Recent Change to Generals

[Zakilevo]

Like Indirik said, with this new change, generals will always be behind. They won't be able to make quick decisions. We are not playing a game with a chat server where you can ask your marshals to get whatever information you need ASAP. If no one sends me a scout report of a region that is about to be hit by enemies, I have to either gamble or pull my men back to insure that I am not throwing an entire army into my enemies.

I doubt many generals are diligent enough to try and control their marshals' every order.

[De-Legro]

Like Indirik said, with this new change, generals will always be behind. They won't be able to make quick decisions. We are not playing a game with a chat server where you can ask your marshals to get whatever information you need ASAP. If no one sends me a scout report of a region that is about to be hit by enemies, I have to either gamble or pull my men back to insure that I am not throwing an entire army into my enemies.

I doubt many generals are diligent enough to try and control their marshals' every order.

Yes, but the real question is, do Generals need to make quick decisions. It is my understanding that the role Tom envisions for them does not require them to be making quick decisions. The theory is fast decisions are tactical decision. The Generals role comes after the "quick" decisions as he tries to salvage the entire operation.

See in your example you are making it the Generals job to decide if men are pulled back or not. What I'm attempting to do is make that the Marshals decision, after all those men are under his command not mine as the General. For that to happen the Marshal obviously needs some understanding of the strategic goals.

[Zakilevo]

Yes, but the real question is, do Generals need to make quick decisions. It is my understanding that the role Tom envisions for them does not require them to be making quick decisions. The theory is fast decisions are tactical decision. The Generals role comes after the "quick" decisions as he tries to salvage the entire operation.

See in your example you are making it the Generals job to decide if men are pulled back or not. What I'm attempting to do is make that the Marshals decision, after all those men are under his command not mine as the General. For that to happen the Marshal obviously needs some understanding of the strategic goals.

If you lead multiple armies, it becomes the generals job to decide in my opinion. If one army pulls back because the marshal of the army thinks his army isn't ready while the other stays, you will see nothing more than a massacre. Well obviously that is why we have military councils to share our knowledge. It doesn't do any harm by having detailed information of armies. During my time as the general of Sirion, I didn't dictate what each army should do instead I assigned them with assignments such as putting one of three armies in charge of crushing rebels while putting two others on assaulting a city. Only time I checked an individual CS was when we had stragglers. I checked if it was worth waiting for them or not. Also unit types as well. Waiting on cavalry units before assaulting a city does nothing but waste time and give enemies more time to build up their defences.

I do not see a big merit to this change at all. We have 12 hours to make a decision and I doubt Tom trying to let marshals make these 'quick' decisions will do much good. It will do nothing but make generals ask their marshals for information they used to have.

[GoldPanda]

I seem to recall that Tom has said previously that Generals shouldn't be making decisions every turn.

That's fine during peace-time. If your realm is locked in a life-or-death struggle with another realm of approximately equal strength, letting your Marshals debate on turn-by-turn decisions is a fast way to get your realms killed, imho. The more armies you have, the more chefs end up in the kitchen and the more things can go horribly wrong.

Eventually all realms would end up adapting and having one or two armies, or end up getting killed.

I'm not saying that the General needs to be able to micromanage every single knight every single turn. It's sometimes a good idea to give a Marshal a mission and let him run free with his army. However, it's not always a good idea to give all Marshals multi-turn instructions and somehow expect them to work it out all the time. A General needs to be able to see into his realm's armies so that he can make informed decisions on when and where to split off an army or two.

[Tom]

That's fine during peace-time. If your realm is locked in a life-or-death struggle with another realm of approximately equal strength, letting your Marshals debate on turn-by-turn decisions is a fast way to get your realms killed, imho. The more armies you have, the more chefs end up in the kitchen and the more things can go horribly wrong.

If you trust your marshals that little, your realm ought to die.

If your general thinks that he is the only one who can properly lead the armies, your realm ought to die.

If you need the general (maybe we need to abandon that term, it really is more like a minister of war) to issue turn-by-turn orders, then your realm ought to die.


You are complaining because you are trying to have the general do what is actually the marshals job. They have the information needed for turn-by-turn detail actions, so why don't you let them do it?

The general is supposed to tell his marshals to defend region X, attack region Y and make sure that there are enough forces near the border to Z to repell any raiding attempts.

If you act any more detailled than this, then you are not playing a general, you are playing a marshal who isn't happy with just one army.


And the "one big army" strategy isn't a solution, it is a big part of the problem. With a large army, of course you will only ever have a small part of your forces in any given region. Try smaller armies and you will find they are much more responsive and unified. Nothing in the game forces you to put 20 people into an army. Have you tried 5 ?

[GoldPanda]

You can keep making these claims, Tom, but the reality in the game simply does not match up to them.

The realms with small armies are dead or dying. The realms with big armies are thriving. The realms that empower their Marshals are dead. The realms with micro-managing, megalomania-cal, charismatic, cult-of-personality Generals are winning and conquering, or at least surviving. This is why real wars are fought with centralized command structures instead of by committee. This is why Sun Tzu and Napolean end up in history books instead of war planning committee #532. War planning by centralized authority is simply a superior system. And when your realm only has 40 players in it, you don't need four helpers to decide where to send them.

If that's not true, then I suspect that you would not be trying to handicap the General position. But like the players in this thread are telling you, all you will accomplish is forcing every realm to consolidate into fewer armies.

Maybe all these realms ought to die. Maybe. But unless you start lightning bolting the realms that fail to follow your "vision", they'll keep on living. The realms that tried to obey your vision are mostly already dead. I know, because I helped kill one of them.

[GoldPanda]

The general is supposed to tell his marshals to defend region X, attack region Y and make sure that there are enough forces near the border to Z to repell any raiding attempts.

Very few realms are big enough to split their military three way and not get slaughtered, Tom. It's always "blob up and meet the other blob". Splitting up = getting defeated piece-meal = horrible casualties among the nobility + one or two dead Heroes = dismissed General.

Nothing in the game forces you to put 20 people into an army. Have you tried 5 ?

I haven't, but I'm pretty sure Carelia did. It's dead now.

[Tom]

Good points there.

I want the General position. But do you really think that Sun Tzu bothered himself with the equipment quality of every squad within his army? I've actually read him, and everything he says is rather general and abstract. Absolutely no micro-management anywhere in sight.

I do agree that the combat system is part of the problem, because despite our efforts with overkill, etc. it still rewards hitting the enemy with everything you have instead of running encounters.

[Gustav Kuriga]

It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.

He said you have to know your own army in order to be able to successfully fight. This is one of the most famous quotes.

[JPierreD]

An small chapter of The Art of War: http://suntzusaid.com/book/2
When I read that and try to apply it to a BM General, well, it does seem to imply a fair deal of micro-management.

The problem for me lays with the separation between Marshal and General. Ideally in a single-army realm those positions should be the same, and when more armies exist the General becomes the first of the Marshals. It is either that or one of the Marshals coordinates the rest, because there usually needs to be a central command. Realms are too small and the gameplay is too simple for a position of General be dissociated with the one of Marshal. The Ruler already takes care of the foreign relations (which makes the Ambassadors rarely do real diplomatic work), so there is very little for a General to do out of the field. He could send one army to defend the hypothetical north, while the other army is busy TOing or repairing regions in the hypothetical west, but those decisions are very unusual and leave the General doing almost nothing. Kind of the problem there is with the Banker position, though that one has much more potential for activity than a General dissociated of the battlefield and from foreign policy. Such General would not even be able to coordinate with foreign armies because of his ignorance of the state of his own.

[Anaris]

Tom,

You know that I agree with you on this. I believe that BattleMaster is at its best with small armies led by empowered marshals, with a strategic-minded General over them who plans out the course of the war, while the marshals direct its day-to-day flow.

But however much we want it to be, this is not (by and large) how the players play the game. And we cannot force them to.

A clear, strong vision of How The Game Should Be is a good thing only in as much as the players will actually accept that vision.  And yes, there are some things on which we cannot bend: the Inalienable Rights are important, and need to remain strong, even if some players dislike them.

But in all practicality, no one is being deprived of fun because the General has the information required to plan out the actions of the whole army. In most realms, you have at most three people with the strategic and tactical sense to be a General or a Marshal who can plan out the actions of armies—and most of the time, one or two of them won't have enough time to devote to the position.

Give the General the tools he needs to be able to effectively command all the realm's armies without having to ask for status updates. It's an unnecessary complication thrown in at a time when we know we need to simplify the game to avoid driving people away.

[vonGenf]

(maybe we need to abandon that term, it really is more like a minister of war)

That's not a bad idea. That position is meant to be a government office, and not a military title.

In fact, if the naming system was overhauled to look like this, without any change to the responsibilities and game mechanics:

General -> Minister for War
Marshal -> General
Vice-marshal -> Marshal (or lieutenant)

Maybe the system would be better aligned with most people's conception of the words.

[Tom]

Maybe you read it that way because that is the way your want to read it?

He says "know your army", but he doesn't say what exactly that means. You read it as meaning knowing every little detail about every single soldier. I read it as knowing your capabilities, strengths, weaknesses, etc. - neither is directly spelled out.


But instead of philosophy, how about those who are unhappy say what exactly it is they need? Not in the "the old thing back" way, but really think about what you want and why.

For example, I have gathered that you need a summary per region, and I don't see why that could not be provided. After all, the information is already there, the computer would simply sum it up for you. So we could add that.

[Geronus]

You need to know how much strength you have in any given region, yes. That's a minimum requirement to be able to even make decisions, otherwise you're just guessing.

And I agree with Anaris wholeheartedly. Having multiple, independent Marshals might be an ideal but the fact is that it's been a recipe for disaster in most of the realms I've been in that have utilized multiple armies in the same theatre of war. Ibladesh comes strongly to mind here, but it didn't help Fronen much either. And Riombara shifted away from two more or less equal armies to one large one and one small supporting one for similar reasons. One army per theatre is my rule. Any more and you risk command dissolution.

[Arrakis]

There are examples where multiple armies worked fine, too. For example in Ibladesh it did, not in the last war but in the war with Itorunt. I think it worked well in Sirion too in times when they were attacked by several realms.

It worked because there were competent players in those positions. For example, if a general treats his marshals as drones they will do as drones do. This means if you have them become addicted to General issuing orders every turn, then they will lose themselves when he is not around. General setting goals to his marshals for certain time period is better than holding them by the hand through the entire process. There is no point in marshal being just a messenger, he needs to be independent in giving orders but still follow the goals the general sets.

Biggest issue with this is that there are indeed few good marshals in the game. In my opinion being a good marshal is one of the hardest jobs around, and it takes a lot of time and effort. People probably just think that it's not worth it.