This topic came up a lot of times.

Clearly this should be addressed in some way, but I imagine it could be difficult without also changing some core mechanic of the actual combat system.

In my opinion the problem can be addressed in two ways:

1 -  drastically reduce the movement points of units in battle, so the attacker cant cover the distance to the defender in the very first round (with not mounted at least)

or

2- alternate moves between players for each unit (basically like chess) so moving first wont be a big advantage anymore.

The defender already gets a small 'defensive stance' bonus (as if you didn't spend your attack action on the previous battle turn), but I agree that this is often not enough. 

I do like the idea of the attacker having 1 or 2 less MP on the first turn of battle. That might be just enough to balance it. 

Another option could be letting the defender place the flag during deployment, so he could choose a defendable position. After all, he has to hold it for the entire battle while the attacker only needs to capture and hold it to the end of the turn.

Tenjix wrote:

Another option could be letting the defender place the flag during deployment, so he could choose a defendable position. After all, he has to hold it for the entire battle while the attacker only needs to capture and hold it to the end of the turn.

I really like this.  A lot of times the defender can be at the mercy of a bad flag position like at the bottom of a river valley.  A more defensible position may discourage attack.

I haven't paid close attention to this his, but I'm assuming the flag is where your army was standing when attacked?

Bridger wrote:

The defender already gets a small 'defensive stance' bonus (as if you didn't spend your attack action on the previous battle turn), but I agree that this is often not enough. 

I do like the idea of the attacker having 1 or 2 less MP on the first turn of battle. That might be just enough to balance it. 

In my experience, that's not really enough. Even if it takes 8 units of mine to shoot at just 1 unit to take that out. If the battle originally was an 8 vs 8 with all other things being equal, I can force an 8vs7 and get a guaranteed win at that point.

Tenjix wrote:

Another option could be letting the defender place the flag during deployment, so he could choose a defendable position. After all, he has to hold it for the entire battle while the attacker only needs to capture and hold it to the end of the turn.

I don't know if that would change much, or even anything really. From what I played, a lot of fights end in one turn. Hell, a lot of the large fights technically are decided on the first round already. Even if the battle lasts 5 turns, if you both have equal amounts of units, whoever can kill a unit first, gets a huge dps advantage and will snowball out of control. And generally speaking you're almost always able to kill at least one unit on your first round as the attacker.

Of course this is mostly about ranged units, melee units get retaliation so they don't have this problem.

The other thing is, some units get insanely higher benefits from going first, like Hunnic Hordes are INSANELY strong in the hands of a good player. As long as they get to go first that is.

lbasil wrote:

This topic came up a lot of times.

Clearly this should be addressed in some way, but I imagine it could be difficult without also changing some core mechanic of the actual combat system.

In my opinion the problem can be addressed in two ways:

1 -  drastically reduce the movement points of units in battle, so the attacker cant cover the distance to the defender in the very first round (with not mounted at least)

or

2- alternate moves between players for each unit (basically like chess) so moving first wont be a big advantage anymore.

The more I think about this issue the more I think option 2 here is inevitable. It's the only good solution to this problem really. I mean okay yeah I'd like ranged retaliation too, that could fix it as well, but this one seems way easier to implement.

In Endless Legend, each unit has an initiative score (among others) and each turn consisted of each player assigning instructions to each unit, and then those units acting in initiative order, so there very rarely did sides take turns acting all at once as they do in HK.

Adding an initiative to all troops seem to be an overcomplexification and impractical.
Playing one troop at a time may be the easiest way to deal with that problem.
Ranged retaliation looks too much like playing too often (melee permanent retaliation is a bit odd too, nope?)
Amputing movement from some troops may end up buffing too much ranged ones.

It is logical for the attacker to have advantage if terrain is plain. It all comes down to reinforcement mechanics. I think if the attacker is not allowed to use reinforcements during the first turn, or is allowed to use only one extra regiment, the issue could have been fixed. Because if a defender survives the attack and is better prepared for war in general, he could easily turn the tides with reinforcements.

I had an afterthought about my idea and came to a conclusion that its even more logical, because the defender is at attacker’s mercy of blocking reinforcement spots. So the defender needs to spend a lot to slice through blocker units. If reinforcements are limited to 1 regiment 1st turn for an attacker that could be healthy for the game.

Siptah wrote:
Hm... I'm not sure if a free placeable flag would be fair in any way.  Maybe give the defender a choice between a few options? I mean, when you are defending a city, it would be fine to choose any hex of the city for example. If it would be freely placeable, you could choose a hex that isn't reachable from within the battlefield, put in in the middle of water or on islands to bait the enemy to water their troops when there really isn't a need to do that.

I would prefer a higher defense CS against non-siege ranged attacks in the first round for the defender. The +2 clearly isn't enough, maybe +10ish as with dug-in?

When defending a city, it would already be a improvement if the flag was  guaranteed to spawn inside the city walls.

Since currently, this is not always the case.

And in Multiplayer expirienced players can use this to there advantage 

neprostoman wrote:

It is logical for the attacker to have advantage if terrain is plain. It all comes down to reinforcement mechanics. I think if the attacker is not allowed to use reinforcements during the first turn, or is allowed to use only one extra regiment, the issue could have been fixed. Because if a defender survives the attack and is better prepared for war in general, he could easily turn the tides with reinforcements.

Is it logical? A defending regiment of musketmen would shoot at anyone running at them, probably shoot before the enemy if anything. Unless it's an ambush, but then, is every battle an ambush?

Even if the attacker 'has the advantage' the defender would still be shooting back when they're getting shot, but that's not happening right now. The attacker can shoot and receive no damage in return. Unfortunately this isn't a case where logic or realism matches the gameplay, turn based combat will never match reality, because reality isn't turn based.

StorytellerDave wrote:

neprostoman wrote:

It is logical for the attacker to have advantage if terrain is plain. It all comes down to reinforcement mechanics. I think if the attacker is not allowed to use reinforcements during the first turn, or is allowed to use only one extra regiment, the issue could have been fixed. Because if a defender survives the attack and is better prepared for war in general, he could easily turn the tides with reinforcements.

Is it logical? A defending regiment of musketmen would shoot at anyone running at them, probably shoot before the enemy if anything. Unless it's an ambush, but then, is every battle an ambush?

Even if the attacker 'has the advantage' the defender would still be shooting back when they're getting shot, but that's not happening right now. The attacker can shoot and receive no damage in return. Unfortunately this isn't a case where logic or realism matches the gameplay, turn based combat will never match reality, because reality isn't turn based.

With an initiative or one troop at a time system, the attacker would still have the advantage of moving their piece first, so it wouldn't be the unreasonable move entire army shoot and kill everything in one round at no cost to them situation. It'd be a better simulation.

But a battle is not only of infantry troops, but of siege engines and artillery! Of air and naval support. Attack can accompany some sort of artillery bombardment and force the defender to hide or dig in. It all comes down to the fact that war is not won or lost in a single battle of a single regiment. For me this discussion is a bit weird cause its like if losing a battle of equal forces means losing a war immediately. 

neprostoman wrote:

But I agree with your statement that running into gunfire should come at a cost. Mb giving a "dug in" status to all defender troops can be a good idea? +10 CS can sink a poorly thought out blitz attack.

When you research dug-in, eligible defender units for it have "dug-in" status on the first turn instead of the +2 cs defender bonus.

StorytellerDave wrote:

neprostoman wrote:

StorytellerDave wrote:

neprostoman wrote:

It is logical for the attacker to have advantage if terrain is plain. It all comes down to reinforcement mechanics. I think if the attacker is not allowed to use reinforcements during the first turn, or is allowed to use only one extra regiment, the issue could have been fixed. Because if a defender survives the attack and is better prepared for war in general, he could easily turn the tides with reinforcements.

Is it logical? A defending regiment of musketmen would shoot at anyone running at them, probably shoot before the enemy if anything. Unless it's an ambush, but then, is every battle an ambush?

Even if the attacker 'has the advantage' the defender would still be shooting back when they're getting shot, but that's not happening right now. The attacker can shoot and receive no damage in return. Unfortunately this isn't a case where logic or realism matches the gameplay, turn based combat will never match reality, because reality isn't turn based.

With an initiative or one troop at a time system, the attacker would still have the advantage of moving their piece first, so it wouldn't be the unreasonable move entire army shoot and kill everything in one round at no cost to them situation. It'd be a better simulation.

But a battle is not only of infantry troops, but of siege engines and artillery! Of air and naval support. Attack can accompany some sort of artillery bombardment and force the defender to hide or dig in. It all comes down to the fact that war is not won or lost in a single battle of a single regiment. For me this discussion is a bit weird cause its like if losing a battle of equal forces means losing a war immediately. 

Couple of things and this might be different in your experience because you play differently or on a different difficulty setting or maybe you play multiplayer:

1 - Battles are very often  just infantry troops in this game. Early game has the highest unit diversity in that you get 2 types of melee infantry 1-2 types of cavalry and 1-2 types of ranged units. But after that a big shift happens right when you unlock gunpowder units. Once you have gunpowder, you need no other unit, just your best gunpowder unit with maybe a bit of cavalry if you have one of the unique ones. You won't have artillery yet, because it unlocks WAY later. And late-game it's usually already pointless because the game is basically over by then. By the time I get artillery or aircraft I already won 20 turns before. It's extremely rare that special units get into the battle. Ships are probably the most common, but even they're rare and many ships can't actually attack land units, you only get that ability after gunpowder.

2 - Many small battles (4 or fewer unit battles) are won in one or two rounds. Hunnic/mongol hordes often win in the first round with the enemy not even being able to damage my horsies. Musketmen can kill 2-3 units in one round, and gain a 25-50% damage advantage. In small battles every unit lost is a huge % of the damage they can retaliate with. Meaning I take little to no damage.

3 - Wars in the mid and late-game are very often won in the first battle. What I mean isn't that the war is over, but that the loser has no chance to recover. Usually it's a very big battle and it decides who wins the war. While in larger battles a single unit dying doesn't give as much of a % damage advantage, attacking with 20+ units can destroy a lot of units at no cost, because there is no retaliation. Being able to hit simultaneously with 20 units, and not receive any damage is a bit of a problem. To some extend the 'move or fire' option was made to counteract this, but it's removed later and some cultures don't even get it because they get unique units that bypass it and even when you have to use arquebussiers with 'move or fire', depending on the terrain you might be able to deploy in a way where you can hit on the first round or the neither you nor the enemy can hit on the first round and you get to hit them on the 2nd one. It does take some tactics knowledge to manage this, but if you have that, it gets really boring really fast.

3 - Dug-in doesn't really matter, because it just raises the defence, and defence alone will never fix this problem. Dug-in doesn't do any damage and it doesn't raise the damage that unit deals on its turn. As an attacker, all I need is to kill enough units to gain the dps advantage. After I have that, I will snowball through the battle and win.

I've explained this before, but in a battle between equal forces, whoever kills the first unit, will get such a big snowball effect that you basically cannot lose. Let's say it's an 8 vs 8. How hard you win that battle depends on how many units you can kill on the first round.

Each unit killed gives a 12.5% dps advantage at no cost, since there's no retaliation. And because dug-in gives no damage boost, even if it's the worst case scenario happens and you can't kill a unit on the first round, odds are, they can't either. At which point in the 2nd round you can definitely kill at least one unit, at which point you gain a 12.5% damage advantage compared to their army. Even if they kill a unit at that point it's too late, because you'll be able to kill another of their units first, and the longer the fight goes on, the more damage advantage you can amass, eventually snowballing to a point where you will vastly outnumber their army and win.

 Dug-in is a patchwork solution to this problem that was hastily cobbled together and fixes nothing. Plus, it only comes in way too late into the game too. Medieval era and before, you only get a minor defensive bonus, essentially the same one for not attacking with a unit, and let me tell you, horse archers really don't care about that extra 1 (or 2) combat strength, horse archers can get so much from just standing near other horse archers (which they can always do because they can move in increments and even after attacking) that it makes no difference.

The best balanced bit of combat in this game is melee vs melee, because there's retaliation and you can't take units for free.

So, are you concerned only about the battle of equal forces scenario and no backup? Because, as I've mentioned before, any battle can be reversed if you are better war-prepared in general with the help of reinforcements. Ok, lets say you kill 7 out of 8 Line Infantry units first turn. As long as the last one lives, they can deploy 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars and crush you in a turn with raw numbers. That whole scenario indicates that problem lies within the ability to completely destroy the defender 1st turn. It is logical to retreat to a safer position and take the battle in a place where you can survive a turn and get the upper hand with extra troops stationed nearby, by surviving behind walls or in a terrain supported bottleneck. I don't see a core mechanic problem, but of course it is based only on my experience. I play on humankind difficulty vs AI and/or a couple of my friends.

neprostoman wrote:
So, are you concerned only about the battle of equal forces scenario and no backup? Because, as I've mentioned before, any battle can be reversed if you are better war-prepared in general with the help of reinforcements.

Reinforcements implies that you left part of your army outside of the initial battle, which would be a misplay. Either that your you managed to build a few more units while the battle was going on, which mostly comes in if you're being declared war on and it can counteract the snowball effect somewhat, but doesn't really change much in my experience. I had only a few battles where we both had to reinforce constantly until I eventually won, but those were usually born out of me making a mistake beforehand, in that I declared war on an AI that was way too far from my territory and they attacked first because the AI can always do that due to their insane APM. Also I got a research milestone notification blown up in my face that resulted in me not being able to move my units in time. I love it when that happens.

neprostoman wrote:
As long as the last one lives, they can deploy 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars and crush you in a turn with raw numbers.

Why in the seven hells would you not have the 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars near the main army to begin with? Why would you leave just 8 line infantry alone to die?

neprostoman wrote:
That whole scenario indicates that problem lies within the ability to completely destroy the defender 1st turn

Partially, but also with the attacker getting a snowball effect by killing units before their opponents can retaliate. Even if you don't kill all the units on the first turn you still killed some units for free. Literally doing damage at no cost, because again, there's no retaliation. If you have 20 musketmen and the enemy has 30 and they left 20 of those outside the main battle for some unknown reason, you can kill a bunch of musketmen for free and when the enemy brings in their reinforce you'll be on a better footing than if you had gone up 20vs30 initially. Leaving units out of the battle is not a good idea.

Though you can reinforce within the same turn when it's your round, so it wouldn't even be 1 entire turn, just 1 round. So I don't know why reinforcements would be relevant. Also why would anyone attack an enemy that has 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars if they themselves don't have the same? Or are you implying that you also have 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars and only managed to kill 7 line infantry out of 8?

neprostoman wrote:
It is logical to retreat to a safer position and take the battle in a place where you can survive a turn and get the upper hand with extra troops stationed nearby, by surviving behind walls or in a terrain supported bottleneck

Absolutely, yeah it's safer to retreat rather than fight a losing battle, but you know what's even better? Getting both the terrain AND the first round. Which the AI used to do a ton before the devs decided to nerf their ability to immediately attack out of a city when you besieged said city. They had to do that, because having both the walls AND the first round was insanely strong and felt horrible and unfair for the player.

neprostoman wrote:
I don't see a core mechanic problem, but of course it is based only on my experience. I play on humankind difficulty vs AI and/or a couple of my friends.

I mostly play on the highest difficulty too, but I don't do multiplayer.