Tactical Battles

Here's something I posted in another thread sometime ago which I feel would improve the game quite a bit at minimal AI reconfiguration:

When I think of AoWSM, I'm amazed by how something so small like a wall can add so much depth to the tactical combat.

The combat system itself in AoW isn't very complex. With most units, you just move and attack. Even the special abilities like fire or cold strike didn't change the general strategy by much.

But the walls did. The difference between defending a city, attacking a city and a combat without a walls were HUGE.

Archer units were excellent defenders and a lot weaker when attacking fortified enemy.

You needed special units if you wanted the gates broken before the defending archers turn you into a pin cushion.

You generally needed a completely different units depending if it was for defense, offense or exploration.

i would like to see groups of units fight at the same time instead of one unit out of each group do all the fighting. When two units in civ revolution met all units duke it out until the winning side remains victorious...

Tactical Battles

Current system uses the ‘combat speed’ of the unit to determine its APs allotment.  One side acts, then the other.  Repeat until only one side remains on tactical field.  Side that acts first has immense advantage.

First change:  Determine APs based on the unit’s movement. Higher movement = more APs.

Now use the units ‘combat speed’ and change it to ‘initiative.’  (Actually, can leave the ‘label’ alone if you want…just change its function to initiative in the tac screen)

Finally, change the combat acting queue to be unit specific, not ‘side’ specific.  Now assign every unit (of both sides) a place in the combat acting queue.  Ties are decided in favor of the unit currently having more APs. 

Each unit now is given commands when its ‘turn to act’ comes up in the combat acting queue.  When the last unit in the current queue ‘acts,’ the round is over.  All units (except those ‘frozen, etc.) are now assigned a fresh set of APs to use.  The number of APs is based on their respective current initiative.  The PC now assigns all units a place in the next ‘combat acting queue.  Rinse, repeat.

Initiative per unit – not side.  Action points refer to how much a unit can do (already in game).  Initiative refers to when it can expend its APs.

>> This, all by itself, would remove the horrible advantage given to whichever “side” ‘moves (uses all its action points) first. 

Definitions of words/concepts:

APs = action points. 

Act = unit uses its APs to move/attack/fortify/cast. (User may now give it commands)

Initiative = units current ‘combat speed’ (as in current code)

Round = completing one combat action queue.

Combat action queue = the order/ sequence in which each unit of either side is assigned to act. Each unit ‘acts when its turn comes up in the combat action queue.

Initiative = determines where in the ‘combat action queue’ each unit is placed: highest initiative first, lowest initiative last, etc. Ties in the sequence are resolved in favor of unit with more APs, and if APs are =, then a random roll.

Immediate commands: (unit expends its APs immediately)

Move, melee, volley, cast, fortify.

Next design steps:

ALL UNITS: Reduce the strength of units that have zero AP’s remaining.  (say 10%?)  Defenders should have an advantage, just not the all or nothing of the current system.

ARCHERS: Redesign archers so that as range increases, the attack strength of the volley decreases.

Create various types of bows with various strengths and ranges.  Give archers a sight range increase if on higher ground then their target.

CONDITIONAL COMMANDS:

“Round” refers to when all units, both sides have, as permitted by each unit’s initiative, either expend their APs obeying an immediate command or have been given conditional commands. 

Immediate commands: (expends units APs immediately)

Move, melee, volley, cast, fortify.  (Already in game)  

Conditional commands are assigned to units so that they don’t use their APs immediately.  The APs are stored in the unit (for the duration of current round) and used to act (implement/do) the conditional commands currently given the unit.  Unit waits and responds to actions of enemy units.  APs are not, however, accumulated from one round to the next.  Once the round is over (all units of all sides have acted), any unused APs are gone.  The unit used its time doing the conditional command.  It may have acted in response to enemy actions, or it may have waited for an opportunity that did not happen.

Suggested conditional commands: Once unit expends its APs, it will only defend.

Close and Melee = engage if enemy approaches within x (trigger) distance.  X is assigned per unit, 1,2,3,4, as part of conditional command.  When triggered, the unit immediately moves towards E and melee attacks.  ((so, some units with an enhanced ‘counterattck’ would just defend, while units with enhanced attack strength would move towards E and attempt to attack first.))

Volley engage = archers volley at E if it gets within x distance.  X may be assigned per unit, 1,2,3,4,5.

Counter volley = archers volley against archer unit that just attacked it.

MAGIC USERS: Redesign MU (magic users) so that as spell levels increase, so does the related casting times.   Also, the number of levels the caster is above the actual spell being cast reduces casting time of that spell.  The following is illustrative.  I really don’t know what percentages, etc. would be effective.  However, consider the pace of the battle given the above ‘round’ system…  Developers decide percentage, AP cost, etc… [or allow user to modify these in a game customize input page.]

Level 1 MU casts level 1 spell = uses 100% of base cast time.

Level 2 MU casts level 1 spell = uses   90% of base cast time.

Level 10 MU casts level 1 spell= use   10% of base cast time.

Level 10 MU casts level 5 spell= use   50% of base cast time.

Each 10% of MU time consumes an AP.  So, some spells take a long time to cast – perhaps the MU will stand and work on casting a powerful spell while the troops go through several rounds of movement.  Interesting?

Also, suggest that armor rating apply against AP of units.  Like heavy armor?  You move slower, surprised? channelers, too. 

Create facing for units.  Attacking the flank, rear of unit gives attacker a bonus.  Create pole arms, so foot soldiers can face of a mounted charge. 

Create weakness and strengths for each type of unit so that trade offs, tactics, and well planned battle plans, etc., all create interesting choices for the players. 

>>>

>>>   Most importantly,  make many of these factors modifiable by the user, via a customizing screen.  Idea is that at game set, user can access the battle customizing screen and edit / adjust / set values for many of these things,.  Why make them hard code and shut us out?

>>>  Respectfully suggested...

Just wait for the tactical battle mod me and Kenata are -almost- done with.  We ran into problems with attack and defense multipliers, but now, thanks to Kenata's brilliance, we have them working.

The goal of the mod is to attach special abilities to all of the weapons, so that they all fulfill a tactical niche.

oh nice, I will definitely keep an eye out for that.

The devs have to decide which route to go: AoW style or HoMM/Kings bounty style.

Personally I would prefer AoW style with large battlefields and more wargame like gameplay. I think this would fit Elemental better than chess-style battles.

I agreed, and i hope to have a tactical interface similar to the Fantasy War\Elven Legacy one.

Smaller models and more units in a tile, more animations for units when are waiting for orders and more animations when fighting, i want to see a real melee between two battalions with ALL the soldiers fighting and not, like now, with only one animated and fighting and, magically (i know that's war of magic but) all the units desappear.

Another thing I thought of that many tactical game combat simulation games have is the idea of silmutaneous combat. In other words, (regardless of anything else you implement as far as T.battles) why not make damage take effect at the *end* of the combat round? This would completely nullify the massive move-first advantage which is the biggest killer of tactical battles as it now stands in this game, and is much more realistic I might add. So, for example you would have:

Round 1:

Attacker, side A, moves, shoots, attacks, does some damage and kills units (the damaged and killed defenders are not considered to have taken their damage results yet ).

Defender, side B, moves, shoots, attacks with all units including those affected by round1.sideA's player turn, and does damage & kills some of the Attacker's units.

post round: All damage from round 1 now takes effect including removal of slain units.

Round 2: reapeat round 1

Round 3 to n, same as above ....

Even if you did absolutely nothing else, this in-and-of itself would improve combat a lot as those strong defender units typically targetted by the human player on the first round can actually fire back now before they die, taking some attackers down with them.

I still believe there needs to be a fog-of-war system in place to some extent, as well as other changes that players posted above as far as weapon capabilities, but this would certainly be one giant step forward.

-There needs to be a magic defense attribute beyond "This unit can not be the target of offensive spells" (which doesn't work ATM).

-Shields need to provide a large bonus against ranged attacks beyond their stated "dodge bonus" (which also doesn't seem to work ATM).

-I would love it if different armors were better/worse against different damage types, but that's probably pie-in-the-sky.

-A real First Strike system where damage from the attacker is only applied AFTER the defender counter-attacks, unless the attacker has First Strike

-Positive morale effects as well as negative morale effects, and more ways to affect morale in general

-Heroes with passive abilities that affect the battlefield, like morale above, or add/hinder movement, or defense, or attack, etc.

-The ability to choose the formation your units will start in

-Need a wide variety of tactical spell effects such as:

  - Persistent Walls/Clouds of Fire/Ice/Wind etc. that last for X turns

  - Spells that summon creatures onto the tactical battlefield and only remain for that combat

  - Invisibility, stealth, blur, displacement - things that screw with what you are actually seeing on the tactical map

  - Conversion of hostile units to friendly

  - and so on.

Plus everything mentioned by the above posters

I might add, all units should be able to escape if they can. Locking non-hero units on the map grid is just plain weak. It would be nice if there were some smokescreen type spells that spellcasters could cast that could help cover a retreat (smoke would cause attack reductions, especially for archers). It would be even nicer if the outnumbered defending AI side did something intelligent like this: caste smokescreen & any other spell that reduced attacker's movement, and run like hell for the edge of the board & escape instead of doing the same stupid suicidal attacks over-and-over when massively outnumbered.