How to improve upon MoM and AoW tactical combat?

Two things I hope will be in are a kind of zone of control and morale. I just hate when you can travel away from an opponent you just attacked in close combat.

Well that tactic makes sense in some cases for some units. Perhaps not all but I don't think it should be ruled out entirely.

Bigger doesn't always mean better. Making the battles take way longer (like the Total War series' hour-long monstrosities) will make it a fundamentally different game.

To me, it sounds like the argument for how to make chess better by making the board way larger and adding all sorts of extra stuff. Sure, that may be fun, but it won't be chess anymore.

I wasn't exactly sure they way Stardock were going with the combat, now I know its definately going to be turn-based (default is continuous, but can switch to classic turn based). I wanted to hear others opinions on what they think is best, personally I'm most happy hearing its turn-based.

I kinda think the original MoM combat was very simple, almost too simple. Battles largely just came down to the number of his attack icons vs the number of your defence icons. Reading posts here hearing about the "Champion Halfling Slingers" I think, "How do you counter that?". In MoM you cast the anti-ranged spell on units, if you don't have it what do you do? Does the anti-ranged spell work against Warlocks magical ranged attack? The strategy leads to getting a super-hero/beastie, into a strategy "dead-end" as nothing beats the super-hero/beastie except another super beastie. 

I kinda think that tactical battles stop becoming tactical battles when one sides stack is comprised of one type of unit, ala Champion Slingers, Warlocks or Paladins. There should be a reward to using different units. I believe MoM did not have this because the combat was too simple.

Nah. The big problem with MoM is that the AI had no clue what it was doing. Any simple strategy dominated the AI because it simply couldn't put anything together at all.

In Elemental, things will be very different (I hope). There are so many strategies, counter-strategies and counter-counter-strategies buried within the complexity of the units.

Obtaining "Champion Halfling Slingers" will not be easy against other players. If you bet the farm on such a strategy, it's likely your opponent will annihilate you with an early rush strategy long before you acquire them. Or perhaps they will straight-up counter your slingers with invisible units (something the AI never does) or spells such as warp wood.

Warlocks can be countered easily with spells like elemental armor or magic immunity or magic immune units. Paladins can be countered with ranged units such as bowmen, longbowmen or slingers (or any flying unit, which cannot be engaged by the paladins).

There is no single unit in Master of Magic that cannot be countered. In high-level battles, it would be foolish to use a monocultured force as that would make it much easier for you to be countered.

Correct me if I am incorrect, but wasn't Elemental supposed to be the game that had really big units in it, like some units you had to work very very hard to get and therefore are very powerful (although I realize not ultimately powerful)?

What I would like to see is a "discipline" rating for your soldiers.  Discipline wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with their actual strength or defense.  Instead, it would determine how well you could give units orders.  Units with very low discipline would never accept orders as soon as they enter melee combat.  In other words, you would point low discipline units in a given direction then cut them loose, at which point they would fight the enemy of their choice (probably the nearest and easiest targets) until the battle is over.  You would expect trolls or beserkers to fit into this category.

Units with medium discipline would be unreceptive to orders if they are in a thick melee, but if confronted by fleeing soldiers or given some legroom after a skirmish, can rally and be given new orders. 

Units with high discipline can be given explicit orders while in very thick combat (tactical withdrawels and redeployment.) 

This system would create some interesting strategic decisions.  It would actually cut down on the amount of micromanaging that you did with many of your soldiers.  Once a lot of your soldiers are committed, there won't be a reason to have to click on them, leaving most of your strategic decisions with your high discipline soldiers and spellcasters.

Make real formations, add morale.

Can't say I'm a fan of this idea. Adding a random factor to the battle that can cost you a win by taking away your control sounds more like a recipe for frustration than fun.

When people complain about micromanagement, they usually mean the micromanagement of the empire and the endless minute details (food, production levels, minor adjustments to worker levels, production overrun waste). Micromanagement in combat is completely different and something absolutely necessary to avoid frustration and defeat.

Nothing is worse than losing because the game screwed you through no fault of your own.

Nice idea. And spells to lower discipline.

There's that boogie man word again.  "Random."  It's not random at all, not in the least.  If you tell your soldier to attack a site and you know that he will be fighting at the site and attacking the nearest enemy, you can easily plan around it.  It you fail to get good results from your commital, that makes you a poor strategist, not the feature random.  "Random" would be if the soldier suddenly, and without warning, teleported to an unpredictable location on the battlefield and attacked the nearest enemy, then teleported back to your lines, attacked your own soldiers, and then committed suicide.  That's random.

But this obviously is not the case.  A low discipline soldier behaves in a very predictable way, but with very little flexibility.  They fight what's closest to them after they've been committed.  When you decide to commit them, you need to think hard about where and how, otherwise they'll end up chasing peasants off the field of battle when they should be carving their way toward an enemy sovereign.  In pretty much every strategy game, all soldiers have the same flexibility when it comes to acknowledging orders.  With this method, you have multiple troops flexibilities, and a whole new set of strategies arise from it.

And besides, this is how historical battles have taken place.  Only the most elite soldiers would respond flawlessly to orders in the middle of a maw.

Sorry, but this argument is filled with logical fallacies including a straw man and the fallacy of necessity. The whole thing ends up being a non sequitur.

Here's the premise: you issue an order to a unit and that unit obeys or disobeys your order based on a random number. That, by definition, is a random factor. Q.E.D.

One thing from this gets me thinking, how exactly will combat between two units occur? Traditionally (pretty much EVERY turn based game I can think of, MoM, Elven Legacy ect., Age of Wonders has a "free hit" system but its still similar) does it as:

A is seperate from B --> A attacks B and they roll for damage --> magically A and B are seperate again.

Or...

How about when A attacks B, they become "joined" together in combat. They roll for damage but for B its not necessarily just able to walk away when it's B's turn. Every turn they are "joined" they roll for damage. Being able to disengage is not a given.

I think there needs to be some randomness. The only game I can think of that is a computer turn based game without any randomness was MAX.

http://au.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/max/index.html

"Random" has become a word to be feared on these forums, both to be written and to be read and I don't aim this at anyone in particular. I think given that pretty much every turn based game has randomness, (MoM, Master of Orion 2, Civ IV, Alpha Centuri..... What other classics are there?.....) people need to sit down and take a deep breath. You "control" randomness by playing the numbers. You take risks, thats part of it. I do want to see my lesser quality unit beat the AI's superior unit once in a while, and while it sucks vice-versa. I can't understand when somebody says "Lets include a random roll based on these factors" people start to think all control in the game is lost.

"I won't be able to play the game when I want to because it will only load at random times based on the the average number of red Fruit Loops in the breakfast bowl of Stardock employee's, right? Its the old Civ 1 battleship vs phalanx all over again!"

I agree. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to eliminate all randomness in the game. In fact, I believe most of it is essential to eliminate the predictability and monotony. The one area where I believe randomness has absolutely no place is in the control/issuing/obeying of orders.

It's funny that you brought up Alpha Centauri. This game featured one small example of how extremely annoying randomness of control can be: have a unit attempt to move into a non-road square with a fractional number of movement points remaining.

What happens next? It's random! Your unit may lose his movement point with nothing to show for it.  

Beautiful chaos.....

I guess the moral of that story is that sometimes we like random and sometimes we don't.

It's a logical fallicy to simply declare that someone's argument is incorrect on authority without citing any evidence.  It's also a logical fallacy to "name call" to make your point.  Random has become a meaningless pejorative on these forums,, which make them about as effective at making a point as calling an idea "gay" or "socialist" or "whinner."  I provide a  lengthy argument and you dismiss it with 1 sentence or more specifically, one word that is generally meaningless to the point of insulting..  So watch who you haphazardly accuse of logical fallacies.  Low discipline units do exactly what you tell them to do and you know exactly what they are capable of,

Low discipline units have nothing to do with Chaos.  You know that if you send them against other units, they will attack those units and continue fighting until they win or retreat.  They will not disobey that order and run off into the sunset for unknown reasons.  So how is that random?  All low discipline does is prevent you from issuing further orders until certain requisites are met.  They will have a small red bar next to their health to denote that they will not take any further move orders except full retreat until they are relieved.  Once that bar turns orange, they can be given new orders.  There would most certainly be spells, too, like "valor" or "order" that you could cast on a low discipline unit that would allow you to raise their discipline so that they can reposition while in a maw.  You could even have heros that raise discipline and allow you greater strategic flexibility in tactical battle.

Just because your opponent might come up with a strategy that mires your low discipline soldier there longer than you wanted, that doesn't mean it's chaotic.  It means they out planned you.  If you have a problem with units not slaying other units in one turn so that you can move them elsewhere and continue your strategies, then you should have a problem with elemental combat already, because I'm certain this isn't the case.

You are confusing randomness and limited uncertainty with Chaos.  What you are concerned with is if something happens that you had no prior awareness of or ability to predict.  If your low discipline unit gets mired in combat too long and you don't have any units to further your stretegy, then that's the player's fault for either A: not free them up with the help of a high discipline unit or B: you didn't keep a reserve of units or C: you just didn't plan well enough.  It has nothing to do with chaos. 

Units get locked up in modern warfare all the time because of poor planning, and it adds very interesting strategic landscape.

I'm going to defend Demiansky's point here. If you send troops into battle you know aren't reliable, it's likely that they won't be reliable. Likewise, a high discipline unit is certain to be reliable. There isn't much of a random factor here. It gives you incentive to use disciplined unit as opposed to units whom are merely more powerful.

Realistic wargames simulate this in a variety of ways. SPW&W has "command & control", which I've never actually used but sounds way too intense for me. Close Combat uses battlefield psychology. Even Total War has elements of this by having the camera restricted to the general and the fact that knights will occasionally charge undisciplined into battle.

With each of these games, it doesn't feel like "random chance". You know your elite units will follow your orders in the thcik of battle and that your mobs of peasants probably won't.

I too think Demiansky has a good idea here.  Simplified, have a discipline or morale base value that has some variables that affect it:

length of time since last battle

strength of opposing army compared to yours

last battle won/lost

quality of hero leadership in this battle

training

knowledge of reserve strength

etc.

Then add a small *random* modifier (accounting for quality of food that day, argument with wife, hole in boots , etc.) and look at the total each combat turn.  I would accept losing control of a unit if all of these things went south; it would be much more real. It would also make me plan better.  

While I don't know that I would like Demiansky's idea in practice I have to see that it's in no way 'random' the results of committing and when you can give them orders would be deterministic (ie in any given situation in would be possible for the player to determine if a unit could be given orders without the invoking of any kind of random number generator). I think it might be a very interesting idea to try out and see how it works in practice. It would also tend to reduce the burden of micro-management which makes it a potentially very good thing in my book. I hate when I have to make the choice between extensive micromanagemnt in combat (which I find not fun) or losing because I didn't (which I find not fun).

You don't have to base it on luck by itself.  There can be contributing factors.

With a good morale system and proper combat, your brash knights(most European knights were) can occasionally do that stupid charge for glory they'd have best not done.  If you have the advantage, those stupid units are going to be a lot more likely to behave stupidly than they would if you're about to get creamed.  On the reverse, low morale units are more likely to do something stupid because they're about to get creamed.

Randomization should be slight, something to remove total predictability.  The main factor in mechanics like this should be the setting, how boned the unit is, how tempting the target is.

Think of it in Total War, if your knights were facing spearmen and the formation suddenly did an about face to withdraw, showing their backside, wouldn't you think they'd want to go for it, orders or not?  They'd have to be insane to charge spearmen head on without orders though.