Apologies for the wall of text. God bless ya if you actually read it.
It is my understanding that the default combat speed in E:WoM was changed to 2 in order to help "speed up combat". While an option to speed up combat animations (please) would be better for this, it probably does help...unfortunately it also unbalances other limiting factors which it was supposed to offset.
Perhaps chiefly, it no longer serves to be an effective limiter on powerful, heavy blunt weapons (or armor). A negative -.25, or -.5 may have been a significant drawback with a default speed of 1. It is decidedly less so with a default speed of 2. With that speed you can move and attack, or stand and attack multiple units. With a mount, or with the “great warriors” civ bonus, you are moving at will and dispatching handfuls of enemies a turn. Coupled with the related issue in this post of how the combat system favors glass cannons, there seems to be no reason whatever in the game to prefer or research bladed weapons, or really limit your equipment in any way. It discourages diversity in unit design, and makes combat all feel kind of the same.
The speed requirements for special actions like spell casting or firing a ranged weapon, were changed to 2, which is a good thing in principle. However, these limits aren't rigidly enforced, which defeats the purpose. Performing these actions will deduct 2 action points, but you don't need two AP to be able to perform them. This soft limit further diminishes the role combat speed plays a limiter, and thwarts its potential to promote diversity in combat and unit design.
In my opinion, in the current combat system, two things need to happen for a rather substantial payoff in terms of battlefield roles and unit diversity:
Almost all gear, including light armor, weapons, and even special ability packs, should have a plus or minus speed modifier (much more so than in the game currently). Heavy armor, and powerful two handed weapons (blunt weapons more so in exchange for even bigger damage) should have significant -speed modifiers that really impact speed in meaningful ways. The penalty from heavy weapons + heavy armor should quickly bottom out your speed, requiring a mount, special tech, or magic gear to do anything but lumber along one space at a time or attack a single target. Even light armor should have some minor -speed modifiers. On the other hand, small, quick, bladed weapons, easy to manage weapons, shortbows, or magic weapons, should have +speed modifiers.
Action point costs for special actions like spells, and ranged weapon fire, should be rigidly enforced. The only action you should be able to perform for less than a full action point, is a single move OR a single melee attack. If you don't have two AP, you can't cast a spell, or fire a missile. (Ideally, this would also accompany an overhaul of the magic system that makes frequent casting more practical)
The idea is, you're paying for character equip in speed, as well as resource cost, as opposed to right now, where there is little reason to have an archer or spellcaster not walking around in full plate, aside from the cost. It would mean the biggest , heaviest weapon and armor is not always the best choice. Researching new military tech gives you more options, access to more extreme specialized weapons, and maybe weapons that are a better balance of damage and speed, but you may still want characters running around with smaller weapons, and little or no armor. As now, researching magic items and special equipment gives you access to gear that helps mitigate this, like +speed items, and items that boost attack or defense without adding speed penalties, in exchange for increasing the resource cost of units.
Consider what this buys you:
It's conceptually satisfying. Plays into traditional archetypes. Logical reasons for not having archers and spellcasters in heavy armor without special tech or magic, other than cost. Logical reasons for not having spellcasters casually wielding heavy two handed weapons (They use traditional smaller + speed weapons like daggers and light staves in order to be able to have the speed to cast spells, or as a tradeoff in order to equip some light armor.). It is a well established fantasy gaming convention that spellcasters need to concentrate a “full round” to cast magic. Archers need to set up and take aim...longbowmen are not supposed to be “kiting” you around the field under most circumstances.
provides lots of opportunities for special tech, items, and special or magic gear
It encourages diversity in battlefield roles, and tactical depth. It encourages archers and spellcasters to be “squishier”, and to generally have to stay put to act OR move, but not both. They can't run around willy nilly, staying one step ahead, while still firing. They need that meatshield in front of them so they can set up and act. An enemy that gets into the backfield can disrupt them and force them to run (and therefore not act), or to go toe to toe with someone they probably dont have the defense to stand up to.
It encourages diversity in unit design and equipment. Gives a reason to use shortbows and light weapons. Heavy armor + heavy weapon will be a powerful combo, but won't be the best choice for every unit (see below):
Units maxing out offense with the most powerful melee weapons (strikers) will be on hand to deal with high defense or “super units”, whose armor lower damage characters can't overcome, but probably won't have the speed to chase down lighter, squishier units on the run. In order to stay one step ahead of high defense units to get first strike, they will probably need limit their armor, making them vulnerable to ranged fire, and even to faster units that able to move in and finish them off opportunistically.
Since some units are encouraged to limit their armor for reasons beyond cost, units wielding fast, light, lower damage weapons are still viable, and even desirable. Heavy weapon users wont be fast enough to run down a fleeing squishy. Fast units (rogues) with +speed weapons and items, and light or no armor, will be able to get into the backfield and kill handfuls of squishier units with first strikes and multiple attacks. Consider making a “sneak attack” ability available to penetrate armor on high defense targets. Consider letting characters dual wield light weapons for even more +speed (extra attacks).
Generally, high defense (heavy armor) units (tanks) will be the slowest on the field , shrugging off all but massed range fire and magic, and big strike capability, as they advance on your lines, or act as a defensive wall for your squishies. Units with mounts might get a once per battle “charge” ability to let them put on a speed boost once a battle. Fast units with light damage weapons will have difficulty overcoming their defense, while they should have no trouble killing the rogues, so they make good guardians for archers or spellcasters.
Obviously, there are lots of things one could do to improve the games tactical depth and unit diversity, but combat speed is something already in place, and not well utilized at present, in my opinion. Of course there would be quite a lot of tweaking involved. Those few masochists among you who actually took the time to read this, please add your own comments, or tell me where I'm crazy.
Thanks for reading!
Loving it!
It would not only strongly encourage equipment diversity, but strongly penalize the mantra of just throwing the biggest armor and weapons on some jerk and letting him/her go to town. At least not without a significant investment into combat speed either via tech (hopefully) or items (only if the Mr. T paradigm is fixed).
This could encourage fixing the currently pretty anemic weapon/armor tech trees and perhaps lead to specific skirmisher, archer, cavalry, etc routes. And of course actual weapon effects outside of "pointy end goes in the other guy" or "bustafazoo to the labonza" (cutting vs. blunt if I'm being too opaque
Excellent post! Hopefully they're planning something like this for the coming patches!
That's actually what I was expecting from Elemental from the start!
Thanks! But like most of my posts, probably nothing that hasn't been discussed in beta and elsewhere, in much better fashion by some of the great mathematical thinkers in these parts.
This is certainly the idea, yes. Special unit abilities are important, but the basic combat system should encourage diversity from turn 1, IMO.
/signed
I think having some weapons have special abilities would be nice too.
Pikes = First Strike
Hammers = Stun chance?
etc
There's a mod that adds some of this, but its wildly unbalanced
I pretty much agree with most points said by OP.
And it's kinda out of the blue change. I think it was added in 1.05hotfix, so not really that much time to test actual gameplay effects of such big change.
I agree with the entirety of the OP's post. I think it would be an excellent way to balance the system that is present (with movement and attack using combat speed stat) and make it meaningful. Stardock, what do you think?
Best regards,Steven.
What really annoys me is that my High lvl spells keeps missing or really roll low numbers in tactical. Like a Melting touch supposed to do up to 200 damage just rolls 10~30 and doesn't even hit the most time.
Hitting Autoresolve this spell and others works like they should - dealing 100+
I wonder if it a related issue to the shards not multiplying damage issue? I think at least that the dice rolls tend to focus on the very low end of possible results.
^it's true, more shards doesn't mean more damage from spells, although it may seem so (max damage rating gets better, if you look spell description in tactical battle).
Yes, please.
I think that's what it is - not enough -speed. I don't think it's the 2 base AP that's doing it - just not enough to knock it down from 2.
Honestly, I don't think you should be able to move without 1 AP. If moving = 1 AP, then it costs 1 AP. If you have 0.8, too bad.
ugh. i hate combat speed as a concept entirely. movement speed and speed of attack are entirely different concepts. what is needed for weapons is a change in the action points cost of attacking, not in combat speed. as this
https://forums.elementalgame.com/393547/page/2
thread pointed out, equipping a short sword should not make you move faster. i can see an argument for armour changing your total amount of action points (let's call combat speed what it is, the combat speed name confuses me). however, you don't want to end up in a situation where light armoured bravos are a match in almost every regard for armoured soldiers on a battlefield. there's also the problem that currently, the cost of moving or attacking is set to 1 action point. that's an order of magnitude greater than, say a -0.1 penalty for equipping armour. it might work as a mechanic for sovs with lots of APs and low cost actions, but if you've got a whole army of basic infantry that can only move or attack in each turn and have 0.9 action points left over each turn, then that kinda sucks.
really, for the present i'd rather they just gave every weapon an attack value and left it at that. at least, for now, until they kill off the combat speed concept and replace it with Action Points and a Movement Speed stat that determines the cost of moving.
once combat speed is killed is a concept, then i'll talk about weapons.
I was concerned about being able to produce too many units that couldn't actually *act*. I figured everyone should have a basic default action they could perform. As it is, there would probably need to be some sort of watchdog feature on the unit designer to let players know they were building a unit that wouldn't be able to fire their bow in combat. I had another reason too, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was now.
[edit] Oh yeah. I remember now. Because you're highly likely to end up with some sort of fractional value under the system, and there should be something to do with those points. Otherwise there's no incentive to maintain a 1.25 combat speed over a 1.0 combat speed, so you might as well max out armor, which goes in the opposite direction of the diversity I'm trying to promote.
Well,
1) I think there are any number of new stats to track you could add into the game that would model combat more realistically. I was kind of operating from a "what do we have to work with right now" P.O.V. A more elaborate combat system would be great, but I'm not going to hold my breath as far as what we're likely to see in the next year.
As far as precedent goes, we saw some big revisions to the way combat in gal civ 2 unfolded, and lots of values shifted, but we never really saw any fundamental change to the basic combat system. We never saw new stats being added to the ships, or combat fundamentally remodeled. So while I can imagine lots of things, Im not going to get my hopes up too much.
2) Conceptually, it makes sense that heavy armor and weapons would slow your movement over land. It also makes sense that lighter, more balanced weapons allow more attacks in the same amount of time, as opposed to the long wind up and swing of a heavy two handed weapon.
In the game, these two concepts get mashed together, which make for some interpretations that are a bit hazier, but nothing I'm going to lose any sleep over. As I said in that thread, in a highly abstracted game, no concept will ever be entirely realistic conceptually. What's important is, do they make for a fun, balanced game within the rules they have established? Currently, EWOM is falling short of this. Aggro management mechanics in tactical games rarely make a lot of sense from a realistic standpoint. What's important is, they help establish roles for different unit builds, and add tactical depth.
3) If you're arguing that equipment should only ever *subtract* from combat speed/action point total, then we agree in principle, and we really are proposing the same thing with mostly cosmetic differences. Once again, I only suggested that light weapons add to CS/AP because that's the way it's currently modeled in the game, and I tried to work within the system as much as possible.
I'm fine with a system that starts with X action points, and removes them for every piece of equipment/gear, with lighter weapons having progressively less or no penalty. I really only see that as shifting the median from what I suggested. The end result is still the same: Heavy Gear slows you down and limits your attack speed making it difficult to use some special abilities, while units limiting their gear to light equipment move and act faster. Units have to pay for their equipment in *speed*, as well as resource cost.
Although, I do find it perfectly feasible that *magic* weapons and items could add +speed. They're Magic.
I *HATE* the current combat speed mechanics...
I personally think that movement speed and combat speed need to be seperated. Giving someone a horse (which currently increase combat speed) should not increase attack speed. For example, a horse archer does not naturally fire more shots than a regular archer, they are simply faster when moving around the battlefield.
Maybe there could be a movement stat that determines how many action points need to be spent to move 1 square. This stat would be increased when any armor is applied and especially increased with heavier armor.
True, but if you let fractions move - then they could still fire their bow, then move, basically getting a loophole where otherwise they'd have to move OR attack. It removes a decision to make, especially if the bows got flanked or their front is vaporized by a spell, you catch a stack that has just ranged units and you have warg/horse units, etc.
Maybe, but you create a situation that anything from .01 to 1.0 is able to move - what would be the point of making movement cost if you can basically get a free movement after you attack if you have even .1 points left?
If I move before I attack, I lose a full AP (which then costs me a would be attack) However, if I attack twice and have .25 left, I'll still get that move I wanted AND both attacks. Doesn't seem...fair...I guess you could say.
Up armor's defense. If light infantry is a match for a knight in heavy armor - that would seem to tell me heavy armor isn't good enough. Unit in leather with a short sword vs knight in full plate, a large shield, and a mace - if the light unit wins, that would seem to be more than just AP at work?
there's also the problem that currently, the cost of moving or attacking is set to 1 action point. that's an order of magnitude greater than, say a -0.1 penalty for equipping armour. it might work as a mechanic for sovs with lots of APs and low cost actions, but if you've got a whole army of basic infantry that can only move or attack in each turn and have 0.9 action points left over each turn, then that kinda sucks.
Do units get more AP when the level up? I never checked when they got a level so in that case, they'd either have to get slightly lighter or gain level 2. It does still kind of suck, but it is the kind of trade off with equipping that the OP seems to be going for. Do you tack on that shield knowing you might run yourself into this situation until they reach level 2 - or do your forego it and the defense it provides?
They do have the map move - they could use that as tactical map movement - or during unit design, the role of boots might be to change the unit's movement (modify from a base). Then weapons/armor mess with action points.
Not a terrible idea in principle, but it would require complete re-balancing of map movement. I don't think we want tactical map movement of 6 and 7 squares (without using exploits like ammy stacking, where map move is theoretically infinite)
And at the same time, Im not sure we want worldmap movement limited to crawling along at two or three for the sake of balancing on the tactical map.
you say it as if it's balanced at all at present. myself i'd do it like this:
typically infantry has speed of 1, cavalry has 2 etc
strategy map movement = 1+your speed
tactical map movement cost 1/speed action points, with a maximum of your speed+1 moves in a turn.
so infantry move 2 on land, cavalry move 3
assuming 2.0 (ie, default) action points, and default attack point cost (1.0), on the tactical map
infantry moves 2 and doesn't attack, or 1 and 1 attack, or 2 attacks (as present)
cavalry moves 3 no attacks (max 3 moves per turn and not enough left to attack) or 2 moves 1 attack, or 1 moves 1 attack, or 2 attacks (as present)
of course, once you change weapon speed you can get some other combinations (and if you have AP penalties for heavy armour). i'd add automatic action point increases for sovereign levels and troop experience (ie, remove this from level up, as it seems confusing there), and maybe some global bonuses so that the whole process feels a little more continuous and less descrete (ie, more difficult to "build" for a certain number of moves/attacks.
thoughts?
is it just me or does every thread i post in immediately die?
coincidence maybe lol but i might be wrong, i take this isnt the first time it happens ?
no
no! and it almost always seems to happen as soon as i get my big brainwaves. i have the forum touch of death.
I like this idea. Like you said, make things more continuous while still keeping for equip trade-offs for power vs speed.
I also think leveling up should give AP just by virtue of level. (Something like AP = 2 + (level/4) + AP adjustments [spells, armor, whatever] )
Certainly would make champions and sovereigns more powerful on the battle field too.
yeah, that's exactly how i'd do it. the best thing about this idea is that you don't even need any new stats. just rename combat speed to something sensible and derive everything from a base movement stat (either use the strategy movement speed, or reduce it by 1, call it speed and then give everyone a free bonus move in strat mode). i prefer the latter as that's how GC2 did it.
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