An idea: Infantry formations

[WarKirby]

As always, all numbers in this post are just ballpark figures, meant to be discussed and tweaked.

the formation promotions of the Scion Honored band, have given me an interesting idea.

Could it work, to have different unit formations available to soldiers? Each having it's own tactical function, and useful in the right situation, but never a clear "best" for all situations.


This could require the Military Strategy tech, so not something you'd get right from the start. Once the appropriate tech is discovered, new formation options would appear to applicable units.

Who can use them?
I'm thinking Infantry, Archery, and Recon units. Perhaps cavalry too. Formations would only be useable in the open, there's not enough room to do so when defending in a city or a fort.

When a unit is in the open, it would be able to change it's formation at any time. Doing so should cost some movement, giving a greater tactical edge to the Mobility promotion.

So, what would they do? Here's what I'm thinking

Relaxed formation
Not really a formation, so much as a lack of one. would have no bonuses or penalties. Just for setting units back to default.

Spread Formation

Can be thought of, as giving the order for your men to spread out. Get some distance between each other. This would make a unit weak in direct combat, but would also make them harder to fight. So it could do the following things

• -15% (weaker in general)
• +50% resistance to ranged attacks (harder targets)
• +50% resistance to collateral damage (and AoE spells like maelstrom)
• +50% resistance to defensive strikes
• +25% vs archery units
• +20% forest strength (spread out and hide among the trees)
• -30% strength vs cavalry (divide and conquer)
• -20% strength vs light cavalry (based on the cavalry classes idea from the other thread. cumulative with the above)

This would make it a good choice for assailing entrenched archers, and when the terrain favors you. but a poor choice for general combat, and wold make you more vulnerable to melee attacks and especially vulnerable to fast moving cavalry.

Tight formation
Your troops are ordered close together, shield to shield, a well oiled war machine, fighting as one.

This formation would yield some powerful advantages in direct combat, but being so tightly packed makes your unit one big, easy target, for certain types of assault.

• +25% vs melee units
• +25% vs recon units
• +25% defence vs light cavalry (but not heavy)
• +25% resistance to mind effects (charm, dominate, fear, etc. companions are close at hand to keep you grounded)
• -25% defence vs heavy cavalry (formation smashing)
• -50% resistance to ranged attacks (big target)
• -50% resistance to collateral damage (and AoE spells)
• -50% resistance to defensive strikes

What does everyone think? good idea? bad? discuss!

 

[Grimz101]

I like, sounds micromanagement heavy though.
Has any other mod done this before?
If so we should look at how their AI uses it, we do not need any more advantages for the human over the AI.

 

[Willgar]

Think there was an idea regarding combined arms (bonus for having a mix of melee, ranged & cavalry in a stack) but cant remeber a formation mod. It sounds interesting but cant see the AI using it properly without a lot of work. It sounds like another layer of micro mangament with very little gameplay value. Although i think the idea has merit

 

[Humakty]

I agree with Grimz101, it would only advantage the human player, and confuse the AI. And in reality, loose formation was mostly used by skirmishers/archers to protect against missile fire. Tight formation should have all the other advantages. More, some promotions would loose some of their pertinence, as they are supposed to reflect formations. (cover....etc)

 

[Brokenbone]

Dumb question, but is this basically an idea like "ship crews, except for land units?"

That is, just like you pick buccaneer, skeleton, or longshoremen when at harbor, would the idea to be starting with some sort of default formation, and having a few options to alter that, whether anyplace, anytime in the field, or maybe only when inside a city, or inside a fort, or inside a city with a certain building like a barracks or command post or something?

Sounds on the one hand interesting, but on the other hand, possibly irritating in terms of micromanagement. Also it kind of means trading out promotions which you'd normally be stuck with. Again, fine for ships, or fine for a couple of unique units (Centeni getting bonus pay anytime, anywhere) / unique civ powers (Austrin getting "travel light" and "re-equip"), don't know if making it a global, all civs change would necessarily be good/bad/indifferent.

Maybe just trying it out with some small subset of units (national units? melee units T3 and up?) would be the best test bed for that kind of thing for intrepid modmodders (inside FF or out).

 

[TimSLS]

Sounds interesting, though I'd prefer we cut out the intermediate steps and just link the total war engine into civ, so everytime a battle starts all we jump to a total war battle (should we use Medieval II or Rome?) which accurately depicts all the units, including dragons. Shouldn't be too hard to code, right Xienwolf? Or if its easier we could go with the Master of Magic battles instead...

 

[Humakty]

I vote for master of magic, to keep in consideration the one's that don't like RTS, but Xienwolf will whip us a little 3D engine to go with it. It shouldn't take more than some days of hard work.

 

[TimSLS]

Oops, forgot to include my serious thoughts on this. I think its not a good idea. Compare it to ship crews or heavy/light cavalry, which makes sense because it is a significant change of equipment or crew that cannot be done often, and probably requires a city to handle the logisitics. This makes sense for civ.

Now consider infantry formation, a decision that your general might be making and changing 50 odd times in a single day of battle, and can be done very quickly with no logistics involved. Suddenly you can only change it during the course of your turn, which lasts how long, a month, a year? Would be very odd - also, any competent general in charge of your unit would be expected to optimally choose the loosness and tightness of his formation as the situation warrents (ie suffering an arhcery barrage, or a cavalry charge). So the current archery ranged attack rate in some sense assumes the enemy has adopted the correct loose formation (or, rather, part of what a high damage roll indicates is they have failed to, and a low damage indicates they have), as do the variable results of normal combat. Formation is thus just one of the many, many low level tactical decisions that your generals are handling behind the scenes and are already represented by the random combat.

So, I think its a bad idea, though if we do implement it, how about a "draw weapon" and "put away weapon" toggle button? +1 strength when drawn, -1 strength when not, but when in town having drawn weapons on for more than 10 turns creates -1 unhappiness from "we are scared of your soldiers."

 

[WarKirby]

Dumb question, but is this basically an idea like "ship crews, except for land units?"

yes, yes it is.

 

[Iceciro]

I dunno, I still think the shock/cover/formation etc promotions handle this well.

 

[Sephi]

why not just add an ability to the mobillity promotion. So you have the option to loose 1 movement for the next five turns and gain 5% strength or maybe a bonus depending on the unittype. Melee units could use a tight formation while recon units spread out. The AI should use it whenever they don't use their full movement (they often stack high and low movement units)

 

[Anathema]

why not just add an ability to the mobillity promotion. So you have the option to loose 1 movement for the next five turns and gain 5% strength or maybe a bonus depending on the unittype. Melee units could use a tight formation while recon units spread out. The AI should use it whenever they don't use their full movement (they often stack high and low movement units)

That's awfully close to simply standing still and getting your 5% per turn fortify bonus. I mean, not that this or anything else in this thread is a bad idea, but I have to agree that the current game mechanics already cover these things well enough. This isn't, after all, an RTS - should be some limit to the amount of micromanagement you can do to affect the outcomes of battles.

 

[Hawkwood]

If there's one thing I don't get, it's the tight formation's penalty against heavy cavalry.

It doesn't make sense because while cavalry cause more casualties that way, they also lose more men themselves, thereby making them weaker once the melee combat begins if the soldiers didn't run. On the other hand, if they did start to flee (as non-disciplined soldiers would) then the cavalry would have no trouble cutting down the disorganized soldiers. So tight formations should have bonus against heavy cavalry if the soldiers are disciplined, a penalty if not.

However I'm against this proposal, not because it's a particularly bad idea, but because if we keep making it more complicated, when do we stop? Like I said the thread about withdrawal rates: If we give cavalry a penalty for crossing rivers we would have to negate that penalty if the rivers were on Ice or Tundra.

Why do I mention this? Because if we add something because it would make FF more realistic, we would have think of when it isn't realistic. It's a bit hard to explain since English isn't my native language, but I will try anyway: Every thing we add to make FF more realistic makes the game more complicated, while not actually making it much closer to reality because there's always a situation where it doesn't function that way.

Like I said in the other thread: What we need to add isn't something that completely simulates reality, because then we would never know when to stop. We need to add stuff simulates reality enough, while there isn't a reasonably common situation where it doesn't function like what we add.

Which by the is why I don't think it's a good idea to add a polearm line to FF. Spears are a good weapon, but they don't make peasant capable of killing a knight since doesn't have the discipline to stand against a cavalry charge, which means the bonus against cavalry can't be too big. At the same time, cavalry isn't the ultimate swordsmen killer, and pikeman aren't doesn't perform worse against swordsmen then they perform against cavalry.
To simulate reality axemen/swordsmen and spearmen and champions and pikemen would need have the same strength, with the difference being that spearmen and pikemen have a minor bonus (like 10-20%) against cavalry, that's not enough of a difference to warrant a separate unit line.

EDIT: Sorry, I forgot about another way you could implement a Polearm line: Defensive Melee units. Unfortunately archers do the job better, and Pikemen wasn't very defensive:

Medieval pike formations tended to have better success when they operated in an aggressive fashion. The Scots at the Battle of Stirling Bridge (1297), for example, utilized the momentum of their charge to overrun an English army while the Englishmen were halfway through the process of crossing a narrow bridge. And then, at the Battle of Laupen (1339), Bernese pikemen overwhelmed the infantry forces of the opposing Habsburg/Burgundian army with a massive charge before wheeling over to strike and rout the Austro-Burgundian horsemen as well. It was not uncommon for aggressive pike formations to be composed of dismounted men-at-arms, as at the Battle of Sempach (1389), where the dismounted Austrian vanguard, using their lances as pikes, had some initial success against their predominantly halberd-equipped Swiss adversaries. Dismounted Italian men-at-arms also used the same method to defeat the Swiss at the Battle of Arbedo (1422).

 

[WarKirby]

If there's one thing I don't get, it's the tight formation's penalty against heavy cavalry.

It doesn't make sense because while cavalry cause more casualties that way, they also lose more men themselves, thereby making them weaker once the melee combat begins if the soldiers didn't run. On the other hand, if they did start to flee (as non-disciplined soldiers would) then the cavalry would have no trouble cutting down the disorganized soldiers. So tight formations should have bonus against heavy cavalry if the soldiers are disciplined, a penalty if not.

The thing being, the average axeman doesn't appear to carry a spear. It would be nice to have a polearm unit line, that would actually benefit against cavalry in a tight formation..

 

[Hawkwood]

The thing being, the average axeman doesn't appear to carry a spear. It would be nice to have a polearm unit line, that would actually benefit against cavalry in a tight formation..

If read on you would see that it's whether formations are effective against cavalry doesn't depend on whether they carry a spear or not, but about how disciplined the soldiers are.

 

[TimSLS]

Well, it would depend on both. I seem to remember that base Civ had a more rock-paper-scissors feel to unit strengths, and FfH went explicitly away from that...but I could be misremembering...

 

[Hawkwood]

A spear doesn't do you much good if you start running shortly before the cavalry clash into the formation, the formation would be disorganized and any heavy cavalry would have an easy time mopping it up.

I just really don't like the rock-paper-scissors approach. It's a gross oversimplification and in some cases directly wrong. For example, Swiss pikemen in the early renaissance steamrolled other infantry. And not only that, pikemen units didn't consist solely of pikemen, both halberdiers and two-handed swordmen were part of the formation, though in so small numbers they can't be used as a seperate unit in computer games.

Basically what I'm saying is: Pikemen were efficient melee units that when used in a specific formation, that included small numbers of other troops, were the "backbone" of renaissance armies. They wouldn't be that if they had some magical counter that were capable of defeating them no matter the circumstances.

 

[TimSLS]

I'm rather with you on the rock paper scissors issues. And I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you on the need for discipline to resist a cavalry charge. Since you asked for feedback on language use - If something needs two seperate conditions to be true, it can be said to depend on both. Since you seem to be arguing you need both discipline and proper equipment (spears, polearms) to be effective against cavalry, I think it would be said to depend on both. Unless you are asserting that disciplined axeman would be effective against cavalry, in which case I misunderstood.

Of course, we also know that yelling "freedom...FREEDOM" prior to a cavalry charge works just as well as discipline...

 

[Hawkwood]

Sorry if I seem unclear, I said discipline and lack of fear of death* (sometimes nearly insanely so) is what makes a formation capable of resisting a cavalry charge.

*Is there a different phrase? Fear of death doesn't sound quite right to me.

 

[Iceciro]

Courage?

In any case, I still think that's better shown through promotions. >_>
The discipline and courage is something either instilled through training or experience, both of which promotions designate.

Your average thrown together group of axe-guys isn't going to be able to resist a cavalry charge, even if you cram them into the right formation - they'll freak and bolt. Nowdays cavalry aren't as scary to us because we're used to the era of tanks and whatnot - not from the realization that what's headed towards you are a pack of highly-trained expert troops on animals that can RUN YOU OVER, and that if you dont get a start now into some thick foliage or friendly lines you WILL NOT ESCAPE these troops because they move so fast.

If anything I think cavalry aren't dangerous ENOUGH. They should probabaly have a lower attack strength but some firstrikes or something to indicate how solid cavalry could utterly rout weak, untrained enemies.