Assassin

[LPhillips]

That's in for sure? Sweet.

[MrBofa]

haha yeah that was a sickening shock but to be fair I usually do scout ahead. it was just that one situation i didnt have any scouts and had to move away from your 4 8 stacks of death to the east. but yeah, you got me there, that was pretty shocking. i thought i had that one.

[KGB]

Your hero left a city that contained 24+ men including another hero + Devils etc.

Not sure why you *had* to run but happy that you weakened your city down as I was envisioning having to send 40-50 men to take out your 24+ armies since I didn't bring siege. Once you sent out that hero stack it made the fall of the city (and the other heroes death) a much simpler task.

KGB

[piranha]

Quite interesting ideas. I been down that path several times when I thought about ideas for battle. Targeting units instead of attacking the one in line would make the anti air bonus much more interesting and there could be new bonuses/abilites that work the same way.

Someone mentioned in an earlier post that W4 had some sort of tactical combat. How did that work?

[Pillager]

Yes, it is quite satisfying when an unsuspecting victim goes for the bait and triggers one of my carefully devised deathtraps.

Messing with heroes in the fight order just seems so wrong to me...not that this feeling will stop me from exploiting this ability.

Good on you MrBofa, for taking your lumps with good humor.

[Pillager]

The warlords 4 combat was quite different, in that you chose which unit you wanted to fight in the next matchup. I never played it online, and I can't really see how this would work unless both players were simultaneously playing.

Honestly, I didn't much care for the game as a whole..but it did have some really interesting ideas. The graphics made me feel slightly ill, so that didn't help.

KGB is really the one to explain the W4 system.

[KGB]

Piranha,

Pillager explained the basics correctly. Both sides pick their next unit to send into battle. Obviously that doesn't work in a PBEM format game like Warbarons unless you want to write an AI and then have players complain about that AI not picking the right unit

Honestly if there was going to be tactical combat I wouldn't use the War4 model. The model used in a game called Titan works much better (deploy all armies on a *small* hex battleboard and then move them around. But that's so far from Warlords that it's not even really worth talking about because again it would require both players to be present or an AI to do battles.

I'm not a fan of targeting units in stacks. Makes the game quite complex and hard to understand. Plus it makes those expensive bonus units worth far less if they can be killed by targeting. I assume that's one of the reasons the whole 'cancel bonus' concept exists. That cancel bonus concept is basically a targeting of a skill to negate (rather than a unit).

The other problem with targeting units is you need a special target unit for each unit you want to target. For example say you wanted to target a Devil and an Archon. You need unit A that targets Devils and unit B that targets Archons. Otherwise players have to select in combat (and defenders can't select so you can't really do the idea of selecting in combat). So the target concept doesn't work.

KGB

[kenc80]

I agree with KGB. Lets keep this faithful to War2 and skip this feature. Its good to debate but it would take us a long ways away from Warlords II combat.

[LPhillips]

That combat system had a very mixed reception in W4. Erring on the side of highly negative when veterans compared it with past incarnations. It really is best to let it be dead.

If you want an Assassin, this is my suggestion:
14 move
2 str
banding+1 (capped at +5, prior to normal bonus application/cap)
cancel command (or hero, or item?)

I think it would have to be a 3-turn unit. 4 renders it rather useless, 2 is far too cheap. It would need to be fairly expensive, like current 3-turn units are. There would also need to be a unit that canceled banding bonuses which players could reasonably buy and employ if they saw Assassins in play. Maybe another 3-turn. To build a squad of these Assassins would take 2 castles 12 turns.

The problem is working out the bonus that makes it effective vs. heroes. I don't know how complicated you're willing to get, but a careful description would enable you to let it "cancel hero" when only Assassins were in the stack. Then it would never replace the Archon. Also, you could enable Rogue-class heroes to have (or learn) the Assassin tag, allowing them to travel with Assassins and utilize the Assassins' anti-hero abilities.

Give it some thought, and careful consideration. I think it's very well-balanced. Sure, you can have 3-turn 7 strength units (or higher with a Rogue hero and bonuses), but an effective counter turns it into a stack of 2-strength units. And you can't effectively mix in other units, as it reduces the banding bonus and removes the anti-hero ability. They're not fast enough to blaze through enemy territory. And finally, they have the potential to kill up to mid-strength hero stacks, but will never nuke/resist super-stacks on their own.

[Pillager]

For example say you wanted to target a Devil and an Archon. You need unit A that targets Devils and unit B that targets Archons. Otherwise players have to select in combat (and defenders can't select so you can't really do the idea of selecting in combat). So the target concept doesn't work.

Well, targeting certainly wouldn't work like this. But targeting a class of units (like heroes or flyers) could potentially work...and really isn't confusing at all.

Anyway, this seems like it may be the least popular idea I've come up with (and that's saying something).