Pondering a possible future battle concept.

[piranha]

So I have been thinking a bit and thought I'd share these ideas in the forum to have them ripped apart and thrown in the trash .
This idea would take a lot of work to implement so its not something that would happen anytime soon. I just think its
interesting to talk and see what could come up.


I know that there are a lot of traditionals who want everything to be exactly like it was in some previous versions of warlords.
But if we look away from that and see what could be done in terms of a different battle system based on what we have now.


The reason I want to explore this idea is becuase I think there could be a possiblity to add a new dimension of strategy in this game.
Right now its about movement very much. What I can think could be fun is strategies in designing an army.
Right now armies are with some exceptions like a ladder. More STR = better. There are base units, there are support units and there are heroes.

To draw a parallell to stacraft, the first units you can build in starcraft, the most low tech ones are still good by the time you can build every unit,
the reason is every unit have a certain use. The most cheap unit might be cost effective against the most expensive unit.


In warbarons you could say that the elf should always be a good unit in your super army if he could attack a flying enemy. But since he can't he is
more or less shit a lot of the time. If this was a real battle you would probably have the elf shooting at the flying guys and not run into the heavy cavalery.


The goal of this idea is to make it like that so that you can have your armies attack the oppoenent that they are most efficient vs, and that you should be able to
build the units that you want instead of the units you happen to get.

The battle is a tactical battle where players don't select anything when entering battle so there is nothing to select in order to defend yourself properly.
Instead the fightorder would be updated so each army is also assigned a priority that can be changed.
Right now there is a default fighorder, same would be for priorities.


Here is an image of the battlefield to get have something to talk around.


Each battle round would allow each unit to perform a action. Attack or move.

A heavy cav could for example have a priority to attack ranged enemies which would mean that they move 2 squares non diagonal (if fast units are allowed to move two squares per round ) towards the elves.

The pike man would attack the heavy cav at the same time so the cav might take a hit while its riding, or it can deal damage to the pikeman (Same calculation as now).

Lets say elves have range 3 and can shoot at the heavy cav or the wolfs without risking taking damage themself.


In this system each unit would perform an action during every round so the battle should not necessary take longer time than it does now since several units can die on the same round.

Armies will always try to charge the closest enemy except if a priority is set to move towards a specific type of unit.

The fightorder would be divded into lines so you can decide how far back or forward the units start in battle.

If a unit dont have a target it will automaticlly move forward until it have a target.


To make an example.
Lets say catapult and wizard have a range of 4, and elf have range 3.
Each unit does its task in order of initiative (perhaps decided by movement speed)
PLAYER 1 = top
PLAYER 2 = bottom

Round 1.

P1: Wizard fire on nearest heavy cav. (heavy cav can only roll dice to avoid hit, not to damage the wizard)
P2: Wizard fire on elf.
P2: Hevy cav move 2 steps forward (non diagonal, through friendly units if there is a empty spot to arrive at)
P1: Elves fire on heavy cav.
P2: Wolf rider move 2 steps
P1: Pikemen attacks heavy cav.

Something like that.

With a system like this a hero could influence units around him, for example if he have +3 leadership the units closest get +3, while those 1 tile away only get +2 and so on.¨

There are probably quite a lot of interesting possiblities a system like this would open, but also problems that would make it confusing if not thought through.

Perhaps flying units would be able to move past land based enemies to attack those behind.

At first it might seem like a army of a few hard defenders and then a lot of range units behind must be the best, but for example mammoth and elephants
would be quite resistant to arrows so making them effective vs such a setup, or light 8 light cav might be able to move close to the elves due to their speed and finish them even if a few of them
died on their way there.

The point is to create a system where units can be more unique. More paper-rock-scissor than STR 1 - 14.

Any thoughts?

[Pillager]

Not sure I understand how armies would be set up before the battle. If you could make army setup/priorities easy to understand and fairly quick to alter...then this sort of system could be great fun. This might be easier said than done though.

Curious to see what 'the guardians of the status quo' have to say about this.

[piranha]

Lets say the fight order is divided into 4 sections. You might place all the units you want on th front in line 1 and some long range units in line 3. If the fight order line 1 is, dwarf, pike man, heavy infantry, in that order and your army consist of 3 dwarf, 1 pike man, 2 heavy inf, then in the center the 3 dwarf would be, and on one side the pike man and then outside him and on the other side of the dwarfs the 2 heavy inf. So you start from the center and out.

I think the fight order should be quite simple to understand since it could be nearly the same as it is now. The priority thing would require a bit of thought.

[wizardofcos]

ok you know piranha that I'm a War2 fan but im looking at this with an open mind.

My big question is how does this work in a turn based game like Warbarons? Wouldnt this extend the turn times and number of turns as you would have to go through rounds of action with your opponent?

[KGB]

Piranha,

If I read this right, what your proposing is:

1) There is a new rank order instead of fight order. There are 4 ranks total and players put all units into 1 of 4 ranks (pre-battle, just as we do our fight ordering).
2) There is a new target order concept where players select unit (archon, hero, devil) for a unit to seek out and target. No mention of whether you can select multiple targets with priority or only 1 specific one or just all units in a certain rank but I'll assume you might be able to select multiple targets in order.
3) When battle starts, units get placed in their rank. If there are no units present in a particular rank, nothing goes there (for example if rank 4, last rank is just heros/dragons/archons/devils and a stack has none of those then there are no units in rank 4.
4) The battle auto-plays according to some target selections. There are now ranged attacks for units with ranged power and other potential. But basically no human interaction is needed.

Of course the immediate thing is everyone would target a hero with their first target. Then a dragon/archon/devil since killing that even if you lose the battle would still be a major victory.

Thus you immediately have to have the concept in place where units can't move past enemy units in front ranks without engaging in a battle to the death or at least taking what AD&D terms attacks of opportunity (where you don't strike back because you are only moving past).

No mention of terrain and how that affects things. Would hills/forest etc reduce cavalry movement in battle, block lines of shots for ranged attacks, can ground units attack fliers or only other fliers/ranged units etc.

Seems like it's going to totally revamp the entire battle system. And the first thing that comes to mind is I want more control in the tactical battle. The ability to concentrate multiple units on 1 unit (4v1) instead of engaging 4v4 to drop enemies faster. The ability to manually move my men to slip past to the back units etc. So I think this leads down a VERY slippery slope to having to implement a complex tactical system that requires you now become good at the tactical part of the game in addition to the strategic part.

If you are really serious about this concept I'd suggest you take a look at the board game Titan (a free online java version called Colossus exists). It's all fantasy based, has stacks, flying units, ground units, ranged attacks, magic ranged attacks, terrain bonus's etc. All hex based, not squares. It's the best tactical system I've seen.

KGB

[Pillager]

KGB,

Titan and Colossus are great games, glad to see that you are also a fan.

I'm against too much control. There is no need to allow units to target any unit they please. In fact, I would say that no unit (other than maybe heroes) should be able to specifically target a hero if there are other units in play. Perhaps if the hero was the closest unit and the unit was set to 'attack closest unit'...but no specific targeting of heroes... except by assassins of course.

Maybe there should be no way to set priorities, units just behave according to their type. Perhaps differently for attack and defense. Elves like to shoot flyers, so they will target a flyer if it is within range. Orcs are difficult to control and tend to behave chaotically..that sort of thing. Then it would be a case of knowing what your units naturally want to do and setting them up to do it.

If that was the case, then you would just set up your fight order (in ranks) and that would be all...much the same way you currently do it..but with ranks.

[KGB]

Pillager,

I love Titan/Colossus. I play a lot online actually because games are typically 1-3 hrs in length so I can get a couple of games in during an evening.

I agree with you about too much control. But if the only reason to write all this is to form ranks instead of fight order it's probably not worth Piranha's effort. I suspect that the majority of players aren't interested in a pseudo tactical system. Either they want things to remain the same or they want a fully controllable tactical system where they could move units around manually /set specific orders at the least.

To me the whole tactical system makes the most sense if you plan to have pure online head-2-head play where both/all players are logged on at the same time like the speed game concept. It would work well for that concept like it does for Titan/Colossus since all players are online at the same time controlling units. But for the PBEM format most of us are used to I suspect it won't be worth the effort.

KGB

[Pillager]

Being able to manipulate unit behaviors too freely would give the attacker a large advantage (since he can recon before a major battle and then alter his battle plans to exploit the defender's weaknesses).

Obviously a turn based tactical combat system would be fun...but it could only be used during head to head speed games...which I never seem to get to play:(. Not sure if it is worth designing a combat mechanic that would only be used in a small fraction of games.

[piranha]

For warbarons it would only be useful with a system that works all the time so it must be a system that does not require players to be at the computer at the same time. It might not be a tactical combat since you wont be able to give orders during the battle.

You could say that the only difference is that the fight order is different, but if you can decide what units you want to build in your cities you can decide what your army will look like. There is possiblity to add different abilities like piercing weapons that is good vs armored units, or crushing that might be good vs smaller units but not as good vs large sized units. But if piercing damage is added now and the unit with piercing damage must attack the first in line it loses most of its purpose.

It will just a unit that sometimes get to use its bonus just like wizard and elf does now. But if it would always try to attack armored units it would be something that you might want to avoid with your armored units and that would make it interesting because it can be really effective in either pushing the enemy to retreat or to adapt and build a counter for it.

Right now we have the terrain bonus that does this. Pikemen on open are really good for example. This would be similar but it would be effective vs a certain type of unit instead of on a certain type of terrain. Since cities is the most important thing to guard the city bonus is the most important. But it could be unit specific bonuses instead of terrain based.

With the current system the defender doesn't lose much because he cant adjust his fight order before an attack and the same thing need to apply here. The priorities should not be required to change to be effective most of the time in battle. The main thing would be that there will be a strategy in how you combine your armies, what you produce. Thats where the new strategy comes in.

[LPhillips]

What you're really suggesting is creating a new game. I might like to see this in parallel to the traditional concept, as an option but not the only way to play. For tactical games, you can use the same units, graphics, maps, hero system, movement system, etc, but simply tweak the units' bonuses.

I'm suggesting this as a way of implementing this system, and giving open range to all of your creative ideas and the great features this would allow, without giving up anything you have now. Once you programmed the tactical combat system, the only maintenance to having the two different combat options would be keeping up with separate unit updates and balance.

I see numerous issues with increasing complexity. What happens with naval battles, city/tower/ruin defense, terrain types and their effects on battle, spells, etc? A huge part of Warlords' appeal is the simplicity. You can focus on more subtle strategy. Simply increasing options with units and heroes will add all the complexity we need, as players have more ways to threaten and more ways to respond.