I think my suggestion is pretty obvious from the title. However, I'd like to go into some detail on why this should matter in tactical combat.
Almost all great battles prior to the industrial revolution have been decided on who could outflank and/or protect flanks the best, as well as their field position. It's hard for me to see tactical combat being more than a glorified chess board if this kind of thing is never taken into account.
What I suggest is a damage modifier for units who are flanked, taking into account the direction they are facing. The units who are flanked should also receive a hit to being able to counter attack, or shouldn't be able to counter at all. I think units who are attacked from directly behind should receive an even more drastic effect on this, and they should also take a hit on morale.
In order for this to work you'll need to be able to choose the direction your units are facing.
I also believe field position should matter. Right now the computer just dumps your army in seemingly the worst possible formation imaginable. It would be nice if we had a way to edit formations somewhere, or at least be able to place pieces ourselves before combat starts. I know this is a little aside from field position, but if field position matters, then we need to be able to take advantage of it somehow. Total War does this nicely.
Another thing about field position is that certain tiles should have benefits/drawbacks. For example archers on a hill should do more damage and be able to shoot farther at units below them. Forrest tiles could give human/small units stealth, or perhaps a defense bonus against mounted units, or it could cost mounted units 2 moves to move on one forest tile. Narrow bridges could give a damage bonus to ranged units like archers, etc.
I know I'm probably not covering everything here, but I'd like to hear what you guys think too. I guess being fascinated by historical battles like the ones Alexander the Great was in, it just seems to me that field position, direction of units, and covering flanks were the prime factors into who won or lost. I think it'd be great if we could take advantage of such stuff in Elemental at some point, even if it won't make it by launch.
Heck if I can mod this in at some point I will, if it's possible.
i like it! hope something like it is on its way.
yeah this would be a fun addition. i wish they would go back to having the units start at the edge of the maps as oppose to being near the middle. make terrain alter line of sight. this way you could sneak some guys around that forest and you wouldn't see them.
Yeah a fog of war type thing for line of sight would be sweet too!
Yea ... and with LOS, make it different than on the overland map certainly.
Like ... most units have an LOS of 10, and a Hill costs 5 LOS, a forest Tile costs 5 LOS, and a mountain costs 10.
Then, some units could have greater LOS and some could have less ... and a flat tile would cost 1 (or less) LOS.
Of course ... if instead of simply having a "flat", "hill", or "mountain" tile we had varying Z values ... this could get a lot more fun.
I'm guessing all of this would have to come post release as a patch or even as part of an expansion pack, but the line of sight stuff would be great and also having bonuses to terrain would add a lot more depth without necessarily causing battles to last lots longer.
I thought Frogboy mentioned that terrain bonuses were going to be in tactical battles so maybe this will be in beta 4.
Also some kind of attack bonus when attacked by something from the land map that was out of your line of sight when you last moved, this way you could have surprise attacks, it could be limited to only effect the first round.
P.s. Also this would give you a reason to cast a line of sight spell that shows everything within a certain radius when moving around the land map near forests or mountains and could be used in multiplayer also as players could hide units near mountains for ambushing.
Edited for spelling: how hard is it to use the correct word for sight.
Yeah I assume anything major in my suggestion that wasn't really planned will probably not happen until after launch, but I just thought I'd throw them out there just in case I'm wrong haha. I also remember Frogboy wanting to make certain tiles do different things, but I wasn't sure if he was going to get that in before or after launch.
And how do you do this with auto-resolve? How does the AI do this? As much as I like tactical battles, you gotta remember that the game isn't a tactical battle simulation and they're meant to be short and sweet because you can have many of them per turn. Stuff like tile bonuses AFAIK are already planned and a good addition, but unit facing needlessly complicates things. If you want flanking, just make it so that a unit attacked from behind can't counter-attack (or rolls an automatic 0 on defense). That's it, don't need anything fancy with a unit facing system.
I would only want them to do it if they felt they could make it fun. I'm sure they wouldn't do it if they felt the AI couldn't handle it. However, there are tactical RPG's on systems like GBA and NDS that have these kinds of factors. So I don't think it's entirely impossible
Unit facing doesn't necessarily over complicate things, it just allows for different tactics. It would really make people think about how units move and how to position them, it'd make offensive and defensive formations to exist. As it is now all I can really do with positioning my units is using them as a wall. It was just an idea to make tactical battles more dynamic using stuff from real life battle tactics. It doesn't need to be any more complex than a damage type/buff, or like you said no counter attack, or loss in morale.
No need to create a flanking system if you use what you're describing : someone attacked from behind can't retaliate and gets a defensive roll halved (unless he has "keen senses" ?).
When a unit enters in a square in front of an enemy unit movement stops (unless you get the "run through" ability).
When a unit attacks another unit and some friendly units are adjacent to that enemy unit the attacking gets a bonus (and an even higher bonus if the friends have the ability "team work")
All of those things easily simulates the advantages/disavantages of placement (the most common ones).
Well, they're definitely short.
As of 3C the tactical battles are seriously lacking any depth. Looking forward to today's build.
XXXXXXXXXX(behind)
YYYYY XXXXXXXX(beside)
XXXXXXXXXX(front)
Where Y gets a full counterattack to (front)
gets a 50% reduction in CA to (beside)
and ZERO CA to (behind)
Proper maneuvers and facing make battles go faster, not slower. You do a decent morale setup like any good table top has, which is where the setup in the TW games came from, and units break and get run down in such situations.
It solves all kinds of balance problems too.
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