Pity Those Ancient Spanish in DBA – The Army Points Say It All

I’ve always felt the 12 element army size of DBA doesn’t give balanced games. Some folks have come up with points systems to deal with this. I thought I’d tally the points total for a few armies to see how they compare under a couple of the points systems. I’ve focussed on the Macedonian and Punic Wars and not too surprisingly the Ancient Spanish are the poor relatives.

The two point systems I looked at are:

• DBA 2.0 Points System By Philip Woutat
• Rating Elements and Armies in De Bellis Antiquitatis By David Lawrence

Philip’s system is simpler than David’s. David does quite a granular analysis of the different troop types to come up with his element value. He also adds in a factor for the Troop Type of the General – not too interesting for the period I looked at – and the Aggression of the army – seen as a negative presumarly because the defender sets up the terrain. Despite these differences the two systems give very similar results, relatively speaking. If fact you you divide David’s score by 3 you get, roughly, Philip’s score.

The the Macedonian and Punic Wars armies I looked at were:

• DBA II/19c Seleucid
• DBA II/33 Polybian Roman
• Revised Polybian Roman
• DBA II/32 Later Carthaginian
• DBA II/39 Ancient Spanish
• Revised Ancient Spanish

The DBA II/19c Seleucid army list scores the top in both point systems and DBA II/39 Ancient Spanish scores lowest. You have to add three elements of Scutarii (AX) to the Spanish to get close to a “balanced” game against the Seleucids.