Sauron is a bad ass, but I think that it would be more something like a area attack hitting several ajacent tiles in gameplay terms. (not unlike a dragon breath)

If you only have a global combat speed like you describe, you will have the following problems:

- a unit that have a high combat speed will be able to move very fast while it might not be appropriate
- having the combat speed used for both movement and attacks will make combat more static, as moving will means less attacks
- If you want a big unit to be able to be very effective when fighting hordes of units and give him a high combat speed, it makes this unit able to be very effective against another big unit by focusing all its attacks on it.

For instance, if Sauron has 15 "action points" allowing him to do 15 attacks for 10 damage each, he could also do the same 15 attacks on the same target for 150 damages (ignoring potentiel damage reduction from armor). If instead he could attack an area for 30 damage in each square (or to each individual figure in the area if squads are managed as unique units in the same square during battle), he would still be very powerful against hordes of mooks, but against a dragon he would only do one 30 damage attack. Still good, but probably not overpowered.



So both players give their orders, and both are resolved at the same time ?
I suppose that units will be able to change orders if the situation change during their action ?
If you move a cavalry unit and during the move another ennemy come between the cavalry and its original target, will the cavalry unit attack this other unit, or will it ignore it and try to continue charging the original target ?



Preventing retreats would also means that each battle must be fought until the death of the very last unit, wich could also drag on.

But if you allow retreats, and have the retreat be simulated in the battlefield (with needing to move the fleeing units to your border of the battle map in order to escape) this too would drag the battle.

I think that MoM did it good : you have a "flee" button, and have a chance to loose some (or all) of your units (and some fame too sometimes).

You could have the movement speed of the fleeing units compared to the fastest ennemies to give modifiers to each unit survival chances (fast cavalry and flying units should escape easier unless ther are other fast or flying units in pursuit), and it could sometimes be frustrating to lose a unit that should have been able to flee because it was at the rear of your forces, but at least it would be immediatly resolved.

You could also have modifier to the chance of escape depending of if you fight in your territory, neutral land, or in the ennemy kingdom. (a unit lost during escape might not be dead but just a deserter. If the war go on near its home, it might be more tempted to join the army again after the defeat that if it was a war of conquest far from his family)

And if a fight last for more that N turns, you could have a auto-retreat from the attacker (maybe with 100% escape chance, the defenders too might be too tired too)

Warning: sometimes there is no solution that can be satisfying for all situations. If you try too hard to do one, it could make both of them bland and less fun.

Better to focus to one system and optimise it. If the battle take some time but are fun, the players won't mind. Of course, you can still have auto-resolve and the like for extreme situations.




Predefined map elements + random map generation using those elements should be the best of both worlds.

Oh, and add something like sweep if you want someone to hit multiple opponents: having multiple attacks means I'd just hit the same target over and over personally, to focus fire.

I do not like winner take all with no retreat option, I suggest making it so that if you are the attacker at the start of the tactical combat there are all the options mentioned that can be turned on or off before the battle starts (after all you are attacking you should be able to decide in which way and what rules etc.) however if you are being attacked you have no choices(or limited at best) no retreat for sure unless the attacker wishes to engage in diplomacy or you can surrender. I personally love to spend long tactical battles if I am wining or there is a challenge but rather just surrender and move on if I know I can't win and it is no fun just going through the motions any more.

I also think that in the interest of keeping battles relatively manageable instead of having 200 archers take a turn one at a time I think that all like units should attack simultaneously  this way the battles can progress fast enough to keep it fun.

 

I am really happy to hear about the terrain being a factor big yes, but I do not want the random tactical areas to be "dumb" If I am in the desert I hate to get a snow area as a random tactical area with no challenge to the terrain.

 

I also love the idea of having lots of control in the tactical battles how it is implemented continues or just turn base is fine as long as it is fun and I as the player am in control to do as I wish as fast or as slow as I wish to.(single player) for multiplayer I think the rules should be set and agreed upon at the start of game.

I don't really like the Winner takes all approach either, as it would inevitably lead to a lot of posturing and very little actual fighting.

With regards to the Randomization vs Richness debate i agree it would be most fun to have some landmarks that have premade maps, as well as cities having at least the same random map for them, this would be kind of what they did in the Total War series. It would feel slightly strange to fight over the same castle several times with a different look to it everytime. This would allow for stunning set pieces, because I do want to see them, fighting over Minas Tirith is something else than fighting over generic city nr.23.

My most important issue with regards to the tactical combat system is that the AI can actually play it as well. The total war series was never the same after I figured out how I could beat the AI easily every time, even with much fewer troops. So please keep the combat system simple enough so that the AI can effectively play it. Oh and I love the moral thing, really adds another dimension to the game, and this could create the opportunity for morale reducing/boosting abilities to be given to troops.

I'd rather have troops able to run away : in medieval battles there were more disbanded and retreating armies than exterminated ones. Those who ran could wander in the land with a very low morale for some time before they get back to their leader's control, a disbanded army can make plenty of bandits (deserters) and trouble, but rather easy to exterminate because they are scattered and not organised. A champion with morale bonus could for instance be able to rally them and make the army a whole again by just going to each unit (even though he'd still need to heal them ). 

I'm a great fan of tactical battles. Yet in multiplayer games (which I play a lot more than single ) with more than 2 players, when a tactical battle is undergoing it's boring for those who arn't involved (above all when the battle lasts ages) BUT disabeling them means losing a huge strategic aspect of the game. In my view, most games failed at managing that. How are you planning to do it?

Even though it lets them know your troops and strategies, the least you can do is have others watch the battle, or why not keep managing/deisnging their own empire during the battle (instead of having a green screen like there was in age of wonders ) => the most you could do would be to have them participate in some way (HOM&M5 had something like that for long turns I think, if turns came to last too long, others could come as ghosts and do bad things to you ><). Why not, for instance, have other players influence in some way that moral tide in the battle that determines when the defender overcomes the attacker? they could have some "bored" button which could mean the battle has already been too long and hence reflect what soldiers in the battlefield feel about it too (and influence morale). Yet this button should appear only after a few turns in order to give the attacker a chance. 

Well, I don't really care how but you need to keep battles entertaining even for those that are not involved ><

we decided to implement turn based (simultaneous turns based on combat speed) with tiles.

How does this work with regard to the unit sizes? Say, I have 1 Soldier, the enemy has an Army of 1000 Soldiers, and there is a dragon running around. Would all of those occupy one tile? If yes, will we be able to split/combine units during the battles?

 

WINNER. TAKE. ALL.

I'd say, just have the battles end after N turns, remember the positions of the units in the battle and have reinforcements arrive at the borders of the battlefield, depending on where are on the strategic map.

Withdrawing would then require moving to the border.

 

 

Combined Arms. Archers have range. Mounted Warriors have great combat speed. Foot soldiers tend to have better weapons and defenses.

Units should be however you design them, not forced into specific archetypes. If I want heavily armored Archers, I should be able to create them.

 

 

Thresholds. Players can set the tactical battle threshold in the menu. That is, they can say it requires 10 units on each side before it’ll actually go into tactical battle.

 

Sword of the Stars had the following options: Auto Resolve, Auto Resolve unless opponent is fighting manually, fight manually and auto resolve peacefully (If both players select this, no fight happens, else it auto resolves)

 

Randomization vs. Richness.

Premade special locations plus automatically generated terrain for the rest of the world would probably be the best option. But no matter which of the two options you choose, generating/selecting the battlefields should happen during the creation of the world. If I fight multiple battles on the same tile, I expect the battleground to be the same (unless some Sovereign created a mountain there or something). With premade maps this should be no problem, with "random" maps you could just remember the seed necessary to create each battlefield, if saving all of the battlefields would take to much memory.

 

 

edit: The quotes were messed up somehow

 

WINNER.TAKE.ALL.

If you want to implement it, N could be:

N = MAX(CHA Sovereign;CHA Heroes in battle) + Training* + Special Boni (like Warlordtrait or such)

*Training: Green 1; Veteran 2; Elite 4 a.s.o.

Randomness vs. Richness

I like irongamers idea.

Or amke a set of special maps and include them into the random generator, so that there is maybe a 10% chance to play on a special map.

 

I have been following the journals and awaiting my chance to join the beta. It would be awesome if it started before the three day weekend, but if it doesn't, I will live. Sorry for the length, I promise to post shorter in the future.

My thoughts are winner take all

Only when the defender is besieged or pinned somehow. Tactical retreats are a major part of warfare. As an attacker, let us say my army has the advantage and I attack. The map comes up and it turns out there are major terrain advantages that favor the defender and from the placement of those units, I realize I have little chance to win. An example would be the battle is close to a mountain and it turns out the deployment for the defenders is in the hills and mountains and there are a lot of trees. I have mostly cavalry, which would be useless attacking that terrain and the defender has light troops and foot troops that have advantages in that terrain. After fighting for a time, but it becomes clear this will cause me to lose many troops and isn't worth it. Why would I as the attacker run a suicide charge?

Also units should "break" if their morale is too low, those units are the ones that suffer loses on retreats, not ones retreated in good order.

Also agree the defender has the chance to retreat from the first contact, but pinned if it happens again.

Retreats/withdrawls

Perhaps the retreating/withdrawing army has the opportunity to leave a rear guard. If they can hold out for "X" turns, the other units leaving escape. For simplicity, let's say the rear guard has to hold out 10 turns. For every turn they hold out, 10% of the retreating units escape based on the movement speed. So heroes and cavalry would be the first to escape. Slow moving heavily armored units would be the last.

Battle Length and Draws

If there is a draw, then that gives both sides a chance to pull in more units the next turn as reinforcements. Alternatively, after "X" turns any units in a radius of the battle can join it. After 20 turns, units within X can join, 40 turns and it is 2X distance. edpfister brings up an interesting point. If there is a "day" and it lasts "X" turns, that is the point where you have "interesting options"

      1) Each player can decide to retreat or not. If they do, then they get away

      2) Chose to stay, perhaps even redeploy in areas they control and hope reinforcements show up

      3) Night attack. Try to force the issue, but attacking is at a big disadvantage. When morning comes, reinforcements show up at the edge and are fresh while units that were battling are very tired.

      4) Units that are surrounded cannot retreat/redeploy

Also the battle length determines how many movement points the attacker loses. Let's say I am attacking a faction and I am moving a massive army through a pass in the mountains. It drives me nuts that a defender could put one useless unit there and if I attack, then all my movement is used up. I should only lose the movement for the time it takes to remove the defender.

Combat Speed - I agree that movement and attacks per turn should not be tied together.

lwarmonger idea of scalability of the battles sounds like a great idea. Use a few large units or break them out into smaller sub units means quick battles or slower ones based on scale. The map expands based on the scale, but the unit movement doesn't.

Breniir - totally agree, fatigue should be a factor. This would make reserves important as well. Better trained units fatique slower.

Maps should reflect the terrain. Perhaps a random map for a tile or group of tiles where combat occurs based on the terrain. Then that map is saved for future battle purposes. If a battle is fought at that site again, the same map is used again. If you could keep any damage and relics from the past battle on the map, that would be even more atmospheric. An example would be a fort that was damaged would still be damaged, craters would still be there, not the bodies of the dead 10 turns ago. You could even create handmade maps and organize them by terrain type so they are randomly selected based on terrain. Once that map is used, it is locked to that part of the map so it wouldn't appear elsewhere. Having a map with mountains in plains or river valleys in a desert would be jarring and shouldn't be allowed.

Morale - bonuses from leaders and advantages in numbers, quality and terrain.

Wow, lots of good posts here. Brad, are you actually going to read all of this?!? I'll try to keep it short

My 2 Eurocents:

AoE vs. Combat Speed: Disagree with Brad, agree with most others: Sauron should have had an AoE and low combat speed.

10 COMBAT PHASES, COMBINED ARMS, and COMBAT SPEED: I could imagine a way of combining these aspects, much like Star Chamber did. This would allow for excellent, fun, but simple differences between arms types and demonstrate something of weapon speed. Star Chamber gives an *EXCELLENT* method of implementing combined arms, speed, and combat phases in a combat turn: 10 turns, and each WEAPON TYPE activates once in discrete combat phases: Phase 1: Torpedo, Phase 2: Torpedo, Phase 3: Beam, Phase 4: Missile, Phase 5: Beam, Phase 6: Missile, Phase 7: Cannon, Phase 8: Cannon, Phase 9: Cannon, Phase 10: Special. So if your unit had a Beam weapon with 6 damage, it would do a total of 12 damage, 6 in phase 3 and 6 in phase 5. Thus, units with beam weapons get to shoot first, before big cannons can; yet cannons get to fire three times, but units with cannon damage need to survive until the end of the combat turn in order to do so. A unit with beam and cannon weapons (rare in that game) had the advantage of both. Hence there is an element of strategic planning in mixing your armies: you want units that fire hard, but last, to be sturdy, while units that fire first might want to escape before the end of the battle (e.g. plan for units with only Torpedos to exit battle after Phase 2 would be optimal, with Torpedo and Cannon would be a tradeoff between optimal damage output and survivability). Hence my suggestion:

10 Combat Phases: Whereby units may MOVE X tiles according to their movement speed instead of attacking in any phase they choose, whereby there might be special movement rules for mounted units

- units wielding small weapons such as daggers may activate an attack maneuver (I still envision multiple attack possibilities based on techs learned, e.g. "stab", "jab", "hook", "riposte", "slice", "parry", etc., which I call learnable maneuvers) in phase 1 OR phase 1 and 4 (if higher "combat speed") OR phase 1 and 4 and 7 (if yet higher) OR 1 and 4 and 7 and 10 if highest

- units wielding medium weapons such as swords or maces may attack in phase 2 OR 2 and 5 OR 2 and 5 and 8 OR 2 and 5 and 8 and 10

- units wielding large weapons such as poleaxes may attack in phase 3 OR 3 and 6 OR 3 and 6 and 9 (large weapons should tend to do much more damage, since they may only attack 3 times maximum?)

- units firing ranged weapons such as bows or crossbows (which should have low attack speed) may attack in turns 4 OR 4 and 8 OR 4 and 8 and 10

- units casting spells: phase 10 (only 1 spell per turn)

- siege units or large machined units: phase 9 OR 9 and 10

- units with special attacks (dragon breath, spider web) need to be categorized as one of the above

Another possibility would be to make for more than 10 combat phases in one turn and to make for additional breakdowns, e.g. 20 or 30 Combat Phases, so that 1 "turn" might be substantially "longer" if there are units in play with significantly high attack speeds.

This system would allow for units with high attack speeds to still be differentiated from units with different exemplifications of the types of combined arms there are. It would require only that each unit in the game have at least one "type" flag (small, medium, large, siege, ranged, mounted, special).

 

WINNER NEED NOT TAKE ALL and LENGTH OF BATTLE: Winner need not take all -- in fact (please hear me out!) there need not even be a clearly decisive winner!

- Dominions3 demonstrates that uncontrolled retreat (rout) can be implemented without great difficulty and interesting effects, plus useful to help demonstrate some effects of fear; I would like to be able to see controlled retreat be possible with a substantial pentalty to defense while retreating. Thus, the "winner" might even be he who runs away and lives to fight another day. Dominions3 battles lasted N=50 turns, after which auto-rout is induced. Uncontrolled retreat: You cannot control into which neighboring tile your troops flee.

- Undecisive Battles are fun: Star Chamber's battles were EXCITING -- and only lasted 1 turn! That is to say: Opposing players could occupy the SAME TILE for more than one turn: enemy troops in the same tile were not disjunctive! That is to say: LONG battles MAY take up LONG game time. In other words: Two armies meet: they fight for N turns (anywhere from 1 to 50 seems ok to me); after which, the tactical battlescreen darkens and the curtain drops, a day has gone to end, and the battle will be continued NEXT game turn -- or not, depending on whether the player moves what members of his armies he still can move (perhaps some become immobilized, unconscious, crippled, or charmed) away or not. The strategic map screen shows that at least two players are contending for one strategic space and have not had a decisive victory. This would not even be terribly complicated, just somewhat new.

- Auto-Resolve: You hinted elsewhere that there might be a button for auto-resolution of tactical battles. For people worried about battles being too long (anything more than 30 turns is REALLY LONG) -- would it be possible to click the auto-resolve button to end it sooner and let the computer AI figure it out? I think that tactical battles with thousands of troops will probably take hours, no matter what restrictions you put in. That's the tradeoff. Perhaps the thresholds can work the other way then, too: If battle has >100 troops, then timer?

- In any case, it would seem like there are no severe disadvantages to allowing for battles to be restricted in length (N < 50) and for there to be survivors, be these those who somehow flee or those who remain in the same tile to fight later.

RANDOM vs RICH MAPS: Like most others, I agree that representation of the strategic map's terrain in the tactical battlefield's map itself should be important; if that means randomness, then I would prefer randomness, though I am not sure I understand why that need be so.

SPECIAL MOVES, RADIAL ICONS, LEARNED MANEUVERS, and EXPERIENCE:  I'd like to see the tactical battlefield be the place where a player may select a squad of troops (squad = troops of same skillsets, but perhaps different individual stats), whereas skillset = which abilities those troops are able to activate. I could imagine that when a squad is highlighted, there could be a radial menu much like NWN had, or the bottom menu opens up into a little "toolbar" showing icons (much like Dragon Age has for each selected character), one icon for each action that troop may perform, e.g.

- move to

- default attack

Each squad should at least always be able to perform these two basic actions (unless hindered, e.g. by being immobilized, charmed, incapacitated, made insane, morale = 0, etc.) BUT units or squads may open up additional icons if those units have "earned" them, either by gaining experience or by having researched the appropriate tech or both. Some of these special moves should have a "cooldown" time (also much like Dragon Age), e.g. perhaps only usable once per turn:

- defensive stance (units gain a substantial bonus to defense, but may only auto-parry incoming melee attacks, and this at a substantial penalty) -- a maneuver / icon such as this should be easy to unlock, perhaps after learning any tier 2 Warfare tech whatsoever, with no experience required

- special defensive maneuver 1 (which requires special equipment, e.g. a shield), e.g. "shield wall" or "high guard"

- special offensive maneuvers: e.g. "bash" (requires medium weapon, does substantial additional damage at a small defensive penalty), "called shot" (requires ranged weapon, greatly increases chance of critical hit and adds small armor piercing ability at the cost of defense and weapon speed) or "feint" (requires any melee weapon, greatly increases defense but lowers damage and slight penalty to attack), etc. etc.

Dragon's breath, special magical attacks, etc. should all belong to categories such as these.

This - I want my encounter to appear to be in the local terrain and I want the tactical combat to be interesting, but even more than that, if the battle maps are only pre-made, then you will be fighting hundreds or thousands of battles in the same map (over time).

I really don't want a battle to open up and I go "Oh yeah, here's map 2A again." That would get boring pretty much immediately.

And no, user created content won't magically make that go away, either. It might add some surprises, but you'll still be popping up combat maps that you've already figured out.

Randomization vs. Richness

Here is a somewhat unique idea.

In most army combat situations, being able to scout your 'battlefield' before your army takes the field is extremely important. What I propose is this (and this is for open battlefield combat not seiges):

Ambush or Defending armies that fortify their positions get to 'pick' from 3-5 randomly generated maps - perhaps allowing them to select defensive features that will play to their armies strength. The defender can then 'pre-position' their forces, then the attacker can position their units from 'entry' points. The attacker can either enter from 1 point or from multiple points by dividing their forces. Perhaps the defender might have an additional ability to lay spell traps in certain parts of the battlefield prior to combat and entry by the attacker.

For Armies that come across each other in the open, both the attacking armies get 3-5 map options to choose from, if both pick the same battleground then the combat starts otherwise the one with the better scout units (or some other skill/feature/spell) gets to pick the battlefield. Both enter from 'entry' points, neither is considered the defender.

The map options can include some pre-map combat maps as well as some random maps. This allows the game to have something that no other game has, yet allows players to have some decision over the battlefield map.

Just my thought and basically takes the best of both options and offers them to the player.

 

 

 

Randomization vs. Richness

No amount of premade maps is big enough not to become repetitious. So I would rather have simpler tactical maps than more complicated ones that appear again and again.

However, it made me think about the repetition and it makes sense sometimes - such as if you fight on the same map tile. If you use randomly generated map and store the seed  you get the same battlefield.

Link: https://forums.elementalgame.com/382964

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Rich premade maps would be a great addition to some datadisk. For example prepared battlefield for specific artifact or something like that would be nice. But it should be optional.

The "Winner Take All" and win in N moves is not an idea I like. If you're going to implement something like that, I'd much rather have a objective-based tactical battle where you want hold certain victory areas to win. I'm a big fan of victory areas in general, they really cut down on abusive tactics and force players to use more balanced and interesting strategies. It also allows for Pyrrhic victories and so that victors aren't purely the ones who take the fewest casualties.

I also find it hard to justify no retreat. Sure, it does cut down on ping-ponging but in this case the cure really is worse than the disease. Maybe give penalties to disengagement? I personally find the Dominions 3 implementation the best, where the survivors wander in all directions and don't provide much of a challenge until the player takes the time to organize them again.

In terms of randomized vs. richness, I'd say go for random, as long as it actually reflects the world map.  I think if it's well implemented you can better convey the idea of a battle occurring inside the world rather than on a separate artificial map.