Scourge of War Boards

After last nights conversation about a way to factor casualties into scoring for victory conditions, I figure we should continue it here and see if we can nail down a few ideas for new scoring rules.

What I remember of the conversation is that casualties should be factored into the overall score and that victory location points should be such that they can be modified my casualties taken to either take or hold those locations.

To start this off, this is what I propose:

Each victory location is worth 500 points. At the end of the game, the total points for a team is tallied. That number is then subtracted from the total number of casualties taken. The team with the SMALLER number is the victor.

Here's how it would look for the battle fought last night (4207):

Confederate:
Victory Locations: 7
Victory Points: 3,500 (7 x 500)
Casualties: 7,051
Final Score: 3,551 (7,051 - 3,500)

Union:
Victory Locations: 0
Victory Points: 0 (0 x 500)
Casualties: 8,308
Final Score: 8,308

Confed: 3,551
Union: 8,308

The CSA has the smaller number and is the victor. It's like golf, the less number of strokes per hole the better.

There might be something I'm overlooking.....

Writer I like the way you are thinking. While casualties are important for obvious reasons, battles are often fought for and won by holding geographic locations. The soldiers get paid to hold ground. I listened to some of the conversation last night and had a concern as to how do you strike the proper balance. I think what you have may be a good beginning; we will just have to try it out. One question I have though is regarding objectives that are mutually contested (held neutral); will each side split the points? I would also assume given this point system that some objectives may not be contested by either side, depending on casualties on the field, and the potential difficulty of obtaining those objectives. I have noticed playing this game that having good coordination is imperative to winning. This may become more important under this new scoring as someone is going to have to keep a tab on casualties/ objectives to make decisions on when objective are of value.

I suppose that objective that are left neutral give points to neither side.

Something I just thought about, too, and this may make things a bit interesting, is to remove the timers from the VL's and instead the VL's only count for points at the end of the game. Perhaps there could also be a cease-fire option where both sides agree to cease fighting, tally the points, and determine the victor at that moment.

Yes, the only logical manner to proceed with neutral objectives would be to give points to neither side. Glad to see I helped fan the flames for this discussion and then tottered off elsewhere while Rome burned.

Holding objectives at the end has already been used and fairly well discounted as an effective scoring method. Using that, we found quickly that players simply waited until the very end then banzai charged en masse. Thus you really had to keep your map open until the last dying second as an objective could literally be turned one second before the end. If we were to bring this method back, points really become irrelevant, and we'd be back to just counting who had the majority of objectives. Really, it just makes the scoring more difficult for no real gain, in my opinion.

Honestly, what's wrong with using the game's scoring system? It's doing the exact same thing as is being proposed, only no external calculations are required. Look at each side's overall commander and you have your points (less casualties) tallied for you. I thought the only real concern was tweaking exactly how much each objective was going to be worth. It might, perhaps, even be a good idea to set parameters for points based upon 1) The number of objectives and 2) The number of players. Thus, if a host opts to use only 3 objectives for 10 players, those 3 could be worth, say, 750. For 5 objectives for 10 players, maybe 500 each. For fewer players, the objectives need not count so much, as there would obviously be fewer casualties, and as such it would be unlikely to sway hundreds or even thousands of points in the overall score.

If it's already possible to modify these values ourselves, I don't really see why we're wasting time "debating" all of this. Why not just get to experimenting? Different hosts may, in the end, still have different preferences, but if we can come up with an overall set of parameters that are agreeable to most (if not all), we should come to a more satisfactory conclusion to games more often.

We should use the game's scoring to determine the winner, as it takes more into consideration than casualties (routed troops, etc.).

Currently, the choices for objective points are 500, 1000, and up.

So. . . starting this evening, let's try 500 points per objective (hold for 25 minutes), 7 objectives, winner decided by total points.

If we don't like it, we can adjust from there.

I'm a bit worried this change will lead to more conservative play, and I really have been enjoying the bitter dogfights we've been having lately, but I'm willing to give it a shot.

XNS is going to have to take care of his troops now.

XNS is going to have to take care of his troops now.

Ha! Says you. He'll show you, mister smarty-pants!

Really, though, you still don't have to take care of anything, because with the frequency of turns, etc., replacement troops will always come in steadily, and if you just bump your recruitment limits, losses don't matter in the least. You have all 5's and 300 men per regiment? Too bad someone with all 3's and 500 man regiments can clobber you just by going into assault columns and charging.

XNS is going to have to take care of his troops now.

Ha! Says you. He'll show you, mister smarty-pants!

Really, though, you still don't have to take care of anything, because with the frequency of turns, etc., replacement troops will always come in steadily, and if you just bump your recruitment limits, losses don't matter in the least. You have all 5's and 300 men per regiment? Too bad someone with all 3's and 500 man regiments can clobber you just by going into assault columns and charging.

So very bitter is this one, must be a fan of Brussels sprouts.

Actually one of my divs currently has four 4's and the other has 5 4's. Maybe I just clobber you cause you suck.

So very bitter is this one, must be a fan of Brussels sprouts.

Nonsense! I've never even been to Brussels.

And Seal, when was the last time you played with that division? You've never clobbered me that I'm aware of, but rest assured if you did, it would have been via your usual means.