Originally, Elemental was going to have continuous turn combat. That effectively meant real-time. Ultimately, after playing around with it, we decided to implement turn based (simultaneous turns based on combat speed) with tiles.
The evolution of tactical combat in Elemental owes a lot to the beta program. 9 Months of public beta testing of the game engine with corresponding debates has led to some important changes that would not have happened otherwise.
A lot of the discussion resulted in us thinking about the game in ways we didn’t think of before. Specifically, how do we address game design issues that have plagued our genre for decades now? If you’re a strategy gamer, you know them well.
For us, the challenge of tactical combat has been about giving the player as much control as possible over how long tactical combat should last. This ultimately led to the realization that the funnest way for us turned out to be to have the strategic elements of combat very clear and well defined.
Elements of Tactical Combat
In no particular order these are the things that matter:
Remaining Questions and issues:
I can say post release I'm interested in putting in WEGO and letting people try out the RTS system we put in too.
Regardless, I want to write a free Myth-like mod for fun.
I didn't know it was called WEGO, but I think it would be awesome for tactical battles. I would like to have the ability to just play some quick skirmishes online in tactical mode. With a rich system with lots of tactical modifiers, I could imagine it being more fun to play quick skirmishes than a campaign in multiplayer
Yeah, I had to look that one up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-keeping_systems_in_games
Simultaneously-executed and clock-based turns
I'm going to have to agree with most of the combat speed posting. I partly like it, and partly hate it. Combining movement and combat in a logical fashion so that you don't move ten spaces and have your one attack round, then not move at all the next turn, to still have just your one attack round. This is an excellently stupid design flaw to excise. I'll miss it not in the slightest.
However, there shouldn't be a speed that determines how many moves you have. You should have a static number of moves per turn, possibly with ways to increase it. Combat speed should be how many attacks you can do with one move. Then you should have another speed for your traveling rate. The guy with two swords and a horse would both move and fight twice as fast, but one or the other would only change one aspect, not both. It's an absurdity to be simplifying it so much after opening up unit design so much. I'm going to start having nightmares about Spore, where you evolve your creature up from a single celled organism to have a generic attack behavior in the end.
I wonder if worshiping pigeons would get me in trouble with the folks...
It can't be stated enough, with the exception of a post that gets me banned perhaps. I HATE, with an undying fury, those god forsaken systems that randomly nuke your units for you. I'd rather cut my balls off, roast them on a spit, and eat them.
This isn't a problem. It isn't even a problem in RTW, although you have to take advantage of the design to do it. In RTW, where there is no method for handling this, you simply don't use a general in a harrying force. It's quite the simple matter to send in a fleet of cavalry archers, wardogs, or other excellent troops, rape the shit out of some stuff, and then get the fuck out of Dodge. Your units will gain the appropriate rewards for their raping, and whatever unit was the "command" gets tagged with any potential leadership hangups for cowardice. When you get one of them nuked, you stick em in a real army with a commander that will supersede them.
Circumventing it entirely in elemental isn't an issue at all. If your ambush or whatever is successful, you'll have had favorable results when you retreated. A retreat with favorable results shouldn't be marked down as cowardice. The TW system has multiple oversights of a preposterously obvious nature, leadership penalties that are awarded irrespective of results are one of them.
I really miss Myth and Myth 2. Those were awesome games. Correct me if I'm wrong, but, weren't the battles in Myth done in real time? I seem to remember that. I especially loved using my dwarf bombers to blow the crap out of groups of the "fallen". I seem to recall some kind of slow shambling zombie type enemies. Man it's been too long.
I could look them up to make sure, I just don't feel well enough to "fact check" my memories of old games right now.
I'd jump all over a "Myth" Mod for Elemental though. Good call chief.
Add my name to the list of those who are adamantly in favor of retreat/withdrawl options and against the "winner take all" approach. I hate -- with the fire of a thousand suns -- combat systems where neither side is allowed to break off and run. Yes, there should absolutely be penalties and/or serious risks for retreating, but I absolutely feel that the option(s) should be there. To not allow withdrawls really hurts both immersion and severely limits the players' tactical -- and even strategic (depending on the circumstance) -- choices.
Well for singleplayer games, you could simply add in a counter where all you would have to do is arrow up/down until you reach the desired number of turns you want battles last (or enter the number manually). You could do this for MP games as well, with the hosting player determining how combat lasts (although hopefully s/he does with input from the other players).
Well if we're to truly have "hundreds" of pre-made battle maps, then I'd probably go for the "Richness" option. If you're only going to have a few dozen pre-made maps, however, then I would definitely prefer Randomization.
11 pages is more than i can read in the few spare time i have, so sorry if i repeat other people's posts. I wanted to give my point of view on the "Winners take all" issue.
I don't like it. I think it should always be possible, not easy but possible, to flee if you discover you're in a loosing position. Also, you can't use any hit and run with fast units without a way to flee a battle. Think of Faramir's rangers in Lord of the Rings, they were patrolling the borderland between Gondor and Mordor, launching fast attacks on Sauron's troops and disapearing quickly. You can't possibly do this with a "Winners take all" approach, especially if the attacker only has N turns to wipe out the defender. That's also anoth issue with this approach. If the attacker has a bonus (being morale, position or anything) and the attacker can't flee, players will be reluctant to attack each other. I can see it in my mind. Two players with roughly as powerfull armies watching each other, but none of them being able to decide an attack, because they know the other player will have an advantage if they attack and they will loose their whole army if they fail in their attack.
On the other hand, fleeing should'nt be as easy as pressing a button. In order to flee one should have to move his troops to the border of the tactical map. Maybe there could be an area on the borders of the map where, if a unit enter, it's removed from the tactical map. Units fleeing from the west would end up west of the battle's square on the world map, and so on, so a fleeing army could end up split-up and disorganized. The winning player might also be able to try and catch the fleeing soldiers but obviously a footman shoudl'nt be able to catch a horsmen or a lightly armored ranger.
Also, wounded soliders could move slower, thus making them easier to catch up while fleeing. This was done in Spellforce (the first one), and even if this was real time, i guess it could be possible in turn based.
As for the how many N turns . Something intersting might be for the attacker to have a choice of attack type, and this would impact N. A small army should be able to attack a larger army's flanks, thus fighting only a portion of the larger army, but with only very few turns before they start hearing the horns of the larger army and they loose morale (and possibly start fleeing uncontrollably). On the other hand, a full fledged battle with two large forces should be longer. Will a besieged army try to break the siege with every men, or only send a small force of cavalry to destroy those catapults and come back? Or maybe a small commando of specialized units on an assassination mission. Special missions against larger forces might be interesting, but would require the ability to flee. Obviously, there shouldn't be too much special missions either.
And what about a system lik ein king's arthur ? You have Victory locations on the battlefield. If you control more Victory locations you start leeching morale from your enemy.
i like bob's ideas on retreating. as i often plan on retreating after meeting an objective, i dont think the morale penalty for retreat should be too steep. i would much prefer to have to move my armys to the edge of the map or rally around the sov/champion or commander. before retreat is possible. i hate it when its just click the retreat button and see who didnt make it out. this way you could make tough decisions about which units cover your retreat and or possibly get left behind.(this should be brutal on your moral)
also am interested in vieuxchats victory tile suggestion. never played king arthur so i dont know specifics. but if these tiles made some sense. for example my enemies archers find a sweet spot up high over the battle field this should affect my morale. these tiles should be sorta rare though with only one or a few on each maps and some with none. or in my mind i can see it becoming fairly formulaic. simply find the victory tile then deffend till the enemy retreats due to low morale. i do like the idea though.
i really dont like winner takes all at all. clearly i want the option to retreat... i suppose i could live with the turn limit, that suspends the battle till the next turn. could be very cool if it allowed for reinforcements. but i wonder how that would really work with the flow of the game, if one turn in game equals approx. 4 months.. or what ever. then how long is each tactical turn? and could a battle conceivably last 8 to 12 months? but id much prefer this to winner takes all.
i realize that nothing ive said does anything to address concerns about never ending battles. i guess i like long and hard fought battles.
As a suggestion, withdrawing from combat could cause you to lose prestige for your nearest cities, as a disincentive to do so. If you think about it, the flow of a game is such that if you get into a bad combat that you withdraw from, you'll be rebuilding an army for the next few turns. One way to exact a penalty on that process is to make it (slightly) harder to do so if you withdraw.
I don't think winner take all is a good idea; but I think that if you choose to withdraw, your army should be routed, and you effectively cede control of the section of the map where your army was (because you can't project power there anymore). That means practically that your army is reduced in size, you lose control of it while the survivors run for the nearest friendly city, and the remaining forces that do make it back bump up the citizenry, rather than rejoining the army. You can make units from that citizenry again, and perhaps you don't have to pay the training time again for those citizens, but you have to re-equip them.
Sweet! WEGO rocks. If done well, as I am sure Stardock will, it brings an almost human element to the troops. You cannot expect green undisciplined troops to hold up and charge stronger units while taking fire. The units choose targets on their own, turn and fire unless directed otherwise. You cannot move a cavalry unit 5 or 6 hexes to a line of troops and no one shoots at them. However, you also get a predetermined chance (and only that chance) to change orders. To me that is realistic because there is no way a general could give explicit orders to everyone ever second of a battle.
To me, it is the best of both worlds of TBS and RTS, especially in multiplayer.
Winner. Takes. All.
This just hit me earlier today. Why not have a system that accounts for the amount of players in the game and lowers the total turns or even takes tactical out of the picture altogether. The more players, the less tactical the battles become. With 32 players, the battles would auto-resolve, with 2 players the battles can be very tactical to the Nth turn. N being a game option.
It's very concerning the loudest voices seem to be thinking 1x1 or solo style play with very large time sinks per battle. This game has a great chance to break the mold for strategy/tbs in a multiplayer venue, assuming you can actually play and finish a multiplayer game within a reasonable time.
-AceQ-
These ideas are both pretty solid. Withdraw as an option would have grave consequences and in many cases, it may be better to just concede the battle and lose the army rather than deal with the consequences of running.
Here’s my opinion on several key issues:
Randomization vs. Richness
Both. For battles in the general open world randomization should be used with the caveat that once a battle occurs on a tile or area that map is permanently assigned to the area for the remainder of the game.
Assuming there are unique landmarks or regions in the game, ala Mirkwood, Lonely Mountain, Mount Doom, (and if there aren’t, there should be!) hand designed maps should be used for these unique areas. Additionally, hand designed maps could be used for user-built fortresses, towers, etc. They could be drawn from a greater pool of landmarks during initial map creation, sometimes you get “Agbad’s Forest of Doom” and sometimes you don’t.
Additionally, player built structures, such as a fortress, could have unique hand designed battle maps. The player could choose from several types of fortresses when they build in a location, each differentiated by its battle map. It could be another research or tech option.
Length of Battles
I’m leery of arbitrary time limits, too much opportunity for cheesy exploits of the battle system and it ruins the immersion. Without actually playing with the combat system it’s hard to offer specific ideas. One possible change of direction is to go for a completely abstracted battle system like the one used in Disciples 1 & 2, which had more of a board game feel.
The length of tactical battles in Master of Magic and Master of Orion (1 & 2) seemed about right (though I haven’t played any of them in 15 years so my memory could be flawed), the length of battles in Age of Wonders was far, far too long. I never actually completed any game of Age of Wonders--when one relatively small siege (20 units or so) lasted more than a hour I put the game back on the shelf never to be played again.
Length of battles really depends on if Elemental is a strategy game wrapped around a tactical game core, or a tactical game wrapped around a strategy game core. Everything I have seen so far says the latter. If so, tactical battles should be kept short.
I really, really like the idea of battles that last from turn to turn. That’s absolutely the most original idea I have read on this thread. My mind races with all of the juicy implications on game play. It's a great compromise between time and richness.
WINNER. TAKE. ALL.
Only if there is a good game play / fiction explanation. It ruins the immersion and opens up the game for cheesy exploits if units cannot retreat because "the game doesn't work that way". Why should my flying units be forced into mortal combat with a group of infantry that has neither missiles or spells? Sorry, the game doesn't work that way. Generally speaking, retreats should be allowed.
The game is subtitled “War of Magic” why not make a spell that locks armies into deadly combat? It could be a mid to late game spell used to force decisive outcomes as the game winds down. There could also be a counter-spell.
WEGO and multiplayer are natural fits. It naturally increases turn speed since everyone plots their turns at one time. A turn timer/ chess clock should be implemented regardless of tactical combat approach to give players the option to keep things moving. I'm also a big fan of PBEM, so a pure tactical PBEM option would be fun.
I think winner takes all encourages the creation of killer stacks. My belief is that the game should encourage smaller stacks by having lots of strategic points to protect on the map. However, if weaker armies are always destroyed, it seems like the only real strategy would be to create the biggest and baddest army and roll over opponents. Obviously, it would need to be tested, but I think my instincts are right.
I think extra losses and morale losses are good penalties for retreating.
I also am against battles having a fixed duration. Fixed duration seems so contrived, gamey and non-immersive that I think it would detract from the game.
I would be for a quick battle option that lets me setup parameters like...
This would give players more control than most games allow in quick combat which might make it more palatable. It should also make troop composition more important since an army without cavalry shouldn't be very good at flanking for example.
One last thought... I'm a huge fan of having tactical objectives on the map. Not only as spots that add "bonuses", but as a means to victory. I saw someone else mention king Arthur and I would prefer an approach similar to that over only being able to win by making the opponents army break.
what is worng with the game draging on personaly i want my game to last for weeks or months not a day.
qoute "should we allow retreating? Should we allow draws?" how about making them optional so people who want them can have them and people who do not want dont half to have them and as for x number turns that should be option also so that people who want 5 turns gets five turns people who want 15 turns gets 15 turns or people who get 25 turns gets 25 turns or people who want unlimited turns gets it.
that way people get what they want out of the game people who want combat and the game to last long get that abilty people who do not get that every one is happy.
if you put a cap on number of turns with no option then you really take out the x-com feature of the game x-com had no limit it was unlimited to the number of turns you get during combat and you could widthdraw from combat anytime you wanted by getting back to your transport ship.
I really do not see why that idea should be limitenated form the game and be honest if it was I would be really disappointed becuase I think the combat is where game might shine the brightest.
anthere thing about games that have time limits they always get exploited for exmaple I have horse guys the computer is attacking me with infacntyr my horse guys move 6 for exmaple his infantry spear men that would kill my horses they move 3 if turn limit is yets say 10 i could just run my horses guys around the map till time limit is up and then with winner takes all i would win period he would be wipped out.
most games have quick combat this is what happens.
Thank you! the +1 karma worked on Frogboy too!
I've no idea what I've posted at page 9 is called WE-GO; I did played MOO2 ( what a shame, lol). Is there a chance that a heavily turn-based-ish WEGO system be implemented in EWOM? So we will have the best of both worlds? I have just proposed such a version of WE-GO here.
Pls comment!
Nice to see some love for WEGO.
We need to boil all this down so someone coming in doesn't get overwhelmed and repeats what we have all been saying.
What we mostly agree on
It appears we almost unanimously dislike winner-take-all
Most want maps that reflect the stategic map. Some version of premap maps at strategic locations would be good (perhaps cities?) we would prefer not to see the same map more than once a blue moon and certainly not in the same game in a different location. Having the same tactical map on the same location of the stategic map would be fine as it makes sense.
Morale - we seem to agree it should be a factor, but not a lot of agreement on mechanics
Terrain - obviously terrain should be a major factor
My observations and thoughts on other matters
As to length of battles, not many appear in favor of it. However this could affect multiplayer if it is unlimited.
Separate movement and combat attacks. They have nothing in common. Perhaps action points and different costs for each unit to move, turn, shoot, melee, cast might work.
paper-rock-scissors has some appeal. Personally I am not married to it, but it helps prevent everyone rushing for the uber unit, so that is a major plus.
Thresholds - while it could have been explained better, I feel this only applies to multiplayer. It drives me bananas when someone has to play out a 8 - 1 ratio battle holding up multiplayer games to try to do the most damage possible, then retreat. Then it happens again, and again, and again. So as an option in multiplayer, certainly, singleplayer, no.
Conversely, I do think there should be a break point for battles. Not a hard breakpoint, like 50%, more like you are down more than 50% of your starting force and behind another 50% in strength compared to your opponent. Otherwise it comes to who can hit the other persons magic rout number first, even though it is really a draw at that point.
As usual, feel free to agree/disagree on anything. I am not the fountain of wisdom, although sometimes I can pontificate with the best. I am just saying we need to narrow the focus of the discussion. Perhaps a poll and thread on each item discussed would greatly simplify matters.
In king's arthur, the Victory locations give some bonuses (in battle or after battle : a cathedral is a victory location an dgives a spell to use in its vicinity, stones lik ein sotnehenge nullifies all magic in its vicinity, a high spot gives the ability to cast rain of arrows on archers, etc... so those victory locations aren't only for draining the morale, they also give some bonuses in battle)
I'm a strong fan of the WeGo system from combat mission, and I'd love to see it implemented well in elemental .. because it's really harder to implement that well.
i believe a compromise is possible, but would require more work then just picking one way....
do both!
Create an array of high quality maps, that would be used in some spesial cases - important battles (and you would have to determine which battle is important and could use a HQ map)
for the rest of the battles, use random maps.
This way, players will stumble upon your HQ maps while avoiding repetitions.....
I'll repeat things many people already said:
I'm all for WEGO.
Combat Speed. Minor detail imo.
Morale. Bonuses and penalties are fine, but I'd like to see berserk units too that you don't control either. Too much morale (berserk) = auto-charge, don't control. Too little (terror) = flee/surrender, don't control.
Terrain.Nice if it has some influence.
WINNER. TAKE. ALL. Against it. I want to be able to send 4 or 5 horse archers attack an army of 100 legionaries, run around them and shoot arrows at them, retreat at the end of battle and repeat this until the infantry dies. Unless legionaires managed to get some reinforcement. Like some posters said (arstal, yaromir, sweatyboatman, climber, maybe others too), I'd like battles that drag too long to stop and be continued on next turn after players had opportunity to bring in some reinforcement on the strategic map.
I'd also like retreat to be possible but hard. Start units in the middle of the battlefield with lots of ground to cover in order to retreat. However, make retreat option not possible if there's no free tile on the strategic map.
Combined Arms.Nice.
Thresholds. Being able to auto resolve at any point is great.
Controlling the length of a tactical battle: Make it so players can set how many "moves" they want to have. If their army is 1000 men large and they chose 10 moves, then group units in units of 100 with most similar abilities (heroes probably stand alone all the time). If 10 moves are chosen and the army is 100 men large, then 1 unit is 10 men large. This is a simple setting, easy to understand, particularly if you present how your armies would be divided/grouped into units you can maneuver/give orders to when choosing the number of "moves".
Randomization vs. Richness. Really depends on the size of the maps.
WEGO sounds a lot like Ogre Battle to me.
That means I am behind it 100% all the super fun happy time. I'm sure it will result in endless instances of me shouting Zap Brannigan quotes at my poor army as they try to carry out my impossible orders ("INFANTRY, ATTACK FROM THE SKY"), but hot damn would it be worth it.
What about pre-release? Now that continuous turns are scrapped (to my great sadness, but apparently to a majority of the forum goers' happiness), a turn-based WEGO system seems like by far the best kind of combat, with lots of support from the posters in this thread.
So does this mean that kind of combat is out for sure?
That said, it'd be awesome if you guys do put in other combat modes besides the one you ultimately settle on post-release, even if they aren't 100% complete. Not only would it be fun, but it'd give modders are really good starting point to work from.
Yeah...King Arthur's "victory locations system" is really awesome.
Random vs Richness
I'd prefer to see maps the accurately reflect the terrain of the current tile. That way if the tile you're occupying is on top of a hill, when the tactical battle starts, your army is at the top of the hill and the enemy is at the bottom.
And obviously it is possible to have tactically interesting maps that are randomly generated. To have your cake and eat it too, so to speak. But I respect that it requires more development time, effort, (and money) for that one feature.
To that end, my proposed solution is customizable map scripts! Do your best for retail then let the community spend as much time as they like working on something better. We've seen a lot of that in the Civ IV community, for instance, and a lot of those scripts were picked up by Firaxis for expansion packs.
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