[EX3] Battle group adjustments

[Heavy Arms]

Actually, it's because, barring supernatural interference, those legions are good enough to usually wipe the floor with an equal size opposing force.

There's a huge difference between being the best military in Creation, and the dominant military in Creation. And the Dragonblooded are what makes the difference for the Realm. "Barring supernatural interference," which is a ridiculous thing to do in Creation, the Realm can beat any other military. But it would also allow the other major players in the Threshold that aren't being crushed to throw off the Realm's yolk.

Regardless of the Realm's preferred military doctrines, their military might depends on having Dragonbloods in large numbers, and putting them into their military in significant numbers. The Realm might know it's a weak position in the long run, but it's also the position they're in.

Those are the creation's equivalent of Roman legions. Those legions didn't win battles and wars because they had supernatural support, or because they were deploying some sort of supersoldiers. They did it because they were trained to be the best military machine around.

Yes, the Realm's military takes a lot of inspiration from the Roman legions. But the Roman Empire was smaller than the Blessed Isle, let alone the Threshold. Even at the height of the Roman military's power, their legions floundered repeatedly whenever the Roman Empire's borders actually got close to another major power of the time. The Roman Empire lucked out because of the significant geological obstacles keeping them away from getting into wars with the other major empires of their era who were generally bigger and equally well armed. The Romans couldn't beat the Parthians (keep in mind the Parthians were themselves a shadow of the Achaemenid Empire that Alexander managed to defeat) or the German tribes over centuries of conflicts.

The Roman legions lost frequently. Legions were regularly lost in revolts by peoples without armies of their own.

The strength of the Roman armies were not the elite forces within the legions. It was the infrastructure supporting them that let them control such a large area.

If the Realm was just the Roman legions, they'd struggle to control the Blessed Isle with frequent peasant revolts, and they'd never even be able to get a foothold in the Threshold for more than a decade or so before the local powers pushed them right back out again.

[Astralporing]

The Realm isn't the dominant military force in Creation because of it's ability to field as many legions as it can; it's because those legions are lead by Dragonblooded commanders, to support Dragonblooded heroes fighting up close and personal with enemies, and to compliment Dragonblooded sorcerers bringing their own small units of supernatural fighters to add to the potency of the over military might in question.

Actually, it's because, barring supernatural interference, those legions are good enough to usually wipe the floor with an equal size opposing force. No, they don't depend on dragonblooded heroes fighting up close and personal - dynasts usually fill only the officer/commander roles and appear on the front lines generally only when situation really looks bad. If you look closely at Realm's military doctrine you will find easily that it actually cautions against depending on individual prowess and sorcerous support.
Those are the creation's equivalent of Roman legions. Those legions didn't win battles and wars because they had supernatural support, or because they were deploying some sort of supersoldiers. They did it because they were trained to be the best military machine around.

[Lioness]

I found that the easiest way to make an army 'matter' in the framework of the existing rules was to run additional Battle Groups.
People think the sidebar on page 211 prevents it but if you've got different formations, with different weapons and different training you don't stop to work out an average profile for the whole army.

[Heavy Arms]

I had intended to have "Dragonblooded commanders" cover that...

[Isator Levi]

The Realm isn't the dominant military force in Creation because of it's ability to field as many legions as it can; it's because those legions are lead by Dragonblooded commanders, to support Dragonblooded heroes fighting up close and personal with enemies, and to compliment Dragonblooded sorcerers bringing their own small units of supernatural fighters to add to the potency of the over military might in question.

Poor Dragon Blooded Sun Tzu, left out in the cold...

[Heavy Arms]

One of the reasons the change in percentages are hard to predict is because of the nature of a dice-pool system of rolling.

There isn't a flat change from Drill because the impact of increased Drill (notably the increased Defense) isn't flat. Individuals winning at 95% are likely hitting successes need to overcome the increased Defense from Drill already, so there's a minor change. Individuals winning at an 80% rate is likely hitting at a much lower average value, so the increased Defense from Drill is going to have a much more drastic effect.

A simple way to look at it, is that if your average successes is 6, and you're facing a base Defense of 4, Drill going up isn't going to be a huge difference, because you're still hitting on average. 12 dice vs a boosted Defense of 6 still hits 57% of the time.

If your average successes are only 5 vs. a base Defense of 4, the impact of increasing Defense is more pronounced (esp. Elite Drill's +2). 10 dice vs. a boosted Defense of 6 only hits 39% of the time.

Though for your simulation, the impact is probably more on the onslaught side of things.

[Aaron S]

Recently I have tried a variety of tweaks to even out the win rates for my given scenario. All failed to be universal. I’m still looking for a solution to achieve what I want. (Those goals have been refined a bit from my initial post, but I won’t state them here.) I need to spend time learning why three-combatant scenarios range from 83% to 39% wins against an elite Drill battle group.

That’s future work.

Following topics raised in some responses, I pondered game balance for enemies, allies, and Merits. I don’t think I hit on anything new here, but I thought I’d share my thoughts anyway. Balance in the rules seems to be stem from world and story more than combat aspects. Something costing five dots seems like the best thing of that type that powerful rulers, sorcerers, or Dynasts have across Creation. A few better instances of such things exist, but they will become the focus of a campaign rather than the trappings of a starting character. That’s the context I read and am working with. Four different Merits all directly provide bodies assisting a character—Allies, Command, Followers, and Retainers. Each brings its own in-world consideration and complication. Two dots in Command gives access to a Size 3 battle group of Medium Infantry. I like using logistics, upkeep, motivation, and coordination to portray the consequences of keeping even just 125 soldiers at the ready. If a player finds commanding a battle group to be an interesting part of the game, I want to support that, challenge that, and also ensure the battle group has the right ‘heft’.

Maybe that ‘heft’ arises in play already. Part of what I understand people who have run battle groups to be saying is that they like the feel. The feel comes from their altered mechanics, which conveys the sense of fighting a massed unit, not a single creature. Battle groups attack every creature on their fronts and handle damage differently. Even strong characters are threatened if other members of their Circle are at risk. I shouldn’t underestimate the psychological effect for players when facing one.

While I’m still stuck on arriving at a comparable force in arms, reminders of the unit size leads me focus on three to six individuals facing one battle group of Size 1. Actual play mostly has a number of protagonists in that range, and it matches the description for what Size 1 means. I’m glad that the basic effect from changing numbers or Drill remains predictable and intuitive. E.g., adding individuals always increases that team’s win rate and lowers the time needed to win and, not coincidentally, the number of casualties. Increasing a battle group’s Drill always makes it harder to defeat. I had wondered if more individuals would give a battle group more opportunities to get in a lucky hit and win, at least more than the extra person helps the individual defeat the battle group. That appears never to be the case for a team of 3-6 Militia, Medium Infantry, Elite Troops, or Buck-Ogres.

The degree of change is hard to predict. Increasing Drill tends to shrink a 95% win rate to 80%, and an 80% win rate to 50%. 9-13% of fights have at least one individual death when the individuals win 80%. This drops to 2-4% of fights when individuals win 95%. Another way of thinking about that point is in terms of the victory condition. The battle group wins the simulation if at least half of the individuals are heavily injured or any are dead. Given that, about 60% of battle group wins happened because of at least one individual dying. (This observation ties back into the gross limitations of my simulation while also spurring thoughts of more tweaks. I need to avoid that path for now.)

I am interested learning about how larger battle groups perform. I want to check different battle group sizes against each other, strong individuals against large but weak battle groups, and the effects of commanders. My goal would be that larger battle groups win in some ‘reasonable way’, and I don’t know what that means yet. I personally want not to have to split a battle group into multiple for it to play out as effectively as I think it should. Splitting for different forces, such as infantry, archers, and cavalry, makes sense. Maybe I can gather these data before the system learning I mentioned at the start.

Additional details to mention for critique: I kept the Buck-Ogre battle group simulated as Might 0. Descriptions from the Bride of Ahlat’s Blessing of Ahlat (4. 498) and the Cataphract’s Marching Fever Dream Nightmare (p. 535) left me thinking that some extra infusion of energy should be around for it to be Might 1. I also don’t simulate use of the Buck-Ogre’s Dual Strikes special attack, or anyone’s special attacks, really, but that one stands out. For other battle group types, I want to use the special chopping, piercing, or slashing attacks enabled by weapon tags, but I don't have a good rationale for when. No combatant uses those techniques at this point.

[Heavy Arms]

.... and it still does? I'm not suggesting stating out every individual soldier.

For the specifics of one Size 2 BG to two Size 1 BGs? It's not a big deal, but following that logic for larger BGs gets bad really fast. As the book itself points out a single Size 5 BG could be ten Size 3 BGs. At which point you're still getting into the overworked ST issue. The problem even with wanting to make BGs more powerful is that this also scales with workload. The more power you get out of this, the more work you put on the ST. Two Size 2 to one Size 1 isn't a big deal, but it isn't a big boost either. The mentioned one Size 5 to ten Size 3s is a huge amount to track for a system designed to reduce stuff to track, and an insanely bigger jump in threat.

Yes, that would be a way to introduce more threat. But the scenario above was for a size 2 battle group against a single troop of the same type.

The simulation the OP is a simulation of a highly specific scenario. I'm pretty sure they recognize that, and are capable of seeing how multiple BGs of different Sizes stack up against the same number of individual combatants.

My point is going beyond the simulation, you get more out of multiple BGs if they're not identical than if they are. So you might as well used mixed troops, avoiding the against-the-spirit-of-the-concept of splitting a BG into lots of smaller BGs, and getting a more potent tactical threat out of it at the same time.

TheCountAlucard : Implying that trying to squeeze as much mechanical benefit out of as tiny a space as possible is a bad thing :P

No, just pointing out the explicit thing the book says:

"Otherwise,don’t split battle groups into smaller units for greater offensive power." Ex3, p. 211

As well, pointing out things like dividing your troops to attack from different angles is something the Pincer Attack Stratagem is for.

[HalfTangible]

Well, to the OP's stated goals, the "BGs are meant to speed things up," is still an important consideration.

And really, if you want to be threatening, diversity of troops is better anyway. If you're going to track multiple BGs as antagonists, you might as well get the much stronger benefit of mixed troops. Have an infantry BG to tie up the PCs and their allies, and a cavalry group to charge in. Etc. It's way more of a threat than two identical BGs.

.... and it still does? I'm not suggesting stating out every individual soldier.

Yes, that would be a way to introduce more threat. But the scenario above was for a size 2 battle group against a single troop of the same type.

TheCountAlucard : Implying that trying to squeeze as much mechanical benefit out of as tiny a space as possible is a bad thing :P

[TheCountAlucard]

That strikes me as odd. It's not uncommon in war to split off a group of your troops to try and flank the enemy, or hold some back in reserve, or similar actions that require the commander split his force.

Those sorts of actions are covered by strategems, using the War Ability, not by playing hob with the action economy.

[Heavy Arms]

Well, to the OP's stated goals, the "BGs are meant to speed things up," is still an important consideration.

And really, if you want to be threatening, diversity of troops is better anyway. If you're going to track multiple BGs as antagonists, you might as well get the much stronger benefit of mixed troops. Have an infantry BG to tie up the PCs and their allies, and a cavalry group to charge in. Etc. It's way more of a threat than two identical BGs.

[HalfTangible]

The books heavily advise against splitting BGs up just to gain a mechanical advantage by having two BGs instead of one. Multiple BGs should either be different types of troops (So you might have a Size 5 infantry BG, a Size 3 archery BG, and a Size 3 light cavalry BG), or be because you're dealing with enough people that even Size 5 can't handle them.

That strikes me as odd. It's not uncommon in war to split off a group of your troops to try and flank the enemy, or hold some back in reserve, or similar actions that require the commander split his force.

I get why you wouldn't do so as a matter of course (since BGs are meant to speed things up) but if you specifically want to make the BGs more threatening, why not?

[Heavy Arms]

The books heavily advise against splitting BGs up just to gain a mechanical advantage by having two BGs instead of one. Multiple BGs should either be different types of troops (So you might have a Size 5 infantry BG, a Size 3 archery BG, and a Size 3 light cavalry BG), or be because you're dealing with enough people that even Size 5 can't handle them.

[HalfTangible]

Individuals won too handily. For an extreme outlier, note one individual Elite Troop won almost two-thirds of matches against a whole battle group.

That's because, under most circumstances, the individual elite troop would be an Exalt, ninja or some other great hero. In Creation, the great hero theory of history is very much in effect: individuals impose the greatest change on the world, not nations or armies. (see Heavy Arms on the strength of the Realm's military)

That said, keep in mind a few things:
1) For battle groups initiative/health also represents morale: A single soldier fighting his way through a size two force and coming out largely unscathed is going to be MUCH more demoralizing than losing the same number of troops to an army of the same size.
2) A size 2 battle group could easily split into two size 1 battle groups with other traits remaining the same. Did you try this? Because having an army of that size remain as one unit strikes me as something similar to sending your mooks to fight the hero one at a time in [insert video game franchise/favorite sentai here]. And if I'm reading these rules right, by doing this you increase your withering dice from 4 total to 6 total

[Heavy Arms]

"Armies are important" is not a core premise of Exalted without a lot of caveats. Large numbers of troops especially are not, and have never been, presented as the trump card in Exalted. If a Dawn has to struggle significantly to take on a Size 5 group of fresh peasant conscripts something is wrong. If the system doesn't let you recreate the Battle of Thermopylae something is wrong. Etc. The Realm isn't the dominant military force in Creation because of it's ability to field as many legions as it can; it's because those legions are lead by Dragonblooded commanders, to support Dragonblooded heroes fighting up close and personal with enemies, and to compliment Dragonblooded sorcerers bringing their own small units of supernatural fighters to add to the potency of the over military might in question.