indigav wrote:
I had noticed that the Critical stat seemed to be working independently then the choice of weapons, I just haven't joined all the dots up yet.



@Gewar

What unit was you referring to? I would think that a flying unit would also have this as they take no notice of cliffs.



I just seen a Deamon with attack stats better than my starter Hero and still I'll beat it as it's not ranged and doesn't use its full movement count to close. Is this the AI being dumb, or battle mechanics?

I've noticed this when fighting Hydra and this big ogre-like neutral unit. The were not flying for sure

@ Gewar

The Hydra (Vinesnake), and I'm guessing the big ogre-like unit is a Rumbler, have something called "Sweep Attack", which attacks all units in a cone of 1.



Sweep Attack is a minor faction unit trait, of which I believe there are 6.



I would suppose there is some lee way in the application of this attack for creatures that are the size these 2 are, but I agree that it doesn't seem in-keeping with the premise of terrain based strategy.

Polymathin wrote:
I think what erks me the most about current battle mechanics is that you can only choose who your units attack the first round then if they kill the unit you wanted dead first they do whatever the hell they want. I have seen my units make some stupid attack decisions and it is frustrating as all hell.

^THAT.



I think ELs battlesystem could be really, really great, if it weren't so barebones. I really hope they'll give it more love than they did on ES.

Battles are important afterall, at the moment they are even the only real "thing to do".



I think the player should be able to decide how far he wants to get involved into the battle.

Some want to just click auto-resolve, some are okay with giving rough tactical orders every other turn.

And then some, like me, want to have a more wholly tactical experience, giving orders to their units every turn,

initializing flanking maneuvers, using their unit placement and the environment to full effect and so on.

My Idea to that topic:



3-LEVEL-BATTLESYSTEM:



AUTOMATIC // SEMIAUTOMATIC // MANUAL



It would add a third way of fighting a battle, called SEMIAUTOMATIC and make it roughly what battleing is now, but with more diverse tactics and less managing who attacks who.

It would give you the ability to assign tactics to your units, or unitgroups and have them fight according to that afterwards. The Computer would play out the battle for you, so it's similar to rolling the dice, but with a little bit of involvement.

There would also be a button called "Intervene", which would lead to manual battle.



In a fully MANUAL battle, you get to move your units every battleturn, essentially giving you the full round-based combat experience.

You could still assign certain tactics to Units you don't want to move for a while (maybe you are using them to block a path, or they are just archer-units, raining hell on everyone in range),

but you could also move everyone whereever you want every turn.



This 3-way system, would be the cure for frustrating battle-outcomes, as we have them now. I've had to reload my game quite a few times already, because the AI did something stupendous in the 2nd "unguided" round, taking unnecessary high losses or even losing several units, just because the targeting + pathfinding went mad after the inital target went down. I could just sit there and watch.

That is the kind of frustration, that a gamedeveloper should avoid at all costs, as it makes the player think "This game is unfair" instead of "Oh, my mistake". And unfairness like that can break peoples motivation really quickly.





OTHER

• Flanking!!! Comeon, thats a standard, everyone wants it, the hexagonal engine is great for it (see Civ 5)
• Placing units "behind(from the enemies viewpoint)" shieldbearers, would give a bonus against ranged attacks.
• Standing next to your Hero gives extra Attack or Defense (emulating Morale, could be a hero feature)
• Ranged units attempt to retreat when attacked.
• Cavalry charges through the first unit they meet, if they kill it in the first attack.
• ..
  
  

******/

I also had a problem, where haunts only had 1 movement point, and ryders only had 3?

they were completely useless to me, but I am unsure if that was a bug, so i won't pick up that topic now.

indigav wrote:
@ Gewar

The Hydra (Vinesnake), and I'm guessing the big ogre-like unit is a Rumbler, have something called "Sweep Attack", which attacks all units in a cone of 1.



Sweep Attack is a minor faction unit trait, of which I believe there are 6.



I would suppose there is some lee way in the application of this attack for creatures that are the size these 2 are, but I agree that it doesn't seem in-keeping with the premise of terrain based strategy.

I understand that they have sweep attack - but I think it is odd that they can hurt adjecent unit on top of the cliff, they could not hurt if there would be no other unit at the bottom.



pic - X is a Hydra, 1 and 2 are my units - 1 is at the same level as hydra and can be attacked, 2 is on top of the cliff and could not be attacked, but it would be hurt becouse it is adjecent to the unit 1



.020.

0X10

.000.

Just to remind folks...

in the final game we plan to offer a game setting that will allow you to control every round if you wish so. It will probably be 3 settings: simple (1 order phase), Normal (3 phases), Advanced ( 6 phases). In all these setting we always keep the same number of rounds (6 rounds), not to change the game balance.

From SpaceTroll about a week ago



So you can deduce that for manual combat...

Minimum unit set-up is 1 phase x 6 rounds = 6 points of player interaction

In-between unit set-up is 3 phases x 6 rounds = 18 points of player interaction

Maximum unit set-up is 6 phases x 6 rounds = 36 points of player interaction