Michael Gorman on 21 Dec 2002 05:03:01 -0000


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

RE: [eia] dice re-roll policy


My concern is this. We will probably screw up land orders again at some point this game. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of people reworking land orders with fore knowledge of how their battles will go. I don't know if it made a difference for Prussia or if it will ever make a difference, but being able to rework your land orders with the knowledge that this or that roll will go your way or not go your way seems a bad idea. I don't expect people to try to milk that and intentionally screw up their orders so they can make their rolls and then change the orders, but it's a rare turn where you don't have several options on how to execute a given goal for that month. If you know that choosing one path will completely screw you and choosing another will give you a big win, can you honestly ignore that knowledge when you pick which option you will take? Suppose the rolls in question were a foraging roll. You had a forage value of three or four but ended up getting a six. Then someone points out that you screwed something up and need to change your foraging rolls. You might have turned down an alternate plan that would have had the corps that foraged so badly supplied by a depot. What do you do? If you switch to your alternate plan, it now looks like you switched away from foraging to save the factors and used knowledge you never should have had. If you don't switch, then you intentionally force yourself to turn down a plan you had already made because your mistake caused you to know something you shouldn't know in advance. If you instead say that since the last order set was invalid, the rolls that went with it are invalid, then you can make your new orders in the absence of either the benefit or the impediment of fore knowledge. With a siege. Suppose Prussia had blown the Vilna siege roll. They found out it was going to cost more to attack Vilna then planned and decided they would never launch that attack then. What do you do? If you back out of the siege, then you appear to be using the knowledge that the siege failed to not bother launching the attack. It wouldn't matter if that attack was only being launched assuming a certain supply situation, it now looks like it was withdrawn because it failed. Similarly, knowing it will succeed, it would be very hard to pull that attack back even if it might cost a little more. After all, you know you will win before you even move.

It's the writing of orders with foreknowledge of the results that has me so adamantly opposed to just letting people roll and then correct moves without rerolling.

Mike


_______________________________________________
eia mailing list
eia@xxxxxxxxx
http://lists.ellipsis.cx/mailman/listinfo/eia