Robbie.Price

Join Date 04/2007

+12

[Gameplay][Tactical battle]16 birds with 1 stone

Saving Heros, and Sovrins, while rebalancing spells, squads, with one simple change.

IN this i am assuming a system like
https://forums.elementalgame.com/393907 has been implemented.

The Problem:

There has been a lot of complains about squads being overpowered. That in the late game the only thing that matters is how many squads with 300 attack and 400 Def can you field. There have also been numerous complaints that Spells, especially direct damage spells SUCK in the late game.and there have been complains that Late game heroes are pointless because they are just chickenfeed to the overpowered squads.

There have been a lot of proposed solutions, many of which would work, some of which are even elegant. I hope this is another elegant and workable solution.

I want to talk to you about targets. Or more about how many people you can be attacked by at once.

Unless you are on the ground getting plumbed by a mob (standing beside you and kicking you) it's really hard to get more then three people swinging swords, maces and what have you directed at you in a fight.

Currently, 16 poorly equipped schmucks can lay the smackdown on a level 10 Hero with God's own armour, because they manage to all attack, all at once, and all with perfect efficiency.

Proposed Solution (Paradigm description):

Understanding this I would propose that Units have a 'targets' attribute. Anything 'human' sized would have 3 targets, a giant spider might have 1(a spider 1/3 of the size of a human is *#$%ing huge), and a dragon would have between 50 and 1000 (arbitrary large number). A Squad of 16 people thus would have '66 targets'. (Perhaps the Larger Fallen would have 3.5 'targets each' and the smaller ones 2.5 each).

Goal:

Make it so that Single Unit Troops (including spell casters) are still useful against Squads in the late game, unless the Squad is designed with the intent to attack Single Unit Troops.

Game Mechanics(in brief);

When I attack a unit, I check if it has a 'target' or part of one free. If it doesn't I can't attack.

I then Roll to attack that Target, (attack and Def for targets discussed later). If I miss that target, I then evaluate if the same unit has more 'free' targets. If it does I RE-roll (with a lower chance to hit(attack), and a lower mean damage.) for up to N targets (Archers have High N, Swords medium N, Mauls have N=2, and Pikes have N=1).

If I Hit a target the Target becomes 'used' until next round of battle. (if I hit it with a RE-Roll I use less then 1 full target, say 2/3rds of a target or 1/2 a target). If I hit a Target that is partially used (IE the unit I'm attacking only has 1/3 of a target remaining because of previous attacks) then any final damage calculated is multiplied by the fraction of a full target remaining. So I hit, do 30 damage after armour, but the target was only a 1/3 target remaining free so I do 10 damage. (Different Types of attacks can consume different amounts of a target [damage based on needing 1 target but amount deducted based on weapon type]. Pikes would use a max of 2/3s of a target [because you can fit more pike-men around a unit] archers would use [1/3] or even [1/6] of a target (balancing needed) Mauls would use [1and1/3] or a target. . .)

If a Unit has more then 2/3s of it's max 'target' allotment filled by melee damage that unit can not disengage without a special ability to do so. However the unit also can not be the target of archery or spells that require a target for the remainder of this turn or the next turn (unless disengaged). [They are surrounded and can not escape. ranged weapons do not have an open enough target to aim at].

Game Mechanics (Swings, Attack, and Defense; Basic);

A units Defense is it's ability not to be hit, see link above, all 'targets' of a unit have the same Defense
If a Unit has 60 armour, and 3 targets. then the Unit has 20 armour per target.

Most units attack consists of one 'swing' (a Dagger, or a weapon in both hands would permit two 'swings'/attack). A squad of 16 units would attack with 16 'swings' unless modified by an ability or weapon. Spells could carry more or less 'swings', Fireball would have something like 5 swings / caster level, a dragon attack might be 10 swings, and dragon breath might have 20 'swings'.

A units Attack is it's ability to hit, Each swing has the same attack as the unit. However if a Unit has three people in it, then each 'swing' only carries 1/3rd of the damage potential. One 'swing' can kill or wound a maximum on one person. (so a 16 unit troop can loose no more then 'max health/16' to a given swing. [if you want to get technical you can track how much health the 'top' person has left... but...])

Game Mechanics( Example );

Thus if a unit has 10 guys (10 HP each), 9 attack, 10 def, 90 Damage, 120 Armour, it means it has: 10 swings, and 30 targets.
Each 'Swing' has 8 attack, and 9 Damage, each 'Target' has 10 def and 4 Armour. [translation these are early mace men with leather armour].

Compare to a Hero.

1 Unit (30HP), 12 attack, 14 def, 20 Damage, 30 armour, This unit has 1 swing and 3 targets. It's 'Swing' has 12 attack and 30 damage, and it's 'targets' have 10 def and 10 Armour.

Both units have combat speed 2.

Translation, That Hero is going to beat that squad of mace men. (with low remaining HP).

Round 1, Macemen; Has 10 swings, but can only land 4 hits: 2 direct hits taking 1 target, 1 reroll target taking 1/2 a target, and one full hit but only for half damage (runs out of targets to hit). [note, the defenders 'def' exceeds the attackers attack, so those 4 hits probably took 5 of the 10 swings.] Has two attacks per combat move

The two direct hits do between 0 and 2 damage each, (attack 9 vrs armour 10), the two other hits likely do 1 damage each between them, 3 damage per combat move.

6 Total Damage.

Round 1,Hero; 1 swing, Hits, 30 damage - 4 armour = >10. Kills one from the troop. Has two attacks per combat turn
20 Total Damage : Kills 2 units.

Round 2. Same (still has more then 5 troops) 6 Total damage to Hero.

Round 3. (only 6 Troops remain) 6 total damage to Hero

Round 4. (only 4 Troops remain) 4 total damage to Hero. Round 5. 2 Damage to Hero. Round 6 End.

Total Damage to Hero: 24.

Same Scenario but with MorningStars rather then maces. (MorningStars take 2/3s of a target each) or 4.5 hits for the first rounds rather then 3. doing 9 damage for the first 3 rounds. Total Damage to Hero 33. Hero Looses.

The choice between mace and MorningStar (otherwise identical weapons save the 2/3's target hit). determines Win or Loose.

Note: If the second unit had been 10 units with knives (two strikes per attack) rather then a hero, the knives would have won. STRATEGIC CHOICES!

Note: Archers fireing into Melee consume targets (your units can not be in the line of sight to target) in some situations you will find it not a good idea to fire into Melee because it will consume the targets

Extended Options (magic and abilities):

Spells could vary in the number of Targets the consume, and number of strikes they can make.

Fireball hits all open targets of a unit for attack____ Damage _____ up to N. Uses all remaining open Targets. (don't want to be where a fireball is exploding)

Lightning: needs 0 targets to hit, uses 0 targets when hitting (lightning comes from above, most of the attacks we're considering don't)

Force Guard: Reduces max number of targets for unit by (.5) (HUGE advantage for single fighters taking on mobs).

Abilities:
Momentum: If unit hits full target, and another full target exists in the same unit, reroll for the second target as well.

Marksman: Can fire on units in melee (units over 2/3s targets full with Melee hits).

Volley: All shots are calculated as if they missed the first target, (reduced accuracy and damage) but do not consume targets upon hit. (good for last volley before Melee arrives.)

Ninja: Always has a bonus 'strike' at same damage potential as normal strikes.

Conclusion:

Assuming the 'Gaussian hits', and the 'attack def Damage and Armour' models: https://forums.elementalgame.com/392880 , https://forums.elementalgame.com/393907

Adding only the 4 easy to understand variables of 'Targets', 'Swings', and tracking how many targets are hit (Total and by Melee) Gives the following Strategic Options.

For the same cost one can produce 4 levels of troops SUPER Beasts (dragon), Large squads, small Squads, and Lone rangers:

A Super Beast :

Can Kill just about anything, but has a weak spot of either Lone Rangers or Large Squads. (depending on the super beast).

A Large squad :

that can kill Super beasts, or other Super Squads (but is VERY weak when at attacking considerably smaller squads or lone heroes)

that can kill attack large squads and small Squads (but will loose to Supe Beats and Loan Rangers [doing lots but not enough damage])

or that can kill Lone rangers, but is weak against everybody else.

Small Squads: (like large squad but can be set to kill lone rangers as easily as Large squads can kill Super Beasts)

Lone Rangers: Can Kill just about anything, but has a weak spot of either Super Beasts or small Squads. (depending on the Equipment).

Summery:

Regardless of this size of your army, you can be set to best attack armies bigger, smaller, or the same size as you. but you'll always have a weakness for the other direction to compensate [or you'll cost much more to cover all your bases.]

Now at the very end game you still want, and still have a use for both Super large armies, and Lone Heroes/spell casters.

You don't even need to do THAT much work in re-balancing spells. Just set their max number of targets and attack/damage per target appropriately.

Robbie Price.

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The idea seems good, but I don't think I fully understand it.

Let me see...

Could you explain targets in another manner? Your pronouns above made it hard to tell if you meant the ATTACKERS had to spend targets, or if the DEFENDERS had targets that were consumed by the ATTACKERS.
Swings are essentially individual attacks? So if I have 5 swings per turn, with each unit in my 10 man group having 5 attack, then it translates to 5 swings carrying five attack?
in the example, since the hero was strong enough to kill off 2 macemen per turn, he won - but the damage wasn't impacted because even though he killed off 2 people, the remaining 8 could attack for 6 damage, and then the remaining 6. Thus, they had 5 swings, and could attack 5 times each turn, so long as they had that many units.
For the fireball spell, it essentially blasts the enemy and then that enemy can't be targetted by anyone else? Seems to handicap fireball to me. How does the fireball's damage translate to multiple units, and how is it still a viable thing to cast?

-N

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Goodmorning,

Sorry for the confusion.

The idea boils down to this, Time is broken into bits, each bit is only long enough for a fireball to explode, or a person to swing a sword twice, or an arrow, maybe 2, to be fired from a bow. About 3 - 6 seconds. In those 3-6 seconds you can't be hit by 16 people, 16 people can't stand around you and swing swords at you in 6 seconds.

Targets:
In 6 seconds you can be hit by about 3 people, or you can be hit by more people but glancing blows (too many people try to hit you they get in each others way) The bigger you are, the more places people can hit you from (dragons, Trolls).

When you are hit by an attack it is either a direct attack, meaning the person is directly nearby you and taking up a full unit of space, or the hit is a glancing hit, meaning they missed and are probably not perfectly lined up with you, so they only take half a space around your body. When you are fired on by an archer, and the archer hits, it means in that period of 6 seconds there was a gap, a line of fire between yourself and the archer. This gap can be small, but it has to exsist for the archer to hit you. Archery takes up very little space, because the attack has to come from somewhere but only the direct path that the arrow (takes, took or will take) is 'used'. hence the 1/3rd of a 'target' or 1/6th of a target.
In the next 6 seconds, something else might happen, and new people might be there to hit you. but in any given 6 seconds there is only so much space around you for you to be hit from. I called that space around you where somebody must be to hit you, you're 'targets'.

Swings:
yes, Swings are individual attacks. In 6 seconds how many people can you hit. Probably 2 (combat speed 2). How many people can an Ogre with a tree for a club hit? well with a sweeping swing, possibly 3, maybe 4. (one swing, but it contacts with 3 people). How many people can a dragon hit? Lots, probably 1 with each claw, one with it's mouth, and 3 or 4 with it's tail, so 7. A fireball would hit everybody, anybody inside the blast radius gets hit probably more then once (burns the persons arms And legs) . . . if you have a group of 10 people, and each person can hit 2 times in 6 seconds, then you have '20 swings' in your attack. Each swing has an chance to hit, (attack) and a strength (damage it will apply if it hits.)

The example:

Apparently i made a small mistake in the example, and calculated it with 6 'targets' for the hero, but the idea is the same,
In the example I assumed that some of the attacks would miss, I guessed that 5 swings were needed to land 2 full hits and 2 half hits, in 3 seconds(which they did twice (combat speed 2)) in the 6 seconds.

For the first 3 rounds of combat (10 macemen, 8 macemen, 6 macemen) there were more then enough swings to hit all the available 'targets' of the Hero. After that too few macemen remained to hit the hero fully, and so the amount of damage done per turn dropped.

Also the Hero no matter how strong, can only kill 2 people in 6 seconds. The Hero had Combat speed of 2, and 1 swing per attack. each swing killed it's target, But the damage done by each of those two swings was 26 damage each. The Hero would have killed 5 troops, each 6 seconds, except for the limit of 1 kill per swing.

The pike-men however did kill the Hero, because pike-men can stand further away from the person they are attacking, so more pike-men can hit a person in 6 seconds.

Regarding spells.
I wanted spells to be different, to feel different and have different uses.
Fireball is good when you're attacking a big troop, lots of people or lots of targets in one square. but during the 6 seconds that the fireball is exploding nobody can get near enough to hit, archers can't see targets, and melee fighters would be in the fire themselves if they were close enough to swing and hit. In the next 6 seconds they could hit, but in this 6 seconds they can't because the air is filled with fire.
Lightning however doesn't take up room around the person being hit, it comes from above. so if you want to hit your enemies while they are engaged in Melee you're better off using the Lightning spell.

If you're going to have 1 attack spell for each school of magic they need to be different.

So Throw Rock is like an archery shot, one hit, lots of damage.
Ice Bolt might be very simular but less damage and causes freezing,
Fireball hits everybody in the group, but takes up all the 'targets' so best used if you know you're going to kill, or if your archers are going to have something else to fire upon

Lightning can hit a few people (3 or 4 strikes) but the attack doesn't use any space so it's perfect for attacking engaged melee troops.

So fireball is useful but only before your melee troops reach theirs, then you have to switch to some other spell. You wouldn't use lightning unless your troops had already arrived because Fireball would do more damage. Each spell has a situation it's best used in, It adds an extra element of strategy since you have to choose the right spell for the job.

I hope this is more clear.

Thank you for posting your confusion.
Robbie Price

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The system isn't intuitive enough. You're adding an entire extra stat in order to solve an issue that could be easily addressed just by giving heroes better deals in the item shop.

Are squads relatively strong? Kind of, but they're not all that amazing compared to units that do unblockable damage. A single adventure dragon with some +essence boosts is very strong. Doing damage with magic is unrealistically difficult, but spells such as ice spike and haste are still very strong. IE squads are not innately too strong at this point. So... Why do people naturally dislike squads?

In terms of flavor, each tech tree generates an approach to winning your battles, each of which can be combined for a large total amount of strategies. The combat tree allows you to generate large armies of basic troops, that become impressive due to their organized might. Fielding an army of 144 bowmen to take down the enemy's 12 elementals makes perfect sense in terms of flavor.

The answer lies largely in the intuitive divide. Squads produce unrealistically high stats, that are often countered by ignoring those stats.

For instance, to counter a 12 man squad with 400 defense and 700 life a group of casters would be best off using teleports and artifacts to get the jump on the enemy, and then dump 175 total mana into vigilant demon bombs. (assuming this late in the game, a caster heavy strategy has at least 9 casters (4 children, 4 champions and the sovereign) with an average of 40 mana, we can assume the caster has around 360 mana available. He can instantly kill 2 such units, and has to beat the rest with his summons. assuming the enemy splits his forces, they become easy to counter with 'god knights' that have so much gold invested in them that even squads are meaningless.) Even if the enemy has champions to help transport the squads these can be countered by assassination via expendable archer groups, assuming the champion's stats are rather low due to lack of funds to invest in them.

IE- currently the answer to squads is almost entirely based around perma stun, abstractly large damage attacks, and armor ignore. There is no way to come up with a unit with larger stats.

This is actually, technically, how it should be. One particular tree should have the best stats, and other trees should receive alternate advantages to compensate. However, when your stats are 10 times that of your enemy's the very idea of losing creates cognitive dissonance (read: pain) Either you will be enraged at the 'cheap' tactics used by the enemy, or feel that your strategy is unbeatable, and only the mirror match matters.

This cognitive dissonance is what needs to be corrected- the balance issues are besides the point.

The simplest answer is therefore-

Each unit in the squad should add less than a full unit's worth of stats. IE 3 people should have 1.5*normal stats. To compensate for this extreme nerf, two major actions should be taken- abilities that do unblockable damage should be downsized (for instance, dragon's inferno could do half of its damage as undefendable, instead of being entirely undefendable.) and the cost of squads should be reduced. Preferably, with a little testing, combat could still have the highest total stats, but would only be 20-30% higher than the next strongest units. However, high attack and defense would be relatively more valuable in this brave new world.

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Goodmorning all,

My problem with the current system isn't that Stacks of Death are unkillable. As you said, a certain subset of spells (which some people say are overpowered but meh) can take out the Stack of Death.

My problem is the linear hierarchy.

2 beats 1, 4 beats 2, 8 beets 4, 12 beats 8, 9 casters dumping 360 mana into the battlefield beats anything.

It's too direct, too arms race. i you unlock the next level of squads you use it. because not using it is always worse then using it.

In my eyes if you have any tech tree that boils down to if you have it use it, and forget about all that came before . . . you don't have a Turn based strategy game's tech tree, you have an RTS upgrade system (zerg stonger claws, protos +1 blade damage). An upgrade system is an arms race system older techs and older spells are valueless.

The only way out of the current hierarchy is to jump the system; from melee and troops, to magic and 360 mana burn.
I want a solution that is IN the system of melee and troops.
I also think that if you need all 9 casters, something is still wrong with the picture.

All I'm asking for is more options. Knowing that a SoD is coming should mean, oh find all my casters. It should be more which of my 3 or 4 options is best.

Maybe it's a stack of marksmen (can fire into melee, hits use no targets) and a stack of pikemen with phased weapons (pass thought friendly weapons and units, so even more guys can attack [each hit takes 1/3 of a target rather then the usual 2/3 pike weapons use]). Clearly this is an army that designed to kill very small armies.

I have to run i'll edit in the rest later, or do another post

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Basically a game is dis-balanced if a faction with lower development cannot oppose a faction with greater development. At the least, it should be difficult for a faction with a lead to defeat several factions that are behind. (or if a technology within one of the factions is worthless, due to be being slightly inferior in that technology field, and so that faction virtually doesn't have that technology.)

A rather good point, I haven't really properly accounted for that. Units scaling steadily is important.

The best answer I can think of there, is to further regulate defense, to a system where armor reduces damage by a percent based on the percent difference between armor and attack (say, armor=attack, would reduce damage 50% armor>2*attack would reduce damage by 75% then set up an algorithm that curves nicely through said points.) and decrease the relative cost of hit points while increasing the availability thereof, such that it becomes much more difficult to obtain a turn one kill in combat. Hopefully that would make inferior groups capable of inflicting damage to enemies, even if they don't overpower their enemies.

Cross tree combat is on the face of it, viable- but it is true that a combat user will almost always build as large groups of as elite troops as he can. IE, subtree-ing combat is very difficult. The combat tree automatically becomes the main tree, and the other trees support it. If we look at other setups such as adventure+magic, they merge in a much less parasitic faction, and function as proper symbiots instead of one tree eating the other. If combat was still useful, especially in the early late game, (when you have most of the technology but have not heavily researched the repeatable techs) at a lower cost, it would be more valuable to other strategies. As such it would probably make sense to reduce the maximum power of combat, but increase the value per resource obtained. One method of achieving such a goal would be to reduce the gold prices, but increase iron prices. Since combat is pretty much the only user of iron, having some combat would essentially give you free resources, but having more combat than you have iron would be worthless. For those who want to go with combat centric plans, there are several faction, sovereign and technological abilities that can provide additional iron.

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From what I can tell, the main reasons are thus.

There is nothing making you keep lower tech boni. Why field 9 when you can field 12? Historically speaking, there have been many times when having a huge army is beneficial. There are an equal number of times when such an army is a hindrance. It should be so that if I am under attack by massive armies, there is a definite means of countering them. That means may not work (I may still lose) but it is to my advantage to have that counter in place. Else, what we get is a bunch of SoDs laying siege to cities. That's not fun, that's just following a rote - get a huge army, win the game. A defined counter would mean that while you can still have a massive army, you can't faceroll your way to victory anymore.
Magic's overreliance on summoning and buffing spells means that shards are usually worthless to have, for shards boost damage, and damage via magic is utterly pathetic and doomed to failure. Since spells will become unique in how they do things, and hopefully since they'll require strategy while being able to be...useful...they become a sudden bonus.
There should NEVER be a requirement to play a game in one way, at least not a strategy game. A strategy game is much more than just roflstomping things with a huge army or summoning legions of mystical creatures. it is not fun if the game becomes fantastically easy after getting a stack of death fielded. It is not fun if a stack of death can let us roflwin. It is not fun if there is no means to lay the smackdown on a stack of death.

TO DEMONSTRATE

In Age of Wonders, I was at war with my neighbor, a sorceress named Karissa (pure fire magic, with orcs and dark elves in her army). She was too far away to be a major threat, so I built a city, turned it into a fortress (via construction) and simply stuck a handful of units there. The max per army is 8 units, I had about 12 (full stack + one half stack). The rest of my military was elsewhere. The city was in my domain, and thus I could cast spells at it/on it.

Five turns later, Karissa sends a huge stack of death - a bunch of high-tier creatures, lots of soldiers, amounting to about 80 troops. Ten stacks. She was not a happy camper. She decided to pick a fight with my city. 80 vs. 12. I didn't have anything high tier, and her stack of death would've probably stomped me.

Battle started. I weakened her troops with a powerful spell, and let my archers thin her ranks while my pikemen moved to block her advancing melee units. My healers healed (limited to once per battle) injured soldiers and launched weak barrages of magic. Her stack of death killed all but 2 of my units, but we won.

This scenario is not possible in Elemental. That is disturbing and boring.

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I personally feel that if we removed the unit-cap on armies (or at least increased it yet limited Champion number perhaps??), it would be easier to achieve balance.

With the current battle system? No. But certainly possible "eventually."

For instance, having an army of 20 companies of peasants is an option. Maybe not the smartest option, but still valid. Especially if you have a few healing casters (maybe even a few enchanting/ buff/debuff casters).

Against this army, spells wise is obviously AOE. Troop Wise? maybe a few parties of high-end elites. Well, plus a couple monsters and/or casters.

Like ... with enough peasants you should be able to kill anything BUT!!!! expect to lose most of your peasants. Also, due to morale, there should be no POSSIBLE way to create the exact number of peasants to win with only 1 peasant left (although PLENTY of ways to win with only 1 hero left).

With peasants, you should either have to OVERWHELM your opponent (while keeping 30+% of your numbers) or doomed to lose with either your troops panicking, running away blindly, retreating without orders, or being actually annihilated.

And honestly, I wouldn't mind it if panicked peasants that ran off the map ended up appearing later at some point. (perhaps X turns later in nearest friendly city, where X is at least the normal amount of turns it would take to get there- or more)

lets assume low numbers of high end elites (less than 100), vs 2000 peasants. Lets assume that both armies were equal cost. Any possible victory from the peasant army would by Pyhrric at best (50% losses at least).

However, best-case for the elite army might be winning with only 20% losses. (taking advantage of terrain and a decent morale system)

How would either of these things happen? Not a clue, but lets assume that if the Peasant army loses 80% or more of their army chances are that their remaining units will all rout. (unless the number of elites is less than 20). This isn't a mathematical suggestion, merely a philosophical suggestion.

How it might work mathematically? My hypothesis is if all units use Wide Gaussian Attack vs Defense, Tight Gaussian damage, and little-to-no mitigation of that damage, it might work.

Also, lets assume targeting and large unit sizes ... most of the peasants are in large units of 40 soldiers, and these units cannot make more than 12 attacks on a 4-person party. While the 4-person party has 4 attacks which are likely quite better than the 12 they suffered.

Also, perhaps give elites not only greater HP, but also higher evasion chances and (accuracy?). Maybe not as strong as a leveled hero would have though.

Hmm, perhaps have fairly WIDE Gaussian for Attack and Defense (based primarily on skill and level), while Damage is a more tight Gaussian based upon Equipment. Armor can add to Defense, and also slightly add to damage mitigation.

Although, say Weapons affect both attack and damage. Daggers have a very HIGH attack bonus, while low damage. Swords have a High attack bonus, and medium damage. while Great Hammers have high damage but maybe an attack penalty. Some swords, and some daggers, would have attack speed bonuses. While certain hammers may have attack speed penalties. All weapons but daggers may have a varying Run speed penalty.

as for armor .... lets say light armor gives roughly a 10% bonus to defense and 1 damage mitigation. Medium armor gives 15% bonus to defense and 3 damage mitigation. Heavy armor gives 20% bonus to defense and 6 damage mitigation.

Or perhaps we get some values set first. Base attack is 20 with a Standard deviation of 5. Base defense is 15 with a Standard Deviation of 4.

Then, Light Armor could give a 20% bonus to defense, +1 defense, and 1 damage absorb. Medium Armor would give 10% bonus to defense, +4 defense, and 2 damage absorb. Heavy armor could give 5% bonus to defense, +8 defense, and 4 damage absorb.

Meanwhile, Daggers could give +5 attack and 3 damage. Short Swords could give 20% bonus to attack, +5 attack, and 5 damage. Long Swords could give 20% bonus to attack, and 9 damage. Greatswords could have a 10% bonus to attack, +3 attack, and 12 damage.

Axe could have +3 attack, and 5 damage. Mace could have +5 attack and 5 damage ignoring damage absorb. Giant Hammer could have -20% attack and 20 damage.

all Damage absorb would have a standard deviation of 1, while most Damage would have a standard deviation of 3. // Sword damage could have a standard dev of 2, while Hammer damage could have a standard dev of 4.

Meanwhile, Champions could have increased attack and defense ... and perhaps some guaranteed +base attack.

So a level 5 Champion might have Attack be Gauss (30, 5); with Defense being Gauss (20, 4) ... as well as a 5% raw evasion chance (or so), and a 5% critical hit chance (for 2x damage hits).

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Goodmorning all.

I did some work with Attack and Def, (to hit and to dodge)

I found quickly that the question: "Is Attack larger then Def" when attack and def are rolled on Gaussians was much to sensitive to the mean difference unless the gaussians were very wide. Ie If Attack = def, you have a 50/50 hit rate, unless one of the gaussians was very wide, say 6 or 8, attack = 1 more then defense gave a 70/30, hit/miss rate.

Now gaussians can be made to work for calculating weather on hits or not, but unlike in damage where they are the right type of variability the hit or not hit question is a binary question.

As such I think a simpler and easier to adjust system may be preferable.

I did some testing and found that a system much like what was used in MoM would be best.

have a base 'did you hit' probability, MoM used 30%, then compare attack and defense to modify that % chance.

because I've suggested a system with re-rolls I took a base accuracy of 40%.
For each point that attack was less then Def I subtracted 4%. (or added 4% if attack was greater then def.)
Now these numbers seam, and are, smaller then those used by MoM, but that's because there is a system for re-rolling.

As I suggested most attacks would have at least 1 chance to hit a second target if one isn't taken. the second chance having +2 attack, but - 4 (-50%) or more damage. (I originally suggested -2 attack, but this led to it being much more likely to do full damage than reduced damage, which was counter intuitive.)

If your attack equals the opponents def you have 40% chance to do full damage, and if you miss you have an additional 28.8% chance to do reduced damage. (or a 40% chance for full damage, 28.8% chance to do reduced damage, and a 31.2% chance to miss entirely).

For highlights, see the following table. assuming 1 main hit and 1 re roll

attack-def | Base accuracy | total chance to hit after both rolls.

-10 0% 8%

-5 20% 48.3%

-1 36% 64.2%

0 40% 68.8%

1 44% 73.1%

5 60% 87.2%

10 80% 97.6%

That is assuming each attack gets one reroll, archers would get 3 or 4, assuming they are attacking tight formation stacks or 'big' targets.

Damage however should be Gaussian, as that yields a reasonable distribution of damages which have the right form of randomness.

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I'm not too keen on archers getting "re-rolls" ... although the main body of the theory is sound.

Its actually quite similar to X + 1DN vs C on basic principle.

For instance ... in a D20 system, each point in "attack bonus" or "AC" (within a 20 point spread) increases chance "to hit" or "to miss" by 5%.

When beyond a 20 point spread, however, there is only a 5% chance to hit (or a 5% chance to miss).

using the same D20 system, only converting to a D100, you multiply the "basic modifiers" by 5 to get the same 5% effect, and all other modifiers only increase by 1% ... (basically, so you can have more stack-able "extra" bonuses that are not as important to the core system).

With the current system of Elemental, all we really need is a decent 20 point spread (and, somewhat Ironically, YOU also used a 20 point spread )

although of course, a "20 point spread" where EXTRA bonuses only add 1/5th of a "point" ... might be a more modifiable system.

Basically, I agree with you ... and suggest that you look at your system as (a modification of the MoM system that works a lot like D20 system)

of course ... I agree with you that the actual DAMAGE rolls (after the attack vs defense) should be Gaussian. Probably with a slight % chance of critical hits as well (only on the first roll)

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Goodmorning,

The extra rolls does add complexity, and perhaps is unnecessary, but it makes it a lot easier to differentiate between weapons.

Bows get very high rerolls,

Poleaxes and hammers get none.

This allows the game to better specialize units.

If you want to hit one guy, he's got very few 'targets' you want to hit those targets with 100% of your force so you want no rerolles. so you want a medium sized troop (enough troops to be sure to hit all targets) with weapons that use few targets (bows or pole weapons). however in that situation you prefer pole weapons because they also don't reroll so you never 'use' a target with a reduced damage (also bows probably do less damage per hit [and perhaps per target by the time they hit with rerolls all the time]).

If you want to hit bigger troops you want lots of rerolls so no swing goes wasted, bows, or knives, swords, and other close range weapons.

I'm sure the same effect could be achieved in a different, and less complex way, but this adds extra versatility which is important for differentiability and diversity of weapons.

Robbie Price

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One point I find notable, is that this system seems difficult to produce realism (note: realism for its own sake is not particularly desirable. However, as a gamer, I've countered countless cavalry charges with entrenched pikemen. This is something I'm used to, and forcing me not to makes me "relearn" the dynamics of the battle system.)

Now, we could just ignore this issue, and allow the complexity creep. (complexity creep is bad, but sometimes the benefits are worth it.) However, it would be better if we set things up in a generally intuitive manner.

When a mass of troops are fighting another mass of troops, you generally want phalanxes, archers or cavalry. As force organization drops (for instance, when the terrain doesn't allow widespread regiments.) swords, maces and other somewhat more complicated weapons start to shine in comparison. Once the battlefield reaches 1v1 your weapons of choice are actually truly obscure weapons such as the kusarigama.

So the objective of the system should say-

Archers beat massed troops, except that shields counter archers.

Cavalry are equal in normal regards, but units that don't have to move counter them. (namely phalanxes with archers behind them, hopefully standing on tactical defensive ground.)

Phalanx is a good unit, but it's hard for it to get anything done on its own. Countered by smaller groups of better units.

Swordsmen are more expensive, but superior, thus allowing a 4 man group of swordsmen to have comparable stats to a 8 man phalanx. The price scales in such a way that awesomely large sword squads are hard to produce until late into the game. (for instance set up the training time so that 4 swordsmen take 30 turns to build but 8 to 60, and will be long obsolete by the time they get out. Meanwhile a 8 man phalanx would only take say, 16 turns.) Swordsmen have no advantage against archers. (which makes archers a counter, since swordsmen cost more.)

Macemen are an inbetween state less impressive than swords but stronger than phalanx.

Anything using a shield is far better off against archers, but should be reduced in other regards.

Okay, so now we need to fit in mythical beasts and champions- Note that all relations are cost based ratio. I expect it to take a lot of troops to take down champions or dragons, but doing it the right way should give you a significant advantage in terms of resources invested.

Dragons are well known for their ability to slaughter hordes, and organization and numbers have never done much to stop them. Their current armor piercing plays into this nicely, so inversely, dragons are countered by elite troops with high attack and movement (Sword Cavalry, without shields). (right now nothing really counters dragons because they end the battle on round 1, but I think their fundamentals are currently sound.) In general super monsters with ranged attacks should fall into this paradigm. (so Earth Giants, Fire Giants and Demons should also be countered by the same strategies.) It would make some sense to reduce the speed on dragons so that they can only hit one target per turn. (not as a nerf, though dragons also need some nerfing. But I just want to punish individual units with dragon fire.)

Warrior Champions should actually lose all engagements on a cost basis. (they can do adventure quests, enchantments, teleports, have low upkeeps, the list continues. Sufficed to say, champions are not all about the tactical battlefield.) However, opposite to dragons, well organized large forces should be ideal for stopping champions, while archers should actually do very little. (archers normally are used to coat areas with arrows. Small targets such as champions are a nightmare. On the other hand, a champion who kills 100 people generally does so by pulling each person individually and killing him in a duel. Therefore a large unit that cannot be moved around by the enemy is ideal.)

As such-

Champions should be countered by having as many units as possible.

Dragons should be countered by having as high quality troops as possible.

Archers should be countered by having as high defense as possible

Spears should be countered by having as high attack as possible

Swords should be countered by having as high quality troops as possible

As it stands-

Champions are countered by having as high attack as possible

Dragons are countered by having as high attack as possible

Archers are countered by having as much speed as possible

Spears/Swords/Etc. are all countered by having as much attack as possible.

With the roll system above-

Champions are countered by having as high quality troops as possible

Dragons are countered by having as many troops as possible

Archers are countered by having as high quality troops as possible

Spears are countered by having as high quality troops as possible

Swords are countered by having as many troops as possible.

Thus: Attack and defense, as stats, are not addressed. (well, I don't think you were trying to address them...) furthermore, dragons and champions are reversed from being countered sensibly. I think you tried too hard to fulfill the archer is countered by champion issue, and nerfed some other matchups on the side. Spears should do better in situations where they're fighting high combat speed units (namely cavalry) than you're allowing them to, and thus need better defenses. Swords are doing the opposite of what makes sense for them, and should be countered by champions not massed forces.

(If I'm not understanding some part of your system that's to be expected, it's highly mathematical with a lot of pieces to track. That said, I expect my analysis to have some holes.)

note-

Rewards attack also means "punishes combat speed". High quality often rewards combat speed. So how should combat speed work on a strategic basis? In actuality, a more advanced unit should always just get more attack/defense/hp. Combat speed allows you to invest above and beyond for high quality units. Thus, combat speed should never be more effective on a cost basis than more attack. It allows you to create units with higher quality.

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Goodmorning all ,

I don't see why or how it fails to produce the desired cavalry charge weak against pikemen. The mechanic can easily be set up to provide that dynamic as well.

In fact nothing you proposed wouldn't fit well within the system I'm proposing. All you have to decide is who beets what and why. Shields beat archers sure, Shield = all archery first rolls miss, only reroll hits. (not good enough, add effective targets for archery = current # of targets -1.5).

I disagree with lone warriors losing all combats on a cost basis, but Pulling units away for 1 on 1 combat is what my suggestion is all about. (well ok 3 on 1 combat, but if you have 15 more attack and def then it may as well be 1 on 1.)

As such-

Champions should be countered by having as many units as possible.

Dragons should be countered by having as high quality troops as possible.

Archers should be countered by having as high defense as possible

Spears should be countered by having as high attack as possible

Swords should be countered by having as high quality troops as possible

I disagree. In fantasy stories, including the book, Champions only fall to other Champions and mythical beasts. A champion is an epic unit, guided by fate. In the middle earth trilogy only one 'Champion' (including evil ones) ever 'dies' to a swarm of opponents. . . and the one that does fall to a swarm is really not very much of a Champion since he's really too corruptible. Gimli and Legolas take out 30+ opponents each at Helms Deep. The Which king falls to a fate hero and a courageous woman. The ring bearer to a ultra spider . In the book a hero is the target of an assassination attempt with an arrow which took "years" to create and imbue with magic, why? because NO amount of troops was ever going to be sufficient to kill the hero . . . anytime one loan hero strikes out against a numerically Superior (but obviously less well trained and equipped) opponent they kick ass. It's epic, they are supposed to. It feels wrong to loose a hero to 12 joe's with swords. (I'm a PC character, if you don't have a last name leave now, or I WILL be your final scene.)

Champions aught be countered by Champions, Elite (champion killing)squads, and Dragons or other super-strong mythicals.

Dragons aught be countered by as a modest number of high quality troops as possible, and Champions (yes both way, depending on the build of the champion more then anything else.)

Archers should be countered by speed (that's why you have pikemen to protect your archers from Calvary)

Spears should be countered by archers (can't move fast enough to get there before dieing)

Calvary by spears.

and swords play the middle man good at most things.

Additionally, Spears help defeat smaller armies, Calvary and Archers help defeat larger armies.

But most of this is external and complimentary to my primary focus, which is

Big beats medium, Medium beats small, Small beats Big, unless you pay extra to go the other way around.

ie Small can beat medium if you've got swords (high training), and shields (more cost). And big can be small if you're willing to pay extra to have armour negation, 'target' consumption reduction. . .

How swords, shields, farm utensils, spears, horses, and maces fit in is somewhat secondary to the point. Currently the system only goes one way more = better. it doesn't matter what equipment or training or anything else. that's too bad.

I hope that's clearer, and I hope my reason for ordering champions the way I have makes sense.

Robbie Price

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well, at some level I agree that (given same cost) small (numbered) units should overcome large (numbered) units ... and medium (numbered) units should be weak against large, yet cost-effective vs small.

Yet, at the same time, I feel that large numbers of peons should have somewhat of an advantage in all cases if you assume infinite morale.

Also ... when a hero levels up, cost is kind of thrown out the window (and the hero should be rightfully badass).

Basically, a well-equipped Regiment (80), should still eventually kill a level 10 hero ... (assuming combat hero), but not before taking some serious losses (say around 50%)

I'm doing some simulations to determine appropriate weapon and armor values (especially armor), although thus far on a "base test" a level 10 super-warrior has dealt around 90 damage to a Regiment (total HP 800), and meanwhile the Regiment has managed to take out half of the Hero's HP.

The hero has a 1D4 (damage) dagger, and the Regiment have 1D20 (damage) hammers of some kind.

The hero has 10 constitution, and at level 10 that translates to 40 HP.

Also, the hero is wearing NO armor (for full dex bonus), and the soldiers are wearing an armor value of 10 (not sure whether this is strong or weak armor value- yet)

Thus far 5 rounds of combat have occurred, assuming both have a combat speed of 1. So one attacks, the other counters, the other attacks, and the one counters. and then the one attacks, etc. The regiment have had 28 misses and 2 successful hits. The Hero has had 1 miss and 9 hits.

The hero has 25 strength and 25 dexterity. He started with 15/15 and placed 2 strength for 5 levels and 2 dex for 5 levels.

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I'm not saying that a Russian army (every male between 10 and 70 in the country, untrained and practically equipped) will necessarily fall to a lone guy just because he's a hero.

in terms of the calculations there should be a $$ value associated with leveling up. so when you compare a level 10 hero with a size 16 squad you are taking into account the full cost of the squad(and it's levels) and the equipment, highering cost, levels, and spell bonuses of the hero. If the hero and squad are equipped in the normal sense (ie not paying extra to have equipment to reverse the normal hierarchy) then knowing who is going to win the toe to toes battle should be reasonably predictable by comparing the costs. Whoever costs a LOT more will win, if the Squad costs %150 of the hero they will win with huge losses by 125% the hero will win but only just, and if they are close to the same or the Hero costs more the hero will win.

Same goes for a medium sized troop, with normal hierarchy, they should continue to win until the large sized army costs about 115-120% times as much.

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I guess what I'm saying is that level should count towards "your cost" ... only its not really costing resources, just time and effort.

Also, I believe in each level taking the same amount of experience, only your experience is determined by how much weaker or stronger you were than your opponent. (not necessary, but I think its a cooler system)

Anyways, I prefer to make a combat system not based (entirely) on the results I want, but how I think battles should play out on a turn by turn basis.

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So essentially, a low level Hero would do nearly 50/50 vs a squad that cost the same resources of investment ... however a High Level Hero would be a creature far beyond its material value.

So basically, regardless of stats, an extra 2.5% to hit and an extra 2.5% chance to dodge per level, stacking with stat bonuses.

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On that we concur

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