Hide exact army size

[niekdegrijze]

I posted this in the suggestions part of the forum, but I am curious what people think of this idea.
I double posted this thread because It looks to me that treads in the general forum get more views and replays.

I read about this idea somewhere in another tread but could not find it again. So I thought I make a suggestion.

Party and army sizes should be hidden and only vissible in broad categories like, small, big, huge.
Depending on the scout level these categories can narrow to small, medium, big, large, huge, massive etc. (please give better names )
maybe a strength related name can also account for an indication of tier distribution.

I would think is it pretty hard for a scout to give a proper estimate of an enemy strength, if you are trying not te be killed.

the goal is that when 2 parties of the same category meet. there is a bandwich of uncertainty in which the attacker can be outnumbered/outclassed. This adds a lot of random chance to the encounters that hopefully feel natural.

different skills and traits could influence the likelihood of engaging.
a cautious commander would not take the risk to engage another party in the same category, but a courageous or impetuous commander may risk it.
other skills could play a role as well: tactics, leadership and party morale. but these things are related to auto resolve. These should only play a part in the ai decision making if they influence the auto resolve outcome
Not sure how well these connect to the current autoresolve system.

This could also play a role in the ambush mechanic, I would like to have a proper ambush mechanic, but an easy way to implement it could be to give (for example) Battanian parties a fake smaller party size in the forrest. This would give them a chance to "surprise" the enemy.

P.s if someone is familiar with the original thread, please add a link.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

I wouldn't mind it if the AI had a fuzzier picture of how their enemy stacks up, but I think making it this vague would be hard on the player. You already only get a rough picture of the enemy's strength by looking at their troop list. Unless its a small party, its very hard to accurately process long lists like that in your head, so at best, all you're getting is a rough estimate of their strength. How many recruits make up the total, are there a lot of elites. That's about as clear as your picture gets. With big armies, you can't even see the full roster so its even more of a guess. The AI, on the other hand, has a very accurate picture of the enemy's strength since they're just seeing the raw numbers. I'd like it if their knowledge was a bit less perfect.

 

[MakinTorf]

that sounds pretty good. i would suggest to put that on the extra realistic difficulty.

i like i give +1

 

[D0c1]

here you go

Hiding exact numbers of parties from player is discussed about 4-5 years ago. We tried something like ?-0..9 ??-10..99 ???-100..999 or something like this. For about 1 year development we go with that feature then it is removed. It created another problems I could not remember exactly what they were.

At least for example player started a siege after waiting outside 3-4 days and after building siege equipments and when he enters siege battle he sees there are much more garrison compared to he expected. At that point player will probably give up that siege and go another target. This is a time loss and it can be a repetative action not so fun to play that way however we are forcing player to play that way to be more succesfull. Its same on map, get closer to a party learn exact number and run away if you are 0.1 faster, player need to look tooltips compare speed all time. There can be some percentage of players want to play like this of course it can be optional but as a general game rule it does not suit well. There was another problems as I said which I can not remember and finally this feature is removed.

However in paper it seems a good idea but it does not suit well our M&B series. It can be used in another similar game design of course.

 

[MakinTorf]

ohh... ok

 

[Midnitewolf]

I wouldn't mind it if the AI had a fuzzier picture of how their enemy stacks up, but I think making it this vague would be hard on the player. You already only get a rough picture of the enemy's strength by looking at their troop list. Unless its a small party, its very hard to accurately process long lists like that in your head, so at best, all you're getting is a rough estimate of their strength. How many recruits make up the total, are there a lot of elites. That's about as clear as your picture gets. With big armies, you can't even see the full roster so its even more of a guess. The AI, on the other hand, has a very accurate picture of the enemy's strength since they're just seeing the raw numbers. I'd like it if their knowledge was a bit less perfect.

I don't think it would be too bad if the party size was listed as a range. For example you might see something like this:

Huge Army
1500-2000+
200-300 Cavalry
100-200 Horse Archers
800-1200 Infantry
200-400 Archers

You would also have a Big, Medium, Small classification for armies as well.

Then make it so that the accuracy of the estimates are based on the players or the companion assigned to the scouting role, Scout Skill. The higher the Scout Skill, the more precise the numbers and composition.

For individual parties, I would either leave it as is or make the estimation pretty accurate by default. I mean unlike an actual army with outriders and pickets preventing snooping eyes from spying on it and its columns actually probably stretching outside of a persons field of view while on the match, it isn't hard to count/estimate 100 or so troops ridding along.

 

[Apocal]

I mostly judge armies based on only two things -- number of recruits and number of mounted troops -- and it is pretty accurate.

 

[niekdegrijze]

here you go

Thank you, much appreciated , I forgot that this feature was removed.
I personally don't see the risk about the time loss, because it would mostly impact AI vs AI and AI vs the player.
for player vs AI interaction the player has more options to deal with the uncertainty.

Field battle:
The player can manage his party speed better, can make sure the party scout level is high enough and the player has a big impact in the actual battle from the personal kills to the use of tactics.
I think most problems can be resolved with a narrower bandwidth of categories.
I also think that the endless running away part with a slightly bigger speed would not be a problem if parties would flee to seek refuge in friends towns or castles.

Sieges:
I actually like the fact that, in the given example, the player can besiege a target and later learn that the garrison is bigger than expected. This would force you to use your spymaster NPC or to get in touch with the local criminal underground.

But the "other" problems could of course be the bigger problems.

 

[Apocal]

Sieges:
I actually like the fact that, in the given example, the player can besiege a target and later learn that the garrison is bigger than expected. This would force you to use your spymaster NPC or to get in touch with the local criminal underground.

What? Just load into the battle, press tab and, if you don't like the number, press "End Battle."