I’m not a fan of the TB tactical combat that is going to be in elemental but I'd still like to make the best of it. I think this idea will make tactical combat feel more visceral and fluid. The idea I’m proposing is rather simple and has been suggested at the strategic level already. Basically you would have two options for attack during a battle.
Option A: This option is already in the game and everyone here knows it well I’m sure.
The Player moves a unit to a tile adjacent his enemy and clicks attack.
This is repeated for other units until the enemy unit is surrounded, destroyed, or moves away.
Option B: This option is what I’m hoping will get included in the TB tactical combat.
The Player moves a unit to a tile adjacent his enemy and clicks the coordinate attack option.
The player moves all units he wishes to participate in the combined assault to the maximum of 4 (Surrounding the enemy with a square grid) into position with the last unit having the combined assault option available.
Then all units involved attack the enemy together.
Defensive counter: defensive version of Option B.
The player moves a unit to a desired location and clicks coordinate defense.
The player moves all units he wishes to participate in the coordinated defense adjacent to one another to a maximum of 4.
When the last unit is in position the combined garrison option becomes available. When an enemy unit(s) attacks any part of the garrison they engage all units within the garrison.
I’m not sure how the tactical battles are going to look but I’m hoping when an attack is initiated the tactical map zooms into an action map where the attacker and defender fight in a cinematic fashion of some sort. Then after the action is complete the camera zooms out and the next move on the tactical map is made. If this is how tactical battles work allowing multiple units to engage in defense and attack would be sweet.
There would be a tremendous variety of bonuses you could put in place such as certain formations having bonuses against a single unit or some formations working better depending on unit placement. You could even have some formations work better on different terrains.
Questions? Comments? Concerns?
I like it. Makes sense too. Not to mention the much more "Epic" feel some battles would have. That all depends on "Why" their "Unit Caps" are in place though. If it's a hardware/software issue then that might be too many units for the engine to handle at once without slowing down visually.
Even to mod this in we'd have to know if unit limitations were hard coded or if they are going to be left open like everything else has. If I had to guess I'd say this is something they will leave open for us to be able to mod in the script. I'd definitely like to see an idea like this be incorporated from the start though.
From what I understand of the scaling that will occur in Elemental this shouldn't be out of the question. Brad has mentioned there would be battles with 10s of thousands of soldiers so having 4,000 vs 4,000 instead of 1,000 vs 1,000 as an example should be doable I think. The main thing for me is this system would allow you to perform pincer attacks and some more advanced maneuvers you don't typically get in TB combat. Hopefully, even in a worst case scenario modding of this system would be possible if Stardock left a path open as you stated.
Awesome idea! the only formation I don't think should be allowed is the:
All adjecent friendlies should get the option to do your coordinated attack option. Hopefully when the map zooms to tactical battle (yes frogboy has said that the tactical map is seperate from the strategic map), then the locations of the friendly and enemy forces should be taken into account when placing them initially on the tactical map.
How can we have a battle with thousands of soldiers if armies have a cap at ten (?) units and a unit can only be up to 20 men?
The reason I think the T formation should be included is so you have at least one formation where ranged attackers aren't on the proverbial front line.
@ Savage: Legions are a single unit made up of 1000 men. Granted I haven't gotten beta 3 working yet but I'd be hard pressed to believe armies are limited to 10 units and each unit is capped at 20 men. That would be Elemental: Gang fights of magic not war.
Coordinated attack and defense would be a great addition. It was one of my favorite features of Age of Wonders.
I see what you're saying Dark, but generally in zoomed tactical battles, units are normally spaced along two lines. It wouldn't be too difficult for the coders to do a check and fill up the bcakline with archers first. I just don't think the T formation shuold be allowed because the tail is not adjecent to the attacking square. It seems to be bringing in units to a fight that really were too slow, and should just enjoy listening to the stories of the warriors who got to the fight on time
Archers will likely need to be one tile away from the enemy to begin with. Assuming that's how it works I think allowing a 2nd line in formations is practical. However I also think you should be able to have melee units arranged in such a manner. For an example with the T formation again you might have the first row consist of 3 large groups of poorly trained soldiers but the single unit in the back would be composed of heavy infantry.
The main variable for doing coordinated attacks from a game-play perspective at least to me is more about how many units you will allow than their placement. I'm in favor of letting the player put the units wherever he wants as long as they are within their attack range / the coordinated attack range.
As an added stipulation perhaps melee units which are a tile away should be required to have enough movement points to reach the enemy. Otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to participate in a coordinated attack. If this was the case then players would have more freedom in what formations they could use and at the same time your fear of allowing units who couldn't reach the fight are addressed.
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