StorytellerDave wrote:
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?

I usually have my armies spread out between cities to have extra stability, because every unit gives +5. When a surprise war is declared I can reach the front within 1-2 turns with the help of roads and later train stations and airports. Also you can fall a victim to a surprise attack by another foe if you concentrate all your troops in one place, but it is more often exploited by human players than AI. Also when you reinforce, you can choose the spawn point by engaging from different angles. That way you can make a flank attack which is especially important for melee units because of a rear attack. You can also engage from an unprotected wall-adjacent tile and enter a city immediately after spawning.

neprostoman wrote:

StorytellerDave wrote:
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?

I usually have my armies spread out between cities to have extra stability, because every unit gives +5. When a surprise war is declared I can reach the front within 1-2 turns with the help of roads and later train stations and airports. Also you can fall a victim to a surprise attack by another foe if you concentrate all your troops in one place, but it is more often exploited by human players than AI. Also when you reinforce, you can choose the spawn point by engaging from different angles. That way you can make a flank attack which is especially important for melee units because of a rear attack. You can also engage from an unprotected wall-adjacent tile and enter a city immediately after spawning.

Usually you can tell if a war is about to break out a couple turns before it happens. Scouting is important, it's useful to have eyes at your borders.

But generally you will know who's the biggest threat out of all of your neighbors. So I tend to put my units near the border of whichever country I think is most likely to attack or would be the most threatening if they do. Sometimes I have to split my army in two, but it's not very common and if I do have two separate armies, usually it's either a case of me being able to reinforce immediately when the battle starts or me not even bothering to reinforce because either it would be a lost battle, so I retreat and try to get the attack first, or if I can win the battle with the units I have there then there's no reason to reinforce and instead go on the offensive with my other army.

It is important to underline that if your unit can get there in the same turn your army is attacked, you can bring those in on your first round.

But honestly this scenario is also odd from the attacker's perspective, even if the defender has their units all split up around various cities for stability, why would the attacker go in with fewer units than their opponent has? And if the attacker also has 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars, then the battle would be over turn 1, or hell, round 1 even. And if they don't have 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars, why are they attacking someone who does?

I haven't really used reinforcements for flanking, I tend to be able to do that regardless, just based on unit movement.

This might not work for everyone, but my favorite way of dealing with footsies on open terrain is to pick the Assyrians.

Here's a battle - Enemy has 6 galleas, 8 Man o war, 8 transport ships and 2 cogs.

I have 12 ironclads and 2 transport ships.

First round of combat, I killed 12 of their ships. Not turn. ROUND! By the time they got to retaliate they had half their ships and I lost literally nothing at all in that battle. Despite having 14 ships and them having 24. Sure, ironclads are better than man o war and galleas, but even so, the fact that their retaliation damage was about 70% weaker than what they could've done if they attacked first is absolutely INSANE.

got on the forums just to post about this same topic. Every time I return to Humankind I'm driven mad by the very obvious attacker's advantage, and the AI wins every even fight unless you mad click to micro-manage every army at the start of every turn in this TURN-BASED strategy game. Honestly I've wanted this game to be good since release, but it feels unplayable every time I give it a go.

AI definitely seems very familiar with the meta, which isn't right.

If I wanted to have to metagame to compete I wouldn't be playing against AI.

Another vote for the "reduce battle movement turn 1" idea. Cavalry being actual shock troops would be cool, currently they don't have much reason to exist within the battle map (but are useful outside it).

I've been really taken with the discussion in this thread, and thought i'd put another idea out there, if only to keep the interesting counterpoints coming.

Perhaps to blunt the first turn, first round advantage of the Attacker being able to eliminate units without retaliation; in the first round the defender gets to retaliate in any situation where it could be feasible. In addition to this, the Attacker's Roll is calculated on their health remaining after the Defender gets their free retaliation. Effectively, the defence gets one, out of sequence hit for free on the Attacker, before the normal rolls are made. This does not remove the CS bonus from Defending or subsequently, Dug in.
This Status on the defending units, call it 'Prepared' for now, clears after the first attack against them is made; but it really hurts that first unit that engages.

This is interesting to me for a number of reasons, it could be applied or excluded from other units to enrichen combat in the game.

For example,

Units attacking defenders from outside of LoS aren't retaliated against.

Anti-Tank Guns may always have this function versus Tanks. (Perhaps it is not 'Prepared' but 'Ambush'?)

Certain units don't lose this Status after the First Round, such as Pikemen, or Hoplites, as long as they don't move.

Keen to hear your thoughts.

Wow this became an essay really fast. These are my thoughts on the issues of attacking and defending. Here goes.

Terms & concepts

Firstly, I'd like to draw a distinction between attacking and defending in a natural sense (what happens before/outside of battle) versus attacking and defending in battle, lest they be conflated. The former I will call attacking and defending, the latter going first or going second. The going first player will be G1, and the going second player will be G2 because I got tired of writing it the long way.

In the natural sense, the advantages of defending are:

⦁    Stationing armies on advantageous terrain

⦁    Proximity to cities for reinforcements and retreat

⦁    Using defensive structures (city terrain & garrisons) to prop up defenders, thereby needing to invest less economy into units

In the natural sense, the advantages of attacking are:

⦁    Choosing which cities or armies to attack, or evade entirely

⦁    Choosing which angle to attack at; outflanking and seizing the terrain advantage if possible

⦁    Not having to spread out armies; concentrating forces to defeat defending armies in detail

⦁    Opportunity to attack enemy economy, e.g. ransacking and siege

Generally, the attacker is G1, and the defender is G2. This is not always the case, as, for example, you can be attacked by a defending army and end up playing G2 while advancing on a city, or vice-versa. However, because of the general case, it can be said that the defender's advantage is often G2's advantage.

Ideally, the above natural factors should be the greatest factors in determining an advantage, allowing asymmetrical (or "imbalanced" as Jeremy Silman puts it with regards to chess) but equal opportunities for play on both sides. Applying artificial bonuses to either side can overshadow the natural advantage to an engagement and make the game feel unfair or contrived. However, HK's battle system is turn-based, which adds a different layer of advantage.

How HK deals with going first / going second

Since it's pretty much inevitable that the player going first in a turn-based game will have an appreciable advantage, some intervention is needed mechanically to give the going second player a fighting chance. HK has only two such mechanics that I can think of; namely: 

⦁    the flag system

⦁    the defending bonus being applied on round 1

I like both of these bonuses and think they should remain as is, which I'll justify briefly.

The flag system is brilliant in concept as it singlehandedly provides the requisite asymmetry or "imbalance" between the two players to make the engagement interesting. The matter of going first or going second does not have mere tactical implications, but the two players have completely different win conditions: G1 is playing for checkmate, while G2 doesn't have to do anything at all. This changes the strategy needed by both players to achieve their goal and can make you think twice about whether holding ground or attacking the approaching enemy is a better call.

The defending bonus is, superficially, a highly artificial mechanic that would probably be unfair or unfun if it were implemented differently. Say, if it were just  a +2 bonus to all units of G2, which would be dull and probably broken. Or, it would not even be a benefit to the G2 player had it not applied on round 1. As it is however, it is a universal mechanic that both players can make use of, while it being applied on round 1 perfectly supports G2's win condition, which is merely holding position, and blunts G1's first strike advantage.

An ideal practical example

So the flag system provides the win condition for the going second player, and the first round defense bonus provides a means to that win condition. Conceptually, it works out. But what about in practice?

Let's consider a battle between equal strength melee units in equal numbers. Say, a battle between equal numbers of Tribes or Scouts.

In this case, I think the system is perfect. G2 has no need to attack G1 on superior terrain, so the inherent attacker's advantage of choosing an angle of attack is checked. G1 gets to attack first, so they can choose to focus on a single unit to thin G2's ranks, but they will trade HP inefficiently against a defending unit without superior terrain. So the battle will be decided by whoever has the tactical advantage in terms of terrain, unit configuration, etc., which I believe is ideal.

Because the system works in this case, I don't think it is fundamentally broken or unfixable. Obviously this is not how the game works most of the time however, so there is something to be desired.

Where the problems lie

As I see it, there are 3 main problems with the current battle system that work to undermine the asymmetrical advantages that can be enjoyed by playing the G2 side. I will also provide what I think is the best solution to address these problems. 

1. Ranged units

In my example, I placed melee units against melee units, since I think the system works great for them. All of that falls apart as soon as you introduce ranged units. Furthermore, there are two identifiable sub-problems with ranged units that I will outline separately.

1. A) No retaliation against ranged units

The fact that melee units cannot retaliate against ranged units is entirely sensible and an important part of the balance of combat. While it is true that unretaliated fire from ranged units is a large part of what makes the G1 first strike advantage so powerful, ranged units are pretty much the only thing that prevents the G2 advantage from being overwhelming. Without the fear of taking unrealizable damage from ranged units, there would be nothing that could prevent G2 from holding decent terrain and spamming End Round.

The problem really occurs once you advance to the 4th Era and beyond, where the primary form of combat is ranged attacks. While the defending/dug in bonus still applies to G2, without the threat of taking a bad trade, there is zero counter-incentive to attacking G2 with every unit possible. Sure, they will take less damage, but no compensation. They will just begin their first turn down material with nothing to show for it.

The solution for this is very easy: ranged units should retaliate against ranged fire. This preserves both the balance between ranged/melee units in early eras and the going second compensation for G2 in later eras.

1. B) Indirect Fire

I've really got a bone to pick with this one. The "Indirect Fire" unit specialty alone breaks combat for the first 2 or 3 eras of the game. 

Most strategy game players probably know this implicitly, but there's a theory  known as "Lanchester's square law" that proports that each unit in an army provides an exponential benefit to the strength of that army - meaning every unit lost in a battle exponentially reduces that side's chances of winning. Having fewer units means fewer adjacency bonuses, fewer tiles that can be held, and fewer attacks by your opponent that need to be spent picking off weak units. If G1 can focus fire a single unit to death in the first turn, they are immediately at an exponential advantage. The Indirect Fire ability makes this possibility a reality in almost any situation.

There is pretty much no fix for this ability either; with the way damage is calculated, no degree of combat strength penalty from no line of sight can really offset the power this ability provides. It ought to be removed from all ranged units, excepting mortars and artillery and the like.

I play pretty much exclusively with a modded version of the game because I don't like the base game's balance, and this is unit specialty is a large part of that. Removing this tag from ranged units alone brings so much more life and interest into combat.

Back when the mod tools launched, removing this tag made archers pretty unusable because of the awkward LOS mechanics. However, since they updated the rules, I find they add a whole new dimension to ranged combat. Placing archers on higher ground guarantees a good vantage point, and now you can actually shoot between friendly units! The new rules make you think carefully about the configuration of your army, and force players to distribute ranged damage across the enemy army where possible rather than focus down single targets. Sadly, in the current state of the game, there is little reason to use or understand LOS rules.

Without Indirect Fire, good spots for archers become a massive advantage, and they are much easier to exploit while defending (which usually means playing as G2). Placing units as G2 in spots where they can be killed on the first round by archers becomes a mistake, rather than an inevitability. Taking away this ability transforms archers from the lead weights on your deathball beatstick to a powerful but situational risk/reward unit with huge potential for players who can exploit the terrain.

The one place I think Indirect Fire or Exceptional Accuracy can be kept is for ranged units standing on Garrisons. It's not necessary, but it would keep the bonus in some form and makes building Garrisons more worthwhile. Limiting this ability to cities with Watchtowers would also give a great reason to actually build those otherwise fairly useless things - I haven't tried this however since it's not possible to do with the current mod tools.

2. No army reinforcement cap

If you can remember back to my example, there were equal numbers of units on both sides. While having more units should be an obvious advantage to either side, the current implementation of reinforcements grossly benefits G1.

The reason for this is that, because there is no limit to how many reinforcements can be deployed in a single round, there is nothing stopping G1 from deploying all reinforcements on round 1. G2 may not even get a chance to deploy reinforcements, because with a higher volume of units G1 can devote some to blocking reinforcements at little cost.

You can see how this also exacerbates the problems with ranged units. As many ranged units as G1 has, they can deploy on the first round to inflict unretaliated damage. If this were not the case, and there were a limit to how many reinforcements could be deployed on the first round (if any), then even with Indirect Fire in play, every archer brought to the frontline would be one less melee unit to hold the line, so even then G2 might have some counterplay against the squishy archers.

As previously stated, every additional unit on a side constitutes an exponential advantage; without a cap on reinforcements, who can wonder why G1 is evaluated so highly by the AI? 

What's mystifying is that the game already has a property for army reinforcement cap on each empire, meaning this feature was planned and probably implemented at some point. However, the game never reads the value, so modifying it does nothing. I can't fathom why this feature was cut, given the implications.

I think there should be a limit of X reinforcements allowed per round, where X is the army reinforcement cap, starting at 1 but upgradeable by technologies and/or civics and the like. G2 should be allowed to deploy X reinforcements to the deployment zone before the first round so as not to get overwhelmed by G1's first round reinforcements.

3. Large differences in Combat Strength between units

Going back to my example one last time, I said the units were of equal strength. Between units of equal strength, the only advantages that can be gained are utilizing superior terrain and tactical bonuses (adjacency, defending, rear attack, etc.) After maximizing your advantage in these areas, it's all up to the dice. It's a very fun and rewarding system when it works, but I rarely feel like these advantages matter because of the chasm in strength between most units. It's hard to be specific in a brief way but I think the whole game needs adjustment as far as Combat Strength and bonuses go.

Firstly, the base Combat Strength between units varies wildly. There is a 1 tech and 45 Industry difference between Scouts and Warriors, but a cavernous 6 points in Combat Strength difference between the two. Even if your Scouts are on high ground, they will lose decisively to an equal or even lesser number of Warriors. Moving into the Classical Era, there is a whopping 7 point difference between Warriors and Swordsmen! Differences in terrain or tactical bonuses melt in the face of military superiority.

The game also has too many sources of universal, situationally-agnostic Combat Strength bonuses. The +2 defensive bonus completely melts if your opponent has +3 Combat Strength from 2 tiers of Homeland ideology plus the Professional Army civic. Fighting the opponent on a river is nullified, and high ground will barely do you any good.

Universal Combat Strength is not the only problem however, as even situational Unit Specialties feel overtuned and/or disproportionate to the effort it takes to employ them. A few examples:

⦁    It's not the easiest unit to use, but a Javelin Thrower on a Forest tile is a +8 Archer. Yikes. And they're still worse than Archers with Indirect Fire.

⦁    The Teutonic Knight is 3 stronger than a Knight, and gets a +6 bonus if you're of a different religion. Surely there should be some counterplay besides converting?

⦁    Carthaginian Elephants get a big +4 if you have the audacity to be a weaker unit (they are the strongest base unit of their Era with Mauryan Elephants).

⦁    Jazayerchis have +1 range over Musketeers, are unlocked earlier, and get +3 as a hard earned reward for... attacking.

The first two are examples of effects that are fun to use but simply too strong, while the latter two aren't really even situational and give a large benefit for not really doing anything.

Now these issues affect every player, and are not a unique problem with playing the G2 side. However, I said in the concepts section that the defender's advantage, meaning terrain and so forth, is often G2's advantage. Often times choosing to play defensively and leaving your armies open to attack means you are leaning into economy more than military, and using defensive advantages to your benefit. Those advantages really don't mean much if your opponent is specializing in military, which makes playing G2 feel that much worse.

Ultimately, these large bonuses overshadow the fruits of terrain advantage, tactical play, and defense, and reward brute-forcing the military option over intelligent positioning and maneuvering. This almost always benefits the attacking militarist player, and neutralizes the benefits of defense.

Conclusion

⦁    Remove Indirect Fire from all ranged units, except optionally as an effect on Garrisons. This could be an effect of the Watchtowers infrastructure as an additional prerequisite.

⦁    Allow ranged units to retaliate against other ranged units.

⦁    Implement Army Reinforcement Cap.

⦁    Reduce universal sources of Combat Strength (Homeland ideology +1 Combat Strength on Unit/+2 Combat Strength on Unit -> +25% Experience Gain on Unit/+50% Experience Gain on Unit

⦁    Reduce differences in Combat Strength between units within eras, between basic units and Emblematic units, and between upgraded units from one Era to the next.

⦁    Reduce Combat Strength effects of Unit Specialties in proportion to their situational benefits.

Some other nice options to have:

⦁    Allow repositioning of Defender's Flag in Deployment Phase to another tile in the Deployment Zone

⦁    Add "Ambush" action to armies - Target an adjacent tile (or "half ring" of 3 adjacent tiles) - Automatically attack any unfriendly army that arrives on those tiles, regardless of whether they tried to attack first. Cannot be deactivated and reactivated in the same turn (to reward flanking the ambushing army).

There's honestly just no good means of making going first not a major advantage.
Even in a system where only one unit from and army goes, and it alternates back and forth, having that first attack is still a big advantage.
Less than your entire army going, yes, but still significant.
The go-first advantage is just to inherent. Too automatic. It's just has inevitable and unpreventable as the advantage of outnumbering your opponent, if not even moreso.
And, if we're being honest, it's probably the most realistic thing about the game.

Some of you have been saying it's crazy the defending ranged unit doesn't get to retaliate, regarding round 1.
It's really not. That is realistic, very realistic. In a real battle, the start would be every ranged unit on the attackers side firing at the exact same time, at enemies who are not ready to shoot back, and most likely without the defenders even knowing they're about to get shot. And that's without it being an full and proper ambush. In real ambush, in turn based terms, the defender just wouldn't get a round 1. It would be skipped and go straight to attackers round 2. Which people would hardly enjoy, so ambushing doesn't exist in this game.

As for the flag, anything we do with the flag would be pointless, because frankly, the flag is pointless to begin with.
If there's anything you don't want as the attacker, it's to capture the flag.
Taking the flag just lets the enemy retreat before you can finish your attack, to continue being a nusiance on the map, and force you to waste (an) extra turn(s) dealing with them.
You don't want to capture the flag as an attacker, you want to avoid capturing the flag so you can finish killing off the enemies units in less turns.
As defender, if you aren't already wrecking the attacker, you want the flag to be captured asap so you can retreat with less damage and then be the attacker.

I think its the combination of the large attackers advantage and the real time micro that occurs before battle to determine who will be the attacker that makes this such a bother. 

Attackers advantage would be more acceptable to me if it was not the product of who was fastest on the campaign map clicking their army into the opponents.

In other turn-based games, one solution for this is to make the first round of the first player olny half of a round or something like that. The idea of limiting the mp of units in the first round of combat goes in this direction, but I feel it is too weak of a change... But would it make sense to limit the number of units the first player can use in the first move? 8vs8 will not be an immédiate win if you can only use half of your army and see the defender using all he has left afterward? You will have retaliation in this situation. It may still let an advantage to the attacker, but not in a "If I'm first, I win without loss" kind of way.

Tbh honest I find it strange that the first player is always the attacker. What is the motivation for this choice? Except that it is easy?

I would like to see a proper limit for how many reinforcements can be brought into battle at once, just not sure how well it would work with battles in which more than one army is called into deployment zone straight away due to proximity to each other. And I'm a bit afraid of widening tech/quality gap that way, thinking here mainly about units like elephants that have no real counter aside of getting swarmed, they'd have easier time charging into battle knowing that they'll be able to take the enemy on piecemeal.

And now with Metternich we will have an additional layer of trying to bait your enemy into walking into your Stealth units, because Ambushed armies cannot be reinforced.

Just bring back the Initiative system from Endless Legend

This is a critical problem with the game in ship battles - because the attack / defense ratio is so high, the attacker can take out most of the defending army in the first turn. I've switched to Pangea maps to avoid the ship battles, since it's almost trivial to win against AI by building a big enough navy to destroy anything that moves between continents.  

Alternate unit turns would really make a world of difference there.