Single round battles

[Tantali]

Current battle mechanics talk about multiple battle rounds. Balance of amount of rules versus usage currently veers quite a lot towards too much rules.

Very rarely a battle takes multiple rounds, because either no next round is possible, or retreat is simply the only viable option. Probably 80% take 1 round, 19% take 2 rounds, 1% take 3+ rounds. Of those additional rounds, the outcome in most cases is almost trivial.

Maybe we can find a ruleset that has pretty much the same outcomes as we have now, but has only a single battle-round. It would simplify the rules a lot.

[Tantali]

I'll think about this myself as well and suggest something tomorrow, I just wanted to create the issue now already.

If you can think of an often occurring battle scenario where the second round chances are important (as in, not having this would diminish the fun of the game), and you think it wouldn't be realistic to put this in a simple 1-round mechanic, please note them down here.

[nymanjens]

I think the one-round case encompasses more in the neighborhood of 95% of the cases.

I'd be OK with having only one round iff if it really is a major simplification. If it ends up just removing the infinite-loop, then I don't think it's worth it.

[Tantali]

Given that we're talking about a single round, obviously the choice for retreating doesn't exist anymore, as that's handled automatically.

First suggestion with goal to match current system pretty much exactly (double checked with my python tool):

• first round as currently in the rules
• if value of healthy attacking army is strictly larger than unit count of healthy defending army, attacker wins and defender has to retreat, otherwise defender wins and attacker has to retreat

I suggest this just as a sort of baseline for any single-round suggestions. I'll now try and find another one that's a lot less rule-heavy but still matches the battle results that we have pretty closely.

[Tantali]

209 is a first version I endorse

[Tantali]

I'm not against multi-round-battle, as long as:

• average of 2 rounds or more
• meaningful choices between rounds, so that you're just constantly having to decide the obvious

Currently we have quite complex rules that are tricky to explain, but both aforementioned points that make multi-round interesting are missing in the current version. We have an average of just above 1 round, with an absolute max of 2 rounds. I've also never had the impression that I had a choice in between rounds.

If those points are not met, I'm pro single-round combat, meaning no choice, and thus going for the simplest system that gives us the probabilities we want. Because there's no need to make it unnecessarily complex. Also, I'm against making the rules complex with the sole purpose of hiding the win-chances.

Currently I see these solutions:

• go for multi-round combat by changing the probabilities and somehow come up with meaningful choices (can't think of any at the moment)
• go for single-round combat keeping our tried-and-tested probabilities (#210) even though it looks a bit strange in the rules and the dice show how little chance is involved in winning the fight
• go for single-round combat by changing the probabilities, which leaves us with lots of possibilities to make the rules extremely simple and intuitive (e.g. roll for kills, largest remaining army wins)

[nymanjens]

Discussed after testplay of 2018-04-05: We agreed to test a variant of #210 next time where:

• battles are won based on unit count, except that the attacker infantry can roll a dice and get -0.5 unit (33% chance)
• Both attacker and defender have 33% chance to make a kill per infantry/unit
• Artillery rules stay the same (insta-kill)
• Trenches virtually double the amount of defending units and thus dice