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I was re-reading a thread about entrenchments being "over powered" and I had a thought, why do entrenchments offer no bonus to attacking troops?

Now before you laugh and say, silly man you have to get out of your entrenchments to attack so how can they help you?, consider the offensive potential for entrenchments. Attacking an entrenched position across open ground is suicide. Digging in allows you to get around the problem, because digging approaches allows you to remain in cover while closing the distance with the enemy. Good approach trenches can get to within 50m or less of a defensive position. Troops, supplies, and artillery can be brought up close and in relative safety in preparation for an assault, and the defenders have a hard time tracking troop movements. When the order is given to go over the top, the first enemy line could often be taken in the initial rush. After that, things get messy for the attackers, because attacks tended to break cohesion as they got further away from the LOD and the enemy counter attacked. But things are equally messy for the defenders in the counter attack, because they have to get up and expose themselves in order to eject the attackers from their front defensive line. When you look at causalities from assaults that started from entrenched positions (or siege positions), generally attackers and defenders have roughly similar numbers of causalities.

What could this mean for the game? A simple solution would be to make the real entrenchment level of a defending element the difference between the defending stack and the attacking stack's entrenchment level. Defender dug in at 6, attacker is dug in at 2, the defender receives an entrenchment bonus of level 4. (This would be similar to how the offensive/defensive stats of leaders stack up against each other when calculating hit chance). In the case of assaulting a structure, any fort bonuses would be unaffected.

Now all of this really only comes into play if you have two stacks sharing a region, which is pretty rare. An attacker from outside the region should be expected to face the full force of entrenchments when trying to force his way in.

There is a chance to reduce entrenchments during assaults, why not just increase the odds of that. otoh inf only get 4 lvls of entrenchment bonus arty get up to 8 so there is a lot to consider from changing entrenchments.MTSG looks like you keep your entrenchment post giving aid.

This might more aptly apply during a siege. The side laying siege would indeed dig zigzag trenches up as close as possible to the defender's walls and assault from close range. Interesting point.

hanny1 wrote:There is a chance to reduce entrenchments during assaults,

I did not know that...are you referring to storming a structure or attacks outside the structures?

pgr wrote:I did not know that...are you referring to storming a structure or attacks outside the structures?

Field combat, not sieges, its listed in a file [ dont have the game to hand,might be the one with 1.25 as base chance to hit] as an odds of happening so it can be changed.

pgr wrote:I was re-reading a thread about entrenchments being "over powered" and I had a thought, why do entrenchments offer no bonus to attacking troops?

Now before you laugh and say, silly man you have to get out of your entrenchments to attack so how can they help you?, consider the offensive potential for entrenchments. Attacking an entrenched position across open ground is suicide. Digging in allows you to get around the problem, because digging approaches allows you to remain in cover while closing the distance with the enemy. Good approach trenches can get to within 50m or less of a defensive position. Troops, supplies, and artillery can be brought up close and in relative safety in preparation for an assault, and the defenders have a hard time tracking troop movements. When the order is given to go over the top, the first enemy line could often be taken in the initial rush. After that, things get messy for the attackers, because attacks tended to break cohesion as they got further away from the LOD and the enemy counter attacked. But things are equally messy for the defenders in the counter attack, because they have to get up and expose themselves in order to eject the attackers from their front defensive line. When you look at causalities from assaults that started from entrenched positions (or siege positions), generally attackers and defenders have roughly similar numbers of causalities.

What could this mean for the game? A simple solution would be to make the real entrenchment level of a defending element the difference between the defending stack and the attacking stack's entrenchment level. Defender dug in at 6, attacker is dug in at 2, the defender receives an entrenchment bonus of level 4. (This would be similar to how the offensive/defensive stats of leaders stack up against each other when calculating hit chance). In the case of assaulting a structure, any fort bonuses would be unaffected.

Now all of this really only comes into play if you have two stacks sharing a region, which is pretty rare. An attacker from outside the region should be expected to face the full force of entrenchments when trying to force his way in.

I'd have to disagree. Nearly all battles consisted of the attacking side exiting their improved position to close on and attack the defender in his improved position.

Counter attacks were against enemy forces which had reached the defender's improved positions and had to be pushed back out by the defender. I can't think of a any situations where the attacking side returned to their own position, where they were counter attacked by the defending side.

And why would the defender counter attack the attacker in the attacker's improved position? If the attacker had already committed to risking moving over open fields to attack and drive the defender out, the defender would know that the best results of the battle they could attain would be through simply staying put. There is after all and underlying reason for the battle, which dictates the behavior of each side.

Captain_Orso wrote:Counter attacks were against enemy forces which had reached the defender's improved positions and had to be pushed back out by the defender. I can't think of a any situations where the attacking side returned to their own position, where they were counter attacked by the defending side.
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The bit in bold is what I'm referring to. I'm not saying defenders attacked the opposing sides lines in defense. What I'm saying is that defenders would have to expose themselves in order to retake their original defensive works that were lost in the initial assault.

Okay, I understand now. That is not really reflected in the battle engine. It basically only reflects the attacking side advancing to melee and trying to break the defender's morale.

What you are referring to was considered during pre-beta--among a plethora of other battle possibilities--, but it was deemed to be so complex, and would require rewriting the battle engine so extensively, that it was dropped in favor of getting other issues solved. Basically, more-bang-to-the-buck, if you will.