http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiting_(video_gaming)
This is an issue that, as the AI guy, I'm still struggling with. How to defend against this?
I've been tempted to have the AI do it to the human but the more I think about it, the more unsatisfying that would be.
In beta 1, the kiting issue isn't huge because the tactical maps are so small. But in Beta 2, they start to get a lot more interesting (I have one map that is basically inspired from Demigod complete with multiple paths).
I'd be interested in hear different ideas on how to prevent excessive kiting.
If ranged attacks are limited, the number of shots should be inversely proportional to the power of the ranged attack.
So a bow of awesome might indeed have only 6 shots per battle.
But a rinky dink bow of tiny would have at LEAST 20 or 30 shots.
Not necessarily. Depends on the cost of the unit. Maybe, when you're designing the unit, you can specify the number of attacks, with a cost increase in materials (for bullets), metal (for arrows), or crystal (for fireballs). Each of those should have different damage/initiative/attack strengths. Bullets should be cheap, plentiful, and allow fast attacks, since there's plenty of materials (compared to metal and crystal).
We don't have to limit kiting by some illogical mechanism. It is a real military tactic, so it must be countered by tactic possibilities. A good army is a multipurpose army, with archery and cavalery. These two types of troops have the possibility to counteract kitting tactic. For monster... Some monster can't have the possibiltie to counteract such tactic and I think it is logical. It is the advantage to have technologies such as archery and cavalery: more tactical possibilities. Archery cavalery can be another technology (mongol archery use special arc on cavalery).
For the boss, they have huge size so a great capacity of mouvement. This is a sufficient way to counteract kity. Furthermore, they are elementals of great power, so they have probably the possibility to alter environnement (firewall, mud, tempest that can block the use of archery...). They must have some tactical possibilities.
Another option is to have every movement and action have a time cost. Only the time cost of actions would be reduced by initiative.
e.g. Say moving your full movement costs 50 TUs and attacking costs 50 TUs. Moving part of your movement, say 3 of 5, would cost 3.5 of 50 = 30. If I just attack, my next turn will be in 50 TUs (reduced by initiative). If I move my full movement of 5 squares and attack , my next turn will be in 100 TUs (50 reduced by initiative), at which time I can do the same again if I like. A slower unit chasing a kiter might move 2, costing 50 TUs, and be able to move 2 times in the time it takes the faster hero to move 5 and attack (assuming equal initiative) which would not allow the melee unit to catch up.
The cost of moving vs. attacking and the extent to which initiative reduces TU cost is where the balance come in. With the given values, the kiter would be able to keep his distance (which we would expect if he can move 2.5x the melee unit). If the cost of attacking were raised to 70, the melee unit would be able to hit the kiter on his third turn and the two units would basically trade hits until someone died. A higher initiative on the hero might reduce the cost of the attack down under 50, allowing the hero to kite the melee unit indefinitely.
If the hero could only move 3 spaces, and he started moving when the melee unit was 2 spaces away, he moves 3 (widening the gap to 5) and attacks (50 + ~70) = 120. The melee unit would move 2 (50) and 2 again (50) and only have to move 1 on his third turn and attack (25 + ~70) = ~95. 20 TU later, the hero could move 3 and attack again (50 + ~70). 75 TU later, the melee unit could move 2 again (50). 45 TU later, the hero moves just before the melee unit can close in the final space (50 + ~70) The gap is now 4 spaces. 5 TU later, the melee unit moves 2 (50) and 2 and attacks again (50 + ~70) ...
If the units were a 2 move archer and a 2 move melee unit with attacks costing 50, basically the archer would get an attack for every move of the melee unit until it closed into melee range. The archer might get more because attacks are reduced by initiative and moves are not. Once the melee unit is 2 squares away, the archer would move back 2 and attack(50 + ~50), while the melee unit would move 2 (50) then move 2 and attack (50+ ~50). Their next moves would be at about the same time, depending on whose attack was reduced more by initiative. Assuming the archer goes first, he moves 2 and attacks (50 + ~50) and the melee unit moves and attacks (50 + ~50). Basically, they trade hits.
I think this alternative achieves the separation of initiative and movement without being too complicated.
Theoretically, different attacks or spells could have different time costs, which would make them a bit less vanilla. A Charge time for special attacks would be cool too. Different movement costs for different terrain types would also spice things up.
Tactical battles need some pretty serious tinkering to be interesting, I think.
Zones of Control is high on the list of things it is in absolutely dire need of. Disengaging and running past enemy units should be extremely dangerous. Because otherwise movement is basically just shuffling a bunch of Rooks around. Uncommonly tootless Rooks, unsupported by any other kinds of playing pieces. Or... Not having zones of control makes positioning almost meaningless and terribly dull.
A greater range of movement speeds is also way up high on the list. 2 tile movement is OK for heavy/shock troops. It's too low for light infantry and too high for archers. I hesitate to suggest an increase for cavalry, because it would really require longer maps to not be ridiculously over-effective. With ZoCs in the game it also opens up for different types of movement. A skirmishing unit, for example, might not be able to move past an enemy unit without getting attacked, but they might be able to disengage an enemy unit without getting attacked. While an invisible unit might be entirely unaffected by ZoCs as long as it stays invisible.
Wider battlefields as well. There's no space to flank or surround your enemy at present, and there should be because it makes positioning more fun and more important.
Terrain modifiers on a per-unit-type basis too is pretty important. Why are cavalry units just as good on hills as light infantry. Why are archer units just as accurate against units in woods as they are against units on plains. That sort of thing.
The only way to un-break the endless Turn system, is to set a fairly low time limit on battles. Otherwise the benefit of high initiative will either have to be so low as to only matter in 1/50 battles, effectively making it meaningless... Or it will be more or less as is, which is horrendously over-effective. I strongly suggest going back to the multi-Turn system, and simply re-scaling the effectiveness of initiative accordingly. Putting a time limit on battles doesn't stop initiative from spiraling, it just stops it (at best) from spiraling out of control - and the time limit will almost certainly be a pain in the neck to try to keep track of for the players in an endless Turn system.
...
Archer kiting is kind of silly. Real archers aren't Tolkien elves. In the real world practically no one have ever fired effectively while on the move. The kind of volley fire the British longbows were famous for required a carefully set up position. Skirmishing didn't mean running towards your enemy while madly trying to fire off some arrows, then running away while doing the same. It meant setting up an ambush and firing from a fixed position, then falling back to another and fire from there.
Facing would also be cool, but it is infinitely less important than everything mentioned above. Still, facing would make positioning even more important, which is always a really good thing.
Morale, likewise, would be cool. And I don't mean army morale, I mean unit morale. If my spearmans are getting creamed by something really big and hairy with waaay too many teeth, they should probably at least consider running away. I know would. But like Facing this is way, waaay down on the list of priorities. It won't make the current unfun battles fun, but it would make fun tactical battles even more entertaining.
I really like the idea of being able to spend more on your unit to give it more ammunition (deadlier ammunition costs more ofc)
This would be especially nice for the new MAGE units. As they (possibly) will not be using the global mana pool, these magical units could instead have 'shots per battle' similar to MoM's Warlock with 4 shots per battle. (using crystals, or a combination of crystals and mana, would be logical)
As far as ranged units ... I think having more arrows would both increase production times but also increase encumbrance (carry a lot of arrows), thus reduce initiative somewhat.
So you could have a fast and cheap archer with few arrows, or an expensive, slightly slower archer, with a ton of arrows.
I haven't read this thread in full, so I hope I am not repeating the ideas of others.
Have different "stances" for units: sprint halves your dodge and defense, but you get double the moves. This way you can reach your ranged enemy but it costs you. "Defense" mode gives you +50% defense, +100% ranged defense (no dodge bonus) but you lose one move (or half your moves maybe?). This could be viewed as something like the Roman testudo formation. So, if you have enough units, you can build up a line and force your enemy into a corner. Attacking automatically halves your moves for the next turn. So, you attack enemy in defense formation. You only get half moves for next turn. The enemy sprints you, and gets to hit you. Equipment & abilities change which one is the preferred tactic for your unit.
Maybe movement and initiative should be much more expensive (or rare) than currently. If you have a unit with 3 movement and double the initiative of your enemy you can do this: move in + attack. Next turn move away. Enemy can't reach you. Move in + attack, move away. Repeat until enemy dead. If you get to the point where you have such an advantage in initiative and movement, there must either be strong counters to this, or you simply are much better than your enemy. If the latter case is possible, then it should be hard to get into this point.
Special abilities & spells meant to counter this tactic: "web", "sprint", "slow" etc.
Make initiative random. You don't know for sure who gets the next turn, so you can't totally game the system. This probably makes it harder to write good AI...
The ammo limit is simple and effective for ranged units.
Have a penalty for constantly running away. Maybe there should be special squares you could conquer, one for the defender, one for the attacker, each at the opposite side of the board. Something like what you have in chess, move your pawn to opposite side and get a queen. In-game this could work as: get your unit to the "conquer" square and your opponent starts to lose initiative, you start to gain it. Probably doesn't work that well in practice. The reason I bring this up is I believe this is what happened in real-life combats to those who just constantly ran away and kept shooting their arrows: they would get slaughtered due to the enemy getting the control of the battlefield.
I would suggest changing the initiative system so that 1) combat starts on a random initiative number and 2) each point of initiative be less powerful and/or 3) initiative increases suffer from diminishing returns.Currently, high initiative means that a unit acts first and acts more frequently. If 1), then high initiative would mean the unit would act more frequently, but wouldn't necessarily act first. I suspect that initiative is currently the most powerful stat to improve damage output and, thanks to kiting, survivability. 2) and/or 3) are needed to mitigate that.
Just a follow-up idea to the sprint/testudo stances: the sprint ability should be severely limited for troops having a lot of weight carried. So, if you go for a lot of defensive equipment, you might become a sitting duck for ranged-arms troops.
I actually like the stances idea (well, who doesn't like their own ideas): it adds a lot of different tactics, and makes troop specialization more interesting: cavalry might have charge: additional +50% attack against vs defense stance troops. When in this mode, if they get attacked by troops using spears, their defense is bypassed.
Having heavy shields might reduce your sprint ability, but give you additional bonuses in defense stance. And so on.
I like the idea of a stance or ability that may increase ranged defense (but lower melee attack/defense) so as to avoid archer cheese.
Perhaps this could be a tactic for a unit of shield carrying infantry?
(we already have the 'defensive' stance, I think we could make a stance for ranged defense only)
-> Alternatively, I suppose using the stock 'defensive' stance can be a good counter to kiting? (if you don't have mounted or melee in that particular stack)
Just spent some time reading Wikipedia. Here is what Roman army did against those cheesy kiting Parthians. (Must be said: mostly they just lost the battles). The article mentions three key strategies:
Of course, I think the Romans would have preferred fireballs and mass slow spells if those were available
So, how does securing high ground relate to FE?, Maybe have tactical maps where kiting is made harder? Maybe this should depend on the square the battle takes place? If in forest, the map is such that it has movement slowing squares which make kiting harder. If in open ground, kiting is easier.
I think Age of Wonders 2 did this best due to their movement action system (similar to what DexCisco was describing). The defensive bonus from walls also helped as well.However, that may be too big of a change for FE at this point. I do think that the AI should use kiting if its available, but you also should nerf kiting no matter what.
I think there are some easy solutions:
1. Make ranged attacks so weak that an all archer army can't possibly win. This sounds extreme, but in most TBS games the opposite is true, and all archer army can't lose. It would be a refreshing change.2. Create specialized anti-archer units. A shield accessory that blocks 50% of ranged damage might be good enough. Ranged units that have a weaker attack but can counter-attack other ranged units might be good as well. 3. Make melee units faster. This was done in Might and Magic: Heroes 6, and I think it worked fairly well. If it wasn't for tons of resurrection available, you would lose units in almost every battle. This can be done with 1 time teleport or sprint abilities, as well as a general stat boost.
4. Make it so that when any unit leaves or passes through a tile adjacent to an enemy, that enemy gets a free attack. If you make a ranged attack against an adjacent melee unit, the enemy gets a free attack as well (e.g. D&D). I am not sure if you were worried about melee never reaching the enemy, but this fixes part of the problem. These don't have to be mechanics, they can be traits you choose when you create units as well.
melee units don't need to be any faster.
Also, I haven't tried out ranged myself in the beta, but from what I've heard ranged attacks are anything but OP (its more the high initiative leading to archery silliness).
Having armor n shields which specifically blocks ranged damage (but does not do so for melee damage) could help to a degree.
Because we have Pierce/Blunt/and Cuttings ... we could probably just make something that is +50% pierce defense, -50% blunt n cutting defense
Ultimately, those that specialize in ranged attacks are going to win more than lose when it comes to fighting a melee focused empire. For the longest time in history the most powerful military invention was the Bow.
That being said, we should always be careful to keep ranged units from becoming the correct choice in every situation.
Things like damage or accuracy reductions at extremely long range
and 'fatigue', or rather having initiative cumulatively lowered by 1 for each attack+move combo (to be refilled at the end of battle)
and Accuracy bonuses for ranged units that 'don't move' ... would all help to balance kiting. At least for the footman archer variety.
As far as horse archers go ... only allow Short-bows for mounted units, give a slight penalty to accuracy (for being on a horse), and give short bows a shorter range than 'the entire map'. Maybe a range as short as 4 or 5 tiles.
Why not have ranged weapons require a number of turns?
For example, it may only cost 1 turn to shoot a Short Bow, which has shorter range and less damage. It might cost 2 to shoot a Longbow. Getting this same effect might be possible by having each shot lowering your initiative for one turn.
Looking back on it, I think that there are already plenty of counters to kiting, and that maybe the AI just has to lose a tactical battle and then learn from it (ie use archer counters like Casters, Archers, and Cavalry) in future encounters with that Faction.
(or at least try to get at least one of these three aspects into play vs said Faction that uses kiting)
-> there are ways we can limit the effectiveness of kiting, but ultimately I think we should allow for kiting to be a decent tactic under certain situations.
Is there any chance Frogboy can give us a better idea of how the AI will function when it comes to designing units and leveling/equipping heroes. We've racked our brains to find some human side solutions. Now we need to know how good the AI will be.
-Can the AI respond to losing to me because I have slow, heavy melee units by building mounted archers and kiting?
-Can the AI utilize abilities in unit design to counter kiting?
-Can the AI choose to level a hero as an Assassin to counter kiting?
-Can the AI know when not to use horses? (Really mounts need to be balanced so that choosing them is not always the best option) *Looks at Spears*
-Can the AI choose to research technology in order to counter kiting?
-Can the AI take advantage of certain areas on tactical maps to prevent kiting?
Btw, fe already has zones of control in tactical battles.
I was thinking of suggesting the concept of fatigue. That basically, each turn units lose a % of their imitative until they're all the same speed. It would take several turns but eventuallythey'd equal out.
Personally I would try balancing it out first before adding a new mechanic. What about movement? That would have to equalize as well.
Being on a hill could offer increased range and accuracy for archers. That way kiters have to enter their range to attack. I do this in Shogun 2. I would never mention such a thing, except that I am already hoping to add this in a tactical mod. But if you feel like it works for the core game, it's all yours.
Fatigue seems like a good idea. Just make sure there is a good UI element to show what your fatigue levels are. Also, make sure that if you allow spells, items or traits to bypass/reverse fatigue, it doesn't defeat the purpose.
Not crazy about it. Why not try toning down initiative boosters first? Barring that, please consider making fatigue optional through xml.
The way I see it, no unit should ever be moving at more than a 2:1 ratio, even fully enchanted. Except for cavalry, which should be able to kite non-mounted units to a limited degree.
Kiting Response Ideas:
1. Magic Spells
2. Melee
Some of these solutions (stances and fatigue) are too broad and complicated for this problem. Fatigue is just another thing the player has to worry about that doesn't make the battles more interesting - it decreases the difference between units and thus makes battles blander overall. We have some unit and champion abilities that only apply on the first turn, that's enough there.
I say give bows -3 initiative base, and have some good traits that help counter this (Rapid Fire -20% acc this turn and next turn, +5 initiative next turn.) Also give move-and-fire tactics a beefy -x% acc modifier.
I think accuracy modifiers will help only in act I, because in act II and III the accuracy will be much higher than the dodge, because the accuracy scales with the level and dodge does not (the same applies to spell mastery and spell resistance). That is the reason why i think the game mechanics should be balanced before we look for artifical solutions.
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