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Straight Arrow
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Checking on Weather and Terrain Effect

Mon May 22, 2017 5:38 pm

Is this statement true?

Weather and terrain traversing effect combat frontage. The number of days it takes a force to enter an area directly reduces the number of elements deployable on the battlefield.

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Gray Fox
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Re: Checking on Weather and Terrain Effect

Mon May 22, 2017 11:33 pm

True.

"Depending on the terrain and weather conditions, an army is limited in the number of troops that can be engaged."

http://www.ageod.net/agewiki/Frontage
I'm the 51st shade of gray. Eat, pray, Charge!

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ArmChairGeneral
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Re: Checking on Weather and Terrain Effect

Tue May 23, 2017 7:02 am

"Weather and terrain traversing effect combat frontage." =/= "Depending on the terrain and weather conditions, an army is limited in the number of troops that can be engaged."

What do you mean by traversing? That armies on the move enter battle with smaller potential frontage than ones who are not moving? If so, then that is not my understanding of the way the rules work.

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The second sentence is even more problematic.

"The number of days it takes a force to enter an area directly [emphasis mine] reduces the number of elements deployable on the battlefield." =/= "Depending on the terrain and weather conditions, an army is limited in the number of troops that can be engaged."

Directly would mean that if marching time is 8 instead of 7 then frontage is reduced by some fixed number, and if it goes to 10 days from 7 then frontage would be reduced by three times that number. Even if movement reduces frontage (which I dispute) I doubt the amount it would reduce would be some fixed value based on number of days traveled; I would expect it to be a little more complicated than that.

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I think that the terrain and weather in the region the battle actually takes place affects the frontage, not the region an attacking force is coming from. If I am right then neither of the sentences in the OP would be accurate.

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Durk
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Re: Checking on Weather and Terrain Effect

Fri May 26, 2017 4:01 am

But it feels as if march and terrain matter in combat readiness. So I am not exactly certain what you are saying about how this is impacted by frontage. Assume I am a dull witted child, please!

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Captain_Orso
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Re: Checking on Weather and Terrain Effect

Fri May 26, 2017 7:23 am

There are two parts to the calculations on who gets to fight in a round of battle, 1) the Combat Unit Quota, and 2) the Quota Cost.

The best references I know of, on how these work are here:
AGEWiki: Frontage
Frontage Primer.

Calculating the CUQ depends on Leadership with a [Terrain x Weather] table matrix. This gives you a numeric value, the CUQ.

Now you can start to fill the CUQ with units, but again depending on a [Terrain x Weather] table some elements will use up more or less of the CUQ than others. Just as an illustration (this has little to nothing to do with the numbers of real game situations)

    this illustration assumes a CUQ of 20

    referencing a [Terrain x Weather] table I've invented just for illustrative purposes, for clear weather in clear terrain, we find the Quota Costs:
    Light Infantry = 3
    Line Infantry = 5
    Militia = 7

    For each Light Infantry element chosen to be put into Frontage, 3 is subtracted from the CUQ.
    For each Line Infantry element chosen to be put into Frontage, 5 is subtracted from the CUQ.
    For each Militia element chosen to be put into Frontage, 7 is subtracted from the CUQ.

    This given, you could get 6 Light Infantry in into frontage, or 4 Line Infantry, or 2 Militia, or a combination of these, as long as the math works.

    But frontage is not filled based on how many elements you might get into frontage. Units are picked on their combat readiness, basically their Power for Offensive or Defensive depending on posture, withTQ (Quality and cohesion) playing large roles. A unit it picked to fight, and it's QC is subtracted from the CUQ. Then the next is picked, etc, etc, until the frontage is filled, or all units are fighting, which ever comes first.

The Quota Cost tables have higher costs for an element type type the worse the terrain and weather is, thus reducing frontage. So basically, the faster an element is, with regards to terrain and weather, the more of them that can get into a fight at one time (round of battle).

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ArmChairGeneral
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Re: Checking on Weather and Terrain Effect

Mon May 29, 2017 6:04 am

Marching DOES have a direct effect on combat via the Cohesion mechanic: troops that march farther will be tired and less effective in battle, becoming shaken or outright breaking more easily. Adverse terrain and weather in the region they are marching from makes the march longer and thus reduces their cohesion before battle begins.

(Additionally there is a minor cohesion effect noted above by Capt_Orso on which elements get into the frontage, but most elements in a stack take cohesion loss from marching at the same rate, so the relative difference between two elements that march together is small or non-existent and the net effect on which elements were selected would be very similar to the selection if the stack had not marched. Further, this does not affect the SIZE of the overall frontage.)

However, the original poster was asking whether the region that was traversed to get to battle affected the FRONTAGE, i.e. the notional space on the battlefield available for elements to fight in. I maintain that the weather and terrain matrix Orso references is based entirely on the region in which the battle occurs.

A stack that marches several days to a battle will not be as effective as the same stack that sits still and has the battle come to them, but frontage size is not the mechanism by which this happens. Frontage size does not depend on the weather and terrain in the region the stack started from, only the region the battle occurs in.

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