Field of Glory—where to start?

[hangarflying]

This is a miniature war game that covers the ancient and medieval periods. It uses a point-buy system to build armies from lists, and I think Army Builder would be a great tool for this game. Unfortunately, my lack of experience with both AB and FoG leaves me a bit stymied as to where I should start and how to organize everything.

1) Overall organization: the game has approximately a dozen supplement books that contain the army lists; each book contains about 20 or so factions with their own list. Initially, I was contemplating designating each faction as a race, but in the end, there would be over 200 races, and that seemed a bit much. Would it be possible to set each supplement book as the race, and then each faction in the book as a "sub-race"?

2) Filtering dates: a number of army lists have certain units that are available before a date and the other units after that date. Is there a way to set a filter that would allow me to provide a date range, and then only those options that fall within that range would be available?

2b) Date filter for overall organization: in lieu of paragraph 1, would it be possible to set a date filter that would give only those factions that fall within the range as options (along with the appropriate date-related army options)?

3) Unit stats: I made a definition file and got it to compile, though I don't think I understand how everything works. Units in FoG don't have numerical stats (Att 5, Def 3, HP 10, etc), rather the stats are terms (heavy foot, armored, drilled, pikeman, for example). I made tag groups of each category, and then tags of each term for the categories, but I'm not sure how to associate them to a unit.

I started filling out a data file for a test unit, and the categories showed up in the "stats" section, but the stats aren't numbers...do I just type in the appropriate I'd?

3b) Some units have multiple attack styles. For example, unit a is a swordsman, unit b is impact foot, and unit c is both swordsman and impact foot. Is there a way for unit c to recognize both "swordsman" and "impact foot", or do I need to make a third entry for "swordsman, impact foot"?

I may be getting ahead of myself on some of this. Thanks for any help!

[Harkan_again]

Some answers below, hope they help

Originally Posted by hangarflying

This is a miniature war game that covers the ancient and medieval periods. It uses a point-buy system to build armies from lists, and I think Army Builder would be a great tool for this game. Unfortunately, my lack of experience with both AB and FoG leaves me a bit stymied as to where I should start and how to organize everything.

1) Overall organization: the game has approximately a dozen supplement books that contain the army lists; each book contains about 20 or so factions with their own list. Initially, I was contemplating designating each faction as a race, but in the end, there would be over 200 races, and that seemed a bit much. Would it be possible to set each supplement book as the race, and then each faction in the book as a "sub-race"?

I used a similar approach in Hail Caesar as there are so many lists in there - one race per book then rulesets for each race

2) Filtering dates: a number of army lists have certain units that are available before a date and the other units after that date. Is there a way to set a filter that would allow me to provide a date range, and then only those options that fall within that range would be available?

Try having a look at what ranges are covered by dates, try setting up a context with rulesets that cover these date ranges. Put live tags on the various rulesets in (1) above to make them legal by date range

2b) Date filter for overall organization: in lieu of paragraph 1, would it be possible to set a date filter that would give only those factions that fall within the range as options (along with the appropriate date-related army options)?

See above

3) Unit stats: I made a definition file and got it to compile, though I don't think I understand how everything works. Units in FoG don't have numerical stats (Att 5, Def 3, HP 10, etc), rather the stats are terms (heavy foot, armored, drilled, pikeman, for example). I made tag groups of each category, and then tags of each term for the categories, but I'm not sure how to associate them to a unit.

you can set up the tag group that is associated with each unit stat to have text showing, when you create the units then select the tags through the tag group at the bottom middle of the Unit tab in the dat file. Through the Unit Stat tab in the def file and the Finalize script you can then set up how the stat displays

I started filling out a data file for a test unit, and the categories showed up in the "stats" section, but the stats aren't numbers...do I just type in the appropriate I'd?

3b) Some units have multiple attack styles. For example, unit a is a swordsman, unit b is impact foot, and unit c is both swordsman and impact foot. Is there a way for unit c to recognize both "swordsman" and "impact foot", or do I need to make a third entry for "swordsman, impact foot"?

If you follow (3) above then you can link multiple tags to the unit that then shows the differing choices so rather than having one tag that has "swordsman, impact foot" you can choose two of them that has "swordsman" and "impact foot" - that way round any scripting associated with the choices means you aren't repeating code and makes maintenance easier - try having a look at the Hail Caesar file as that has similar things in it

I may be getting ahead of myself on some of this. Thanks for any help!

[hangarflying]

Thanks! I'll check it out!

[ratboy]

Last word from the owners of FoG, they did not want and would not approve datafiles for armybuilder. but if you want I can email you what I started several years ago.