I can not put my finger on it, but why the tactical combat is so boring in this game? Compare this for example with King's Bounty game - combat shines there.
Is combat field too big? Is it because there are no interesting topological elements (blocks) on the field? Is it variety of the units? Is it absence of special abilities? All of it together? Should some weapons be able to hit in two cells? Should there be poison weapons? Should there be more magical units? Or is it because of square/hexagon difference?
What do you think? What is the main reason of combat being boring? Can it be singled out? Understanding it should help the developers.
I think it's mainly the lack of special abilities natural to non casters.
Not many options.
Most units, weapons and armor types differ from one another only by stats.
It worked for "Alpha Centaury" which was purely strategic, but it isn't enough if the game also has tactical combat.
Its the lack of special abilities combined with the simplistic two stat combat system.
Ranged attacks are point and click.
Got a hill in the way? No problem. Got your buddy's head in the way? No problem. Can't see past your own asshole? No problem. You can still shoot them just fine!
It pretty much removes any point to the whole tactics bit when you can simply exterminate anything with less than absurd defense on the opening round no matter where it is in relation to your units.
I do not find it boring.. I would however like less delay between clicks for attack its to long right now..
It's the fact each side takes turns, you know you can use your whole group at a time...every single thing basically moves two blocks when moving. Lack of abilities is a big one as well.
For instance a wolf should move farther then your archers in a given turn.
Ranges have to be added for ranged attacks like bows...as well LOS.
I have to admit with the spell replacements a modder did, spells look pretty cool.
I don't think it is far off, alot of these things can be changed pretty easily, the look is fine, the battlefield size is great. It just needs some refinement. At the moment it is off in that regard.
King's Bounty has way more spells and special abilities, particularly ranged ones. Also, there were never straightfoward charges from the opposing side. Iin King's Bounty attacks would go back and forth between sides throughout the round based on combat speed. More ranged attack options, more unit special abilities, heals, and faster movement for melee units or teleport kept the action happening and unpredictable. Range range range.
That said, I didn't think King's Bounty tactical combat was all that exciting, it was good but not great, and I got bored of it, and still haven't finished the game but I think I was close. The strongest point of King's Bounty were charming visuals and quest dialog. The effects were really over-the-top particularly with the creatures in your magic box, or whatever that was. When they came into play I found myself disengaging from the combat. A game that mixed swords with sorcery well was King Arthur the role playing wargame, if you were playing old faith. I know it was real-time so has limited applicability here, but the style was right on, and again what made it exciting was the ability of old faith units to teleport quickly into and out of battle.
It makes me wonder if it might be better if units could choose between ranged and melee attacks, depending of curcumstances. If the peasant unit is adjacent to an enemy, then hit it with a club, but if apart, then use a sling. That would open attack possibilities other than rushing or waiting for the rush, positioning yourself to get the first strike against the AI.
More abilities!!! I would like to see team based abilities, multi-tile abilities, morale altering abilities and more. Creatures need to aid one another or even hinder their own team if they are too strong. Such as an ogre that has a chance of going into a rage and attacking all units in sight including your own. Lets say then that we need more variety in units. If I got heavy armor on a unit they better be moving slower than a rogue with nothing but a dagger. What about a flag bearer that increases morale of his whole team? Creatures that cannot be seen or targeted unless they are adjacent to other creatures, then have a creature that can "spot" them from afar. Throw in a leadership trait that is based on the team leader's charisma that mandates how many units or of what combat rating he/she can lead. What about pre-battle tactic formations? Too much to ask for? Add this quality in please: if my sovereign is in battle and his spouse gets killed while fighting, I would like to see something happen, lower his morale or increase his attack temporarily. This can also be used for siblings or close "friends". Don't be afraid to put some emotion into it. I would like to feel for my heroes the same way I felt for them in games like Fire Emblem or Shinning Force. This game has the potential to be epic beyond any other game out there it is just going to need a whole lot of variety... after we squash the bugs of course.
For me, its too slow (in movement/attacks and animations) and has too much random chance to it (I can save and re-load the same battle and sometimes my units will miss 9/10 times, then re-load the same fight and hit every attack).
- All units behave the same regardless of their equipment. Spearmen act the same way as swordsmen, macemen, and even cavalry. The only difference is the damage they inflict, and how much they can move. Spearmen aren't better against cavalry, cavalry is just a faster unit, no charge hability or anything of the like, etc. This means you can just make 1 type of units with high attack and high defense and just spam the hell out of it. Attach some skills to certain weapons or pieces of armor (the already mentioned charge, shield bash, phalanx formation), make damage types (cutting, piercing, blunt) truly different, implement some sort of formation system (by giving bonuses to your units for being aligned in a certain way), I DON'T KNOW, SOMETHING.
- No tactical depth whatsoever. Does it matter if your unit is attacked from behind or from the side? Does terrain affect your troops significantly? Do you need to have different types of troops in your army? The answer to all of these, unfortunately, is no.
- Magic is all the same. For a game called ELEMENTAL, magic sure is homogeneous in this game. Being burned by a fireball or being electrified by a thunderbolt is the same thing.
- Really really really badly thought out turn system. The attacker always goes first, and the defender always second. Always. Personally, I'd prefer a system based on giving turns to individual units (faster units move before slow ones, and have more "turns"), rather than entire sides, but at the least, they could make it so the player who goes first is determined by a stat/combination of stats instead of ALWAYS being the attacker first and the defender second.
- Screwed up action points/speed system. Short sword makes you run faster, etc.
- No difference between evading and absorbing damage. Is that knight you're facing REALLY agile so he keeps evading your attacks? Nope, he's being hit, but since the game acknowledges both things as the same, he gets a "miss" message when his armor negates damage.
Last, but not least:
1 on 1 fights between 2 squads of troops (as in, when 2 parties/legions attack each other on the battlefield, 1 guy from each do some sort of duel). This is motly visual, so I'm guessing they are gonna change it eventually.
Sorry if I sound like an asshole, but it's just that this game has ENORMOUS potential. Like, GOTY all years for me, but we're not going anywhere with a system like this.
the 1 on 1 fight thing is just a visual battle(doesn't really matter), terrain does give defence bonus's, the rest I agree with.
All of these are great examples of why Tac Combat sucks.
You forgot a big one, though: 1dN. Though that's changing at Some Point in the Future (tm).
Yeah, I said it was visual too, so I suggested they make them like they are actually, you know, fighting instead of watching a teammate duel some guy from the other side. No change in the damage calculations or anything, just make it more exciting to the eyes.
After all, that's that the OP is asking.
And the changes given by the terrain aren't very significant. Being on a hill as any unit should be really important, and having to go up that hill should reduce your speed quite a lot.
lack of meaningful depth.
Combat is boring for two reasons. First and foremost, because there is only a single damage type (currently), there is no tactical depth to unit design or to unit interaction on the battlefield. Your dudes are either better or worse than the other guy's dudes. Tactics don't exist, except for "when all else is equal, first strike wins".
Second, the tactical AI is completely retarded and poses no challenge whatsoever. Any and all "tactics" boil down to exploiting the AI's basic stupidity in order to get the first strike. Seriously, the player should never lose a tactical battle with anything close to even forces. The AI is that simplistic. Unfortunately, even with good AI the tactical battles would still lack depth; a single damage type leaves no room for intelligent tactics anyway.
As others have said, not enough special abilities and magic is way too generic. Most importantly, it's called tactical battle, but there is no tactics here at all. It's a strategic game, like simple chess, not tactical.
To be tactical the terrain must matter. Things like LoS, higher ground, cover and concealment should matter.
If the battle map was hex, it could be made much more tactical and interesting. I've posted this elsewhere, but I'll do it again:
You can make army setup a lot more important, especially on a hex map, by requiring action points to "rotate" (so facing direction is important) as well as move or attack. That makes formations and tactics like flanking a lot more important. A unit that's attacked head on has full defence and responds with full a counter attack, but if you hit it on the frontal sides the defence and counter attack go down. And if you hit it from the back, it's even lower. That will force the defender to use a good selection of combined arms to create a strong formation, with protection for the flanks, while the attacker tries to engage the enemy line head on while sending its cavalry to out flank and attack from behind, where the defence is weaker. Getting attacked on the flanks or rear would also have a detrimental effect on morale.
This will make unit customisation actually useful. You can have heavy troops with good all around defence protecting the flanks, while cheaper troops with strong frontal defence, but weaker rear defence can hold the main line. There will actually be a reason to have light and heavy infantry other than just going for the heaviest you can afford.
Many other things can be added to make the tactical combat more interesting and realistic. Cavalry should get charge bonuses as well as huge penalties for attacking spearmen head on. Swordsmen having bonuses over spearmen. Elite troops with active defence. And so on and so on - all the stuff you see in proper tactical wargames.
I agree with all those points, but I heard the devs have some sort of bias against hexagons, so I doubt we'll be getting that. It's too late for it anyway, but the whole flanking system would still be implemented roughly to the battles we have now.
Yeah I know Brad is against hexagons. It's a shame because they give you so much more options in tactical battle. Still, facing direction and rotation is doable with square tiles too and it will add more depth to the battles by making flanking and formations important.
Hopefully they'll listen, because I've seen this suggested MANY times. I mean, after all, flanking is one of the most important parts of tactical combat, and same goes for positioning in general (terran types).
Sorry double post
1) If you want to make a realistic wargame learn from the bees: HEXES - (if you have a bias against wargames go to play CLUEDO: squares just make no sense period.) The devs obviously must be completely ignorant about the huge tradition which lies behind turn based wargames... which brings us to the subject of this post. Battles are boring because the devs don't like wargames!
2) If you want a challenging TBS battle learn from Heroes of Might and Magic; but hey, you gotta work on that AI and here although they made an amazing work starting from scratch a new game engine, the AI leaves a lot to be desired.
3) The battle system is poor, REALLY REALLY poor! No special abilities, no option to speed up unit movement (yeah I know they'll eventually do that but that's certainly not enough)
4) The scenery is quite average, and you don't really even realize when units benefit from terrain bonuses (when the other misses a little sign saying 50% defense bonus appearing overhead could maybe help realizing what happens, at least would help realizing that SOMETHING happens... It does right?)
5) I never understood the blunt weapon slash weapon system, to me my guys are either better of worse than the others and combats never bring surprises, I would just hit auto fight each time but I can't because my heroes could either die or waste magic in stupid ways, since the AI is so dumb that doesn't even try to preseve mana or heroes)
... And so on
Any other fantasy TBS game has better tactical combat. If the devs play AoW, HoMM, Kings bounty or Fantasy wars for 1 hour each, then they should know what is needed.
Lack of significant terrain and chokepoints.
Slow animations.
Random damage.
Shortswords of running and spellcasting.
Generic spells that cost far too much to be used in subsequent battles.
Silly initial placement of troops.
Agree but random damage is OK, all attack spells do look the same though, which is annoying in a game called "war of magic".
Random damage is a big turnoff for me. AoW has it and that was my biggest complaint for that game. Units in it had only stat ranges from 1-20 and it was still annoying system. The whole 1DN system basically turns tactics into a gambling game. I may have 200 defense and 10 hp while the enemy has only 10 attack and I STILL get single-shoted by it. So what do you do? You reload. Only thing this system brings is reload, reload, reload. Not fun, not tactics, just gamble. I agree that there needs to be some randomness to the system, but having it ALL based on it, it's just not good. The whole 1DN system is basically annoying and reload intensive. Nothing more.
Add to it that NPC spawn system needs to be fixed too. Right now, you travel and next turn, out of nowhere a pack of wolves spawns out of nowhere and attacks you on that SAME turn. You can't do ANYTHING about it except reload. Also annoying as hell and only thing it does is makes you reload when something like this happens. There is no strategy in it since you can't really do anything about it. It may even happen withing your borders since monsters may spawn right outside it and then move in on the same turn. This flaw should be easy to fix though. Make monsters spawn with 0 move points. That way they won't be able to move on the turn they spawned.
I agree with pretty much everything here.
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