Goodmorning all,

a thought,   While battle winning spells will exist,  the vast majority of spells will be considerably less powerful.  Those stat breaking spells will be and are ment to be just that Stat Breaking spells. But they will be super expencive, have to be prepared in advance(except in VERY VERY endgame sanarios). Most of the times, and in most of the battles the spells will be on the order of HOMM, or AOW/MOM. 

What i mean to say is Yes game altering spells exist, and will make the caclulator return garbage, but only in late game, and only at large expence.  MOST of the time the spells thrown around will be only as powerful as your average spell in other games, WELL within the calculable limit.

To joasoze:  you are right in part,  Knowing how many and what type of opponent your facing, and how many troops you have is enough information to make the decision. However that information is too raw, to make any meaningful judgement of weather or not to make the attack you'd have to look at all the stats, of all the opponents your faceing, check their special ablilites, streanghts and weaknesses.  You can't just look at these names and know them "Billy The Soldier" a unit of frogboy's doesn't tell me ANYTHING about 'Billy' as a soldier, I would need to be shown every peice of equipment Billy owns, and then think long and hard about what that stuff means to a battle. ...  now i've got a battle of 5000 units, named 'Billy the soldier', 'john the soldier', 'suzan th...', 'bob ..' do you see what i'm getting at here?

It would be nice if the comp did some of that proccessing for me.  and presented it in a useful fasion, 2 - 3 numbers, or qualitative statements.  With the understanding that Battle breaking spells may exsist, the opposing Channler may be in the army and my scout didn't see him/her,  there are and will always be the option of surpises, illusion spells, mis-information.  But for 7 out of 10 battles probably more it'll be mundain army vrs mundain army with moderate (non stat breaking) magical assistance to both sides.   All I want is that the comp provide an estimate under the assumption that no heavy magic is going on, because most of the time it won't (It'll be wrong sometimes, but only really wrong when my opponent is counting on it being really wrong beause they've heavy magiced something and are out to catch my with my pants down).

Take Care.

Robbie 

Goodmorning all,

a thought,   While battle winning spells will exist,  the vast majority of spells will be considerably less powerful.  Those stat breaking spells will be and are ment to be just that Stat Breaking spells. But they will be super expencive, have to be prepared in advance(except in VERY VERY endgame sanarios). Most of the times, and in most of the battles the spells will be on the order of HOMM, or AOW/MOM. 

What i mean to say is Yes game altering spells exist, and will make the caclulator return garbage, but only in late game, and only at large expence.  MOST of the time the spells thrown around will be only as powerful as your average spell in other games, WELL within the calculable limit.

To joasoze:  you are right in part,  Knowing how many and what type of opponent your facing, and how many troops you have is enough information to make the decision. However that information is too raw, to make any meaningful judgement of weather or not to make the attack you'd have to look at all the stats, of all the opponents your faceing, check their special ablilites, streanghts and weaknesses.  You can't just look at these names and know them "Billy The Soldier" a unit of frogboy's doesn't tell me ANYTHING about 'Billy' as a soldier, I would need to be shown every peice of equipment Billy owns, and then think long and hard about what that stuff means to a battle. ...  now i've got a battle of 5000 units, named 'Billy the soldier', 'john the soldier', 'suzan th...', 'bob ..' do you see what i'm getting at here?

It would be nice if the comp did some of that proccessing for me.  and presented it in a useful fasion, 2 - 3 numbers, or qualitative statements.  With the understanding that Battle breaking spells may exsist, the opposing Channler may be in the army and my scout didn't see him/her,  there are and will always be the option of surpises, illusion spells, mis-information.  But for 7 out of 10 battles probably more it'll be mundain army vrs mundain army with moderate (non stat breaking) magical assistance to both sides.   All I want is that the comp provide an estimate under the assumption that no heavy magic is going on, because most of the time it won't (It'll be wrong sometimes, but only really wrong when my opponent is counting on it being really wrong beause they've heavy magiced something and are out to catch me with my pants down).

Take Care.

Robbie 

I was fairly certain the Sovereign had to be present on the battlefield to cast a spell. Or 90+% of spells anyhow. I guess a long-distance morale effecting spell like Sauron's would be ok.

@Robbie_Price - where is the fun if the battle is decieded in advance

I'm actually hoping that as long as a battle takes place in a Sov's sphere of influence that he could cast in the battle like he was actually there. Or perhaps you can get a magic item your army or hero could carry, like a mirror, that would allow a caster not present to cast there.

Joasoze:  Who said anything about decided in advance??  

Now some battles are decided in advance "Dragon of curbstomp"vr 'leper with one arm and a pointed stick'.  That's a pritty one sided battle regardless of weather the comp tells you about it or not.   unless somebody decided to name thier dragon 'leper with one arm and a pointed stick' in which case if you own the Dragon of Curbstomp it might be nice to be warned that the name is deciving because the innaccurate calculated odds come to 50%. 

What i think most people are thinking in terms of is 2 numbers,  probabilty and volitility,   so it might say,  50% chance,  +/- 30%.  there is nothing pre-detirmined there.   REALLY good scouting might say, 55% +/- 7%.   Still far from pre-detirmined and that explicately is assuming that no really funky magic is being or going to be used in the battle, so if you or your opponent have a suprise planned those numbers mean even less still.

I don't see where you're getting the idea of pre-detirmined battles from?  care to explain?

Thanks

 Price

If the penalty for your sovereign dying wasn't so severe, I would agree with you.  It's good to have a vague understanding of what the risks of a battle are without mousing over every unique unit your opponent has.  That's why I'd like to be able to check a volatility score and strength score--- both of which are very easily calculated.  If volatility is high, then I'll go ahead and mouse over enemy units to see if it's worth the risk.  If volatility is roughly equal, I'll go ahead and leap straight into the battle without further analysis.

Also, if modded creatures make it into the game in the same way as they do in SPORE, then no amount of player experience can prepare you for what you face and people who can honestly stick with their John Wayne mentality about game loading will soon find that they spend more time starting new games than playing current ones.

I like the idea of power comparison. It is an easy way to evaluate the forces of both side without making any probability calculations. I would personally rate the combat on 3 values:

Strength: Determined by attack defense values of units and the amount of units.

Volatility: The amount of speciall abilities that could have an impact on the battle.

Magic: The potential of the ennemy wizard to influence the battle.

All these variables are compared separately, so you dont neet to evaluate for example, how much a volatility point is worth of army strength point. So players analyse these variables in order to take the "do I attack or not" decision.

If you want to make this information unclear using scouts and spies, that is fine with me, I don't really care as long that the uncertainity is indicated in the number. For example I am sure he has an army strength of 25 but  I think he has an army strength of 75. The value 25 is cetain, the value 75 could be lower or higher than the actual value. If Information scouting gets better, the minimum and uncertain value would be close to each other.

So the system abovve could be easily calculated by comparing values and making averages and medians.

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Now the other thing I would like, which did not seem to be undertood, will be illustrated below. This is how it works in "advance wars":

1 swordman unit VS 1 dragon and 1 priest unit.

1-I select swordman, select which path it will move. I move it next to the dragon

2-I select to attack the dragon.

3-The game show: 5% to 10%. Which mean that this attack will inflict to the dragon from a minimum of 5% to a maximum of 10% of damage to the dragon. (based on it's max HP)

4-Since this attack is not very efficient and the dragon is full strength, I cancel the move.

5-Instead I move my unit beside the priest.

6-I select the priest as target and it shows, 60-80%. Ah! Much better.

7- I accept the action, the units move in place and attacks.

8- Repeat the process for every move.

That's it. It's a simple attack evaluation to make sure you do not make useless attacks, like scratching the dragon, without knowling it.

This is not tile-based turn-based battles. Perhaps, however, you can select a unit, and hover mouse over enemy unit, and it can give a % based odds for victory or a recommendation based upon several smaller factors.

Either way, you either get a percentage or you get "good idea!" "pretty good" "fair" "tough" "Poor choice" "bad move" "failure imminent"

Goodmorning all,

I was thinking more for on the world map,  army vrs army. that's where you would really need the report.

In battle if i remember correctly the idea is that you let the battle run as simmulation, real time so all units move at once, and occationally you hit pause, stopping the game so you can enter orders or change of plans.   If one wanted to impliment a guestmation at that level  the easiest thing to do would be colour the attack pointer,  say crosshairs,  green for go, blue yellow or orange for more dangerous opponents and red for 'gonna pwn ya'.   My self i would hope that once in battle the intraface is obvious enough that such a system wasn't needed.  but if it were to exist that is how i would impliment it.


Take care

I agree with the green, yellow, and red system. Of course, such a system doesn't "have" to be there, but if it turns out, in testing, that it could be needed, then that particular permutation is the system I would support. Now, on the World Map, perhaps a gigantic card could be opened upon scrolling over an enemy (or ally) army. Where it has a small figurine to represent each unit-type (bob, jerry, crochet, and armadillo) a small number below to represent the number of soldiers, and then large numbers to the side with big letter ATTK and DEF next to them, so you know what kind of unit it is .... so far as its physical prowess.

Thats kind of how it was done in Total War, anyways (on the world map)

Goodmorning,

Myself i would prefer to pop up a small interface, with  2 - 5 numbers / statements  and have an option to open the larger card. Always having a large card jump up everytime my mouse passes over the army would get annoying quick.  A small window with enough infromation in it to decide  attack, run, or open the big card,  would be preferable.

Robbie.

Yea, option for a larger card would be necessary, Im just wondering what the smaller card would have in its details. Perhaps a total number of all attack values, and total number of all defense values? (sum) .... or avg + number of units. maybe some notes on weapon type, like "mostly archers" or "swords and axes" or "mostly spears" or "mostly cavalry".

Goodmorning,

Assuming very high level scouting I would have the small card have 

"We consider this army to be a _____" threat, nusance, joke
"It is consistent of mostly ______ and ______, It also contains _______" Last one is a string for strongest hero or other unit
"Overall we feal that ______ against this force has a ____% of success" (first blank chooseable:  A raid, full on attack, stealth opperation.)

(Optional)"We would expect ______ casualties on ______ side," #  -  #, our side if %>50  their side if %<50

"We feal _______ about this report"  Very certain, certain, uncertain, ashammed (to show you this report, due to how poor it is)


sort of thing.

Very good example, Robbie

props

Woot, somebody karma's me yay!

lol.