SP - General hide exact army sizes

[niekdegrijze]

I read this 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 de 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 witch 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 system could be an easier way to implement a sort of ambush mechanic. Give (for example) Battanian parties a fake smaller party size when they are in a forrest. This way they can "surprise" the enemy.
That said, if possible, I would prefer a proper ambush mechanic.

 

[MakinTorf]

for a more "extreme realistic" difficutly.

+1

 

[Smithers945]

Agreed!

 

[84Slashes]

Big +1, I would add to the suggestion by expanding to include settlement garrison and militia numbers. It's kind of silly that I can just mouse over a settlement and know exactly the quantity and quality of troops inside!

different skills and traits could influence the likelihood of engaging.

This would be a wonderful way to also make traits matter and make lords feel more alive.

 

[Heafodban]

This makes sense.

 

[Poddicus]

The sand people march in single file to hide their numbers...

 

[Zorion_no]

I'm ok with it if its a toggle option, as some ppl will def not like it.
Forceing "extremes" or "too realistic" isnt ideal on ppl who want a more casual approach to the game.

 

[Moridin123]

I'd love for this to be a thing.

 

[Lusitani 5th Empire]

I think the spotting and terrain mechanics need to be reworked, i don't know if I remember some dev saying this or if it's just my imagination but I think they are working on improving it, maybe it was just the terrain feature that they already showed us.
Either way, I agree that army stats (size, type of troops...) should remain hidden, fully or partially, under certain circumstances, depending on spotting skill, terrain and other variables. I and many others, have talked about this in other posts.

Agreed, at least fix the patrols, give more control to the player and add the ability to hold certain tactical positions; make sure AI is patrolling efficiently.
Adding watchtowers should be easy work as well - require the use of some skill and perks; x number of troops/workers and a companion with engineer skill required to build it; requirement for some building materials; some time to build it; some money to pay for the work, maintenance and wages; ability for it to be destroyed or to be used by the enemy/neutral parties if they kill who is guarding it; ability to spot parties in a certain range or radius and deliver the information as a delayed (or not) report and/or as real time map spotting to you and/or clan/faction/allies who are in a reachable distance radius; additionally some resources could be stored there; visual and functionality variety depending on culture/factions/clans, tier/upgrades..

I propose to make the visual effect of the campaign map more realistic: troops should be harder to spot in hidden places such as forests, and, conversely, easier to spot in broad areas. Larger units are easier to see, while smaller units are harder to spot in hidden places. In this way, bandits hiding in the forest will be more difficult to find, so players need to be more careful when entering the hidden place, be careful to encounter bandits at any time. This also makes AI and player ambushes possible. When small groups of troops hide in the forest (perhaps allowing troops to take cover in advance), the troops being ambushed are at risk of being attacked in unknown circumstances. This also makes reconnaissance skills more useful, as higher reconnaissance skills will make it easier to spot hidden units and harder to sneak up on.

This.
Currently you can all spot enemies within a certain radius, I don't know if forests, terrain, type of party has any affect on the radius but it's not significant either way.
A good idea is creating more dynamism on spotting. Like @Julio-Claudian said, having chance of negating being spotted determined by skill, terrain... even when inside the normal spot radius.
Having spot radius for friendly troops being the highest; For neutral parties, medium radius; And for enemies, according to some skill on spotting and tactics of their party, a radius between the medium radius and a smaller radius.
As for ambushes, parties would require more skill or special skill to be able to evade the small spotting radius of the other army. Let's say if some party with the ambush ability manages to get inside that small spotting radius undetected, then they stay hidden as long as a "spotting threshold" is maintained by the attacker party.
In more practical terms lets say a blue army is passing through some trees, on the opposite way comes a red army, which as more skill in tactics, spotting and the ambush ability. As they come closer to each other the red army spots the blue army while going undetected and proceeds to follow and attack the blue army.

• Situation 1: While in the trees, the red army (being undetected) manages to close in and ambush the blue army.
• Situation 2: While in the trees, the red army remains undetected, but it's not fast enough to catch the blue army as he changed direction. The red army ends the chase still undetected.
• Situation 3: While in the trees, the red army fails to catch the blue army, but red is in his small spotting zone. As both of armies (red still undetected) exists out of that "tree zone" and enter an "open zone", the terrain advantage progressively fades as both get further away (red still undetected), until the threshold where the blue army is able spot red again. Now as the chase still continues, red is no longer able to ambush, as he is detected by the blue army. The red army still got very close and gets to attack as normal.

Note: The ambush ability is not the same as the ability of renaming undetected. Let's say with only just the ability of renaming undetected you could remain undetected, for example, inside a medium spotting range. The ambush ability would enable parties to get inside the small spotting range undetected and thus performing the ambush (in which, for example, could spawn the attacker in proper formation really close to a defender in a messy formation).

 

[kreamy]

I read this 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 de 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 witch 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 system could be an easier way to implement a sort of ambush mechanic. Give (for example) Battanian parties a fake smaller party size when they are in a forrest. This way they can "surprise" the enemy.
That said, if possible, I would prefer a proper ambush mechanic.

good suggestion.

Would be too 'confusing' for the AI though.

 

[Calabanar]

Love that suggestion.

High cunning could even be used to trick the enemy into thinking we (or they) have less troops than we do, aka luring them into what would effectively be traps.

Not ambushes per se, but close enough it becomes interesting.

 

[KingEroc1st]

i'd like to add to this thought:
give a different measurement metric to how strong the troops are based on tier. so it could be a tiny band of elite troops or a large mass of fodders. but then again, in this game, what mostly matter is the numbers not the quality.