indivdual/party/squad/company clarification

I'm a bit confused with how this is going to work in the final game.

 

With a party of units, how do the stats function exactly? Is it planned to just be a sum of all the units attacks and defenses? (ie a party of spearmen with 5 attack will have a 20 attack, and THAT value is used?)

 

or is it going to be master of magic style?

(when attacking, each individual unit has 5 attack.  Therefore, when attacking, each spearman 'rolls' an attack of 5, so its 4 seperate 5 strength attacks)

 

Basically what I'm getting at is it one roll of 20, or 4 rolls of 5?

 

 

Id like to put a plug in for the master of magic style, 4 rolls of 5.  It makes heroes and fantastical monsters feel a lot more 'epic', with high level warrior champions being able to take on companies of 10 men at a time.  However, it also provides balance in that if a 'warrior champion with a bow' has a bad roll, he does poor damage.  If an archer unit of 6 individuals fire itll do more constant damage on average.

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Reply #1 Top

I would also rather see a roll per each unit in the party. However, I suspect they do it the simpler way and just combine the stats and treat it as a single unit in terms of rolls.

Reply #2 Top

Trust me Its better this way because in mid to late game we'll have raid groups and armies 1000+ strong if it did individual rolls your system would likely lag to hell when you told them to attack.

 

*Even if the max size was 100+ it'd still be much slower and it'd instant kill champions* because individual rolls would have more chances for criticals etc. it'd be unfair against single units unless we gave later level mass buffs to champions etc. so as you can see it complicates things immensely.

Reply #3 Top

Disclaimer: bitterness inside.

(not meant to be rude especially as we don't really know how it is)

[quote=Annatar11] I would also rather see a roll per each unit in the party. However, I suspect they do it the simpler way and just combine the stats and treat it as a single unit in terms of rolls.

I really hope not.

We already lost the “epic battles involving 10’000 vs 10’000” to get the modest “400 vs 400”.

Combining stats of parties would just also send “even 1000 peasants can’t hurt a dragon” into oblivion.

It would also defeat any idea that only a few people can access the target at any time: can you imagine 22 swordsmen striking at the same time against someone? No! Absolutely no! But those big tiles are deceitful as it is now. There should be much more tiles much smaller with only 3 people maximum (or one big unit) in each one like in Dom3.

[quote=”Sethfc”] Trust me Its better this way because in mid to late game we'll have raid groups and armies 1000+ strong if it did individual rolls your system would likely lag to hell when you told them to attack.

Playing Dom3, battles involving hundreds of different individualized units with tens of stats and tags (yeah: the same tens of stats that people like to describe as “too complicated”) are commonplace and watching them unfold in real-time is no lag for my computer and was no lag either years ago with Dom2.

It’s even less a possibility when you consider that battles will be turn-based. Computer lagging for 22 units attacking? Scary!

 

But you could say “Dom3 units are just a few sprites and here we have 3D”. Ok!

First I would say that I would be perfectly satisfied with some kind of false 3D as in AOW if that could help us have epicness in battles. Gameplay before graphics!

Second I am not the one claiming that the game can be played on any machine even low-end and that it will adapt by displaying less soldiers for a party i.e. If the dev team said it, it must be doable.  If it’s not, excuse me but I have not finished AoWII campaign: if I want battles with 20 units on each side I just have to reach that CD on the shelf behind me.

[quote="Sethfc”] *Even if the max size was 100+ it'd still be much slower and it'd instant kill champions* because individual rolls would have more chances for criticals etc. it'd be unfair against single units unless we gave later level mass buffs to champions etc. so as you can see it complicates things immensely.

Champions are not designed to be unstoppable war machines. They have better HP, can be equipped with mighty armors and weapons (now to be found in quest but soon able to be forged) but they are neither dragon nor Sovereign.

Again a Dom3 analogy. Champions are powerful and can be made even more (think boots of trampling, pendant of luck, ethereal suit) but sending one alone against, say, 50 good infantries with morale buffed by a priest is sending them to death. It can work against barbarians, yes, but against a respectful army your champion can wreack havoc when supported by troops for the same reason I told above: troops are protecting his flanks, you can’t have 22 soldiers striking him at the same time!

Note that even sending some pretendant Cyclops or monster alone against a good army is a bad idea.

Sorry but if a game programmed by one guy during his free time can do it, it is not “immensely complicated” and can sure be done by the Stardock team working full time.

Reply #4 Top

Quoting Sethfc, reply 2
Trust me Its better this way because in mid to late game we'll have raid groups and armies 1000+ strong if it did individual rolls your system would likely lag to hell when you told them to attack.

 

*Even if the max size was 100+ it'd still be much slower and it'd instant kill champions* because individual rolls would have more chances for criticals etc. it'd be unfair against single units unless we gave later level mass buffs to champions etc. so as you can see it complicates things immensely.
End of Sethfc's quote

Generating rolls is pretty basic math, something even an archaic computer by todays standards can do hundreds of thousands of times a second. I can't even imagine how fast my i7 could do it.

Reply #5 Top

point taken about the 1 vs thousands. yeah one hero shouldn't win.

 

However, I DO worry about obsoleteness of champions/summons, as well as uses of small elite units of soldiers vs larger groups (a party versus a squad).

 

I dont want a hero crushing an 100 man army.  I do want my hero (upgraded/high level) able to beat a company, even a company of 'knight' type units.

 

 

Id also think it would be neat if units could gain experience AND be upgraded.  Ie my party of spearmen kick butt and get to level 3, and 'learn' abilities (such as armor piercing).  This unit could then be upgraded (at a monetary cost) later to armored pikemen, like we were able to upgrade ships in gal civ 2.

Reply #6 Top

It takes more effort for your computer to navigate to this web-page, use your mouse to click reply, and type a response then it does to do 800 subtraction problems (what attack vs defense basically comes down to).

 

If we are worried about the amount of time to do the calculations, we could simply have the 2 units 'clash' for a few seconds before giving the result, I personally think this would look better anyway. 

Reply #7 Top

As I have found in this thread https://forums.elementalgame.com/389248, companies are currently overpowered due to a bug: A squad of 10 horse archers, with 1 one archer having 14 ATK, is listed as a unit with 143 ATK (which is fine) and do 1430 Damage (which is not fine since 143 ATK already take into account the number of unit in the squad)