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Topic ClosedDetailed game, simplified combat?
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GM ThunderCat View Drop Down
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Points: 2157 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 Aug 2011 at 23:28
It is assumed your commanders use the best military formations and strategies that are available to them and their skill sets and it is assumed that your military tactics are  combined arms rather than segregated arms, unless you have specialised your army this way. Cavalry vs archers etc is already factored into a single battle.

As to the terrain effects, whether you are attacking or defending also has a factor to terrain, for example: archers defending in buiildings have a much higher bonus than archer attacking buildings as they can set up kill zones. So its important where you have your combat.

However scouting your target before attacking is also important, and then adjusting the composition and layout of your army before you send it out to match and counter your opposition, and matching your troops with the commanders that give them the best divisional bonuses for the situation - obviously this adds extra time and planning to the procedure so isn't always possible.

Presetting battle formations themselves, rather than determining the best situation "in the field", runs the risk of turning to rock, paper scissors - which verges towards luck rather than strategy - an official thought about it is here:

However, war strategies (multiple battles) are more involved and complex. Do you have a swift response army purely of cavalry for rapid response; knowing that that imbalance will suffer heavy losses by an army of pikemen and archers, depending on the terrain e.g. Charge of the Light Brigade - however on plains this army is likely to cut down any defence.

Do you send in one unified army or waves of different armies to wear down the advantages of what you are attacking; before mopping up with a more balanced army? etc.

Honored Mule's wiki has some interesting strategies on  Siege and  Defending a City from Siege which a worth reading and give an insight into one type of combat.

I hope this helps


Edited by GM ThunderCat - 27 Aug 2011 at 23:45
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GM ThunderCat View Drop Down
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Points: 2157 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 Aug 2011 at 23:30
Originally posted by uritel uritel wrote:

wondering why you can't view current quantities of diplomats/military on the same screen as your production one when wanting to queue troops, etc.  I'll just tack it up to that.
I'd tack that up to a bit of UI that needs to be improved  Wink
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Points: 9 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 Aug 2011 at 23:55
@TC - Thanks for your response.  I have not had much experience with commanders so I haven't been able to delve into exactly what role they play other than a percentage bonus to whatever skillset they are offering.

From where I'm coming from, I was looking at it from having the different options of a hybrid army or a unit-type army.  It's nice to have a solo cavalry army to raze an enemy if their defenses or down, or else have a hybrid one based on speed vs ranged.  Ballista having the longest range so their attacks would hit first (presumably hitting walls first, lowering their effectiveness), archers hitting second (against cav, other archers, or infantry), cav third for a quick mowdown of other cav and infantry, and lastly inf to clean up.. or if you run out of inf vs their army, your archers and ballistas will finish up or be destroyed.

I'm not necessarily looking for a rock-paper-scissors of pre-defined battle strategies set by the user (which could be interesting.. but yes, that would develop into luck), but more of a speed vs ranged argument that reflects the battle.  If you're saying that's already thrown into the algorithm, then please correct me and I'll withdraw my "complaints".  If it's simply unit a + unit b = combined c vs enemy though, that's where I have more of the issue.  It's the sequence of events vs a lump sum total (ratio'd out depending on how much of total quantity was cav, inf, ranged, etc) that I'm parading for.
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Points: 723 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28 Aug 2011 at 00:02
Originally posted by uritel uritel wrote:

@TC - Thanks for your response.  I have not had much experience with commanders so I haven't been able to delve into exactly what role they play other than a percentage bonus to whatever skillset they are offering.

From where I'm coming from, I was looking at it from having the different options of a hybrid army or a unit-type army.  It's nice to have a solo cavalry army to raze an enemy if their defenses or down, or else have a hybrid one based on speed vs ranged.  Ballista having the longest range so their attacks would hit first (presumably hitting walls first, lowering their effectiveness), archers hitting second (against cav, other archers, or infantry), cav third for a quick mowdown of other cav and infantry, and lastly inf to clean up.. or if you run out of inf vs their army, your archers and ballistas will finish up or be destroyed.

I'm not necessarily looking for a rock-paper-scissors of pre-defined battle strategies set by the user (which could be interesting.. but yes, that would develop into luck), but more of a speed vs ranged argument that reflects the battle.  If you're saying that's already thrown into the algorithm, then please correct me and I'll withdraw my "complaints".  If it's simply unit a + unit b = combined c vs enemy though, that's where I have more of the issue.  It's the sequence of events vs a lump sum total (ratio'd out depending on how much of total quantity was cav, inf, ranged, etc) that I'm parading for.


heck, try read the arcanum article about defending from siege to see how deep the whole mechanic is and how complicated it is......
this is an insanely detailed article, posted by a great player, HM.
 http://illyriad.honoredsoft.com/wiki/Defending_a_City_from_Siege
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Points: 1650 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28 Aug 2011 at 05:11
That article on defending against sieges is actually only about half done as well.  Geek

The tactics of battle resolution are modeled and already all wrapped up in the unit stats and combat resolution algorithm, but the strategy-scale factors are really quite profoundly meaningful.  Back in the early day we had some really epic wins because our opponents didn't believe that it was better to have just defensive units defending than to add offensive units for double the numbers.  But it really does make a huge difference, and creates one of those situations where less really is more.  Those were days of big wins for the accounts run by economists and seasoned quartermasters.
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Llyorn Of Jaensch View Drop Down
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Points: 924 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28 Aug 2011 at 18:44
Uritel has hit on one aspect I'd like to see improved. The length/duration of battles.

Months of effort/work/ planning etc resulting in an instantaneous singular combat report can be a little.....deflating.

I recall a post addressing this suggesting multi-day battles where the battle was progressive. One could receive multiple reports as different elements (Ranged, Cav etc) engage and create the opportunity for reinforcements to arrive and sway the course.

I'd like to see this avenue of thought pursued by the community and the Devs.
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Points: 224 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Aug 2011 at 03:15
Originally posted by uritel uritel wrote:

From where I'm coming from, I was looking at it from having the different options of a hybrid army or a unit-type army.  It's nice to have a solo cavalry army to raze an enemy if their defenses or down, or else have a hybrid one based on speed vs ranged.  Ballista having the longest range so their attacks would hit first (presumably hitting walls first, lowering their effectiveness), archers hitting second (against cav, other archers, or infantry), cav third for a quick mowdown of other cav and infantry, and lastly inf to clean up.. or if you run out of inf vs their army, your archers and ballistas will finish up or be destroyed.

I'm not necessarily looking for a rock-paper-scissors of pre-defined battle strategies set by the user (which could be interesting.. but yes, that would develop into luck), but more of a speed vs ranged argument that reflects the battle.  If you're saying that's already thrown into the algorithm, then please correct me and I'll withdraw my "complaints".  If it's simply unit a + unit b = combined c vs enemy though, that's where I have more of the issue.  It's the sequence of events vs a lump sum total (ratio'd out depending on how much of total quantity was cav, inf, ranged, etc) that I'm parading for.

it really sounds like you're looking for a battle that is broken down into rounds.  It's a really smart way to go about it and one that other games have tried but not always gotten it right. I'm assuming the devs want to avoid this so they dont end up with an evony-type battle system; evony's system would have been really good had they kept developing it (they abandoned development within a year of leaving beta).

In the Illy battle system it seems like a multitude of factors are taken into account (terrain, commanders, unit type, and some unknown secret dev magic) and the sum total of those factors are used to compute a result rather than determining a round by round battle sequence.

btw, everyone is dissing on rock / paper / scissor game play. The total war series uses rock / paper / scissors in their games and probably have the best battle system ever developed in a computer game. It can be a very good system if done right. - M.
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Points: 1650 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Aug 2011 at 04:48
The validity of a rock-paper-scissors approach to balance is debatable, but I've played several of the Total War games--which I love--and fail to see any such elements in their gameplay or tactical balance.  Yes, Total War units' strengths are always tempered by counterpoint weaknesses, costs, or tradeoffs.  But that isn't the same thing at all, and Illyriad has that as well anyway.

More to the point, the devs have already shared their opinion regarding such an approach, and they are very strongly against it.  We can debate the matter, but realize we're discussing theory that will almost certainly never reach practice.

----

As for making battle more interesting or exciting, I will refer back to a thread I started some time ago, that proposed a means of making battles more drawn out and able to be affected while in-progress (while recognizing the infeasibility of making battle resolution interactive):

http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/noninstantaneous-battles_topic1066.html

This is in my opinion the most viable way to give individual battle what detail and complexity it currently lacks.


Edited by HonoredMule - 30 Aug 2011 at 04:58
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Meagh View Drop Down
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Points: 224 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Aug 2011 at 06:54

The rock-paper-scissors approach has been the foundation of the tw game engine since the original shogun. Admittedly i don't really observe it in game play either but i'm sure it's there. It's not even relevant to the discussion i think and i only mentioned it to not that the approach can work and is not itself bad.

HM, I looked at your post about making battles stretch over time. That is a really, really good idea. It may not be what the op had in mind but i think it would add alot of strategy to the game and allow for player initiated maneuvers, maybe pull a 'bait and switch' for example. 

One thing GM TC posted that seemed interesting to me is this

Originally posted by GM ThunderCat GM ThunderCat wrote:


However scouting your target before attacking is also important, and then adjusting the composition and layout of your army before you send it out to match and counter your opposition...
...
Do you send in one unified army or waves of different armies to wear down the advantages of what you are attacking; before mopping up with a more balanced army? etc.

this leads me to think that though the battle isn't computed by round, you can still use different techniques by sending different kind of waves against the target for different results. Something for the op and others to experiment with and might address the ops desire for a detailed combat mechanic. - M.

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Points: 418 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Sep 2011 at 01:05

In this game battles are like poker... it takes 2 minutes to learn how to play it, but years to understand and develop the finest strategie. Frankly im still learning every day... and if you link that with how to manage your cities to produce this kind or that kind of unit, at that production rate, wich size to chose, how to train and manage your commanders... you will have to put your neurons at work as soon as possible. Theire is a lot to do with armies: occupy, attack, raid, assassination, feint, sieges, sailly forths... and with all of these actions comes loads of different possible strategies and combinaisons to adopt.
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