mighty empires campaign rules with warmaster

[cjbennett22]

new rules.
I have 3 years completed on the campaign and I have found that I still have no real point to a fleet in the game.  Besides transporting an army it really cant do anything.

so naval bombardments is my next step.  I have decided that once a fleet moves into a sea tile neighboring a coastal settlement he needs to make some choices.  If the sea tile already contains a fleet they do not necessarily fight, the fleets could actually pass by so the moving fleet needs to roll 1d6 and a 4+ makes contact.  If the moving fleet goes straight for the settlement then they must fight a shorefort scenario against a fort and its defending fleet. Whether there is a fleet or not the attacking fleet must destroy the defending fort.

village=defense tower
city&fortress=shorefort
capital city=coastal bastion

special rule:
If the settlement has a warmaster banner in it that contains a wizard, that wizard will be able to play as a non-school colored wizard in the man o'war game.  I will need to decide on wizard levels for each race later.  If the fort is destroyed so is the wizard.  If the fort is captured by boarding parties and all of the crew is killed then so is the wizard (in the campaign game you could capture and ransom the heroes later).

if the attacking fleet wins they can then stay put next turn and bombard the settlement with all "forward" facing guns, as if that ship is firing at a single point at any one time (On a greatship for example it has 3 broadsides so 3 shots at the settlement, a wargalley has only 1 forward gun so 1 shot).  for each shot you can take roll a d6, on a 6 you hit.  Using the rules of the siege games in warmaster at the end of the firing roll for structural damage.  Hits are accumulative per each round of shooting.  Flyers and melee ships do not count as they would only either block LOS or take shots themselves and ships like ironsharks......I doubt could attack a city in any fantasy game.

village=6 structure points
city and fortress = 12 structure points
capital city = 24 structure points
these points are directly from the substancence provided by the settlement (1 substinence=6 structure points, with the exception of the fortress as it should be bumped up above a village)

as math and statistics in my head go, a "balanced" dwarf fleet that sits in front of me (1 dreadnaught, 2 ironclads, 1 monitor squad, 1 gyrocopter squad, 2 nautilus'),  15 shots can be made, hitting on sixes should land 2-3 hits, adding up to 6-12 structure points of damage (all rolling a 3 or 4).  I wanted a fleet to be able to Raze a village in 1 turn and a city/fortress in two and finally take 4 turns to Raze a capital.

I am preparing these rules knowing that the dwarf fleet will be attempting to raze the entire coast against the chaos next year (1 village and 1 city).  I will be able to report back about it later.  If they are successful the settlements will not be able to pay revenue to the chaos realm.

any thoughts, comments, questions? 
Thank you all!

[cjbennett22]

the rules work pretty well.  No damage to the dwarf fleet but almost when they faced a shore fort, a bloodship and 1 squadron of death galleys

the ironclads paddle wheels are magnets for shots as they just kept getting hit, one of the ironclads lost the wheels and the boilers and was stuck in for the long haul against 2 death galleys and their boarding parties.  it held out to capture both ships.  a lucky shot from a monitor finished off the bloodship after a torpedo hit it.

The forts are their to assist with the lesser fleets when defending against the shore line and to help make a dent.  In this case they almost made a dent. a normal fleet that couldn't repair itself may have taken a lost ship 

1 not so nicely focused picture is attached of the ending positions of the fleets.

[cjbennett22]

for the final rounds I have taken away the rule that allows for 1 gold crown of revenue for every 2 BH captured.  After my first chaos shorefort defense it came apparent that chaos would spend gold to help defend the shores and then the larger force could very easily capture the ships in exchange for gold, basically the chaos was paying the dwarves.  Unbalanced if you ask me.

It was nice at first when the dwarves would just fight random pirate encounters but now that things are clearly going the dwarf way its a landslide push to the larger fleet.  I want to keep it, Ill just change it to double the BH for each captured ship.

Oh also, I have made it so the BH paid to upgrade the level of crew will go away when you sink a ship, so a monitor of sailors will be replaced by a monitor of just regular crew.  But keep the admiral rule, if you capture an admiral all BH are gone, spent or not.  Crews are just to demoralized and now will need to fight under the helm of a nooby.  Also, no BH will be acquired until you have an admiral in the fleet as I am allowing a race to build whatever individual ships they want while at least building towards the minimum.  So that will create a need to pay for an admiral.

Lots of little things now as I button it up.  I found that the campaign has been going in phases.  1, the scouting phase with warmaster troops.  2, the sparse but important not so big warmaster battles.  3, the big man o'war battle.  4, the quick between big warmaster battles.  and 5, the large and very important warmaster battles with the small clean up man o'war battles.  I have nearly 5 years completed now and the dwarves have certainly turned the tide and pushing the chaos hordes back to their swamps.  I have 1 more large warmaster battle ready to go that will wait until the weekend so I can have enough time.

If you have not done a campaign game, its a lot of fun!!!  I suggest you try it.

[Geep]

Thanks for the update, this all sounds great.

[cjbennett22]

its hard finding time for this right now, I finally forced in a game of warmaster to get through a turn just to do another round of bombardment to the chaos capital, 8 total structure points and rolled a 20.  4 subsistance points from a capital means 20 structure points....RAZED!!!!  turn three of the final year of the campaign has the large chaos banner on the run and the capital in ruin. 

This would be more fun if I could get in more of a game on each go but family life and good weather keeps me away  ha