Some Ideas For Mitigating Kiting, And The Regeneration Conundrum

from Elemental Forums

Since the issues presented in the title are now receiving a bunch of attention by the devs, I would like to start a focused discussion surrounding them.  I'm not suggesting that the proposals outlined are either mutually exclusive or all inclusive, rather a random smattering of ideas to try to inspire further thought about the issues.

1. Add Attack of Opportunity.  If two or more opposing units are in adjacent to each other, and Unit Z tries to move away from melee, all opposing adjacent melee units should get an attack on Unit Z.  This could also be introduced for firing bows in melee, casting spells in melee, etc.

2. If you are within a unit's zone of control, restrict movement to one tile in every direction.  Furthermore, larger units (dragons, etc) zone of control and attack range ought to be 2 or more tiles.

3. Bows and staves could have a 'casting time' of one, accounting for aiming and concentrating respectively, and should have their damage increased a bit to account for this.  If they move, they should not be able to start the firing process until their next action.

4. Add more ranged and spellcasting units to the AI factions and monsters.

5. Make Regeneration give a tactical ability which must be activated instead of automatically proccing every turn.  This way, the unit must choose it's usual attack, or the minor healing bestowed from Regen.  Alternatively, make it so if a unit takes any action during a combat turn (move, attack, cast a spell, drink a potion) Regen will not proc.

 

 

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

3. Bows and staves could have a 'casting time' of one, accounting for aiming and concentrating respectively, and should have their damage increased a bit to account for this. If they move, they should not be able to start the firing process until their next action.

4. Add more ranged and spellcasting units to the AI factions and monsters.

5. Make Regeneration give a tactical ability which must be activated instead of automatically proccing every turn. This way, the unit must choose it's usual attack, or the minor healing bestowed from Regen. Alternatively, make it so if a unit takes any action during a combat turn (move, attack, cast a spell, drink a potion) Regen will not proc.
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3 great ideas.  The first two especially address the rock/paper/scissors relationship between initiative, movement, and range very well.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

In my mod I am moving most tactical health regeneration over to a 10 round timer, ie it stops working after the unit has acted 10 times. It doesn't remove the problem with units filling up health by idling in easy battles, but it should put a stop to those who use it to build super-high initiative units that go in, fight, then retreat and kite until they are full health again.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

By the way, while I could live with a turn limit on tactical battles, I would like to find ways to finish tactical battles with a distinct winner.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 2
In my mod I am moving most tactical health regeneration over to a 10 round timer, ie it stops working after the unit has acted 10 times. It doesn't remove the problem with units filling up health by idling in easy battles, but it should put a stop to those who use it to build super-high initiative units that go in, fight, then retreat and kite until they are full health again.
End of Heavenfall's quote

 

thats a good idea

with monsters i think its possibiel to give an enrage timer so after x turns they gain some movement and initiative etc so fight is gonna end 1 way or another

 

tbh i dont think kiting is a problem at all

single players are not competitive, i never exploit nor use anything i find too op becasue i want a challenge not winning

i have no problem winning in single player games i want to lose, i  mod things to be harder, why would i want to exploit kiting and stuff? would just be boring to me

 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

EDIT: Wrong thread. Nothing to see here.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top


I'll toss my idea here too:

Have the tatical map decrease in size every X turns. This allows units to initially kite, but with a time limit, as eventually they must duke it out in melee.

 

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting GFireflyE, reply 7

I'll toss my idea here too:

Have the tatical map decrease in size every X turns. This allows units to initially kite, but with a time limit, as eventually they must duke it out in melee.

 
End of GFireflyE's quote

 

it seems counterintuitive as solution :P

also i think its quite complicated to realize

 

 

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

After thinking about it, I'd like to see all tactical combat per turn effects happen at the same initiative tick, instead of being tied to the target's initiative.  I feel like this would make spells and effects quite a lot easier to balance in the long run.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

yes that would be much more balanced

even though its hardly doable

how to decide what is the real "time"?

 

lets assumoe 2 units have on average 20 init

time for that battle woudl be 20 then

if you hast one it doesnt matter, turn would stil be set on 20

 

but what happens 500 turns later?

maybe a fight face 2 units with 40 initiative

would it make sense to set "time" to 20 even then?

do you have to upgrade the real time based on what is in the battlefield?

quite complicated imo...

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

I really hate #3.  Ranged damaged is gimp. I also feel that regeneration as it is, is very weak.  Kiting seems a lame tactic, so no I am not defending it.  Anyone not able to go toe to toe with something should bring more units.  I could go for 1,2 or 4. 

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

The solution that would make the most sense to me would be to have regeneration (and perhaps poison damage) move to a separate actor in the turn list, with some fixed initiative that cannot be hasted. So if you had at least one unit with an active regeneration enchantment in your army, on the turn list there would be a turn for "Regeneration" and on that turn you see everyone with a regeneration enchantment heal by the amount that the spell is good for.  Granted, there is a chance that the regeneration spell would still be too strong, if the caster had a large number of life shards backing it up, but at least Regeneration would still be useful in battle.

As for the original poster's ideas:

1.  This doesn't do anything for you if the kiting unit is able to keep the opponent from closing to melee range anyway, or if the kiting unit has the opportunity to make two or more moves before the opponent's next move after closing to melee.  It isn't bad, but it's not going to help a lot as most good kiting units are going to have a high initiative and a high speed, which will help to prevent the opponent from reaching melee range and help with escaping melee range after the enemy closes.

2.  I could accept this, although the same problems as exist for (1) exist for (2).

3.  Bows are rather poor as is, with their initiative penalties and the lowest damage of any weapon as high in the tech tree as they are (same for most staves, but these at least do magic damage which ignores armor) so I am against this one.

4.  Fine with me.

5.  Alright, but it still favors the high-initiative kiting unit, because skipping a regular action to heal a little costs the kiting unit a little less than it costs the slower unit that is being kited, unless the difference between the kiting and kited units is such that there are only rarely turns where the kiting unit acts two or more times before the kited unit can act again.

 

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting joeball123, reply 12
The solution that would make the most sense to me would be to have regeneration (and perhaps poison damage) move to a separate actor in the turn list, with some fixed initiative that cannot be hasted. So if you had at least one unit with an active regeneration enchantment in your army, on the turn list there would be a turn for "Regeneration" and on that turn you see everyone with a regeneration enchantment heal by the amount that the spell is good for. Granted, there is a chance that the regeneration spell would still be too strong, if the caster had a large number of life shards backing it up, but at least Regeneration would still be useful in battle.
End of joeball123's quote

This is exactly what I'm talking about.  This way super-fast units won't pop regen or poison faster than slower units.  Then these spells can be more easily balanced, which they need to be.

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting mqpiffle, reply 13

This is exactly what I'm talking about.  This way super-fast units won't pop regen or poison faster than slower units.  Then these spells can be more easily balanced, which they need to be.
End of mqpiffle's quote

 

Strongly disagree, separating tick timers from the units they are associated with is highly counter-intuitive, merely acts as a band-aid for lower level mechanical imbalances, and actually removes a lot of timing strategy from the game (the initiative stat).

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

1. Seems okay. The only problem I have is, switching weapons on the fly isn't a thing. Having archers who are suddenly incapable of melee after getting one or two attacks off will dramatically nerf ranged attackers. Against stupid AI this isn't a problem, of course, but in other situations it might be.

2. Every direction? Then you can just deploy fast-moving, suicidal tackle units to shut a person down and prevent his armies from moving so they're pinned for your suckerpunch. I don't like it.

3. No.

4. Ranged units, sure. I run into a fair amount of spellcasting units after getting into the vicinity of Strong. The whole point of the game's post-apocalyptic backstory is that magic is rare, I thought. If everyone and their dog on the overland map can cast spells it interferes with the setting.

5. That's silly, because there's no situation in which regeneration's small healing is superior to taking an action that inflicts damage, unless the unit is crying in a corner of the map while the meatshields duke it out.

I do think it's absurd that Regeneration heals 1 HP per turn in combat, but only 1 on the overland map, however. Units with regeneration should, logically, be restored to full health each season. The fact HP comes back at a rate of one every 20 seconds or whatever an initiative round is during combat but somehow slows down the moment the adrenaline stops pumping to 1 per couple months was poorly thought out.

Increase the mana cost, the level requirement, or make it only castable on single-member stacks, but make it restore all the HP on the overland map. There's really no other way to balance it besides removing it altogether, anything else just leads to 'optimal unintended behaviors' like idling in combat for teh healz.

On a related note, Death's vampirism equivalents aren't even remotely as good. 3 HP whenever an entire stack dies for Rosoln, for example, is silly. 3 HP per member of a stack, okay. Killing a stack of 3 militia for a 9 HP yield is still downright anemic, but I'd take it. I'd prefer 5 or 6 HP per head. 3 HP for killing a 50-HP stack of soldiers, though, is practically useless in terms of sustain value. Add to that, Rosoln melee units taking advantage of the faction vampirism have no substantial Defense and are prone to getting whacked quickly anyway and you've got one of the most useless Race advantages. Ironeers and the Altar have it way better, to name a few off-hand.