It seems to me that the combat model is broken. Tactical battles are way less fun than they should be, and often become walkovers very early in the game. There is no 'balance' between different units, and often the inferior troops will not just lose, they will melt without doing a single hit on the superior side.
I think is partly because the basic combat model is not doing a good enough job to simulate basic things like the effect of having more troops, weapon vs armor effects, etc. Something has to change; here are my suggestions, which are somewhat independent (you could do one but not the other).
1. Multiple men in a unit should multiply the damage linearly. In other words, if 1 guy has a 50% chance to hit, and does 2-4 damage, 5 guys should have 5 x 50% chance to hit, each doing 2-4 damage. I'm pretty sure that is not how it works right now. One guy with an attack of 10 is shown as Attack 10. 5 Guys with attack 10 should also be shown as Attack 10 (just with 5 guys, hence with 5 times the chance to hit). While this might result in multiple RND tests for each hit, I am confident that our PCs can handle the extra load. Use this consistent attack value against the defence, not some multiple of the attack value.
2. Limit damage by one weapon to one guy. As above, if a 'hit' is made, limit it to killing one guy, not inflicting more damage on the next guy. This gives numbers a real value. There could be exceptions made to this, for 'sweep' type abilities that large monsters and so on might have.
3. Change armor to a simpler model (and use hit locations). This is a big change to the combat model. Instead of adding up the defence values of greaves, shields, helmets, etc to give an overall defence value, simply allow a hit location for each hit on a target, Lower Leg, Upper Leg, Body, Arms, Head. Allow shields a 'save' chance depending on the type of weapon. Then the armor can simply have a defensive value against the weapon damage, for example Leather 1, Chain 3, Plate 5 (or whatever).
Under some circumstances, hits to certain areas might be more likely (defending a castle you might not need leg armor?, Mites might hit legs more often? Intelligent opponents might aim their critical hits at unarmored areas). Damage on the head would be doubled.
This is a serious change to make with a lot of work to balance, but ends up making a lot more sense than the current system, and is easier to understand. It makes a difference whether you armor your legs or your arms, depending on the weapons and enemies you come up against.
4. Whatever the combat system, reduce the power balance between weapons. Having some weapons do 4 damage and others doing 20 or more, is too big a power scale, and leads to highly unbalanced battles. The differences along the tech tree need to be more subtle (although this 'power scale' has to be balanced a little against the other elements of the tech tree, for example the magic paths, which also scale quite quickly).
5. Reduce the damage of the weapons (and the extra HP for levelling). Battles end too quickly and too easily. Especially with everyone being impulsive and mounted.
6. Fix and balance mounts. This has been discussed too much already, with no fix coming.
7. Bring back encumbrance and weight
Disclaimer: I like elements of the game, I have played for 300+ hours, I am a fan of SD and appreciate the work that has gone into this. I'm trying to be helpful
I like the idea with the one hit only one kill and the removal of the damage multiplier per groupmember.
If an army attacks another there is fighting not just one side hitting the other and then the other side hitting back like in the current system. I think a way to balance that would be to calculate damage done like this:
When a stack attacks another, both stacks attack each other. And damage is calculated with both parties like they were before each others attack then damage is dealt with the attacker AND the defender both taking damage. This is more realistic and also eliminates the use of high initiative low hp high damage troops.
Of course this would make swords bad, so the counterattack ability would need to be something else.
While item 1 looks like a good idea it would require a comprehensive combat redesign. Think of the binary effects such as shield bash or blunt knock-down: how would they be implemented in this system? These combat effects which are hit or miss cannot be adapted to a partial hit from a group. Hence a redesign would be needed to maintain some semblance to the current system.
1. is how it works already.
Is it? I was under the impression that your guys either all hit or all missed, with some random damage swing. Does that mean when a unit "dodges" an attack, it has successfully evaded every attacker that was aiming at it? And that the damage assigned when you successfully attack is modified by "how many" of your units hit?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Heavenfall, Thanks for your interest and interpretation. I think you were after No, Yes, Yes there? That is, I am saying that each weapon has to count, and that is not how it currently works.
Yes, it is a fairly major re-design (although not as much as my other suggestions, like #3). But as I think the combat model is broken, that is what I think is required, one way or another.
Currently when you perform normal attack each individual in a stack gets its hit and damage rolled separately. For damage multiplication for troopcount from special abilities the same thing applies to damage, but afaik hit is determined with one roll for the whole stack.
"It seems to me that the combat model is broken. Tactical battles are way less fun than they should be, and often become walkovers very early in the game. There is no 'balance' between different units, and often the inferior troops will not just lose, they will melt without doing a single hit on the superior side."
I agree. Combat is very seldom interesting. It mostly either easy-peasy or utterly impossible.
"2. Limit damage by one weapon to one guy. As above, if a 'hit' is made, limit it to killing one guy, not inflicting more damage on the next guy. This gives numbers a real value. There could be exceptions made to this, for 'sweep' type abilities that large monsters and so on might have."
This I really like. I think this is an important change. It also opens up a lot of options for abilites like sweep and collateral damage.
"4. Whatever the combat system, reduce the power balance between weapons. Having some weapons do 4 damage and others doing 20 or more, is too big a power scale, and leads to highly unbalanced battles. The differences along the tech tree need to be more subtle (although this 'power scale' has to be balanced a little against the other elements of the tech tree, for example the magic paths, which also scale quite quickly)."
and
"5. Reduce the damage of the weapons (and the extra HP for levelling). Battles end too quickly and too easily. Especially with everyone being impulsive and mounted."
Agree. Damage should be more consistent. This would make balancing combat somewhat easier, since the results would fluctuate less.Also, some abilities like counterattack and backswing are really potent, and can seriously affect actual damage output.
I think you'd have to be careful with this - unless you had some modifier in there (not allowing the defender to 'attack back' at full strength) it would pretty much kill the idea of softening up a powerful unit with a bunch of smaller ones. The swarm mechanic in place makes me think the devs feel that's a viable tactic - but if the powerful unit fights back, swarming with weaker units becomes a complicated way to let the stronger unit kill off all the weak ones without taking a turn to do it.
Personally, I think simultaneous combat is a superior model, and a lot of turn-based combat balancing problems stem from the alpha strike being too powerful.
I think, as a rule, all regular units should be able to counterattack. Perhaps not at full strength, but being "locked in combat" should be a thing.
I feel dishing out extreme amounts of alpha strike damage is the job of an assassin or a mage. And powerful mosnters , of course.
This idea of initiating a "fight" rather than merely attacking is a tempting one, but it would have to be balanced out somehow. Otherwise high-initiative units would be punished because attacking wouldn't be all that much better than defending. However, this kind of counter-attack would make swords completely pointless (which they kinda are already but shhh). Good idea, though.
I tend to agree and have suggested it before that we replace an 'attack' with a 'battle'. This is how a lot of TB games of ancient warfare work (for example, Slitherine's Field of Glory, which is a very interesting TB tactical battle engine for Ancient warfare).
As you say, attacking without retaliation is then a special effect (Assassin or whatever).
It is a big change to the combat model, but might be the right one. You can still get bonuses for having overlaps and so on (although strictly speaking, this should only be for overlaps, not units in a line against other units in a line).
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