Balancing Stacked Cities

[magian]

So, most of us have run into a city, packed to the gills with enemy troops, that we have no hope of taking without catastrophic losses. Usually, I just walk around these fortresses... but if they are in striking range of a number of your cities, trench warfare can set in. This has all been discussed before, and various solutions have been suggested, Well, here is another..................

Combat in warbarons is maxed at 8 vs 8 in most cases. So why not make that the norm for city attacks as well? My idea is that, after killing 8 city defenders, two buttons appear on the attacker's battle window. One button is labelled "Press The Attack!", the other is labelled "Fall Back!". The attacker then chooses either to continue the battle, or end it there by moving his stack back to the terrain tile it attacked from. If the attacker chooses to press the attack, and kills another 8 units, the buttons would pop up again.

Falling back would cost movement points equal to the normal movement the stack would spend to enter the terrain tile it attacked from. If some units do not have enough movement left to enter that hex, I would let them do it anyway, and subtract any movement points they have left.

[magian]

Alternatively, falling back could cost every unit in the retreating stack all of its remaining movement. Limiting units to one attack/turn.

I actually kinda like that idea, since it could prolong city sieges in a way that captures a bit of the flavor of a historical siege.

[KGB]

Magian,

I don't think this idea is very feasible.

1) Will the 8 units in the city continue to get the full bonus from all 32 defenders? If so, it's doubtful that attacking 8 at a time and falling back will be of any use. Most of the reason that you don't attack in the first place is because the 32 defenders have too many bonus's to overcome. If you don't let those 8 units get the full bonus from 32 defenders it's hugely unfair to the city player.
2) Falling back would have to cost all movement. Otherwise strong heroes would simply hit, kill 8, re-load their stack and hit again. Rinse and repeat. That's incredibly unfair. But falling back costing all movement will virtually guarantee your death on the defenders turn since you will be stuck right outside the city with no chance to retreat to your own city/safe location etc. So the attack might as well be to the death in the first place.

KGB

[magian]

I would say that yes, the defender would get all the normal stack bonuses.

On one hand you say it would have no value to the attacker, but in the next statement you say it would be incredibly unfair? I'm not convinced it is either one. Yes (if a hero survives) he could reinforce his front ranks with more fodder and attack again. There would be a cost in movement points though, so he couldn't just rinse and repeat an infinite number of times. Considering that a defending hero can have a huge amount of fodder in front of him, and has the wall bonus, he isn't really too hard done by.

Even if a stack that falls back loses all movement points, I think it still has value. It isn't unusual (in my games) that I feel I could beat the contents of a city if they attacked me, but don't feel like I can take them all on at once.

[TheVic]

I like the idee, and I do think defenders should get all bonuses.
The main advantage with surviving is that quite often you will have atleast 3 units left and can fill stack back up to 8 before opponent can attack you. You could build your own tower on defence. Much better then continue attacking with 3 units and die...

Also:
* I would even wish city defence increased so min city def is 5 in this case (cities always give some advantage), and siege units was more importent. Or all attackers get -Citywall as penalty.
* Attacking flying units should not be penalized by full city wall bonus.


On a side not. I would prefere if the max strenght tower took 2 turns to build, and the cheapest was really cheap but didn't hide stack, simulating romans defenses when making camp.

[KGB]

On one hand you say it would have no value to the attacker, but in the next statement you say it would be incredibly unfair? I'm not convinced it is either one.

There is no ambiguity:
It's no (or very little) value to the attacker if they fall back and have 0 move points.
It's incredibly unfair if they can fall back and still have movement points to attack again.

There are some other things to consider here:

1) The battle simulation. If this results in < 10% chance for the attack stack to win, the combat routine is going to force the attack stack to die. Not sure how this would have to be changed to deal with the fact that a battle can now be stopped part way through.
2) I worry that this concept overly penalizes the defenders. For example consider a city with 32 defenders, 16 of which are Hv Inf and the rest some better units that might be used to attack on the defenders turn. Now an attacker knows they can successfully 'raid' the city as long as they kill 8 Hv Inf. This really matters for example if you attacked with a Catapult/RD+6 units planning to have the Cat/RD survive so it can be used again next turn. Effectively you get 2 Cat/RD's instead of 1. That's a big big advantage. So I'd say 8 defenders isn't enough. You should have to at least make it through 16 before getting a retreat option and maybe it needs to be as high as 20 defenders before a retreat becomes an option or else Assassins might be totally nerfed (50% ambush requires 16 men to kill 8 on average).
3) The retreat option can become really overpowering in cases where you can attack from water/mountains and retreat there if the enemy can't follow (ie all land units). A strong Solo Barb with flight might be able to simply kill 8 units a turn and drop back on water/mountains and be totally safe from being attacked back. So this option would have to only be available from land to land attacks.
4) Obviously heroes who retreated should get 0 XP for the attack. But defending heroes should get their normal XP for successfully defending.

It might be better yet if retreat was added as a hero skill only. Something they needed to spend points on (personal skills section where you get UL/Learning etc). 1 point = 1 unit (hero) gets to retreat, 2 points = 2 units can retreat etc. Rest of stack is simply killed (even if it was still alive at time of retreat).

KGB

[magian]

Well, I disagree that 8 is too few defenders to kill before retreating. I think 8 would be exactly the right number. If it were 16 or 20, then this option really would have little to no value.

Sure, you could say that being able to retreat with some valuable survivors is a bit like having more of them. However, you could also say that having a red dragon defending a city with 32 defenders is like having 4 red dragons. That would be a big advantage too right? Counter-balancing that advantage by giving the attackers their own advantage is kinda the whole idea here.

I think it might be too much of a niche ability for players to pick it as a hero skill... although I do think that idea is pretty interesting.

[KGB]

The more I think about it the more retreating after 8 is too few. It just completely nerfs the Assassin hero and makes playing defense impossible.

Here are some examples of what I mean.

1) The worst place it's going to be abused is with a high level Barb. A fully developed 65-75 strength, 5 hit Barb will plow through 8 units in just about any situation short of ambush. 8 Demons at 55 strength aren't very likely to kill such a Barb but 12 or 16 are quite likely to do so. The last thing the Barb needs is to become even better.

2) Consider a city with just 9-10 defenders in it. A hero stack attacks and is 80-85% likely to win. But after killing 8 defenders it's down to just the hero left. It looks like the hero might lose and be killed. But wait, you just retreat the hero and avoid facing the last 2 units. The defender is cheated of an upset win. I'm absolutely against this kind of abuse and I assume (hope) this is now what you envisioned this doing either.

3) Consider a city with just 16 Hv Inf defending with +5 wall bonus. An attacking RD/Cat+6 Lt Inf makes this a 20vs20 str fight. If it went to it's conclusion the RD/Cat probably don't make it through the last 10 defenders. But under the retreat option you will be guaranteed to retreat with RD/Cat left. Next turn same attack + 6 more Lt Inf guarantees you capture the city. So the defender has ZERO chance to hold this city now and ZERO chance to sally forth and kill the RD/Cat/Lt Inf in the open. I'm not for a change that so easily allows bonus units to retreat and reload on the next turn.

4) Consider a city with just 11 men in it. 3 Lt Inf, 7 Spiders and a hero. At attacking hero with 7 Spiders (even battle between spiders) will now be able to simply plow into the city and kill 8 men and retreat because the 3 Lt Inf will go very easily and the 5 other spiders won't be enough to kill the rest of the attack stack (7-8 men). Next turn it will be easy for the attacker to finish off the city if he has any other units around to team up with what remains from the retreat. So the defender must raze and run because his fight order has been invalided by the retreat. This is not a positive development for the game.

5) Consider a city with 24 units in it with an Assassin with 32 ambush most of which is just L1 fodder and maybe 1-2 decent units besides the Assassin. An attacking L1 Valk (+6 bonus only) will be almost guaranteed (>80%) to survive 8 units if the bonus's besides the +6 leadership are equal because 32 ambush isn't enough to kill more than 2 attackers on average. So the Valk kills 8, retreats and can now sit safely in a tower or grouped with an Elephant etc knowing the Assassin can't attack on his own because he isn't that strong. It gets worse for higher level Assassins because even at 50% Ambush (L6+ Assassin) it will be relatively easy for an attacking force with decent bonus's to survive 8 defenders. The Assassin is going to be rendered completely useless esp now that Warding is much more prevalent (Ranger/Crusader etc).

Also consider now what happens when you are the defender with lots of units. Say 16 Hv Inf before you get to your stronger/better units in the back. The Attacker always gets to see your fight order and then make his own and you can't counter that. So if you have the Hv Inf up front the Attacker just has to pick off 8 of them and retreat. That may be easily do-able. But if you put your better units up front to prevent the kill-8-retreat tactic the Attacker can send in his specialized counter units (ambush or AA vs fliers) and tear your better units apart. That's not fair to the defender unless we are going to allow multiple defend formations based on what is faced.

The more examples I imagine the worse it gets. It's one thing to need this idea to crack open super cities full of 32 men / insane bonus's but it's totally another to be using it against average cities and to be rendering the Assassin almost useless.

That's why I think it has to be a LOT more than 8 defenders. It's got to be 16-20 so there is real risk of the attack stack dying. I don't want a cheese tactic of hit-run to enter the game.

KGB

[Versace]

Raising walls to 15 and putting a bunch of bonus units and heroes into a city and paying their upkeep is a big investment. If you really have to get that particular city then I think it is fine that you have to get loads of your units killed.

If you mass enough stacks you will eventually get the city and those high level enemy heroes killed (and their items). You should also be willing to sacrifice some big bonus units like great archons and devils and also heroes (ranger vs assassin) to get that city. Being able to change fighting order is a big advantage for the attacker.

Normally, in my opinion, aggression is the way to go in this game and putting a bunch of heroes and power units to defend a single city is rarely a winning strategy. If you are in enemy territory just go around the city. If he gets a city in your territory and gets all those units there alive then good for him, it is not an easy task.

[magian]

Yeah, the more I think about it, the less I like this idea. Partially for some of the reasons mentioned, but mostly for the weirdness of the defender having to think about exactly how to structure his defenses (if he has more than 8 units). Having 9 units could be a disadvantage, which just strikes me as odd. Oh well, another thought bubble burst.