Re: [eia] battle of Bordeaux: British withdrawal roll, overwhelming odds and trivial combats

[MICHAEL P GORMAN <mpgorman@xxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: Mel Chin <mchin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Monday, May 14, 2007 3:24 pm
Subject: Re: [eia] battle of Bordeaux: British withdrawal roll, overwhelming odds and trivial combats
To: public list for an Empires in Arms game <eia@xxxxxxxxx>


> I think the the problem here is not the rules but how hidden strengths
>  affect the combat sequence.  There shouldn't be two rolls for withdrawal.
>  Maybe the attacker should announce his strength with his chit pick 
> and the
>  defender can state after chits are revealed (but before any other actions
>  are taken) whether it's a trivial combat or not. Even better, both 
> sides can
>  post their units strengths with the chit pick escrow.
>  
>  Mel
>  
>  

But that is explicitly not the order in the land combat phase.  The only time any statement of corps identities, and thus the forces present, have to be made before resolution of withdrawal chit choices is if somoene chooses outflank.  Then the forces have to be pre-divided before the outflanking army knows the opposing chit choice.  Otherwise revealing strength is a specific step in land combat sequence.

Corps composition does not appear to be secret normally, but corps identity is supposed to be secret.  I agree that the overwhelming force rule is written as if that is not true, but mostly that means the overwhelming force rule is poorly written.

Otherwise it was apparantly the goal of the writer of this rule to make small corps very advantagous as they can scout out large armies with almost no risk of combat and at no cost to the power throwing troops to the wolves if they end up failing their repeated chances to escape a battle.
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