After a 7 hour, 150-turn marathon multiplayer game last night, in which a good chunk of time was spend waiting for other players to finish their combats, I'll soften my comments on the above. I'd like to see the 2-to-1 resolution come back, at least as an option...

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
I'm glad to find that I'm not the only one disappointed by the current battle sequence of 1 turn per set of orders. I just can't properly manage my empire while running battles anymore, since they require attention so frequently now.

I appreciate the streamlining AMPLITUDE has done with the WE-GO order system and ability to do other things during a battle (especially for multiplayer). I also like the "battle of wits" offered by selecting orders while trying to guess what your opponent is going to do. I like that they didn't go the AoW 3 route where battles take 30 minutes to resolve.



Those things said, there's some serious issues with the combat system. My current pet peeve is Ranged units that run up to Melee units and shoot at them point blank. When I choose to forgo auto-resolution and manage a battle manually, I expect to have a reasonable amount of control over my troops. I want to say things like "move here and attack that guy", "Stay still and buff this guy", "chase down that archer" or "stand on this spot and defend yourself". The AI makes too many of the decisions in a 2-resolutions per order battle and it is frustrating. Even if the AI is making sound decisions (like picking the optimal spot in it's movement radius to move to before attacking), it can often be not what you wanted. Positioning is very important and the AI often moves units to places you don't want them or stumbles into a Ranged kill zone.



With one-resolution per order, having blocked movement or no target doesn't mean your unit is idle or doing something crazy for 1/3 of the battle. After playing over the last couple months, I think we need a bit of that control back and I'm OK sacrificing a bit more time managing a battle to get it. I also think the 0.5.18 system is going to be easier for new players to understand.



Having options for AI take-over mid battle and/or option to skip your orders phase (and just keep current orders) would allow players to go do something else if the battle gets boring...

The numbers in the current build really do seem off by quite a bit, though I've played only one game so far.



I'm glad to find that I'm not the only one disappointed by the current battle sequence of 1 turn per set of orders. I just can't properly manage my empire while running battles anymore, since they require attention so frequently now.

However, much like the absence of the Conquest/Annihilation victory, I believe this will be gone only temporarily. The menu option to configure it still exists, though it only offers this one option. They may just be trying to force players to test this option, or are trying to mask some inadequacies in the battle AI until they can sort them out (which I hope isn't the case. The battle behavior may need tweaking, but then we need to test it to give feedback.)

PawnTakesCheck wrote:
I heard that this was supposed to be configurable--that at game set up it would be possible to select between the one turn orders, one turn combat and one turn orders, two turns combat.

It was up to this latest patch.



I get the sense that they've gotten a lot of negative feedback (from here and other sources) regarding the combat system. I liked the system for the same reasons as the OP but it is a departure for what people expect. For example:

PCGamerPreview wrote:
Most of my frustrations can be solved with tutorials and tooltips that explain how systems work. Legend's combat system is a bigger problem. It's about macro level decisions instead of unit micromanagement, which sounds fine. In practice, after telling my units which enemies to attack, I never knew where they were going to move. Melee units often took inefficient paths and took multiple turns to reach enemies, exposing them to more ranged attacks. Ranged units don't have clearly marked attack radiuses. Combat is automated to the point where I barely felt like I had control, and the control I did have was never interesting or tactical.

Agree that the numbers seem off in this build. Just had a battle where a Urces and un-upgraded Dervish were whacking at each other several rounds doing very low damage...

NoSecurity wrote:


In the battle against the silics I spent three turns just clicking the (combat) button because there was only one unit, but it took my whole army 3 turns to kill it. It was the first time I've been bored with this game.

Exactly what I felt ! My first combat in the first build took more than 15 minutes (2 vaulters marines and a hero against 2 Centaur...) and ended on a DRAW cause the ARMOR VS DAMAGE system is broken, we couldnt inflict more than 3 or 4 damages to each other xD



Their was no tactic, I was only clicking on "launch" button, It was sooooo boring...



Then I started to Automaticly do Auto-battles...

I heard that this was supposed to be configurable--that at game set up it would be possible to select between the one turn orders, one turn combat and one turn orders, two turns combat. I personally totally agree with you about the former setup being more fun; I also consider it more immersive, because to me it seems more like historic battles probably operated (with a general seeing the general state of the battle and issuing orders to messengers, who rode to the various companies and tried to get those orders implemented).



As for the repetitive/slow nature of battle, I set up my game with turn timers (15 seconds for each bit) and I found that that helped/was nice. I didn't necessarily even have to click just to get through the round, if things were set up reasonably I could just let the battle auto-complete and occasionally check in on it to make sure new orders didn't need to be issued. But that said, I still liked the original set up better.