strategic battles

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kkrizan

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New version is really great, but it emphasises the need for some strategy in battles. I would suggest something similar to Brothers in Arms. Simple yet powerful. Frendly and enemy troops coud be separated into groups, and you could tell one of your groups to engage specific enemy group, or to withdraw and join rest of the troops.
 
But moving in a huge clump and sweeping the field would still be the most effective strategy. Other changes would have to implemented as well to make this work. Such as morale, actual advantages to flanking, having an advantage from attacking down a hill, etc. It will take alot of work to have strategy play a significant role in the outcome of a battle. But it would be nice if it did.
 
I didn't mean that much strategy. My primary goal would be to send part of my troop away, so that everybody doesn't group around me.

It seems to me that if you have good leadership and good tactics (my character has good training as well) you are now almost incincible. Higher level troops are too easy to get. When you have 20 or so knights, they practicaly do the job themselves regardles of the enemy. Since you have good tactics, the enemy is outnumbers, and usually outgunned (doesn't have as many good troops).

At the moment I have 40 or so knights, and nobody can practically touch me.
 
It seems to me that the first step towards more strategy (or tactics if you want) in battles would be to group friends and enemies into squads. One squad always stays together. Then you could give separate orders to different squads, and could also target specific enemy squads.

Also, a battlefield should be more flat, so you can see the enemy sooner and have some time to give orders.

That might make you spend more time giving orders than fighting though.

Second step might be to give squads formations which might make infantry with spears give a lot of trouble to cavlary.
 
I see kkrizan's point. The current orders menu only supports a very singular army. What if I want to hold my cavalry in reserve (they do die alot), or set my archers up somewhere safe? And there are tangible benefits to flanking, it doesn't need to be implimented as a statisical bonus like it is in more "strategic" games. Surrounding an enemy makes it MUCH harder for them to defend themselves, because their shield only protects your FRONT. Even as a player being surrounded is a pain in the arse. Ever smacked into a clump of infantry? You stop, and they hit your from the front, and both sides, and if you try to run through they'll smack you in the arse too. Also I think some sort of morale thing is already in place, it's most obvious in the arena. When you smack a guy up he'll try to keep his distance. Anyway, some more tactical options would be nice.
 
Well, using WW2 squad tactics is pretty inappropriate for the setting. I think the max fighters on the battlefield needs to be increased, and that it orders should be given to infantry, cavalry, and support troops individually as well as to the "army" as a whole. High ground and flanking are already a huge advantage just because of how realistic the game is, and I think that's enough strategy.

I do however suggest general battle order commands such as "Stick together and defend", "Encircle them", "Take out their cavalry/infantry/support", "Spread out", "Skirmish", etc.

I hope such things will be moddable.
 
Eird-Way said:
I do however suggest general battle order commands such as "Stick together and defend", "Encircle them", "Take out their cavalry/infantry/support", "Spread out", "Skirmish", etc.

I hope such things will be moddable.

These orders and the AI to support the following of those orders are most likely core-engine items.

It's not a mod, it'd be a re-write of the exe.
 
What about something like in Half-Life 2? Your troops are divided up into two or three groups, as suggested, and tapping the 'c' key makes them go to where the targeting reticule is, and tapping 'c' twice would recall the troops? Maybe there's some way, like remapping the command keys to F1-F5, and the groups to where they commands used to be, so that you select which group to give the commands to.

You could then flank easily by selecting say, group 1, telling them to move to the high ground, and then by hitting '1' and 'F3' tell them to charge.

What do you guys think?
 
I think something along these lines would be quite useful. The old recticle based system of Battlezone (the PC game) would be pretty good. Just look at a point, click (or shift-click), and a menu comes up with actions for the unit, target or location.

Another way to do things would be breaking forces up before the battle starts and assigning default actions that would be executed. This is how things work in Dominions II for forces. You might have several subunits under a commander and each can be assigned a relative position on a minimap along with basic orders to follow. When the battle starts the subunits will do what they've been told to do. In M&B you should be able to adjust those orders on the fly however with varying effectiveness depending on the inclinations of the troop types. Knights might be difficult to control and more prone to impulsive charges. Archers and peasants might be less inclined to close with the enemy.

Here's the problem I see when talking about unit and subunit control. As we get more efficient controlling and deploying our troops how does the AI react? How much more complex coding would be needed to compensate, in an effective way, for our newfound tactical control?
 
Jeez, i would love yo get my swad sharpies in a LINE instead of them in a clump, shooting each other in the backs. And why the hell dont my men listen? when i say hold this position, i mean the position im STANDING at, not 20 yards back! friggers...........

Ian
 
It's usually 20 yards ahead for me... much much worse, they never end up where they should be. And clumps are realistic and cool for moving troops, not to mention damn hardy, i've been tooling around on horseback and clumps are disproportionately harder than stragglers simply because they seem to stagger the strikes, making it hard for you to get one in.

P.S. Cutting things up from horseback is fun. Who needs an army when you can take them piecemeal?
 
Brothers in Arms type of things would really work here except for the charge part because archers are to slow to stall a enemy advance and they got shields so it wouldnt help as much.
 
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