Army Construction Rules (Part 2)...A Campaign Design Process Update

 

While math is not a particularly difficult subject to handle and work out, doing it needlessly can be a tedious and boring activity.

When looking at creating units for the main factions of this campaign, they could all be essentially the same types of units, such as during the Roman civil wars, but that would be a bit bland and the tabletop battles would end up being less interesting than the more varied units as seen through history.

Yet, the primary ancestor to all of the main factions is a fallen Roman empire, one which ended due to natural disaster, not from internal strife and barbarian invasions. Even so, a more thematic approach to designing these armies would not be out of place, letting geographical differences and location play a larger role in determining exactly what types of units will exist, to start out.

I could, as I have given it much thought, have a more regimented system of tables to use for determining the composition of unit types for each faction, but that would really just be a bit…random.

After going over what I had intended to post about this, which is why I didn’t post yesterday, I decided that I am going to pull from the published HC/PS/BP army lists. I am certain that I make little tweaks here and there as needed, to better work out the points costs (keeping more in line with the goal of limiting fractional accounting).

This will require considerable work to “balance” out the points costs between army lists of different eras, with lots of playtesting to help make sure this will work at least mostly as intended.

My current thought is to have the units follow this method below, as already explained in a previous post (well, mostly).

Points values for a given unit are determined by the following formula: C+R+G(E)+SP+S, where Close combat (C), Ranged combat (R), Grit & Gear (G) multiplied by the Era Value (E), Strength Points (SP), and Specials (S) are added together, and the sum is then divided by 10. Note: Ranged combat point value per pip changes according to the range of the weapon equipped.

The sticking point, because at the base level this is already an in-use system, will be the Era Value. I want to mostly avoid inter-era battles as much as I am able, but I do need and want to account for expeditions and colonial warfare as seen in our own Earth history from the Age of Exploration to the early 20^th century. 

Luckily, the BP rules already cover this up to a point, given that they have lists for the Zulu war and the Sudan wars, so those can be readily transferred over. 

There are some story elements of the Imagi-Nations world of mine that will cause some inter-era battles. and then once the later conflicts (our post-1900) come into play, there may be some more problems to deal with. 

Again, I had a much lengthier, detailed, and ultimately a wholly unmanageable system that I had worked out and was about to post, yesterday, when I paused and reflected. 

The major takeaways from that were that 1) I am going to just go off published lists as much as makes sense to me and 2) let those lists inform the stories and background of my Imagi-Nations world.

As a side note, I have poor lighting in this old house that I rent, and my attempts to provide visual documentation of what I am working on have been, less satisfying. However, I just received some lighting gear that might be helpful for when taking pictures of miniatures and terrain, so perhaps I will be able to post some of that sooner, rather than later.