sharing view on a part of game mechanics (Battles)

[ababaev]

Battles

GENERAL: Battles are not well-balanced: We have a lot of useless items for battles. We have OP items for battles.

PRINCIPLES: I believe, that the best system should be based on next principles:

• stone - scissors - paper system. It's the simplest system without OP or useless parts.
• as much as we can avoid adding new items or mechanics.
• as much as we can avoid micromanagement.

IDEAS: In the existing rules, I see the following areas in which the use of the principle of stone-scissors-paper would be most justified:

* Sword/Battle axe-Pike-Lance (SWORD-like weapon).
We should rebalance parameters the way, that:
    * swords have huge advantage over pikes
    * pikes have huge advantage over lances
    * lances have huge advantage over swords

* Knight-Peasant-Archer (here Knight is well trained and equiped unit, peasant is very cheap unit, archer is LBOW/XBOW unit).
We should rebalance parameters the way, that:
    * knights have huge advantage over melee-peasants because of their equipment and skills
    * melee peasants have huge advantage over half-melee, half-ranged peasants, because their melee efficiency against non-well-equiped and non-skilled enemies should be greater that efficiency of ranged-peasants.
    * half-melee, half-ranged peasants should have huge advantage over knights, because range attacks ignores skills and can pierce equipment.

Using specialized melee weapon/army type should be more profitable than using mix of them, otherwise the mix would be just a simple best.

WHAT'S NOW: Current problems according to principles and ideas:

• melee peasants don't have advantage over half-melee, half-ranged peasants. I believe it is possible to achieve this by reducing frequency of ranged hits.
• pikes & lances are much more expensive than swords and not enough effective.

Below I've tried to describe what exactly I suggest, why and which impact we may get.

RANGED

Problem statement: arrows ignores a level of a warrior, thus they are extremely strong at killing the opponent. Instead of spending a lot of time to learn COMB, get melee weapon, armor and etc, just cheap peasant with XBOW can be better. most of arrows are armor piercing, which means that as only armor in the game, they become even more profitable. For example, to kill a Knight with COMB5, sword, mithril armor, horse, maybe riding skills and etc, you can have:

• your own similar Knight with chances (50% to hit, 50% to bypass COMB, 10% to bypass armor -> 2.5%) 2.5% to kill enemy in first round.
• your XBOW 3 peasant with crossbow and chances (1/2 to hit, 8/9 to bypass resistance, 1/3 to bypass armor -> 4/27) ~15% to kill enemy. 6 times better without training and equipping.

LBOW & XBOW are too strong or first line skills & weapon is useless.

Problem statement: XBOW arrows also are armor-piercing, and the price is just a WOOD, when there is no cheap analogues for melee-weapon to pierce the armor. They are much more effective than any melee damage which may be dealt. You put cheap peasants with good armor at first line with BAXE (gives +4 on defence), and this army will have similar efficiency as same army with extremely skilled first line. Just because "kill-hits" of first line is less than 20% of all amount. All the rest is ranged.

Ways to resolve: Existing: add shields. Pros:

• realistic
• gives flexible way of protection (they can be from WOOD, IRON, MITH) Cons:
• littering the game & micromanagement (additional items which have to be produced, equipped, reequipped after each battle and etc)

• it's still based on equipment, not troops skills, thus doesn't solve problem of useless skills of first line

  Suggested: reduce frequency of shoots (archers shoots once per many turns, per 3, 5 or whatever). Pros:

• even more realistic (shoot happens at 1st round and then there are few rounds of melee fight)
• increase meaning of first line skills & weapon. Peasant in first line now is more profitable versus other peasants than archer.
• increase duration of the battle (more rounds -> more influence of melee to the battle)
• no new entities (no micromanagement), as earlier armor -- the way to protect. Cons:
• Very unusual for players, despite fact there is nothing new, just parameter's change, it may be uncomfortable to play.

DBOW

Problem statement: best weapon in the game. 5 armor piercing and COMB ignoring hits per turn. Also profitable versus monsters. Just simply golden solution for all the problems. sometimes if it needs to calculate power of the army, you calculate just amount of DBOWs & huge monsters & amount of MARM and CLOA, but at first -- amount of DBOW.

Ways to resolve: To make it shooting as LBOW, but with 100% chance to shoot instead of 50% (it is double bow in the end). Maybe add skill to shooter +4, for example, if usual resistance of ranged attack of monster will be around 5-8, then hunting them with LBOW/XBOW would be less profitable, than hunt with DBOW, which have 100% chance to shoot at first round and skill +4. Thus DBOWs will still be extremely effective versus mages & monsters, very effective versus knights, but not very effective versus peasants.

MAGIC

I would avoid magic in battle context now, because it's too complicated, and in general magic should be redesigned.

MELEE

Problem statement: Current problem is in fact, that melee is less effective than ranged attacks, and thus generally have no real impact to battles: important just armor. Also many of melee items are useless or even already banned from the ruleset.

SWORD - PIKE - LANCE

Problem statement:

• pikes are useless because no one is using lances.
• lances are useless because they still give no protection to the wielder versus combat attacks, they can't be used without horse, and without winged horse they can be used just on plains or deserts. Also they are more expensive (in terms of skills and items).

Ways to resolve: Increase parameters the way, that advantage of scissor over paper is huge: For example (numbers may be changed): sword gives +2/+2 to COMB, pike gives +0/+0 to COMB (but it's still long weapon, so it's +1 versus unarmed troops), and have +6/+6 versus mounted soldiers with RIDE, lance +4/+4 to RIDE attack and to defence versus COMB attack.

So sword have +2 versus pike (2 vs 0), pike has +2 versus lance (6 vs 4), lance have +2 versus sword (4 vs 2).
I would equalize price: 1 iron for sword, 1 iron for lance, 1 iron for pike. Same with skills (WEAP1 or WEAP2 for creation, not higher).
I would avoid territory fact for a while (lance should be able to be used in any territory).

Adding territory behavior I would leave for future which may never come. But it may be bonus (like +1/-1), not more. 

Knight - Peasant - Archer

Problem statement:

• melee peasants don't have advantage over half-melee, half-ranged peasants.

Ways to resolve: Nothing specific to do, it will be automatically resolved if archers will shoot with lower frequency.

Mix vs Specialization

Problem statement: If mixed army or melee-weapon will not be less effective than using specifilized army/melee-weapon, then people just will use it as simple variant without weakness.

Ways to resolve: I don't have a solution which I would like much, but there are few suggestions:

    * ignore the problem. 
    Still, there will be different armies and we may not care much about fact that mix is golden middle.
    Pros:
        * nothing to change
        * in case of knights - peasants - archers mix is quite realistic
    Cons:
        * micromanagement (pikes, lances and swords instead of just swords, when there is no clean bonus from specialization)

    * add specific knowladge for tactician, based on TACT, which gives bonus (+1 COMB/RIDE) to sword-wielders, pike-wielders or lance-wielders, but just to one of the groups.
    Pros:
        * mix will be less efficient than specialized army, because just 1/3 of army will get bonus instead of all army.
        * some new life to tacticians, for example, it may be 3 skills based on tactic: "pike advantage", "lance advantage", "sword advantage", which give +1 on level 1 and +2 on level 4. And can be learned and used in a battle just one of them.
    Cons:
        * adding new skills

    * add specific flags for tactician, which gives bonus (+1 COMB/RIDE) to sword-wielders, pike-wielders or lance-wielders, but just to one of the groups.
    Pros:
        * mix will be less efficient than specialized army, because just 1/3 of army will get bonus instead of all army.
    Cons:
        * adding new flag

TACTICS

Problem statement: It's binary. Or you have it, and you get round, or you don't. Once you learned 20 leaders to tact5, you, actually, don't even afraid of killers. And tactic5 stops working as tactic5, just another "must" attribute for each one.

Ways to resolve: Tactic in first line gets +1 to tactic. Pros:

• realistic
• now they may die, so you should continuously put efforts in it.
• gives more variativity Cons:
• change of rules

[arkadybabaev]

Why "stone-paper-scissors"?

Lets try to answer few questions to understand what do we want. Lets talk about cheap widely achievable weapon (it doesn't matter what exactly is the price, but it's something which is possible to have a lot).

Do we want to have different types of weapon? No -- then we should have one, for example, swords. And remove all the rest. This is nice variant, lets call it "variant A". If we answer "yes", then we should realize, do we want some of those weapon types be better versus another? No -- then actually we move to "variant A", because there is no reason to have multiple instances of one instance. If we answer "yes", then we should realize, do we want one weapon be generally better than another? Yes -- then actually all the rest (which are not the best) will not be used, and we come back to "variant A". If we answer "No", then anyway somehow we should have system, when one type of weapon is better versus another type of weapon, which is better versus third dtype of weapon and so on, cycling. And the shortest cycle is "stone-paper-scissors". Why shortest? For simplicity. That is "variant B". So eventually we choose between two possible variants.