Vallu751

Join Date 05/2003

+14

[REQUEST] Please explain how squad tactical combat works

Despite reading these forums a lot, I still don't know how tactical combat works when squads are involved.

With single man units it's really straightforward. Roll attack, roll defense. Deduct defense roll from attack roll and reduce leftover from hitpoints.

With squads, what's the calculation? From the 1.07 update notes, I gather that members of a squad attack individually. Well what about defense? Is one of these guesses accurate:

1) Attacking squad rolls attack rolls for each of it's members. Each uses total attack divided by the maximum figures in the unit. Their results are added together. Defending squad rolls a single defend roll. Defense deducted from sum of attacks and reduce leftover from hitpoints.

2) Attacking squad rolls as in option 1. Defending squad rolls defense in a similar way, individually and then calculating together.

3) First member of attacking squad rolls his attack. A defense roll is rolled for total defense of the unit. Defense deducted from attack and hitpoints are reduced. Process repeated for every member of attacking squad.

4) Attacks rolled as per 3. Defense rolls are made according to individual defenses, not total unit defense. If a defender is killed, individual defense for next unit is rolled and reduced from remaining damage. Repeat the damage dealing for each defender as long as there is damage left.

There are countless of more variations, but these seem most likely. MoM of course used option 4, along with a bell curve for rolls.

elemental

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Did I phrase my question poorly or doesn't anyone know how squad combat works? Isn't this a rather central aspect of the game?

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From how I understand it. Its option 3, but with a minor cavet, different armors have different properties. What I mean by that is take a piercing weapon like Bows for example. Lets say your Plate armor has an armor rating of 8 and is strong vs piercing, then it will always roll an 8 vs piercing attacks, but against Blunt or Slashing attacks it will roll a value between 0-8. Its a simliar system to what they used in GalCiv. The only difference in GalCiv they told you what armors were strong against, here they haven't filled in those particular blanks yet for us.

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^I know that such thing is written in the manual, but I always assumed that is was just obsolete/unimplemented game mechanic (very common for game manuals), since there is no way sane developer would hid such data ingame.

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No one (outside the devs, obviously) really knows. In fact, of all the many undocumented and frequently changed game mechanics, this is the one I'd most love to get an official Stardock explanation for.

In an attempt to be constructive, I'll tell you what I do know:

You can miss against 0 defense, and 1 attack vs. 1+ defense can still hit for 1, which implies both attack and defense have a minimum roll of 0 (not 1 as with typical dice rolls/D&D-based systems/etc).

Units with, say 12.8 attack, can hit for 13, implying that decimal attack/defense gets rounded before the roll, or gives a partial chance to roll the next highest number, or the roll itself is decimal and the result rounded.. makes little enough difference, on average. Not sure if something like 12.2 could still occasionally give you 13, that'd shed more light on how exactly decimals are treated.

And as we all know from the latest patch notes, attacking squads have been changed to roll separately for each soldier, but what that really means especially in regards to defense is anybody's guess. We didn't really know how it worked before the patch, and we still don't.

Edit: Glad to get an official Stardock explanation, the system turns out to be better than I expected.

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I want this info badly. Somebody from Stardock please answer.

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Yeah I think we would all appreciate knowing exactly how tactical combat works.

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Each member of the attacking squad rolls (0-ATK/NumTroops) vs. a unique defender roll of (0-DEF/NumTroops). All positive results of the attacker rolls are totaled and damage is dealt.

EDIT: It's the same in autoresolve. There's no difference as far as damage calculations go.

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A unique defender roll?

You mean it's a single roll for defenders, not roll per unit?

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Thank you very much LikeTheWhirlwind. It's great news that the system is almost like my guess number 4. The only difference here is that damage after reducing defense is applied in it's entirety. That's something that I can live with.

It would be very, very nice to have the actual numbers displayed on the UI! Right now we see the sum of all members of the unit, even though that number is never actually used in the calculation! Very misleading.

p22: Let's take an example of what LTW said

6 knights with an attack of 10 attack 6 peasants with defense 4. Peasants have 5 hitpoints each.

Knights roll: 1, 0, 4, 5, 6, 10

defense: 1, 0, 1, 1, 4, 0

damage: 0, 0, 3, 4, 2, 10

Total damage would be 3+4+2+10 = 19. Three peasants die.

In MoM, the last attack would kill one peasant and then the leftover 5 damage points would get the defense roll of the next peasant. In Elemental, it kills two outright.

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Aha! I remember seeing when there's 1 figure remaining the damage can be much more than the maximum attack of an individual; in fact it seemed more likely (usually don't get down that far, so it's been a while). Is it because NumTroops at that point is 1? So (0-ATK)/NumTroops = 0-ATK, where ATK is the total squad attack? If so, that looks like a bug, and should be (0-ATK)/MaxSquadSize. Thanks!

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Quoting Vallu751,

reply 9

Knights roll: 1, 0, 4, 5, 6, 10

defense: 1, 0, 1, 1, 4, 0

damage: 0, 0, 3, 4, 2, 10

So, if defense rolls are done separately (not single def/[num. troops] roll for all defenders), just like attack, the big strength of squad units is that their "rolls", both attack and defense ones, average out, compared to single troop.

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Quoting p22,

reply 11

Quoting Vallu751, reply 9Knights roll: 1, 0, 4, 5, 6, 10

defense: 1, 0, 1, 1, 4, 0

damage: 0, 0, 3, 4, 2, 10

So, if defense rolls are done separately (not single def/(num. troops) roll for all defenders), just like attack, the big strength of squad units is that their "rolls", both attack and defense ones, average out, compared to single troop.

That, plus the fact that it occupies just single cell (how you can attack the same unit with 6 solders in the same turn otherwise?). Second advantage is that it can defend (or counter-attack) multiple times with the defense/counter-attack of the whole squad (if it were separate units, then only one unit would defend, until it dies, the rest would chill out). Third during attack, you get chance for each unit to attack first, without any counter-attack until all units finish attacking. That may lead to the death of the enemy, without any retaliation, meanwhile if it were separate units, couple of units may die.

In short, there are lots of advantages.

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I guess that's an advantage. More predictable is generally better. I wouldn't necessarily call it a big strength. I think the biggest strengths of squads involve being able to place more men into the same space, everyone getting healed if only one survives and buffing spells like haste affecting more men at the cost of a single spell.

I wouldn't mind if the 1-N rolls were made a bit more predictable too. Champions are at a disadvantage because the rolls vary so much. It isn't so bad to lose a squad, you can always train a new one. But uniqueness of units is hurt with this system. It didn't matter as much in Galciv because ships were never unique. But since this game is semi-RPG, the 1-N is bad.

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Faster typing and good points from MxM111

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Vallu751 As for combat rolls being more predictable... Combat is not usually predictable... Therefore when modelling it the varied rolls do an admirable jobs of representing the unpredictability of the outcome unless overwhelming firepower is used... Hence Sun Tsu's part about always use Strength against Weakness.

Just food for thought... It's a game an all.

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Gene: Well said. I think the most important point in your post is the ending. "It's a game an all".

A game is an entertainment product. The combat system that brings out the greatest entertainment is therefore the best.

I suggest you find Sid Meier's research on game combat, it's predictability and how it affects gamer experience. There was an excellent article in this months Pelit - magazine. Gamers don't find it enjoyable if the randomizing causes them losses that were not probably. I can't recall the exact details, but given an 80% chance to win, gamers don't like a loss 20% of the time. In fact, they consider 80% to be just about a sure shot. The reverse is not true if the AI attacks, the 20% victories don't matter at that point, naturally.

Now I'm not saying that the randomizer should be balanced in favor of the player. Just that I agree with Sid Meier's research and believe that more predictability in combat than Elemental is now offering would be more enjoyable to the player.

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It could actually be pretty cool if squad combat was resolved as attack, counter-attack for each attack. This would make escaping damage-free (glass-cannon style) less likely, but would also give an advantage against smaller units, since they would run out of counter-attacks faster. The animations would have to be faster though, it would take too long to have to look at the units trading blows at the current speed, but I guess it could be animated like auto-resolve combat on the world map.

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Quoting Carewolf,

reply 17

It could actually be pretty cool if squad combat was resolved as attack, counter-attack for each attack. This would make escaping damage-free (glass-cannon style) less likely, but would also give an advantage against smaller units, since they would run out counter-attacks faster. The animations would have to be faster though, it would be nice to have to look at the units trading blows at the current speed, but I guess it could be animated like auto-resolve combat on the world map.

It also gives a chance to add certain weapons with "first strike" ability.

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Tanafres' point about maxsquads instead of numsquad is one I have observed as well; I too think the suggested change would be necessaryish.

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Werewindlefr

Join Date 03/2007

+28

Quoting LikeTheWhirlwind,

reply 7

Each member of the attacking squad rolls (0-ATK/NumTroops) vs. a unique defender roll of (0-DEF/NumTroops). All positive results of the attacker rolls are totaled and damage is dealt.

Is it by design that dead soldiers still have attack rolls though? This make diminishing the HP value of the group useless until you actually kill them altogether.

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I had A squad of Archers, 8 of them ATT 64 vs a 24 DEF unit, Squad of 3.

I missed or did less than 4 points of damage, over 10 times.

If the game is working as told this seems VERY unlikely.

SO I had 8 rolls , 0-64, vs 0-24, end result 0 to 4 ten times that battle, seen it happen many time.

or is it:

0-8 The Attack Right Times vs 0-8 DEF

This would match what I am seeing but is not what I have been told?

Hopefully this is what is happening but as of yet I have found no info, form the devs to support it.

What are others seeing?

LEE

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I pretty much undestood it's the second thing.

I mean, why would you roll 0-64 8 times? That would mean some mega superdamage. As if having 8 units with 64 attack.

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Quoting Lfseeney,

reply 21

Hopefully this is what is happening but as of yet I have found no info, form the devs to support it.

Like p22 said, it's the second option. Please read the whole thread, especially the post from LikeTheWhirlwind. He's a dev.

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Quoting Werewindlefr,

reply 20

Quoting LikeTheWhirlwind, reply 7Each member of the attacking squad rolls (0-ATK/NumTroops) vs. a unique defender roll of (0-DEF/NumTroops). All positive results of the attacker rolls are totaled and damage is dealt.
Is it by design that dead soldiers still have attack rolls though? This make diminishing the HP value of the group useless until you actually kill them altogether.

Dead soldiers don't get rolls in the current system. If you have an example of a battle where you've seen a squad do more than its max ATK in damage, please send a save our way.

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^Are you 100% sure?

I just got recently in 1.07 at situation (unfortunately no save), where 4 men group with just 1 unit left did 8 point of damage, while actual single solder had attack rating of 5 (20 total for group). It seems to me that the less soldiers are alive the better attack/defense value get of the remaining ones.

Now, I don't think that dead soldiers to rolls, but instead that living ones get better attack (since attacking/defense rating never changes when soldiers die inside group). So if one is alive he gets attack rating of 20, compare to when 4 are alive, where there is 4 attacks with rating of 5.

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