Combat Model

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Groovy
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Combat Model

Unread postby Groovy » 30 Apr 2014, 22:41

The combat model that I’m aiming for gives more or less equal attention to strategy and tactics.

The strategic aspect comes from:
  • The presence of buildings on the battlefield that contribute to the player’s war effort, and that the player will have to capture and hold to increase his chances of winning
  • Terrain that can be utilised to significantly boost the power of the units situated on it
The player will have to balance these strategic objectives with the traditional HoMM combat objective of suffering minimal losses. Speedy capture of a strategically important map location may be worth the extra losses.

The tactical aspect comes from the customary positioning of troops in pursuit of the chosen strategic objective.

To win, a player will need to have a sound grasp of the strategic possibilities on the battlefield (to know what importance to attach to different parts of it), and will need to be thoroughly familiar with the units at his disposal (to know which ones to train and assign to what tasks).

For this model to work, it will be necessary to keep individual combat turns simple and quick, so that the player can plan several turns ahead and not lose sight of the long-term picture. Numerous or elaborate combat rules and unit abilities are likely to be counterproductive.

As far as I’m aware, the game with the most similar combat model to this one is the mobile game Ancient Empires II:

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Unread postby Groovy » 07 May 2014, 18:27

An important implication of this combat model is that all the information that a player needs in order to strategise must be readily available to him. This means that it must either be easy to memorise, or displayed on the map itself. Having to ask other people (players or the GM) for important information, or having to look it up elsewhere, would interfere with the conceptual immersion needed for strategising.

What I think we can reasonably expect players to commit to memory is knowledge of the game that doesn’t change over time – things like unit line ups for different towns, the stats and abilities of each type of unit, terrain characteristics, etc. What I don’t think we can expect players to keep track of is the game state – which units have what power ups, which map tiles have been drained of mana, etc. This information should either be unimportant enough to disregard (increasing unit attack from 7 to 8, say), or displayed on the map using tokens or some other symbols that are easy to absorb at a glance.

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Unread postby Panda Tar » 07 May 2014, 20:41

Groovy wrote:...or displayed on the map using tokens or some other symbols that are easy to absorb at a glance.
Yes, tokens (with different symbols on it) might be the best solution for some of these situations. If we think on the mana-drained terrain, a token showing a symbol of depleted magic can be placed on that tile. If a unit has an offensive boost, then a token with a sword is placed on it. And so on. It might be a bit harder to symbolize spell effects and ailments, so I believe these should be written plainly, like POISON, SLEEP, SLOW. And again, it all depends on what we'll have in the game. Slow might not even exist if we don't have Speed in the game, still just as an example. :)
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Unread postby Groovy » 08 May 2014, 16:58

Just a thought - how feasible is it to represent units with 3D figurines (they can be very basic, like cardboard cutouts), and use rings of different colour to symbolise which terrain they have mastered? For example, a caster unit that is able to draw mana from water would have a blue ring around it.

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Unread postby Panda Tar » 08 May 2014, 17:02

I dunno. We better check how many things/tokens can be over a unit. We don't want them cluttered.
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