Hi,



I am curious, what are the battle rules. I mean:

1) how unit movement is calculated (compared to strategic map speed)?

2) how ranged distance is calculated (I am failing to find out, why some of my ranged units can reach the target, and other can't)?

3) are there Line of Sight rules?

4) are there Zone of Controll rules?

5) what terrain attitude changes?

6) what forrests change?

7) what rivers change?

8) what are the rules for city battles (do walls give deffensive bonuses? do they work if it is battle near city, as opposed to city assult?)?

9) what is "Deffensive" behaviour? (I've worked out "Offensive" and "Hold Position")?

10) can I flee the battle, and if so - how?

11) how damage is calculated (what deffence changes? what is the chance and damage of critical?)

12) are meele fighters hitting simultaniusly, and if not, in what order (I've seen retaliation before attack a few times)?

13) why sometimes, a unit with "Hold Position" order and with no other orders (no red, white or green arrows) decides to change location?



I've red game manual and fast looked through forum, but if I doubled post, I'm sorry

I'll answer what I know...



1) I believe it is the same but note that some units have different move values in battle for some reason.



3) Unfortunately, not at this time. I hope they add this.



4) Unfortunately, not at this time. I hope they add this too.



5) Attacker or defender in higher elevation gets a bonus. Unsure of the amount.



6) Defender in woods takes less damage.



7) Rivers don't have any combat effects at this time.



8) Units within "district" city hexes get a large defensive bonus



9) Defensive behavior does nothing that I can see at the moment.



10) To "flee" a battle you need to survive for the 6 rounds and force a draw, then move your army away on the world map.



Not sure on numbers 3, 12 and 13

Thanks a lot.



I would love to have full manual (and I am aware, that it is a lot of work for devs and there is wiki page under construction) - I am a board game player and I love rules - even if I am not powergaming, I like to understand what happens

The manual will come its currently under construction and you can find it on the forum.



2) some range units simply have a better range than others. it varies from 2 to 4 but it's mainly 3.

5) I believe the bonus right now for elevated terrain is 30% increased damage

11) your chance of critical are part of the stats and you can raise this stat with gear (titanium does it), but I don't know how much damage is increased by critics

13) it's what happened in previous version of the game, with patchs, holding position should work correctly.

Thank you, Sloul



2) so there are sometimes some odd behaviours - with my ranged unit on "Hold Position" and within range not attacking enemy - I thought that was due to some line of sight rules I didn't understand, but it seams that it is AI bug

Weird, I never experienced that.

Even though this seems like something very dumb and simple I had a hard time simply directing units to do anything. The auto-plans are OK in small one sided battles but it isn't going to get me very far. I would click on one my units and then click on on opposing unit to instruct which opposing unit to attack but it would just select the opposing unit instead. I'm certain the answer is obvious and but for whatever reason is a mystery to me. Update: looks like it is just a matter of left clicking.



Also the units have certain traits that are equally mysterious. The agache shaman has things like bark skin, low damage, and rangeslayer. It isn't clear what these do or how to activate them (or are they passive intrinsic abilities?). Supposedly this agache shaman will also buff friendly units but buff how exactly? Is it a healer, does it boost damage or armor?



It is documented that initiative determines move order. Does initiative determine not just move order but the ratio of turns taken (as it does with Fallen Enchantress)? In other words, if you have two opposing units and one has twice the initiative as the other, then that unit will roughly have twice as many turns as the other unit.



How is damage calculated (vs. the defense value of the defending unit,etc)?



Also do cities have any intrinsic defense of their own if they have no troops garrisoned? In some 4X games a city will have a supplemental built-in defense regardless of whatever is stationed there and in other 4X games an opposing army can roll into an undefended city without a battle. Update: Cities will have militia in future versions.



Do support costs change for garrisoned troops vs. troops out and about the strategic map?



It looks like there is default army size cap of 4 units per army. How is the cap increased? Update: it looks like there are technologies that increase army size caps (although it might also make an interesting leader ability)>



If multiple armies of the same empire are close to each other one army enters combat with an opposing army, does the allied army come to its aid in any form (even if it is just by buffing stats)?



Is there an overall unit cap and how is it calculated? I recently ran into a situation that it took infinity turns to build additional units which is a real long time.



Can you skip over the tier I titanium and glassteel technologies and just leapfrog directly into the equivalent tier II technologies? Because if that is true it seems like the way the game is currently paced the tier I weapon and armor techs don't make much sense. By the time you have secured some resources you're nearly to tier II.



A detailed combat manual is probably the biggest gap in the games' documentation right now.

Okay, I'll try to answer the remaining questions to the best of my abilities:

Gewar wrote:


1) how unit movement is calculated (compared to strategic map speed)?

8) what are the rules for city battles (do walls give deffensive bonuses? do they work if it is battle near city, as opposed to city assult?)?

9) what is "Deffensive" behaviour? (I've worked out "Offensive" and "Hold Position")?

11) how damage is calculated (what deffence changes? what is the chance and damage of critical?)

12) are meele fighters hitting simultaniusly, and if not, in what order (I've seen retaliation before attack a few times)?

1) Unfortunately, there is no relation at all between strategic speed and battle speed. Battle speed should really be listed in the tooltips, given that it can range from 1 to 4, while strategic speed is between 4 and 6.

8) As of version 0.5.3, currently only available in the less stable test branch, a defending army also receives and "Armor stat" that works like additional HP. I believe it also fully absorbs the hit that breaks it, no matter how little of it was left and how much damage it dealt, though I'm not certain about that. Critical hits bypass it, however.

9) Defensive behavior changes the parameters based on which the AI decides which actions to take. In theory, a unit on defensive behavior should be less likely to rush forward and get itself killed, and prefer standing in tiles that give it defensive bonuses. However, I still see plenty of stupidity from my units.

11.) According to Meedoc, damage is calculated according to this formula: target.armor/health -= (attack * DamageMultiplier - target.defense) * target.BattleDamageReduction, where DamageMultiplier includes increases from high ground and charge, while target.BattleDamageReduction includes reductions for forests etc. Critical hit chance is listed in the profile, with the number listed there is not only the percent chance to score a critical, but also the amount of damage it will deal.

12) That one is actually a good question. I have observed both striking at the same time, as well as the attacker first, or the defender first. It is possible that its tied to initiative, but I'll have to look nito that a little more.

AaronH wrote:
Also the units have certain traits that are equally mysterious. The agache shaman has things like bark skin, low damage, and rangeslayer. It isn't clear what these do or how to activate them (or are they passive intrinsic abilities?). Supposedly this agache shaman will also buff friendly units but buff how exactly? Is it a healer, does it boost damage or armor?



It is documented that initiative determines move order. Does initiative determine not just move order but the ratio of turns taken (as it does with Fallen Enchantress)? In other words, if you have two opposing units and one has twice the initiative as the other, then that unit will roughly have twice as many turns as the other unit.



Do support costs change for garrisoned troops vs. troops out and about the strategic map?



If multiple armies of the same empire are close to each other one army enters combat with an opposing army, does the allied army come to its aid in any form (even if it is just by buffing stats)?



Is there an overall unit cap and how is it calculated? I recently ran into a situation that it took infinity turns to build additional units which is a real long time.



Can you skip over the tier I titanium and glassteel technologies and just leapfrog directly into the equivalent tier II technologies? Because if that is true it seems like the way the game is currently paced the tier I weapon and armor techs don't make much sense. By the time you have secured some resources you're nearly to tier II.

Bark skin does indeed buff Defense. The formula for it seems to be Efficiency*Attack of the Shaman, with Efficiency varying between 0.05 and 0.15. I'm not sure which one is in actual use.

No, units act only once per turn. However, it may seem like high initiative units act more often than low initiative ones, because retaliating consumes a unit's action for the turn.

Units stationed in a garrison are cheaper than in the field, as far as I know.

Yes, armies to support each other. The flags you see when starting a manual battle mark the tiles on which reinforcements will arrive each turn, so by default you can receive 2 reinforcing units each battle turn, though a hero skill can raise that to 4.

No, there should not be an overall unit cap. If you are trying to construct a unit and the time to finish it becomes infinite, then most likely your garrison was already full, and it should continue production once you remove a few units from your garrison.

Yes, you can actually skip tier 1 Titanium and Glassteel gear, and I very often do so. If you're especially lucky, you get Tier 3 gear from a quest, and you're set pretty much until era 3 or 4.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
snip

Thanks for the info.