Concept Preview: Combat System Overhaul (Part 2 to Part ....) [UNCLARIFIED]

[raystuttgart]

To avoid questions and have a context for the Combat Overhaul "Part 1" ...

As a preview:

Part 2 is about actual "Attack Ranges".

• Melee --> Short Attack Range (High Direct Damage)
• Randed (Gun) --> Medium Attack Range (Medium Ranged Damage)
• Bombard --> High Attack Range (Lower Bombard and Collateral Damage)
• Mounted --> Being able to defend / retalliate vs. any "Attack Range" (due to speed)

As explanation:

Currently Combat Types basically just define Promotions.
This concept would give them different Attack Types (on the map) as well.

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As further preview:

Part 3 is about "Combat Morale".
(Will also have an XML attribute but will also be influenced by other game mechanics - e.g. Happiness.)

Most importantly Morale will give additionally bonus / malus on Combat Strength (defense and offense) depending on the combat situation (see "Tactics").

Additionally Combat will get a few more outcomes.
(If "Morale" breaks i a Combat that takes more internal combat turns.)

• Glorious Victory (Winner instantly generating a "Brave Captain")
• Decisive Victory (Winner getting additional XP)
• Retreat in Disorder (Loser suffering additional damage while retreating)
• Surrender (Loser becoming a "War Prisoner)

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As further preview:

Part 4 is about chosing different "Tactics".
(Unit / Professions specific: See Promotions.)

New "Tactics" would need to be acquired / unlocked by Promotions (thus XP).
Generally however there will not be just one "Attack" and not just "one Defend" anymore.

• You might e.g. use something like "Flanking", "Frontal Attack", "Storm Attack", "Hold the Lines", ...
• The enemy would also chose "Tactics" and depending on the combination (and Terrain and ...) combat could turn out completely differently.

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As further preview:

Part 5 is about "Stacks".
(Stack Limits that can be increased by "Leaders".)

Normally Stacks are smaller
(Balancing to be discussed. Maybe 5 without a leader.)

However, if you add a leader e.g. a "Brave Lieutenant" or a "General" you can increase the limit.
(In water it would be "Capable Captain" and "Admiral".)

Of course they would also give Promotions.
(e.g. Promotions with new Tactics as described above.)

That is e.g the reason for this concept.

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As further preview:

Part 6 is about potentially using "bLineOfSight" (for Combat gameplay)
To e.g. allow real "flanking attacks" or real "rear attack".

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As further preview:

Part 7 is about potentially using "bInvisible" (e.g. ambushes and surpise attacks)
It was already planned with Rangers but the old implementation did not really work out.

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As further preview:

Part 8 is about adding "Support Professions" (for Stacks)

e.g. Combat Surgeons (healing), Military Priest (morale), Combat Pioneer (defense), Combat Scout (e.g. to prevent Flank Attacks, ...)

Those should use the Experts already in game.
Will be difficult to teach AI though ...

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As further preview:

Part 9 is about "Slowing Down Healing" outside of your own Cities.
(Not completely deactivating it though.)

Potentially it could even be dicussed to heal only up to 50% out of Cities.
(Enemy Territory, Neutral Territory and Own Territory will only influence the Speed.)

Feature "Health" already got a submechanic / healing Bonus (for Miltiary Untis on Plot) for that purpose implemented.

Combat Surgeons (see above) will help, but they are no miracle makers either.
(They can not replace dead soldiers.)

Generally the incentive to either conquer a City or return to your home Cities to heal should be increased.
Forts and Mostareries would also allow healing since they are internally already handled as Cities.

Will be difficult to teach AI though but not impossible ...

Comments:

Still need to consider if this should be done for Scouts and Ships as well.
(Currently I tend to to allow Scouts and Ships to fully heal / repair themselves without a City.)

Potentially "Pillaging" could also restore a bit of Health instantly.

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I want to shift detailed discussion about it however until we may one day have implemented "Part 1" ...

 

[raystuttgart]

To avoid unnecessary questions about things I do not plan (and do not like):

I do not want to have in the Combat Overhaul:
Simply because I personally consider them tedious and bad game design.
But that is of course just my personal taste.

• Ammunition Supply (or any other form of supply for Military Units)
  
• Movement Range Limitations (e.g. taking damage if distance to next City is too big)
• Building Human Military Units (I strongly prefer the concept of Professions with Equipment)

 

[orlanth]

Woww, a lot of those expanded options do sound nice

Attack Ranges

I think that Attack Ranges concept does sound interesting. How are you envisioning that would work in practice - perhaps each battle would apply damage in several sequential rounds or waves, representing progression as battle lines drawing closer? E.g. at the outset Bombard units can apply some low intensity AoE damage across the enemy stack, then Ranged gun/arrow units can apply medium focused damage as the lines draw closer, then finally Melee units can deal high focused damage as battle lines collide? This or something similar sounds like it could enable some interesting RPS-type strategy and tactics.

Morale

This does sound interesting too. The vanilla situation of each attack always resulting in a binary outcome (always just winding up with one unit dead, resulting in the classic situation below could be spiced up and made more realistic by having a chance that some low-morale units may lose heart when confronted by a terrifying foe, and could have a chance to either momentarily fail to execute an attack during a battle, or to fully rout and flee to a neighboring square.



Perhaps some potent shock attack units like Dragoons or Hussars could be eligible for some special Promotions Shock or Terrifying, that make Morale checks more difficult against them (being well suited to rout and scatter untrained Militia). A Promotion Swift Pursuit could also inflict extra damage on routing units as they try to flee.

Are you envisioning each unit would have a fixed Morale stat value, which could be influenced by Promotions/Civics and perhaps Happiness as well? Some games (e.g. Paradox Clausewitz engine titles like Hearts of Iron IV) have Morale/Organization as a separate tracker parallel to the main HP/damage tracker so that units can become demoralized after a defeat, but it seems simpler to have it a stat rather than another HP-like tracker. If you do want to simulate demoralizing defeat in a simpler way, one way could be to inflict a temporary Promotion Routed or Demoralized on units that fled, which gives a Combat and Morale malus but expires after 1 or 2 turns. This way there would be some added interest and realism in a need to tactically "mop up" fleeing units with units able to pursue them, while this would not get too frustrating as you could more easily inflict a final defeat on a Routed unit if managing to pursue it.

In the US Revolutionary War there was plenty of disorganized fleeing into the mountains involved when untrained militias lost pitched battles against line infantry, but some managed to survive and plot the beginnings of guerilla warfare tactics and were harder for those forces to entirely stamp out, which contributed to their eventual ability to overcome a more professional force.


Tactics

If I understand right, would this mean you could unlock additional action button choices, e.g. Frontal Assault (strong bonus to Melee phase attacks) or Envelopment (extra bonus from units in surrounding tiles)? That does sound cool if the AI can have a good perception of the odds in deciding what to use. In considering whether attacker and defender would both have to select these, one thought is I wondered whether it might get too overwhelming to respond to every attack with defensive choices in situations such as multiplayer, so in that case it might be logistically simpler to focus tactics choice on the attacker.

Here is a pretty comprehensive list of some historical tactics I found:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_tactics


Stacks

It's a good idea to limit simple "Stack of Doom" strategies becoming overwhelming in certain situations. One similar idea to think about could be a concept like Combat Width used in CK3 and other Paradox/Clausewitz games (though not Stellaris which uses real time combat! . As a general idea, during each combat a finite number of units from each side are able to attack/engage the enemy in each round, and this available "Combat Width" can be modified by Terrains as well as Commanders, tech, tactics etc, so could be great for a Leader effect as you suggest. This creates interesting possibilities from numeric advantages of a huge force being realistically more limited by certain situations (e.g. a narrow mountain pass). Perhaps something like this could be good to consider if you'd like to limit overwhelming "Stack of Doom" strategies while not needing hard limits on units moving on or through a tile if that would be more problematic from a pathfinding or AI standpoint.

Healing

It does sound good to make healing more of a strategic challenge (not completely eliminating the possibility of some gradual recovery while on campaign, but with this becoming much faster from a relative standpoint if you're able to benefit from regrouping in a town or Fort with good Health and medical support. As an interesting side benefit, if damage to civilian units also can have some consequences (e.g. lower Happiness/productivity), it could be nice to have one outcome of native raids be non-fatal injuries to the local population (where you'd need to recover and could do so more quickly with good medical support, but it's less dramatically devastating than a destroyed Building).

 

[raystuttgart]

The vanilla situation of each attack always resulting in a binary outcome ...

That binary outcome is already now not true anymore for WTP. (Actually it already was not true anymore in RaR.)
We already had a change in the Combat System to limit Combat rounds, so a "draw" (both Units just being damaged in different degrees) is already possible.

 

[raystuttgart]

Attack Ranges

It basically uses a "Ranged Attack" concept / algorithm of my own.

Considering graphics animations, we will see what is possible.
(Being bombarded without fighting back should be no problem though.)

here some cases that might be interesting to understand
(I just explain the first 6 out of in total 12 combat scenarios for "Attack Range".)

Ranged (Gun) attacks Melee --> Ranged will get 2 internal Cobat Rounds for free before Melee closes in
Melee attacks Ranged (Gun) --> Ranged does not get free internal Combat Rounds. Melee gets the first Combat Round.

Bombard attacks Melee --> Bombard will cause "Collateral Damage" without Mellee being able to fight back. (Artillery will make a "Ranged Bombard Attack" - see some mods like e.g. PAE for comparison.)
Melee attacks Bombard --> Bombard will get 1 free "Collateral Damage" but then basically be killed instantly. (This is the case if an Artillery gets attacked undefended .- otherwise of course defender is attacked instead)

Bombard attacks Mounted --> Bombard will cause "Collateral Damage" but Mounted will retalliate: Either directly kill "Bombard" (if undefended) or attack the Defender Unit (if defended)
Mounted attacks Bombard --> Bombard will get no free "Collateral Damage" but basically be killed instantly. (This is the case if an Artillery gets attacked undefended .- otherwise of course defender is attacked instead)

I guess you can kind of imagine what would happen in these cases as well.
(The logic should be self explainable from the examples above.)

• Ranged (Gun) attacks Mounted
• Mounted attacks Ranged (Gun)
  
• Ranged (Gun) attacks Bombard
• Bombard attacks Ranged (Gun)
  
• Melee attacks Mounted
• Mounted attacks Melee

These simple cases are pretty much as of now:

• Melee vs. Melee
• Ranged (Gun) vs. Ranged (Gun)
• Mounted vs. Mounted
• Bombard vs. Bombard

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This is without yet considering my "Promotion Overhaul" for specialized roles
And it is without also without yet considering my "Unit Balancing" according to "Stone / Paper / Cissor" design.

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Summary:

This is not the Civ4Col / Civ4BTS Combat System you know - it would become something new much more tactical.
It is much more versified and complex than just "the stronger Unit wins".

 

[raystuttgart]

Morale

To simplify it:

It is a 2nd "Life Bar" that also gets attacked during Combat.
So after a Combat your Morale will have suffered just like your Health.

Morale (the value as you enter a Combat) will influence Combat Strength in a Combat. (It may also make using certain Tactics impossible.)
If "Morale" of the Loser reaches 0 during Combat before "Health" other things may happen than the Loser just dying ....

Victories may also boost your Morale to "above normal".
(So your Unit will fight better in next Combat.)

There may be "Tactics" and also other "Promotions" that target primarily Morale (instead of primarily Health as normal).
Just like "Health", "Morale" would also need to be recovered (by resting).

Summary:

There are endless possiblities how we could use this very simple concept of "Morale".

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Tactics

If I understand right, would this mean you could unlock additional action button choices,

To simplify it:
Yes.

While it is your turn you can chose the "Attack Tactic" and "Defense Tactic" for each Unit.
Those would of course not be visible for the enemy. (It is kind of "speculating" what the other Unit may have chosen.)

 

[raystuttgart]

Summary:

It would take too long to discuss all details and implications of these concepts now.
I will introduce each part step by step for detailled discussion once we implemented the previous part.

 

[raystuttgart]

By the way:

Some of that stuff in this spoiler was inspiration for my concept.
But I want to take my concept much further than that.

-Ranged Bombardment: Ranged Bombardment allows siege units to bombard in the field# By selecting the bombard icon you can select whether to bombard units only, improvements or cities.
-Combined Arms Stack Attack: Combined Arms Stack Attack allows a full stack of units to engage an enemy stack of units# It replaces the one-on-one combat concept and allows a full stack to work together to eliminate an enemy stack.
-Opportunity Fire: Opportunity Fire allows fortified bombard capable units #such as artillery# to automatically barrage enemy units which close on the position.

 

[modmod]

Part 1 - part 11 +

It seems like a year or more work.
Much awaited since vanilla.
Especially like part 1 and 3.

Tactics/ support professions (while real) are problematic for this game as it counts with units, not with army numbers.
But will see when more detailed.

 

[raystuttgart]

It seems like a year or more work.

The full "Combat Overhaul" is the biggest and most complex concept I have.
That is why we need to work in small parts - meaning many small iterations.

But will see when more detailed.

Le us finish "Part 1" first before we discuss the rest in detail.

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Also, there are many other concepts and todos on the list as well ...

 

[raystuttgart]

Also bump ...

 

[boblywobly]

Hi I have a question about bombard (WTP mod).

i've tried giving various warships Solid Shot 1 and 2, but cannot use ships to bombard enemy cities. there's no button and no keyboard button that I can find. Is this a bug? what am I missing?

 

[raystuttgart]

Hi I have a question about bombard (WTP mod).
what am I missing?

Bombard is currently just about "Bombarding Defensive Structures".
(i.e. Pallisades, Walls, Fortress, ...)

So you can only bombard Cities that have these structures.
(So please check if the Cities have such structures.)

That is also how Vanilla works.
(WTP has not yet changed it.)

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This thread here is a complely unimplemented concept.
(Nothing of what you have read here is yet in the mod.)

 

[boblywobly]

Bombard is currently just about "Bombarding Defensive Structures".
(i.e. Pallisades, Walls, Fortress, ...)

So you can only bombard Cities that have these structures.
(So please check if the Cities have such structures.)

That is also how Vanilla works.
(WTP has not yet changed it.)

-----------

This thread here is a complely unimplemented concept.
(Nothing of what you have read here is yet in the mod.)

Hey Thanks for the quick response.