The AI is painful right now because there are too many O(N^3) systems in the game that make AI being intelligent very difficult.  Balance and more refined mechanics will help and make the game more fun IMO.  But we're going to run things by you guys before we do anything too radical.

imo a good system should imply at max a +-20% gap in dmg, second i really like to have a magic dmg MUCH more reliable (+-10%)and no miss/dodge at all

then it depends on how you want to calculate that and how much you want to change the combat system

if you want to let the system stay close to the actual one i would just reduce the randomness

instead of rolling 0-damage just roll 80%damage-damage

armor is a bit more complicated

personally i WOULDNT roll for armor but put a % reduction like in wow and other rpg

if you really want to roll for armor too i would make a gaussian roll so to have  a average reduction very often or if you want to simplify even more id put 50% armor+-20% insted of the usual 0-arm

There are already some crazy efficient suggestions for how to resolve combat.  I will not get into the math of it because those responsible will post here, or you could find their threads.

What I could suggest is breaking damage into several things categories.

1) line of sight/distance - the further you are away the less likely you are to hit and do serious damage unless it is a 1/1000 lucky strike.

2) obstacles - reduce the odds of actually hitting if their is "stuff" in the way.

3) size - the bigger the monster, the easier to hit, while the opposite also works the same way.

4) dodge/parry/block save- that is about speed.  if you connected with the target, these 3 go into effect.

5) hit - say we take 2d6. 2 is auto miss, 12 is auto hit...  or vise versa.  Then there are armour, size, speed, skill, luck, spell modifiers.

6) damage - once everything has been passed, then there is the amount of damage done and how much is absorbed and what kind it is.

7) magic - armour save vs. magic.  obvious, if you are a fire elemental, fire damage doesn't hurt you, it restores your hit points.  There should be one type of damage that can't be blocked no matter what, but that should only be dispensed by super high level monsters/boss/champions.

8) if you are moving in the same turn you try to attack, you take a penalty unless you are an elite troup or something like that.

I think that covers the basics of it.

Let's not forget that we need to be able to have formations and flanking manuevers, and also your idea of who goes first based on speed and the like.

Exposing all of the combat related aspects of the game via Python would be great and would allow for a wide array of mods.

Above all:

Provide clear definitive advantages / disadvantages for armor / weapon types. Give players a reason to choose certain types of equipment - just like in SC2 where each unit fills a specific roll. Bonus damage against units with essence, reduced movement speed, bonus against mounted units, etc.

Balance unit health / attributes / etc.

Some Ideas:

Defense should not regulate misses / hits. Defense (hereby referred to as Armor) should reduce damage:

• Slashing Damage: certain armors should reduce damage taken from swords / daggers.
• Piercing Damage: certain armors should reduce damage taken from spears / arrows.
• Blunt Damage: certain armors should reduce damage taken hammers / unarmed combat.
• Magic Damage: Spells like "magic missile" should deal magical damage. Armors made from crystals or other rare materials should protect against magical damage.

Get rid of combat speed or what ever it is called. Instead unify the role of tactical movement points and strategic movement points under a unified attribute called stamina. Moving across a normal tile on the strategic map could cost 20 stamina, while moving a across a tile on the tactical map may only cost 5.

An agility attribute should be added to determine if a unit has a chance to avoid an attack. Make armor reduce a unit's agility.

Different training regiments for units (this also would affect warfare tech): bonuses, special abilities, etc, can be awarded by training troops for longer periods of time under special "groups" (think army, marines, FBI, CIA, etc).

Post-battle loot. After defeating an opposing army, give use the chance to recover enemy weapons / equipment etc from the battlefield. When training new units, allow us to use existing equipment from an equipment storage. Allow us to construct equipment separately for our units giving us the chance to re-gear existing units and later dates. When training new units, required equipment would be auto-built if insufficient quantities existed in the equipment storage. Building weapons would increase training times (weapons / etc would need to be built first).

Apply attribute restrictions to equipment for heroes and regular units.

Don't remove dead bodies off the tactical battle map. How else are necromancy / resurrection magics supposed to work?

One great strategic tool in a combat system is the rock/paper/scissors style balance. Now, I HATE pure X beats Y beats Z systems. Hard counters break the game and reduce it to a very shallow level of strategy. What you want to do is put in soft counters that allow a unit that is weaker or has less experience to kill a stronger or more experienced unit based on equipment. For example, units with mounts getting a damage bonus against non-mounted units, unless those units have spears. Units with hammers might do a minimum damage regardless of armor, as long as they don't miss (aka even if you do 5 damage and normally 10 defense would block that, hammers always do at least 50% damage, so you do 2.5 damage instead of zero damage). Having an option to give each unit a training regimen would also be cool, say train your bowmen to fight in forests, now they get a 25% defense bonus in forests. Train your swordsmen to fight mounted units, now they have a 10% damage bonus against mounted units. Having an extra slot for a training specialization in the inventory system would be really cool, but perhaps not essential to get some basic diversity in unit types and roles in battle.

Let me be clear, the strategy that comes from this proposed change lies in combat roles. The idea is to clearly put units into roles: long range, medium range, short range, hit and run, stay and fight, grab onto enemy, isolate enemy, heal ally, weaken a powerful foe, wipe out a group of weaker foes, improve ally morale... the list goes on. You should really allow equipment to give units primary and secondary roles in combat so that A) if you want you can make each unit unique and have a very adaptable army, or b ) you can make several different armies for different purposes and choose what army is right for the current situation.

So even if you left the dice roll system as it was, you can see how things like this would make it less random because you can prepare before the battle begins by building units that will have higher chances of good results or guaranteed chance of at least some minor effect in battle. This will make positioning in battle more important as you want to make sure that your formation puts the best units forward against whichever enemy you are facing.

Also one thing that games like HOMM and Kings Bounty have that I believe is very important to good strategy is the ability to arrange your units on the battlefield before the battle starts. The reason being is that A) in real life this would always happen unless you are ambushed and B ) its a pain to take your AI placed units and waste turns swapping places and getting the formation you want.

A post of mine copied from another thread

Thats one of the beauties I thought of the simplistic HOMM combat.  It had a very simple rock paper scissors style, but it helped promote a diverse army, with my hero supporting with his magic.  Unique abilities or attributes would help a long way to making the tactical battles more well tactical.  Obviously more gear oriented in this game though.  Maybe having a unit in light armor moving more spaces and having more attacks against slow opponents, so they would be great closing the gap and trying to either quickly take out an archer, or a weak unit.  Maybe having pikes and spearmen having a defense bonus, since they generally work better as defensive weapons then others do.  Having a big tower shield have a bonus vs arrows, but reduces mobility and attack speed.  These types of attributes could easily be added to the current system, just balancing the rest of the stats and items around it would just be time consuming to keep it balanced.

 

Once the damage rolls are fixed which you guys are already working on, a difference in damage and resistant types of some sort seems to be the main path to look at next.  Simply little window when you hover your mouse over units with their attack types and resistances would work, or a similar window appearing when you click a unit as well.

As you asked,

Would something like this work?

Attack Rolls

If Attack Value was 20, Level 2 Creature

5+((Random Number (2*2) to 15))

In this case 5+(Roll of 4 to 15 or Min 9 Max 20)

25% of Attack Value + ((Random Range(Level*2) to 75% of Attack Value)) 

DEF could be left a 0-Max Roll, or Use a Similar type roll.
Note May or May not want to MAX  the Level, needs testing.

I am Adding Level as most of the Attack Value cones form the Weapon, and one would think the more Skilled would do a bit more damage with the same weapon as a Trained new Fighter.
This gives a large Range and with DEF working the same way still allows Chances for Misses when the Values of ATK and DEF are close. But also allows for a Strong Hit as well.

Initiative
Right Now ONE side Moves and Attacks, then the Other.
Using a Combo of Move+Dex perhaps, each Figure/Unit Would go from Highest to lowest. 
Attacking Force might get a +0.5 to the Number.
All Weapons except perhaps Daggers lower Initiative, Big Two Handed Hammers are Slow.
If a Figure Waits, to allow others to act it Loses 0.25 each time, it waits.
Mounted Units would get the Mount Move Bonus, as would Hasted Units.

Use Range Bands
Give each Ranged Weapon, and maybe some Spells, Range Bands.
At Short they have +15% to Hit and Damage, at Long -15% to both, the Middle is Normal.
But Have Different ands for Weapons, a Spear should be like 1-2 For Short, 3 Med, 4 Long.
Where an Short Bow might be 1-3 Short, 4-5 Med, and 6-8 Long, 
and a Long Bow  1-4 Short, 5-7 Med, 8-12 Long.
Some Direct One Target Spells Might also use this.

Limited Ammo
Allow some Units to have Heavy Damaging Ranged Weapons, but Limit the Ammo.
A Spears, 1 or 2 Javelins, A Monster could have a Spine Attack but a One Shot.
Should be able to give to abilities as well, so Mana is not needed to use them.
This causes the player to have to make the choice when and where to use them.

Various abilities, and more spells would be great as well, but I feel the I Go, You Go is a balance issue to heavily in favor of the attacker.

Good Luck
Lee

Could just go with a fairly standard D20 system for attacks, with given AC's to beat based on the Armor they are wearing, dex etc. (IE D&D style) It would fit with the roleplaying motif and is a fairly easy system to implement as it exists already.Weapon damage could be as simple as Daggers do 1-4+STR modifier, Maces 1-8, etc etc, yes its still a random system but it works very well in certain rpgs and I think it would flow well within our game parameters.

Then of course to fix heros, let them gain HP as they lvl up in addition to what they gain from stats gains. Make it con based perhaps.

yeah it would be easy to go overboard with every unit having a ton of statistics but that is a bad idea. Simple yet powerful is a much better idea in the long run.

Unified '"Defense" just seems _too_ simple to me is all :^D

One thing I would -not- do is balance magic against magic resistance; I would instead make magic supportive and augmentative rather than outright offensive. Considering how readily available magic is even now, if magic were only influenced by rare magical resistance, it's just making magic that much more powerful.

Basically, instead of treating magic as this special thing that breaks rules, treat it as simply another damage type that can be dodged, avoided, and otherwise counter-acted in many ways. Otherwise, first mage wins and melee units become meatshields rather than effective in their own right. It becomes more effective to field a mage who can cast fireballs (and affect more than one target) and fire bolts (affecting a single target) than archers, for instance, who can only attack (and only ever attack) one target.

I would also say to have more situational and environmental factors. Things the player has to work around or with to win. Being in a heavily forested tile might be good for defense, but it should also make archers vastly less effective. I would say look at some (in)famous battles for ideas. For instance, the lost legions of Rome - due to attempting to fighting in a swamp, an entire legion (including standard) was destroyed by a barbarians. In short, combat should include planning before the tactical fight ever happens. 

The stack is the reason why people feel so grand about the battle. Even if you just consider it as a cavalry unit with 89 point is just a cavalry with 89 HP, but it still 89 cavalry march together in a battlefield board.

also I really recommend a few of you guys download Battle for Wesnoth and give it a look.

In particular:

Different damage types and how they affect different armor types

How terrain is handled (flat % chance to hit)

2 random "traits" each unit is spawned with randomly and how it changes things

Promotion system (is super epic and gives the feeling of POWER UP)

Zone-of-Control system

How damage % is calculated (in a nice little spreadsheet).

You obviously would have much smaller maps, squares, and also you wouldn't be creating/spawning more units. But if you took Wesnoth maps, started with an army and cut down the size to 1/3rd or so, it might be a good model to start with. .