all units should have swarm

[strach]

One of the most illogical things in WB is that you don't get any bonus for attacking in a group. It's rather obvious that if eight people attack one person, not only the group has a huge advantage, but also there's is a high probability that the group will defeat its opponent without any harm. Of course it may happen that before going down single person can take with him one or even few opponents, but it is more likely that the group won't suffer any harm.

So my idea is that, all units should have a +1 swarm. That means that every unit in a 8-stack of light infantry will have 18str comapred to 10 str of a single unit. Single unit still has a chance of killing 1 or 2 enemy units, but the probability of that happening would be more in terms with what we know about combat in real life.

What do you think?

PS This can be somehow balanced with "trample" feature (HvC, Elephant, Mamooth)which would negate the swarm.

[gil]

like

[Chazar]

I like the idea, at least for some weak units it would be nice.

However, it seems overly complicated to give a lot of units the swarm ability. This would unnecessarily complicate the game. So a general mechanism that works regardless of unit type, but for all stacks, might be nice.

[Igor]

The idea of swarm/banding of 1-turn units was already discussed and was found not useful. don't remember when this was, may be a 6 months earlier. too powerful such units will be.

[KGB]

One problem with giving a 'like' group bonus to every unit in Warbarons is that it would make cities even harder to conquer given they can have 32 men in them compared to only 8 in a regular stack.

Another problem is that there is no real difference between 8 Lt Inf and 8 Hv Inf so should those units be be allowed to be grouped together? What about Orcs/Elves/Dwarves/Humans given they all basically fight in the same manner (weapon/shield/armor). Realistically all Infantry units (scouts, Lt/Hv Inf, Pikemen, Elves, Orcs, Dwarves) should be grouped together, all cavalry (Lt/Hv Calv, Wolfriders, Elephants) should be grouped together etc.

The idea behind swarm is that is was to apply to physically small creatures who could benefit from additional creatures when attacking and make it harder to effectively strike back against hordes of them or get into military formations that would defend against them. By that I mean picture a lone man. He can be roughly surrounded by 8 men (using a square board vs hexes). Beyond that additional men can't attack the lone man because they are standing behind the guys so effectively they aren't adding anything to the combat they are only adding life points (ie they can replace fallen guys attacking the lone man). Put 2 men back-to-back and you can only surround them with 10 men. 4 men can only be surrounded by 12 so now you are down from 8-1 to 3-1. Military formations allow soldiers to get into squares to prevent masses of enemies from being able to effectively attack them (the Romans used military squares VERY effectively against far superior numbers of enemies) so that they are adding nothing to the combat beyond life points (replacing fallen soldiers).

On the other hand small units like Scorpions (I picture the Giant ones as being about the size of large rats, not being the size of horses or larger) can easily add plenty more units into their swarm when attacking and still all be able to physically attack because military formations don't stop them from crawling over/past/around etc. Also their attack mode (poison) definitely benefits from more stings (more poison into the victim). The other unit that gets Swarm (Demons) I picture as more Imp sized rather than being huge (if they were Balrog size they should be getting a massive Fear bonus) and those Imps using poison in their tails. Combined with their small size and flying skill they too would be very effective in large numbers against any formation.

KGB

[Moonknight]

Remember when Demons ruled the lands a couple versions ago?