What do you think about multiple units per square? (Tactical)

Heroes of Might and Magic was fairly successful at making this functionality work. Really though, I have never really had a problem with WoM for this. The current mechanism simulates each unit attack at their standard attack power ( ie not combined ) and defending at their standard defense. This is really a good way of handling this. Honestly, the only reason to break down units into a smaller size than one tile is to allow some kind of move through mechanism, though I fail to see how this would result in any kind of real advance in tactical combat itself. Perhaps, it would be cool, and perhaps, it would feel a bit more realistic. Yet, would it really facilitate a deepening of the tactical experience? Right now, a unit behind another unit has to move the same amount of squares to circumvent the blocking unit as it would to go through. The only advantage would be allowing units to move through long lines of defenders, when the circumventing movement would be greater than the through movement. However, this would probably lead to more exploitative tactics than would probably be desired. For instance a line of heavy defenders with glass cannons behind. Thus the glass cannons would rush out, attack, and rush back to safety.

ok lets see, there are a few ways of pulling it off. I  am not sure how dominion handles it, but two really good examples are Master of magic and Heroes of might and magic.

They do it in different ways,in master of magic you have "units".

each unit can have between 1 and 8 individuals in it.

when it attacks, each individual in the unit makes an attack roll and each roll is dealt with seperately.

meaning that 8 spearmen can each make a str 2 attack -> 8 to hit rolls are made and managed. Each spearman has  3 hp so that the whole unit needs to take 24 point of damage to be wiped out. If the unit levels and gain hp, they go up to 4 hp each, so the unit goes up to 32 hp in total. All attacks go against the same spearman until it is killed, then move on to the next one. Area attacks hit all of the at the same time, such as a fireball, so a str 5 firebal has  the potential to outright kill the whole stack, whereas the firebolt spell would attack them one at a time until it ran out of damage (it would have to be at least a 24 damage firebolt for a perfect roll kill which would not happen, it's max damage was 20 for this spell)

The minotaur was a 2 individual unit, high str, high defence, high hp - it's effectiveness cut in half if you killed one of the indivuals.

lesse in Heroes of might and magic

you have a stack of 10 peasants. 3 hp each, attack of 2, defence 2.

the skills of the hero completely change how they react in combat. Hmm on second thought, they are more similar than i initialy believed.

Hmm we will need more examples from other people, i have been writing for several hours now and i am drawing a blank.

EDIT HA kenata beat me taht was odd seeing his post there

im trying to think of how kohan and kohan 2 dealt with the issue.

however with the situation that kenata mentions - the concept of zone of control prevents that form happening (not that we have it, but...)

so the line of blocker advances         ******* 

with the glass cannon behind them       IIII

or like so

- *                        x

-* to attack =>       X

-*                         x

-*

the "*" can spread out to envelope the three "X"  and the "-" or "I" can rush in between to give a smackdown, but when the glass cannons retreat back they recieve attacks of oppertunity unless they have "acrobatics" or that attack of dungeon blood maidens in homm5.

also - dont forget the display in elemental is misleading because it shows you the grand total of the units attack power, not the individual attack power of each soldier

It's been a long time since I played HoMM V, but I thought your hero would just kinda sit back and not really participate tactically, maybe doing a drive-by every once in a while. Same goes for Kings Bounty where your hero doesn't even appear, just casts spells and his equipment gives buffs to his troops.

The reason I'm asking is because in WoM you have single heroes, yet they appear on the map with all your other units. In games like Final Fantasy Tactics, each unit was single, so there was no worry about stacks. If there is going to be multiple units in a single square, it should scale as much as you want, 20, 30, 100... as long as you can afford the troops. The problem is that quickly breaks the mechanic of having your "hero" individually on the battle field, because now there are real armies to deal with. I think that's why I've never seen it done quite the way WoM has it, limiting the stacks helps, but then it's questionable why to even include stacks as it's just doubling up a way to increase unit power, that could be done through better gear or training, (with an individual unit).

I wasn't thinking of a move-through mechanism, I was just thinking of making the squares smaller so even with groups it comes down to one unit per square, without being tied to the large size squares made to accommodate 12 units.

I haven't played MoM so I can't comment on the balance, but it sounds like the unit power and type was weighed with the stack size, so scaled easily. In WoM it's like they throw you a menu to pick your unit size, and besides the grind of researching and building improvements to support it, doesn't really add much to tactical combat. The unit sizes are seemingly arbitrary (1/4/8/12), and have got to increase the difficulty of balancing heroes against them. Right now heroes are much too powerful early on and not powerful enough later, and I can't help but wonder how much has to do to with unit stacks.

I would rather just see a full out army vs army game with supporting heroes (like Romance of The Kindoms), or something along the lines of FF tactics. FF Tactics style would offer more opportunities for RPG progression. I really don't know what to make of these "small armies", or the purpose behind them.

I did not know that (that it was calculated individually), thanks for mentioning it.

yeah. MoM did it great. added a whole new strategy to the game. Adamantium Slingers Rocked, even human spearman could be awesome. Wasn't just a matter of getting to the next tech (i.e. weapon like scimitar, or trog sword in WoM)

The way Elemental has done it and the way they do equipment is broken when you throw in Champions and monsters.  They are incompatible with the way the numbers are crunched in this game.  But, as for the way the units look and move, I'm fine with it in general.  Other than other basic problems like ZOC and such that I've bitched at length about.

Forgive my ambiguity, what I was trying to say is that with a game that is tightly integrated and well balanced, yes you can do things like increase stack sizes between 1-8 and even 1-12. But just throwing it in as part of a hodge podge of mechanics that draws upon classics which had those features, just cause that's how it was done... with no REAL game mechanic reason or balance for doing so, it just introduces more complication and imbalance into a title that already suffers largely from complications and imbalance.

That's what I'm trying to say. And FF Tactics isn't the only example of single units per space, also Age of Wonders which is a classic among classics. Just cause it was once imagined that WoM would be like the successor to MoM, doesn't mean it has to try to follow all its footsteps. I would be more inclined to think that MoM made such design decisions out the need for simplicity rather than it being the best option available. Did MoM let you build a group of units with any armour/weapon  combination of your choosing? No way, but we have that here. Elemental should be designed around what it's capable of doing, not around some imagined heritage it tries to follow.