taltamir

Join Date 01/2006

+34

Rock Paper Scissor approach

So, there is a lot of gnashing of teeth on the balance issues. How about a RPS like system (to clarify, I am thinking more of a mixed unit tactics which I believe is supposed to be called RPS approach. There has been some contention about the terminology early in this thread) where:

AoE (Mages, Horrors, etc) single unit aka a stack of one unit that deals low damage to each unit in a stack. Thus they are effective in wiping out whole stacks in 1 to few attacks but deal piddling damage to singulars and AoE type enemies.

Singulars (Melee or archery sov/champion, giant beasts, etc) a stack of 1 unit which deal large amounts of damage but only to a single unit in a stack per attack. Making them effective against other Singular types and very effective against AoE type. but ineffective against an army/swarm.

Group (hundreds to thousands of soldiers or human-ish sized monsters). They are each individually weak, but there is a whole bunch of them. When engaged with an enemy they "swarm" all over them. If its another swarm/army they duke it out unit v unit. But if its a single or an AoE they try to pile up on them and eventually wear them down, which requires they get some bonuses against single type enemies, (although stronger AoE type will have defenses against that; such as a cloak of fire... of course you could custom build an army with a ring of fire resistance for each soldier to counter exactly that specific unit...).

To go more in depth:

Mages should have primarily AoE (aka overkill in elemental terminology, where damage is multiplied by toon count) spells that affect whole armies or everyone on the battlefield. Those naturally perform poorly against a melee hero who is too tough to bring down with such spells. They COULD attack a singular opponent for trivial mana costs and extra damage to it compared to using an AoE on a single unit stack. But it should leave them at a disadvantage (aka, only win a 1v1 against such an opponent if they are much high level)

Melee heroes should do massive damage, but to a limited amount of toons per attack, and the more toons you have the higher your accuracy (aka, armies don't really miss, but do low enough damage that it takes some time to finish off a melee hero via attrition).

Armies should increase unit count in armies by 10x at least (while keeping their costs the same, and also boosting gold production and construction rates so you could actually field any at all).

All those together mean you get mixed unit armies (rock paper scissors like) game and that you would be fielding all 3 unit types and actually have reason to do strategic battles rather then just soloing everything with your sov.

Note that all of the above are general approaches rather then absolutes. Elemental lords and dragons can have a combo of both AoE and Singulars (or even AoE and swarm for some more bizarre lords). And its not a guaranteed win to attack an AoE with a single or a group with an AoE... it merely confers a large significant advantage. A sov could also be an AoE/Single combo unit (just wont be as effective in both as a specialist).

The only place where there is a hard limit really is in a singular vs a group. Singulars cannot kill groups so they must bring with them their own groups or AoE to do that.

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I would like all of those to be specializations in the given category, but also have mutually exclusive options that offer other strategies.

I imagine the Rock/Paper/Scissors each having a path that gives counters, but is also countered by other paths. Need to keep as many options as possible and leave space for modders to add paths.

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Quoting seanw3,

reply 1

I would like all of those to be specializations in the given category, but also have mutually exclusive options that offer other strategies.

I imagine the Rock/Paper/Scissors each having a path that gives counters, but is also countered by other paths. Need to keep as many options as possible and leave space for modders to add paths.

Could you elaborate some? I am not quite sure what you mean.

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Hate hate hate RPS system.

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Quoting Lord Xia,

reply 3

Hate hate hate RPS system.

What he said.

A rock-paper-scissors system is a cop-out way of dealing with balance issues. It's usually not fun, usually not realistic (in any fashion), and usually boring. Empire Earth, for example, used this system and basically ruined the game for me. However, one legit example of this would be spear beats horseman... that's acceptable.

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1. How is it a cop out?

2. What you are describing is a overly simplified system where rock always beats scissors no matter if its one tiny rock vs 20 big scissors. What I described is merely mixed unit tactics where each has their weaknesses and strengths.

The alternative is either having all of them be identical except for the graphics (which is crappy form of balance) or to have one clearly superior (current state).

Well, there is also the more esoteric "wizards always win but only 1 battle a day"

What is wrong with the implementation method (the stuff under "To implement the above:") which I suggested above beyond me referring to it as RPS. One which is merely the distillation of the balancing ideas presented in various other threads focusing on individual aspects.

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EvilMaxWar

Join Date 10/2007

+49

Im not sure about calling it Rock paper scissor but i feel any good strategy games i played had a good counter- strength and weakness system. It creates strategic challenge and adds to the game and replay value.

Be it Starcraft, GalCiv 2, Civilization etc. They all have a counter system that forces you to react to what the enemy has and in a more general manner makes it an advantage to have varied type of units.

FE in the actual state is mostly Strength beats weakness and that's it.

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EviliroN

Join Date 04/2008

+20

I don't know about anyone else but when we played RPS as kids, we always added other nonsensical weapons to the mix...

"Oh? Your paper covers my rock? Well, it's not a rock, it's a bomb! I win."

"Yeah, your scissors beats my paper, except that my paper is made from a tree, and that tree fell on your scissors when they cut it down. I win>"

It went on like this endlessly.

I'd usually just pull out the gun and win.

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Quoting Lord Xia,

reply 3

Hate hate hate RPS system.

Karma +1

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How does paper beat rock anyway? Wrapping it up?? I am telling you now if I was in a fight with some guy and he tried to win by 'wrapping me up' it wouldn't end well for him. I say rock would kick paper's arse. Anyway, flamethrower beats them all!

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Quoting taltamir,

reply 5

1. How is it a cop out?

2. What you are describing is a overly simplified system where rock always beats scissors no matter if its one tiny rock vs 20 big scissors. What I described is merely mixed unit tactics where each has their weaknesses and strengths.

The alternative is either having all of them be identical except for the graphics (which is crappy form of balance) or to have one clearly superior (current state).

Well, there is also the more esoteric "wizards always win but only 1 battle a day"

What is wrong with the implementation method (the stuff under "To implement the above:") which I suggested above beyond me referring to it as RPS. One which is merely the distillation of the balancing ideas presented in various other threads focusing on individual aspects.

It's a cop-out because there can be better ways of implementing balance then with "rock-paper-scissors" approach, that's just another example of developers simplifying gameplay for the lowest common denominator and to make it easier.

Also, Galactic Civilizations combat system wasn't well implemented due to being RPS oriented. It doesn't really work because you have to focus your game entirely on your opponents designs (beams =/= shields). Boring. Where as Games like Medieval or Rome Total War and Master of Orion had more fun and interesting systems as opposed to RPS. If you implement a variety of interesting weapons and interesting counters then you don't need a RPS approach.

That being said, Elemental does seem a little too focused on strength but there are some smart ways around it.

Warfare isn't symmetrical, it's asymmetrical.

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The point I was making is that each unit type should have a counter and a useful function on the battlefield.

One person put it quite elegantly:

If I am an archer or rogue-like champion, my traits and stats should make me efficient at dispatching enemy champions. If I am a mage champion, I should be efficient at controlling the battle with magic (wiping out troops, buffs, debuffs). If I am a warrior champion, I should be efficient at handling large monsters and magical creatures that your standard knight can't handle. Finally, there's the governor or politician who stations themselves in a city and hangs out there all game, giving bonuses to stationed units and production.

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Also, Galactic Civilizations combat system wasn't well implemented due to being RPS oriented.

There was nothing RPS about galciv, ever. Brad referred to it as RPS in interviews but he is wrong, it isn't RPS. It has 3 weapon types but having 3 types does not make it RPS. That seems to be your mistake (the reason I say YOUR mistake is because I EXPLICITLY STATED what I meant in the "how to implement" section).

Lasers, missiles, and mass drivers all do damage to HP, lasers is resisted by shields, missiles by chaff, and mass drivers by armor. THAT IS NOT RPS.

RPS would be where you can build laser ships, missile ships, and mass driver ships. And where mass drivers does extra damage to missile and less damage to laser. Missiles do extra damage to laser and less to ME, and laser does extra damage to ME and less to missile. (for example).

You ite exciting games like "rome total war", just FYI those games are actual RPS... In age of empires it was archer beats pikemen, pikemen beat horsemen, horsemen beat archer.

In Rome total war you had (according to wikipedia) units that are " which may be broadly categorised into infantry, cavalry, archers, and artillery units. Each unit has optimal styles of use, opposing units against which it is vulnerable or effective"

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TacticalRockPaperScissors

In Total War games (at least Rome: Total War), some soldier types are more effective against others. For instance, archers are good against heavy infantry, because they'll shoot from afar and automatically run away when the enemy gets close, and they can outrun heavy infantry (being lightly armored). But cavalry are good against archers, because the archers get only a few shots in before they have to switch to melee weapons (which they do have, but usually only weak ones, and not much armor). And so on.

Justified to some extent in that they usually don't get any bonus stats by fighting specific units, it's just the way they interact. The only exception is the "effective against armour" trait that certain missile units and axe-wielding infantry have.
However, this trope completely dominates TW multiplayer. There are strict rules as to which factions you should use to defeat certain other factions, based on their selection of units and those units' particular strengths. The particulars of this go somewhat beyond a simple rock-paper-scissors scheme, but the effect is the same - only a certain army selection using a certain deployment and certain tactics will guarantee victory against an experienced player using a given faction.

THAT IS ROCK PAPER SCISSORS! This is what I am suggesting. Thats a "mixed unit tactics" type RPS were it isn't an absolute thing but just more / less damage such that ideally you want to hit the enemy with what they are weak against. But can still overwhelm a small troop with a large army ieven if it is weak against.

A massive army of nothing but cavalry or infanty or archers can win... but it will be disadvantaged. You want all three and applying each to the enemy unit it is strong against.

Currenlty FE is 3 different and uncorrolated methods of doing HP damage, JUST LIKE GALCIV! I am suggesting the change to be like total war.

Mages beats army which beats melee heroes who beat mages.

Mages = Archers

Army = Infantry

Melee heroes = Cavelry

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Quoting Lonemessiah,

reply 9

How does a flamethrower beat a 'rock'? Maybe a blowtorch..

Anyway.. I'm against the rock paper scissors thing too. I would be incredibly frustrated if my attacks could only kill -one- unit despite having an attack rating high enough to obliterate the group. I also don't see the reason for the '10x' ammount of troops. Unless the purpose is simply to make mages inflict more to army units.

I'm 'okay' with having melee/archer heroes inflict reduced damage to army stacks, but I would much prefer that those army stacks were useful on their own without the additional assistance. Adjusting the current unit and champion abilities such that this type of system is sensible by for example, penalizing low strength heroes from wearing platemail, making melee heroes subject to slows/cripples and overall increasing the viability of regular troops are much better ways than simply to say: "You get 25% damage bonus (or penalty) to units or champions with path of the x"

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Quoting CdrRogdan,

reply 13

Note that I never suggested a bonus damage vs path type. (which is the lazy way of doing things, and what the vast majority of games do)

The purpose of 10x units is:

1. Make it an actual ARMY (or swarm)

2. Make mages AoE be much more effective.

3. Make melee heroes less effective (more HP).

ALso strength is trivial to increase. And there is already a penalty.

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I am of the opinion that balancing the encumbrance system would make strength much more important than any other changes right now. It is hard to think about armor, when any unit in the game can wear heavy plate and get almost no penalty. -2 Initiative is not that significant in a battle.

Now that I understand what you are saying, I think it is a good basic design concept. The current goal Derek seems to have is to make each weapon type a rock paper scissors game. Mounts should get a penalty when hit by spears. That was in the original design we were shown, but somehow got phased out. Mages are so powerful right now I can't see doing much until their Initiative is balanced. I think Fireball and Blizzard are great ideas, just not balanced with Init.

Splitting the game into Mage Heroes, Melee Heroes, Army conceals the fact that Mages and Melees are very crude right now. There is little specialization and so the hero seems split between Magic or Melee. The development process needs to flesh these areas out into specific roles like mage that is really good at killing other mages). I want to avoid an RPS system that implies that regular troops can't use magic, doesn't account for summons and trained beasts, and obscures the potential RPS nature of weapon damage.

Pierce, Blunt, Cut is a great RPS system for melee damage. There are literally hundreds of special abilities each weapon in the game can have. Ignoring 66% of armor is merely a taste of that. This area needs to be fleshed out more to create the level of countering you suggest. Each armor type is headed in the right direction with giving a base armor and then having a bonus against a specific type. The problem is that heavy armor has the greatest benefits and requires no strength really. I would like to see plate, chain, leather be available at the same tier in the Warfare Tree so that we can make some RPS decisions. There would then be research to get better version of each type. Then Magical items could offer some interesting differences, like light platemail or a swift warhammer (Yes like Thor's).

As far as many more units, there is currently a bug preventing more than 9 units per faction to be on the field. If that is fixed, yo can easily have any unit possess a trait that spawns more units at the start of any battle. This would lend to making armies really big. If well implemented, it will certainly become a favorite mod among users.

Magic should have its own class of options. Here, there is already a great system in place for resistance and partial or total immunity. Once we get more spells and make sure each element has different, but balanced options, then one can talk about countering.

A reduction in damage from a hero to an army is really just bandaging other problems with the game IMO. I would want that to be a last resort, but it is certainly effective. You could also reduce the penalty regular troops get on XP. That would increase their health and make them more competitive. I think regulars just need to be able to level while defending a city. About half as much as units on the march sounds about right.

There are many ways to balance things though, I personally find most RTS's to oversimplify balance with an RPS system. I would at least want a Rock/Paper/Scissors/Lizard/Spock system. Starcraft II (Starcraft I) lost me due to the simplicity of its counters. Same with Red Alert 3. I like the graphics, but it is impossible to specialize or think beyond a very linear research path and economy mindset.

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Combine it with another idea I read on the forums. Let's say each individual has to be attacked and taken down seperately, so for example a group of five spearmen would take at least five deadly strikes (read five rounds as long as a single attacker has no multiple attacks or area attack) to be taken out.

Mages strong against armies and weak against melee

Melee strong against mages and weak against armies.

Armies strong against melee and weak against mages.

Monsters could then fall into 3 types:

Swarms are monster armies, eg 50 dog sized spiders.

Beasts are monster melee, eg 1 giant creature that hits hard

Horrors are monster mages, eg 1 bog monster that releases clouds of poison that decimates armies but doesn't do enough damage to meleers

Mages could have their strength in offensive spells that target each unit in a stack simultaneously, but therefore do not too much damage on each individual. Would sum up to huge total damage if spoken against stacks (the bigger, the more effective), but would be poor damage if spoken against single targets like Melee and other Mages. Sure there still could and would be single target spells, but mana inefficient and not as frightening as the sword of an Melee hero.

Melees would do huge damage, but only target one individual each round by default. Would be killers against Mages and boss monsters (Beasts), but having a hard time against stacks of regulars or Swarms.

Obviously you could choose to develop your heroes/souvereign's emphasis on Melee or Mage/Archer.

Let's think this further, Archers could be somewhere in beteween and adapting on demand. While never reaching the effectveness of Mages if set to "group attack" (bursting arrow, exploding arrow) or the one of Melees if set to "sniper mode".

Armor could help against Melee attacks, shields protect against Archers (and equivalent beast attacks like "spit in your eye...") and amulets (-> crystals) would be the "point defense" against offensive spells.

...

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I said Gal Civ 2 was RPS "oriented", the shield vs. laser (-> shield wins) was somewhat a RPS system just implemented at a 2X level instead of 3x... there was no more thought behind it, no variety, no fun. It was boring. You may be explaining a completely different system then that but RPS is, at its core (and imo), boring. It needs to be more complex then that.

You can easily argue that the Total War series has some RPS elements such as spears beat horses, that fine and I've already stated that as a fact. However, basing an entire game around that system doesn't make the game more interesting or more fun. Like seanw3 said, "it is impossible to specialize or think beyond a very linear research path and economy mindset". Total War is interesting and diverges from a RPS system because units have a TON of stats. Infantry are not just good at killing archers, some are good at killing horses, some are cannon fodder, some are skirmishers, some have heavy armor, some are very well trained. Yes, there are some infantry, like pikemen, who kill horses very effectively but the game's combat model isn't based around that fact. It has depth, real world strategy, and is based around asymmetrical wars which, inherently, dismisses it from the RPS model. You can easily try and sum up a Wikipedia definition of TW multiplayer to support RPS but that's not the entire game and multiplayer is symmetrical as both sides have equal starting funds.

That being said, I will agree we have the same agenda

1. Make it an actual ARMY (or swarm)

2. Make mages AoE be much more effective.

3. Make melee heroes less effective (more HP).

These three things need to be addressed for FE to have a better combat system.

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I think we need a more complicted interaction between champions and regular units. An normal attack by a champion using a single handed sword or a bow shouldn't kill more than one guy in a unit. Abilities like double strike and mighty blow should enable warrior heroes to kill multiple units(+ talents and special weapons).

Combat is basically too simple to be interesting and balance champions well.

Inversely, maybe all 6 guys in a unit shouldn't be able toall strike a champion at the same time (Unless using spears?), while they could attack something like an ogre, dragon or another unit of troops.

Implementing this would create all kinds of tactics, unique weapons and talents.

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1. Make it an actual army.

This would be great. Letting units grow quickly to 6-20 soldiers in a unit, with a lower accuracy is a good choice. each soldiers should have to pass an accuracy check to strike rather than just one. I am also a little frustrated that regular troops don't affect population enough. Taking 20 men out of the population would make training an army a more complicated choice. Currently, we just build units because that is what you do when there are no more buildings. 20 less men is .2 less gold, research, and production. That would make things very interesting.

The other option is to double the number of soldiers and halve the effects they get from stats, essentially adding more units to the army, but not messing with the game's balance. That kind of change would be easier to implement.

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mqpiffle

Join Date 10/2010

+44

Quoting seanw3,

reply 19

I am also a little frustrated that regular troops don't affect population enough. Taking 20 men out of the population would make training an army a more complicated choice. Currently, we just build units because that is what you do when there are no more buildings. 20 less men is .2 less gold, research, and production. That would make things very interesting.

Yeah - what happened to this??!?!?

This was actually a GREAT idea from WoM, and they left it on the cutting room floor? Silly.

Population now only affects how much money you make and your city level ups. I thought that buildings needing workers and armies requiring population was another great side-effect of the game's population mechanics, as it helps to control building spam in cities.

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Quoting seanw3,

reply 19

Each soldiers should have to pass an accuracy check to strike rather than just one.

It already works this way... Check the damage average you are supposed to do versus the ammount you actually do against a stack with a high dodge chance. You will notice a stark difference.

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Good to know.

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Individual units attacking is too simple. There really needs to be a limit on how many guys can do and take damage in a unit. It just opens up so much more strategic and talent/weapon options. It would work with the rock paper scissors approach well. With mages good against groups and warriors against single units. Assasins could be given multiple attacks with daggers.

+ it would really help balance and DEFINE champions.

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Quoting James009D,

reply 17

You can have a tactical RPS with more then 3 elements. You cannot have it with less then 3.

Galciv did not have 3 seperate RPS systems with 2 elemental (shields vs lasers). It had no RPS at all. I don't think there is an actual name for what it had.

As for total war having MANY varieties... well tactical RPS can have more then just 3 branches. You can have a dozen if you want as long as each unit is strong against some things and weak against others.

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Quoting taltamir,

reply 24

You can have a tactical RPS with more then 3 elements. You cannot have it with less then 3.

Sure you can.

And claiming RPS can have more branches basically defines every game under a RPS game. Every game can have RPS elements but that doesn't classify them as RPS.

Also, the RPS "orientation" in Galactic Civilizations 2 is due to the fact that if someone builds a fleet of Laser ships you will have to build yours with Shields to beat it. Its not a "spear beats horse" example but a variant on the idea (armor, shields, and chaff). I'd argue it has six elements, not three.

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