalry (Impact)1 x Elite Legionaries (Impact, Armour, Missile Support), 1 x Elite Auxilia Palatina (Impact, Missile Support).  Second command, an ordinary general,  2 x Legionaries (Armour, Impact, Missile Support),  2 x Auxilia Palatina (Impact, Missile support), 2 x  Light Infantry Archers.  Plus a Fortified Camp.

 

A better view of the ADLG army

ADLG differs from DBA in that it has a points based army creation system so it has those interesting moments of self doubt about making choices, just like the old WRG ancients army list quandaries.   You know, the should I make those Hun horse archers elite or take a unit of light infantry archers instead kind of thing, rather than the straight 12 element choice of DBA.   It also has special capabilities (as shown above) in some lists.  So the Legionaries above can have armour, missile support and elite status as options. Me being, well, me I have gone for armour and missile support for the Legionaries, impact is mandatory  For the auxilia again missile support and mandatory impact.  The mounted command also took the elite option for it's the infantry reserve.

ADLG has other things going for it too that I like, light infantry and cavalry archers actually shoot at stuff, and units degrade rather than die in an all or nothing way.  Why I haven't used the rules more I really don't know, as I do really like 'chrome' within the rules of a game and the extra figures gives the whole army a better appearance.  

Any way as a result of all of this thinking my painting table is now packed again, after I did really well in November in clearing stuff down.  The western gunfight figures are on the back burner (or is that the left side burner as per the picture), as masses of Baccus 6mm horsemen take centre stage. These are mostly Late Roman/Early Byzantine horse archers and Hunnic heavy cavalry who will be proxying as Byzantine Boukellarioi.  It's a good thing I like painting horses.

I haven't imposed the mess which is my painting table on you for a while!

As you can probably tell I'm having a bit of an upsurge with my painting mojo after a fairly slow year.  I cleared 128 infantry and 30 cavalry figures from the lead pile in November and at this rate will be ahead by a couple of hundred figures compared to January 1st.  Retirement eh, what is it good for?  Well painting teeny tiny soldiers apparently!

Solo Gaming - What should Generals be doing?

I suppose we have all seen players who, as the commanding General,  micro manage every aspect of their wargames army.  It's almost a built in requirement of most rules as there is no one else available to move units, decide who they attack and all the myriad of other decisions needed for combat units.  As a result the player ends up covering every level of the chain of command at the same time.  In the worst cases the micro management is down to moving exact distances to avoid the other side being in shooting range or charge reach.  In my experience, limited I grant you to re-enactment and reading military history, that isn't how things happened in reality.  Real life isn't so cut and dried, generals couldn't be certain how far a unit could advance, or how close they could get to the enemy and still be safe,  In fact they often couldn't even see all of their troops to know what they were doing!  We shouldn't have that level of control either as the player or in the form of an AI opponent.

Against, not with, that's..AGAINST Yourself!

I tried to reduce the control available in my detailed pike and shot rules by using a standard system of orders for each unit.  These set an objective; either a location or an enemy unit, an action when they reach the objective and the speed of movement towards the objective, either fast or slow.  Lastly a delay can be set before starting to move.  As an alternative a support order can be given where a unit simply follows another and assist or takes over that unit's objective if they cannot complete it.  So an order would be something like this:  Advance quickly to  Rabbit Warren Hill and take it by close assault and then hold that position.  After that new orders would be sent or the unit would continue to Hold and other troops would continue the action.  It's assumed in the rules that units will attempt to follow orders until either; they are completed, or they get new orders, or they change orders by using their initiative (via a reaction test).  I think that this goes a long way towards reflecting the reality of command and control for pre 20th century warfare.

A commanding general is only one man, perhaps with a few messengers and aides to assist him, but he can't do everything himself.  Time and space conspire against him if he tries (unless the Army is on the small side).  If he tries to micro manage every unit he can't react to every change in circumstances for every unit, he doesn't have the time.  He cannot get new orders to a unit  from where he is to where they are with any certainty that the situation on receipt won't have changed while they were in transit.  So to balance those problems armies delegate command responsibility.  Hence the chain of command springs into being.  This balances speed of reaction to changes against lack of overall control.  At Battalion level the colonel has to react to the immediate combat situation and may amend the overall plan while still attempting to fulfil his part in it.  At Brigade the Brigadier reacts to the situation the battalions of his brigade are facing and perhaps to the situation of the Brigades alongside his own and so it goes.  Each commander has limited autonomy and is supposed to be following the larger plan (or in some cases not!).

While all of the above may be interesting, it should also have an impact on solo rule mechanisms.  It shows how the AI army should behave; it should have delay built in at higher levels but be capable of reacting to tactical changes at lower levels fairly quickly, unless the officer concerned is of limited capabilities, by some form of reaction test.  These limited capability chaps do exist, consider Byron at Marston Moor charging his cavalry wing over the ground Rupert instructed him to force Cromwell to cross to disrupt their formation!  Or as Brigadier Peter Young once reported on a junior officer "Sir if that man was a horse, I should hesitate to breed from him!"  I'd like an AI system that can throw up this sort of inconsistency.  Much of the reaction at front line level should be included in your rules of choice but that isn't automatically the case.  I'd almost goo as far as saying that rules should cover these issues be they solo or not.

So I'm now at the point of thinking that there should be an opening stage where the Commander in Chief carries out his comparison of forces and considers the strategic overview to determine if he will fight and if so what style of action to fight - attack, spoiling attack, hold and counter attack, defend or withdraw.  The second stage is to look at the ground and craft a plan based on how the terrain constrains tactical options for each side.  This is the stage at which the details of the action are thrashed out.  Hold the left advance the centre and hook around the right level of tactics plus creating a deployment plan.  I like the idea of giving commanders some personality traits which would have an effect at this stage. I'm also thinking that the orders should be to the top tier formations so wings, centre and or reserve in pike and shot fights or brigades.  I'm currently a bit stuck on how to convert these to orders for individual units, but I will get there.  As a bonus I found my spreadsheet from my last attempt to create something so I have a start compared to where I thought I was.

 

Some thoughts on solo wargaming

A recent Facebook review on a new solo wargaming book got me to thinking about what I would want to read on the topic.  The review pretty much listed what I don't want and apparently the book in question had all of these!  I don't need force generators or scenarios I can do that myself.  I don't want a history of or definition of what solo wargaming is either, most of my games are solo I understand what's going on...honest.  What I want is a non player opponent who makes decisions based upon the situation, pre battle objectives, and tactical options available.  Ideally it would look at the balance between it's forces and mine and decide on an overall approach that suits it's forces strengths and weaknesses and takes advantage of my forces weak areas.  It would also be nice if it could surprise me from time to time and wasn't so smart that I am never able to beat it!  It's not too much to ask is it.  I suppose what I am looking for is some kind of Artificial intelligence (AI).

I suppose the same goes for Wargames

Funnily enough I had to undertake a long drive today (Well not that funny the weather was dismal) and , as you do, tuned into Radio 4 as my usual channel had poor reception.  Lo and behold I stumbled onto a discussion of the development of AI systems.  It seems that in the early days there were two schools of thought about how to create a workable system.  One was based on mathematical models and in effect created huge suites of 'IF THEN' steps.  The other was bio- computational and sought to create what we now call neural nets.  The first was something that was seemed achievable with the technology available but had limits hard wired in by the drafting of the IF THEN alternatives.  On the other hand the neural net had huge issues around being able to create the thing but would then have been self sustaining as it would set most of its own decision making parameters and would learn as it grew (Sounds a tad scary to me)

If I'm brutally honest I understand the concept of IF THEN chains but Neural Nets are beyond me.  I actually started to try to create an AI opponent using a simple set of IF THEN steps over a decade ago and ran into some of the problems that proper IT scientists hit.  The first is that you have to understand the entire decision making chain and second it gets very clunky very quickly as the length of the IF THEN steps increases.

So why am I bothering to write all of the above?  Well in the absence of any clever IT boffin creating a computerised AI opponent for me I am going to have another attempt at the 'IF THEN' approach.  Here is where my thought process has brought me to so far:

Firstly the AI General tries to gather information about the player's forces by scouting and interrogating the local population.  Friendly locals are going to give more help than non friendly ones.  The number of mounted troops (cavalry and or Dragoons) influences this step as does the number of player mounted troops screening against scouts.

Next there is a pre battle assessment where the AI General looks at his troops and compares them to what he knows of the enemy.  This considers troop types, quality, numbers compared to the player's force and the broader operational situation (for example is an attack at poor odds necessary to pull enemy troops away from another location).  A basic tactical decision is made at this stage about whether to engage in battle, to withdraw, hold the ground, redeploy to a better site and similar overarching matters.

Now comes a more detailed tactical review on how to deploy and actually fight.  This considers the ground held by the two armies and who it favours.  The balance and composition of forces and the possible deployment.

All I have to do is create excel spreadsheet formulas to value those decision factors and If Then statements or other options to fine tune the AI options.  Sad to say that is where it all came to a grinding halt last time I tried this.  So here is the thing do any of my readers have any suggestions on what to include, how to weight the various decision factors or even suggestions for something that has already done what I'm considering or even an AI chat bot that could create tactical decisions?

Answers gratefully received in the comment section.

British Civil War 6mm forces

These are my oldest 6mm figures and are all from Irregular Miniatures.  I bought most of them from the wargames shop that used to be near King's Cross station back in the late 1980's or early 1990's.  After the intervening 30 plus years they are a little battered and in need of some TLC and a rebase.  Some are still awaiting the touch of a paint brush and a first base!

So here they all are.  Zoom in too see the details

Most of them are the original Irregular Miniatures designs with musketeers that are cast standing feet together with musket at port across the chest and that made them fragile.  Unsurprisingly a number have snapped off, or are in danger of snapping off, at the ankles.  Some are the later design which are more robust and have more animation to them.  Those have alternating firing and loading figures on each strip which isn't how I want them.  I prefer a rank to be all firing, all loading or all standing waiting rather than a mixture.  Still a bit of careful work with side cutters will solve that.

Old style musketeers on show here.  Painted 30 years ago.

And here are the newer style figures painted much more recently.

I'm struggling to decide how to rebase these figures.  The pikemen are cast in close order, shoulder to shoulder with no way to split them down. so I am stuck with the casting's frontages of 20mm or multiples of that.  The shot are on 30mm frontages and cavalry on 25mm so unlike DBA or ADLG I can't use a standard base frontage.  I may have to go old school and count each strip as being 100 men and just live with the different frontages as showing different order, pike in close order and shot in order.  No matter what I decide to do, there will have to be an order heading off to Warbases in due course as nothing in my pile of DBA style bases will match.  Plus as you can see from the first image there is some painting to be done!  The other issue is that I will have to ask  Irregular if they can supply the figures needed to complete some units as they are not retailing their 6mm range at present.

6mm Industry News updates

Probably you are all aware of what follows, or you don't do 6mm figures and so hadn't noticed, but a couple of things popped up this week.  

Firstly, Irregular Miniatures have announced that are taking an enforced break from supplying their 6mm ranges.  This is due to family illness, staff shortages and the need to create new moulds as the old ones are showing wear.  Hopefully this is a temporary measure and will be reversed before too long.  I know a lot of people don't like Irregular's style but they paint up far better than you would expect at first glance at the bare castings and most importantly they have stuff that others don't and at a very competitive price.  The good news is that they have said that for existing customers needing figures to complete projects they will do their best to supply the required figures if you email them.  I'm sure you all join me in wishing them all the best with these issues.

The second issue, and one for The Jolly Broom Man to be aware of, is that Baccus 6mm are stopping shipping their ranges to the EU.  This is due to the imminent implementation (try saying that without your teeth in!) of new product safety rules for goods imported into EU member states from non EU countries.  This is going to require significant paper work and EU representation and Peter Berry can't currently find a way to handle this cost effectively or with certainty that it will meet the new requirements.  He has posted to say that he will be looking to return to selling to EU if possible and that if you want any of his cracking figures selling to you in the EU you need to get orders in PDQ.  Peter is pretty scathing about the circumstances which have led up to this situation and to be frank I agree with him.  I have seen other suppliers taking the same position and I expect to see more.

Wargaming is a business of two extremes at one end you have Games Workshop who are now a FTSE 100 quoted company, and not the smallest one either.  While at the other end most wargame figure, rules and other paraphernalia production is at, or around, the cottage industry level.  The UK is a wargaming commerce power house but mostly fuelled from these small businesses.  Being a third country supplier to the EU hits those small businesses the hardest as they have the least spare resource in time and/or money to deal with this stuff.  I wish I had a solution to offer but I don't.

More Moors

The Moors are coming along nicely.  As usual I'm starting by building a DBA3 army but will probably extend to a small L'Arte De La Guerre (ADLG) army later.  In part this is because DBA and ADLG have different ways of depicting the different parts of the army.  

With DBA there is a standard army of 12 elements which depicts the General, and his bodyguard, as one of those 12 elements and defines him as being a standard DBA troop type (with a bonus in combat).  ADLG on the other hand has generals either as a separate base that can be attached and unattached from any unit of the army or as an attached general permanently linked to a single unit (pretty much as in DBA).  On top of which many ADLG infantry units consist of the equivalent of two DBA elements.  That makes it easier (and cheaper) to start with the DBA version of an army, which is why I started where I have.  Come on you all knew I was a cheapskate!  ADLG also uses an army selection points system with standard games having a 200 point budget. There is a version closer to DBA army size using 100 or 120 points.  That said even at the lower point values an ADLG army is likely to have between 30 to 40% more bases than the DBA equivalent because of the infantry basing system.

Anyway back to the moors (cries of Cathy...Heathcliff in a strange North African tongue should now be ringing in your ears, No? OK maybe that's just me then?).  The General's element is now completed along with the additional infantry.  After some thinking and a query to the hive mind on TMP I decided to use Late Roman Heavy Cavalry castings to differentiate the General from his underlings...er... I mean brave fighting men.  I removed the Draco standard from the command figure group and replaced it with one based upon the Infantry standard.  Which may be wrong but at least it's a standard.

All the army to date, but...wait for it...there is moor to come

When it comes to painting horses I rather like liver chestnut and bay horses as the mainstay of my cavalry. To my eye nothing says 'horse' as much as the black tail and manes of a bay. I do throw in some pure brown, black and greys for variety and the very occasional pure chestnut and roan. I rarely do units in 6mm with all the horses in the same coat colours as these are troops on campaign not the parade ground. If you do spot a unit all of one colour watch out, it will be something or someone a bit special and probably has more oomph than other cavalry formations.

The general's element for DBA

As a final thought I realise that I should have created a Moorish army years ago, honestly the scope for puns is huge!  For a start they are almost all bare headed, not a cap to be seen, although I doubt many have been to Ilkley Moor.  I will leave you to work that one out. 😉