Climber

Join Date 03/2006

+17

Who will win? 1 Dragon vs 50 swordsmen, 1 Dragon vs 500 swordsmen

This is a post inspired by the thread “Troops : Quality v Quantity” . In this discussion, I’ll like to see what mechanism (abstraction) should be put into the Tactical Combat (TC); and I’ll assume few things first:

1.    The Dragon does not use its Breath weapon. My focus is just the basic Melee combat here
2.    TC is done in a grid based map (regardless it is RT or not), as it has been shown in screenshot. All 50 or 500 swordsmen are located in the same tile

For the purpose of illustration, let me dissect the fight in to 1 minute segment (or 1 turn in TBS-speak).

In the 1st minute of the fight, how many swords will be able to ‘touch’ the Dragon’s carapace? 50? Not likely. 500? Not bloody likely.   Despite the Gigantic size of a dragon, there is only so much space for the swordsmen to get close within their swords’ reach.   In this same minute, how many swordsmen will be killed by the dragon’s bite and claws? Probably 10, give or take.

My point here is, Weapon Reach and the Size difference between the combatants matter in the debate of “Quality vs. Quantity”.    There should be a calculation of “how many attacks that is possible from each side” per turn.
This figure will change dramatically, if you replace the example above with Spearman (longer weapon reach = more contact) and the (smaller sized = less contact) Mongol Calvary.

From the perspective of the Swordsmen, the amount of damage they can inflict to the Dragon equals to:
“The number of attack attempts possible in 1 minute” * “Average damage of their swords”

For the sake of illustration, let me assume in this case the math is 20 * 10 = 200 Damage. And please note this number is the same, regardless of whether you are sending 50 or 500 swordsmen to the dragon, because the area of contact remains constant. The remaining 30 or 480 swordsmen cannot move closer in that 1 minute, it is too crowded to reach.

Unfortunately for the swordsmen, their attack is proved to be useless. None of their bronze sword can penetrate the Dragon carapace. Instead of the 200 Damage they hoped for, the dragon remains unscratched and 10 of its fellow swordsmen died in the 1st turn. Tragedy, tragedy…

So, the 2nd turn comes.   What will the swordsmen do?

Now knowing their attack is totally worthless, their morale drops to 0 & they will flee regardless of what their hero/sovereign demands them (unless they are then ordered to attack something else).

In a different scenario, if they are lucky enough to be equipped with a magical sword, they found that they have instead inflicted 200HP of damage to the dragon; their Morale will never drop to 0. They will continue the fight in the 2nd turn.

So in the 2nd turn, is there advantage to send 500 magical swordsmen instead of 50 magical swordsmen, even both groups can only inflict 200HP damage per turn? Well, the 500 swordsmen will definitely the advantage. If the dragon is not killed in the next 4 turns, none of the 50 swordsmen survive.   At the rate of 200HP per turn, the 500 swordsmen can inflict 200*50 worth of damage to the dragon, the beast must die within 50 turns. The 500 magical swordsmen will be victorious.

My point now is, Morale mechanism is important to high Quality units (Dragon) will not overwhelmed by Too Low quality units in huge quantity (500 non-magical swordsmen). The judge on whether your opponent is of “too Low” quality to bother with is to see if they can inflict meaningful damage last turn. The evaluation of Morale on each side should factor in the rate of inflicting damage and how many units (or %) has been killed in the group.

To recap, I would like to include “Weapon Reach”, “Unit Size” in all units’ stat, because it allows the calculation of “The number of attack attempts possible in 1 minute” between to combating parties. Include the Morale mechanism to make sure High Quality never lost to really low quality units in huge quantity.

You might ask why the Dragon can kill 10 swordsmen in 1 turn. I don’t have the best answer now, but Larger sized unit probably should be allow to multiply their normal # of attacks per turn when fighting smaller foes?

So far so good, the only thing I don’t like here is.. I want short TC that lasts no more than 12 minutes. In the example of 500 swordsmen, they need 50 turns kill the dragon if the dragon still stubbornly refuses to roast them…. Haha

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1. Too many absolutes. Even if they're dealing damage, they'll be losing morale with ten of their comrades dying.

2. Size should not automatically increase number of attacks. If the dragon is using its tail as a club, then that makes sense. If it's rearing up and attacking with both claws, then that's fair. But size should not arbitrarily give more attacks. A small thing that is skilled at using two weapons should have such a bonus, even against a large opponent.

3. Reach is a good idea, but I'm unsure it is necessary to include it as an official stat. Reach, in general, should be obvious. Dragons pose unique problems in that it's uncertain whether their forearms (ie claw attacks) should be counted as viable target areas, but this kind of question is also kind of nitpicky.

4. Unit size shouldn't be necessary as an overt stat. Any factors it has should be obvious and automatically factored into the Tactical Combat game. That's another reason why the "bigger = more attacks" thing is problematic. It creates the necessity to use Unit Size, whereas merely paying attention to how many useful appendages a thing has to attack with is much more obvious and doesn't require an arbitrary new stat.

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joasoze

Join Date 02/2006

+39

This does smell slightly of overcomplexification (is that a word?).

If the 50 swordsmen are one group standing next to the draogon (like in Kings Bounty or Heroes of Might and Magic) then I believe that they should all get a swing at the dragon.

When the dragon attacks though there is an intresting question (at least it is to me). Should we calculate damage and spread out on the swordsmen (so that 100 damage would kill 3 swordsmen with 30 health each), or should all the damage go to one of them and the rest is "lost". This last solution would favour lagre groups immensly, but I still like it. I adds something else to think about when composing armies.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

All 50 or 500 swordsmen are located in the same tile

Excellent ideas but I don't agree with one thing. I can see 50 Men in one square, but God I hope not 500 in one square. That would be cheesy as Hell IMO.

500 Men should also be able to choose between a few simple formations preferably as well. Like a line or a box or perhaps even a wedge after the tactics are researched.

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joasoze

Join Date 02/2006

+39

Quoting Raven X,

reply 3

quoting post All 50 or 500 swordsmen are located in the same tile

500 Men should also be able to choose between a few simple formations preferably as well. Like a line or a box or perhaps even a wedge after the tactics are researched.

How would formations influence battle? Wedge give bonus agains cavalery, but penalty agains swordsmen? This could get into micromanagement pretty fast.

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Well, If I was one of those swordsmen, I would fail a morale check upon seeing the dragon. Probably a lot of us would fail it and hang back while the brave heros (perhaps 15% of the total swordsmen) strode forward to do battle.

After I see those brave heros die, I would leave. I wouldn't even bother to loot their wallets first, unless the dragon was chasing someone else.

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joasoze

Join Date 02/2006

+39

Morale is a difficult thing to simulate as it function only to make the strong stronger and the weak weaker.

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I'd expect the swordmen to scatter and try to sorround the dragon to attack him by all his flanks at the same time. You don't fight a Dragon (or any other special unit) like if you were fighting another John Doe like you. Then, we would be talking about if the Dragon has extra attacks like tail attack (and the fact that he is totally ignoring his best advantage: flying + breath weapon... Seriously, why bother/risk in close combat against units without ranged weapons?). And that in the hypotetical case of some non-Dragonbane swordmen attacking by themselves a Dragon (Yay for extreme examples ^^).

Squares in the map? I'd prefer movement a la RTS for units (something a la Sovereign in the global map as we saw in a video?).

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Roslolian, Reply #1
1. I have already mentioned one factors affecting Morale is "how many units (or %) has been killed in the group".
2. Size may or may not automatically increases the # of attack.

Joasoze says, Reply #2
When the dragon attacks though there is an intresting question (at least it is to me). Should we calculate damage and spread out on the swordsmen (so that 100 damage would kill 3 swordsmen with 30 health each), or should all the damage go to one of them and the rest is "lost". This last solution would favour lagre groups immensly...

And what Joasoze said here is similar to my question about the 10 swordsmen too. A discussion on what should be done about it will be interesting.

Raven X (Reply#3)
- All the numbers in OP is for illustration only. You can replace 500 swordsmen with 200 swordsmen in the OP and have the same discussion; or you can replace 500 swordsmen with 500 smaller sized humanoid Halfing which may be able to squeezed in the same tile.

In my thread [Tactical Combat] How to make it simple and provide variety says

Troop formation mechanism
- Each TC tile can only hold a maximum predefined number of troops, depending on the Size of the individual troop. For example, a tile can only hold 2 Gigantic sized Dragon, or 500 Medium sized humanoid Infantry, or 200 Large sized Cavalry.
- When your stack has 2000 infantry units, the game automatically split it into 4 at the TC deployment stage. This provides variety because each occupied tile has its own ZOC, representing additional choke point that your opponent cannot easily bypass

I hope there will be Troop formation mechanism in EWOM, because we'll be (hopefully) designing units of various sizes.

joasoze, Reply#4
- Well, unless you can tell me Wedge/Box/line formation is not another Rock/Sissor/Paper mechanism, so far I don't think it is fun.

cleflar, Reply#5 says:
"Well, If I was one of those swordsmen, I would fail a morale check upon seeing the dragon."

- The OP means to have the Non-magical swordsmen flee on morale only after they know they cannot do meaningful damage. OTOH if my Magical sowrdsmen flee on the sight of the Dragon, without testing their effective Magical swords, I the gamer will be very frustrated

Joasoze, Reply #6 say
"Morale is a difficult thing to simulate as it function only to make the strong stronger and the weak weaker."

- The OP is a discussion about “Troops : Quality v Quantity”, about how to make a nice balance btw "High Quality units in low numbers" vs "Low Quality units in Huge number"

Wintersong, Reply #7
- Since the map is Grid-based, I assume attacking from the front tile means frontal attack. In the case that if the dragon has been flanked & been attacked from its back, it still make no difference to the Non-Magical swordsmen because they still cannot inflict damage; for Magical swordsmen they should enjoy flanking bonus of some kind.

Yes, I am ignoring Dragons' breathe weapon for this discussion. However, you can easily replace the Dragon with a non-breathing Drake.

As far as I know, Grid as seen in the new screenshot in OP

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Depending on how turn-based vs. real-time the combat ends up, I'd rather it not be grid-based. If it's heavily turn-based, then yes - grid based is the way to go. If it's more like Total War combat, then grid-based would be a huge limiting factor in combat strategy, versatility, and would require all sorts of arbitrary abstractions that would be handled naturally in a free-coordinate map.

Also, I don't think we can look at that screenshot and say "tactical combat is grid-based, end of story." That screenshot has been around since the announcement date of the game! It was one of the original few screenshots they gave us. Considering they are only really starting to work on tactical combat now, a year later, I think we need to take that screenshot with a really large salt shaker in hand.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2409

The dragon in both.

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The dragon in both.

I am so happy that you guys are staying strong on having rare creatures like dragons be crazy powerful. I know a lot of people have complained about fantasy creatures being too rare, even if they're individually powerful enough to make up for their small numbers. Personally I think the result will be a much better fantasy feel than most fantasy games have ever pulled off.

Now if only you'd come my way RE the economy

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Tridus

Join Date 03/2008

+110

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 10

The dragon in both.

You know that when tactical combat arrives we're going to test that!

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 10

The dragon in both.

You forgot that part where you say that the pic in the OP wasn't intended to be shown originally and that the real thing won't look like that... Or did you change your mind? (do ye have anything working in that department yet? Or only pre-pre-alpha stuff?)

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Quoting joasoze,

reply 4

How would formations influence battle? Wedge give bonus against cavalry, but penalty against swordsmen? This could get into micromanagement pretty fast.

Yes, wedge for foot soldiers was a bad example, I was just throwing it out there. I'm not saying go overboard with the formations either, they can be kept simple. I just think they would be a nice feature when you start talking about large armies. Formations themselves could be:

Foot Soldier Formations:

Shield Wall: Limited Defense bonus against frontal attacks and arrows. Weak against flanking.

Box Formation: Defense against Calvary charge and Flanking. In Box formation however the unit is immobile and can not move.

Calvary Formations:

Wedge: Adds damage to charge ability. Plus one movement speed. Weak against flanking and rear attacks.

File: Deep File formation for covering great distance on the battle field (plus 5 movement). However in File formation you are completely vulnerable to attack.

Nothing too complicated. I just feel that with all those units represented on screen you should actually be able to do something with them aside from tell them to attack.

Note: When I say "weak against" that would imply the unit would take more damage then usual from that type of attack.

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wintersong! The Frogboy does not forget! (I mean, he might, but who are we to backtalk. you know, hail )

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the best formations are simply where you place your units in relation to each other, the enemy, and the terrain. If you have a nice hill, you might want the archers on the top, with foot-men ringing the base of the hill (or half-way up), while your cavalry are to the sides in the lowlands.

In addition, if you march your army half way across the map and attack from another angle, they will have to move about their units to face you. A much more daunting task when each individual soldier is it's own defined object in the battlesystem/engine. If each individual soldier is an individual object, in a 50 man unit, then it coudl take some time to shift and re-form.

The army moving out of its way to cause such a formation shift wouldn't really be able to move faster than a unit could turn, although they could try to get the footmen to move away from the base of the hill, so some cavalry can harass their flank and their rear, and their cavalry and footmen will have to make some decisions, while your heavy cavalry or Infantry will be charging up their center.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2409

In a battle with a dragon, whether we're talking 50, 500 or 1000 even the formation used would merely determine the order in which the dragon kills them.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 10

The dragon in both.

Yeah yeah, we know how you feel about your oober doober dragons. The important question in my mind, though, is whether an exceptional number of mundane, say, archers, can kill a powerful dragon. I would certainly hope that 1,000,000 archers could kill a dragon.

In vanilla D&D, it's simply impossible for any character under level 5 to even hit a dragon or penetrate it's damage reduction. In my D&D rules, we've ammended the rules in such a way that a very, very, very, very lucky level one archer can kill an adult dragon (if they roll a natural 20 followed by a natural 20 followed by a natural 20 etc.) The odds are just slim, of course.

If it were up to me, an average archer in elemental might be able to have a 5 percent chance to do 1 damage to a 500 hit points dragon. As badass as an unbeatable oober doober dragon might sound, I still think you should be able to overcome them with sheer force. When I come to think of it a mighty dragon taking meager damage from a 10,000 arrow volley would make them appear even more collosal than if they took no damage at all (which implied that they simply have some kind of forcefield or weakness that must be overcome.)

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 17

In a battle with a dragon, whether we're talking 50, 500 or 1000 even the formation used would merely determine the order in which the dragon kills them.

So badass

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I like where Frogboy is going with this. Anything less then magic is not going to hurt a dragon. Arrows and swords propelled by men are not strong enough to do damage. It'd be like non-venomess ant bites - they could sting you everywhere, and while it might hurt a little, all it would do make you angrier.

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Quoting Myles,

reply 20

Even if non-venomous ants bit you long enough, they would cart away miniscule chunks of your flesh until you were dead--- and the size difference between an ant and human is vastly larger than the difference between even the largest dragons in fantasy literature and a human.

Sure, a barrage of Diamond Tipped Arrows of Dragon Slaying is going to fell a dragon faster, but a rain of mundane arrows would surely blemish, loosen, and chip away at a dragon's scales.

Now, I know people get emotional when it comes to how oober doober they want their dragons to be in Elemental, so let me phrase my original statement from a different perspective: I hope to see even the mightiest of units in Elemental be defeatable by sheer numbers, rather than exclusively by OTHER leet units. The main reason is that I grow tired very quickly of games in which older units become swiftly obsolete, and you are forced to always build the most powerful units available to you in order to play efficiently. This would often happen in Master of Magic, where you would ignore all of the lesser units you built earlier in the game in favor of armies that always had the best armed and best trained soldiers.

If I'm able to build a large army of poorly trained and poorly equipped soldiers late game because I have a large surplus of food and citizenry, I want to have the option of pursuing that strategy (that doesn't mean that a large army of crappy soldiers should be better at killing end game units than a smaller army of elite units.) Trivializing the usefulness of a strategic venue just because a lot of people are giddy about the idea of oober doober dragons hurts the strategic breadth of the game.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 17

In a battle with a dragon, whether we're talking 50, 500 or 1000 even the formation used would merely determine the order in which the dragon kills them.

That's the conformation right there folks!!!! Formations are IN!!!!

(if they aren't we can now officially blame the Frogster)

@ Frogboy j/k

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2409

A grasshopper can't kill a man. A million grasshoppers still couldn't kill a man.

How would the million archers kill the dragon? It would depend on whether they can penetrate the dragon's armor. If they can't. They can't.

While the battle system in Elemental is still something to be fully fleshed out, I'm of the opinion that when a unit rolls their attack and defense that the minimum should always be say 10% of their max value. I.e. if the dragon's armor is 50 then even if he rolls a 1, he's still going to get 5 and if the max of the archer's attack is say 4, then he will never be able to damage the dragon.

There are creatures in this game that will simply be unbeatable by any number of mundane peasantry armies.

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Tridus

Join Date 03/2008

+110

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 23

A grasshopper can't kill a man. A million grasshoppers still couldn't kill a man.

How would the million archers kill the dragon? It would depend on whether they can penetrate the dragon's armor. If they can't. They can't.

While the battle system in Elemental is still something to be fully fleshed out, I'm of the opinion that when a unit rolls their attack and defense that the minimum should always be say 10% of their max value. I.e. if the dragon's armor is 50 then even if he rolls a 1, he's still going to get 5 and if the max of the archer's attack is say 4, then he will never be able to damage the dragon.

There are creatures in this game that will simply be unbeatable by any number of mundane peasantry armies.

I like this. It both makes sense, AND it reduces the silly situations of spearmen defeating tanks because of wonky rolls.

To face something like a dragon, you won't be able to just throw a peasant horde at it. Bring out the big guns.

(Of course, a dragon this powerful is also going to be pretty rare from what I've read. You won't be mass producing them, or even seeing them every game.)

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Tridus

Join Date 03/2008

+110

Quoting Demiansky,

reply 21

That's because the ant is actually capable of damaging you skin. One ant can't do it enough to slow you down, but they are having an effect. A wooden spear simply bounces off an aircraft carrier. A million wooden spears will continue to bounce off the aircraft carrier.

The dragon in this case is the aircraft carrier. Bring a torpedo, not a spear.

Quoting Demiansky,

reply 21

If I'm able to build a large army of poorly trained and poorly equipped soldiers late game because I have a large surplus of food and citizenry, I want to have the option of pursuing that strategy (that doesn't mean that a large army of crappy soldiers should be better at killing end game units than a smaller army of elite units.) Trivializing the usefulness of a strategic venue just because a lot of people are giddy about the idea of oober doober dragons hurts the strategic breadth of the game.

Well, your peasants will still be effective against mundane troops. Even 50 well trained well armed Knights will have problems with a big horde of peasants.

Dragons in this game are meant to be super rare, and super powerful. You won't be seeing them very often. If someone DOES manage to get one, yeah, they're badass. Your units aren't being obsoleted here, even your elite knights won't stand much of a chance without help.

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