Different Battle Ruleset - fight on tactical map instead of strategic [wish]

What would you like to see in Freeciv? Do you have a good idea what should be improved or how?
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BlueVersusRed
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Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2017 7:01 pm

Different Battle Ruleset - fight on tactical map instead of strategic [wish]

Post by BlueVersusRed »

Right now battles all nice and great. While attacking, your unit strenght + bonuses vs enemy unit strenght + bonuses. Problem is "squares of death", where lots of units stacked upon each other in one tile. Civ5-6 adress this problem with no stacking at all. It's also a problem. Problem of scaling down or up unit sizes and armies with their strenght and weaknesses.

What i wish in ruleset option, would be this:
Instead fighting in general map, why not fight on "top down tactical" map?And make stack limit of 9 units.

Warning! I think we all can agree that it has no use in multiplayer, so i wish it to be only for single player.

Imagine this situation. You have army posessing from 3 archers, 3 warriors, 2 cavalry and one catapult on the same tile, making stack, which by itself make's an army. You stand on the plains. Your foe has 2 warriors, 3 catapult, and 3 cavalry. His army standing on hills.

You make an attack on foe's army.
Tactical map pop up.
It shows you your starting positions (7x7 tiles on tactical map, which look like plains and give you no bonuses for your forces).Foe's starting position looks like hills, and gives their archers and catapult bonus to an attack and they (all forces on the hill) get less damage from your archers and catapults. They also move faster from the edge down hill and slow down while moving up hill.
Behing your and foe's positions is line of retreatment.
Forward of your and foe's position is "battlefield" or "no man's land" and is 3x7.
It look's like a transition between tile where your's and foe's forces stand.
If there was a river, then whole battlefield part would be on the river (which slows down movement of your and enemy forces). If naval unit attack land units or, naval transport want's to release all land units right on enemy forces, then i will look like D-day i guess (your starting point is coast water, your units are all naval, and enemy forces on the land, and your battlefield is the coast).

You and your foe line up forces. You then proceed to choose which orders to give to your troops (move, attack, stand your ground)
Imagine you lined up your forces like this: 1 line - all archers, 2 line - on the sides warriors, on the center - catapult, 3 line - on the sides cavalry, and one warrior on the center.

Your foe lined up forces like this: 1 line - cavalry, 2 line - catapults, 3 line - warriors.

How you would engage your foe if stats of units are like this?

Warrios - melee 2, 10 hp, 2 movement.
Archers - Range of 4, range attack of 3, melee attack 1, movement of 2, 10 hp.
Cavalry - Melee attack of 3 (only if cavalry were on the move and near enemy. If cavalry stood stationary and attack enemy, they deal damage of 1), hp 12, movement of 3. Can move and attack at the same turn.
Catapults - Range of 5, range attack of 5, no melee, movement of 1 (can't go up hill and across the river), 5 hp (only for range attacks). If enemy forces come up close to catapults they will change sides (i.e. you can capture enemy's catapult), but they won't if ally force also up close.
These stats only true on tactical map. Military Units don't and can't have any stats beside of movement.

Bear in mind that you lose one of movement point if you moving up hill, and get bonus of 1 movement if you go down hill. And range attack deal less (-1)damage to forces up hill, while forces up hill deal more damage (+1).

Now since you attack, you get initiative, and you get first turn. Give orders to all of your troops, hit the button, and wait for foe to react.

About modern units and naval units. Air units would fight in the skies, so they get generic air space with no bonuses to use (since there's no land). If air unit is used in stack with land units, you can move from your land and air units on tactical map. Most of the time air units get bonus against land units.

Naval battles also is no different from air battles.

Fortifications also will play huge point in these tactical battles, just as siege of cities.
Forces in forests are invisible, in both strategic and tactical map. On tactical map, you and your foe can't see units in forests, untill they 2 tiles away from your unit. In jungle you can't see them untill they up close.

So, how do you feel about this?
I think it certanly will improve combat, thus it make's 'em alot slower, so, maybe, option of usual auto-combat would be nice.
XYZ
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Re: Different Battle Ruleset - fight on tactical map instead of strategic [wish]

Post by XYZ »

Sounds like a simplified Heroes of Might and Magic III battlefield: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQnEHRv8A0o&t=16s Nice idea but online unpractical...
BlueVersusRed
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Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2017 7:01 pm

Re: Different Battle Ruleset - fight on tactical map instead of strategic [wish]

Post by BlueVersusRed »

XYZ wrote:Sounds like a simplified Heroes of Might and Magic III battlefield: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQnEHRv8A0o&t=16s Nice idea but online unpractical...
As i said in i wish it only for singleplayer games, and i understand that it would be much slower to play it online.Anyway, i get your point, and can and will agree with you on that.
Thanks for reply, mate :p
Last edited by BlueVersusRed on Fri Jan 20, 2017 6:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
BlueVersusRed
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Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2017 7:01 pm

Re: Different Battle Ruleset - fight on tactical map instead of strategic [wish]

Post by BlueVersusRed »

XYZ wrote:Sounds like a simplified Heroes of Might and Magic III battlefield: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQnEHRv8A0o&t=16s Nice idea but online unpractical...
I think it's like playing overly simplyfied version of Total War battles, really. I also took board game of Go as inspiration for some time, because at first i wanted tactical map battle end in 3 turns, and if enemy forces is not destroyed, wins player which has more control of the territory, having enemy forces to flee (and may be some of them captured), but i scraped that as idea of having tactical map battle more focus on the battle itself, rather than territory.
Lachu
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Re: Different Battle Ruleset - fight on tactical map instead of strategic [wish]

Post by Lachu »

I would prefer to make it simpler.

Player can kept as many units on the tile as they need. Player can also give one unit order to protect other units. He/She can select units to protect. Battles doesn't took one turn, but many turns(like in Civilization V). When you kill protector, each protected unit will be killed. When attacking, you can select target. When attacking unit, half of each protector attack will be added to defense points of victim.

Imagine we would attack warriors protected by fighters. Our drops can give 5 damage per turn and have full move point(5). To start attack we need 1 move point and to return to our tile unit need 1 move point, so we have 3 move point unit can use to hit an enemy. Three move point is also used as initiative. Victim move point is used as initiative too, but victim will took defense bonus calculated by taking half of fighters attack. When unit returning, victim can took some damage too(if unit have possibility to range attack). In this situation, on each round victim roll dice with initiative+1 wall and once victim rolls equal or less than initiative, victim took damage. When enemy returning, initiative of victim is reduced by one on each round and victim will attack until initiative is 0.

Why this changes? This is the best choice between killstack and non killstack. Some units, like catapults wouldn't have defense or have very low defense, so it muse be protected. There's change to kill protector, so protector should have booth good defense and attack. Player could select attack target, so there's no bonus by placing good defender on tile unless it protect some units. There's also tired attack idea - move points decided how many hit in round our unit can do.
Lachu
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Re: Different Battle Ruleset - fight on tactical map instead of strategic [wish]

Post by Lachu »

Auggghhh... I forgot to write about catapults. Catapults would be bad protector, because it will have low move points.
BlueVersusRed
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Re: Different Battle Ruleset - fight on tactical map instead of strategic [wish]

Post by BlueVersusRed »

Lachu wrote:I would prefer to make it simpler.

Player can kept as many units on the tile as they need. Player can also give one unit order to protect other units. He/She can select units to protect. Battles doesn't took one turn, but many turns(like in Civilization V). When you kill protector, each protected unit will be killed. When attacking, you can select target. When attacking unit, half of each protector attack will be added to defense points of victim.

Imagine we would attack warriors protected by fighters. Our drops can give 5 damage per turn and have full move point(5). To start attack we need 1 move point and to return to our tile unit need 1 move point, so we have 3 move point unit can use to hit an enemy. Three move point is also used as initiative. Victim move point is used as initiative too, but victim will took defense bonus calculated by taking half of fighters attack. When unit returning, victim can took some damage too(if unit have possibility to range attack). In this situation, on each round victim roll dice with initiative+1 wall and once victim rolls equal or less than initiative, victim took damage. When enemy returning, initiative of victim is reduced by one on each round and victim will attack until initiative is 0.

Why this changes? This is the best choice between killstack and non killstack. Some units, like catapults wouldn't have defense or have very low defense, so it muse be protected. There's change to kill protector, so protector should have booth good defense and attack. Player could select attack target, so there's no bonus by placing good defender on tile unless it protect some units. There's also tired attack idea - move points decided how many hit in round our unit can do.
Thanks for reply, Lachu.
Sorry, mate, but i couldnt imagine full picture of your suggestion. Please, explain more, or rephrase so i could fully understand what do you think about. Thanks.

Now about "Tactical Map" thing. I brough this up because of scaling (i.e. if 1 tile = 1 village/town/city/Megapolis, then non stacked units are small, weak, and defenceles, than organised army of (stack) units (not spam of the same unit)). But stack has no limit. Stack of doom is inevitable, so stack limit would be nice. 9 is my magic number. When battle occurs, the tactical map be an "fix" for scaling, remove factor of randomnes, and opening more options for winning the battle. But i agree, it's too much, not only multiplayer would be painfully long, but they also would need to code ai so it can understand what to do.

You talk about making it simpler.
With stack limit, you need to organise your army to be efficient. How to do that? Make battles to resolve in multiple rounds, as it is in Civ2 ruleset, but it's very different. And most importantly - It's all automated, and calculated by computer and don't need any imput from players.

So, your army in stack builded like this - 3 catapult, 3 archers, 2 warriors. Enemy army builded like this - 3 cavalry, 2 archers, 2 warriors, 2 catapults. They are stronger since they have full army while you need 1 more unit to make full power army.

Rules are somewhat like this - your units always have 1 movement on strategic map, with some exeptions (Most of them are modern units, especially air and naval units). But when battle occurs, units who melee attack or range attack and have no enemy to attack, need to move closer to the enemy. Sieige units never move on battle. Range units fire at will against closing enemy.

*About moving on the battlefield*
Think about it as if whole battlefield was horisontal line, divided in two (left side is yours, from 1 to 5, right side is enemy from 5 to 1), and i will measure it in "tiles". (i have no idea how to measure it in other ways anyway). Each unit start move from zero of their side of the battlefield.

So, you have 3 catapult, 2 archers, 2 warriors.
Example stats for units:
Archers and warriors have movement of 2 on the battle. Archers are range unit, so they have range 0f 5
Cavalry have movement of 4.
Battlefield has open ground of 10.

So first round of battle would go like this:
Your catapults fire.
Your Archers don't attack, since no enemy in range, and bacuase of that, thay advance.
Warriors advance.

Enemy catapult fire.
Enemy warriors advance.
Enemy cavalry advance.
Enemy archers have no units in range so they advance

Now computer counting it's all.
Your catapults fired.
Your archers stand on 2 tile.
Your warriors stand on 2 tile.

Your enemy catapults fired.
Your enemy archers stand on 2 tile on opposite side.
Your enemy warriors stand on 2 tile on opposite side
Your enemy cavalry stand on 4 tile on opposite side.

Computer calculating damage.
Your catapults destroyed both enemy catapults and one archer.
One of the enemy catapult destroyed one of yours catapult, second one failed to inflict damage.
Computer apply damage, and now your army has 2 catapults, 3 archers, 2 warriors.
Enemy now have 2 archers, 2 warriors, 3 cavalry
Round one finished.

Second round.
Your catapult fire.
Your warriors advance. Now they stand on 4 tile
Your archers fire. They stand on 2 tile.

Your enemy cavalry advance and attack.They now stand on 5 tile from your side of battlefield.
Your enemy archers advance.They now stand on 4 tile from opposite side of battlefield.
Your enemy warriors advance.They now stand on 4 tile from opposite side of battlefield.

Calculating damage.
Your catapults destroyed one warrior, and one cavalry.
Your archers destroyed 2 cavalry (one of them being already destroyed by catapult)

Your enemy cavalry destroyed both warriors.

Apply damage.
You now have 2 catapult, 3 archers.
Enemy now have 1 cavalry, 1 warrior, 2 archer.

Third round.
Your catapults fire.
Your archers fire.

Enemy cavalry advance and attack. Now they stand on 3 tile on your side of battlefield.
Enemy archers fire.

Calculating damage.
Your catapults destroyed 2 archers.
Your archers destroyed 1 archers, 1 cavalry, 1 warriors

Enemy cavalry destroyed one archer.
Enemy archers destroyed 2 of your archers.

Apply damage.
Now your enemy destroyed, and you have 2 catapult.

It's just an example of battle.
Of course different units in different periods of time will have something better to pull out and may be even some special attributes.
For example, let's grab second round, where your warriors moved, and enemy cavalry moved and attacked. If your warriors were actually pikemen, they could counter attack those cavalry.

Or, archers range is really big, they could really use just 2-3 tiles of range, and let 5-6 range to be used by modern infantry for example.
And let modern and post-modern siege units bombard nearest tile possibly destroying one of enemy unit.
Any siege units below modern won't have that.
Or Air units can't be attacked and destroyed by units who can't do that.
And so on.

*About who attack first and why*
By default, each army have 10 points of initiative. Each siege unit substract 1 initiative point. Each cavalry/tank unit add 1 initiative point. Each air unit add 2 initiative point.
+2 bonus to initiative has attacking army.

So from ours example, your army consisting from 3 catapult, 3 archers, 2 warriors, would have initiative of 9 (10-3+2)
And enemy army consisting from 3 cavalry, 2 archers, 2 warriors, 2 catapult would have initiative of (10 -2 +3) 11.
So Enemy army should have move/fire first in this example, but i let it go for sake of example.

Army with higher initiative move/attack first.
Army with less initiative move/attack second.
As you saw, damage would apply in third phase of round, and you can have stalemate (i.e. when both attacking and defending unit destroy each other)

If your are attacking, have higher initiative, and your troops are on enemy side of battlefield, and enemy has less than 1/3 of their current units, they will retreat to nearest most defencive tile. If there no tile to retreat, enemy troops will fight to the death.

Siege and range units have less chance to inflict damage, and deal less damage respective army stand on forest-like tile when battle occurs.

*About damage*
It's all like in Civ2 rules - units have chance of inflicting offencive damage, they have firepover (damage done, if they sucseed to inflict damage) and chance of inflicting defencive damage, with their hpx10 (i.e. if in stats it's hp 1, then they have 10 hp)
Damage done is calculated in move/attack phase, but even if enemy is "killed", it counts as alive, until last phase of round, so, "dead" units can move, damage and "kill" your units.
Lachu
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Re: Different Battle Ruleset - fight on tactical map instead of strategic [wish]

Post by Lachu »

I decided to implement similar idea into Postęp (my own game based on Freeciv). The source and binary aren't released yet, but I'm decided to release flatpak package and source in near future.

What difference between Postęp and Freeciv? First of all, there will be two phases of each round. Each player will plan moves meanwhile and will observe moves in next phase. Another think is that there can coexist units on different players on the same tile and on situation, where's there exist units of foes, battle map will be loaded. Battles will be done in real time, but with time limit. At end of battle, position and directions of units will be saved and in next plan phase player could decide to escape with units or continue battle.

I don't implemented any idea related to this post, but implemented basic districts support (know from Civilization VI), proud points idea(player can buy new cards/policies by porud points, but can also buy units from proud points). I'm trying to implement different tech tree (technology, social, military). Social would be related to population, technology to science and military to disbanded veteran military units in our cities.
pak
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Re: Different Battle Ruleset - fight on tactical map instead of strategic [wish]

Post by pak »

> I would prefer to make it simpler.
> [...]
> This is the best choice between killstack and non killstack.

Why the binary choice? You could set a game-configurable fraction of the stack to be killed,
or specify an extra 1 (or 2, 3, etc) unit(s) to die, chosen randomly. That would be simpler
still, allowing successful attackers to make progress, but also stopping the weirdness of an
enormous army vanishing on the basis of one battle.
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