Some more updates from the campaign testing battlefields...
@Nelson1812 is helping out with some of the battles...
French decided to invade Navarre to pre-empt a Muslim Andalusian invasion of the last northern Spanish enclave of Leon.
The French win the battle very convincingly... but casualties can still be heavy even amongst the non-routed units.
(
@Nelson1812 completely outmaneuvered and clobbered me in this one... well fought, Sir.)
Andalusians lost 60% of their force -- so their army counter drops from 12 strength points SP's) to 5 (and they are disorganised as well for losing 50% or more of their force -- so can't attack or move into hostile regions)
French lost 14% of their manpower -- this drops their SP points from 13 to 11
I take the original SP points and multiply by remaining percentage and round up or down.
French: 13 x 86% = 11.18 -- rounded down to 11.
Andalusians: 12 x 40% = 4.8 -- rounded up to 5.
Andalusian army retreats and French army besieges the garrison in Navarre -- it will take next two remaining turns of summer campaign season to break them down.
(or longer -- there is a siege die roll that extends defenders holding out longer or besiegers suffering losses from disease or bad supplies)
(Six sided die)
Die roll 1: Besiegers lose an SP due to disease and defender sorties
Die roll 6: Garrison does not lose 1 SP and extends successful defence of siege by one more turn
Attackers don't want to continue siege into the winter months... very costly.
French now have option to split their army in next turn and pursue and besiege Navarre at same time.
To maintain a siege without garrison losing SP's, the besieging field army needs to have DOUBLE the SP's of the garrison.
To maintain a siege where the garrison loses an SP every turn (if things go well), then the besieging field army needs to have TRIPLE the SP's of the garrison.
If you advance without having a secure supply base behind you, you will need to try and live off the land, and there will be penalties of possible SP losses.
The ORANGE Al Andalus faction will have to rebuild and reorganise their army (they probably will have about 4 SP's worth of points available to do it), but for every side it applies that if you have to rebuild an army with more than 3 SP's being replaced (not additional reinforcements to a full strength army), the next battle this army fights it will have it's forces picked by AUTO-SELECT in the FOG II battle.
Reason for this is the loss in trained, experienced men from the spring muster and have to scrape together whatever forces you can.
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There are two more battles to fight this Campaign Season turn:
1. The Pecheneg steppe tribes have invaded Bulgaria and the Bulgarians have only managed to muster a weak army to stop them (if the Pechenegs win, then they might move on to ravage the Byzantine province of Thrace.)
2. The Norman Kingdom in Italy has consolidated its hold over Italy and Sicily (but recently lost Sardinia/Corsica) and now is invading Carinthia -- controlled by the Croatians.
Battle 1: Pechenegs 1100 points vs Bulgars 700 points
Battle 2: Normans 900 points vs Croatians 700 points
The job of the Bulgars would be to dent the Pecheneg army on it's way to Byzantium... not too many of their soldiers answered the call to muster quickly enough...
Key for the smaller, non-faction armies is to inflict as much casualties on the faction armies as possible.
Non-faction army battles will be fought either by dedicated players who are not part of any factions, or faction players assigned who don't have any other battles going that turn.
For the above, I flipped a coin and
@Nelson1812 is playing the Bulgars and Normans.
Interestingly, higher points doesn't necessarily mean numerically bigger armies, just resources to buy higher number expensive nigh-quality units.
Bigger picture in this turn so far...
Byzantines have struck back at the Fatamids ... their navies taking control of the Levant Sea and are invading and besieging Cyprus.
The Fatamids are mustering armies and navies for a possible counter strike.
In the north, the Germans have defeated and expelled the Viking army from Saxony and a smaller German force is now besieging the Viking army in Pomerania.
The Anglo-Saxon army has defeated the combined Irish & Viking rebellion in Ireland.
At start of next Campaign Season turn I will explain how economies and incomes work in this campaign.
Hope this hasn't grown completely out of hand and we manage to find players for it when it's ready ...
I find, when I play it, it's quite simple ... when I try and explain it... oh, boy...