So someone here was mentioning how they wished combat was more X-COM like. I thought about it and I realized that X-COM and a lot of other tactics games have something you don't see in 4X combat much if at all: mission based combat. The objective usually just boils down to "kill all the enemies". What if instead, each time you did a battle you had some mission that gave you some form of reward if you win and your opponant an award if you lose. Just a few quick examples, you could have a "breakthrough" mission where you are trying to get all or most of your units to the other end of the arena; if you do then you can move through and be immune to attacks from your opponant for a couple of turns, allowing you to get deep in their rear, but if you don't then you aren't allowed to try to enter the region again for a couple more turns. You could also have a "pillage" mission where you are trying to attack some buildings or similar targets; destroy enough of them and you will gain some gold and your opponant loses some buildings or districts, while losing can result in a loss of morale in your troops.

Finally, most of these missions would also contribute to several meters, either a fame meter that gets you fame/stars when it is full or a conquest meter that lets you demand tribute from or even take over regions depending on how full it is (you can always attack a city's defenders/militia directly to quickly raise it, but losing will give your opponant a lot of progress towards fame from a last stand). The attacker also has to deal with "morale" in their armies, which goes down with every battle in enemy territory, representing limited supply lines, disease, and desertion slowly eating away at an army. If it gets low enough units can be routed, forcing them to flee back to friendly territory or for a certain number of turns, whichever comes first. I'm hoping a "soft conquer" of a territory that gives you awards and fame without having to take over will mean a weak military won't get steamrolled by others since even then it takes a lot more to conquer a city and you can just raid them periodically to farm a little fame.

That's quite interesting idea, but i think that should be made in some other maner. When u decide to start a war you should make a plan of your "Millitary Campaign"(atleast at some tech/culutre development level)  where you choose what u wish to achieve, and perhaps choose what bonuses you will get. Both goals and rewards should be heavely regulated by your "Cassus Belli" What say you Dinode?

invesua wrote:

That's quite interesting idea, but i think that should be made in some other maner. When u decide to start a war you should make a plan of your "Millitary Campaign"(atleast at some tech/culutre development level)  where you choose what u wish to achieve, and perhaps choose what bonuses you will get. Both goals and rewards should be heavely regulated by your "Cassus Belli" What say you Dinode?

So a strategic layer mission? Maybe, and it could also affect what happens after the war is over. For instance, Alexander the Great conquered a huge part of the world, but after he died it all got split up, and while there were some Greek/Macedonian influences left behind the native cultures still persisted to an extent. Basically, a "conquest" style war could result in half of all conquered territories get returned to their previous owners but you get a good deal of fame. Still doesn't stop the individual battles from being "kill all the enemies" though.

Perhaps there can be certain acheivements you can do with units in battles to get fame, even if the overall objective is the same? For instance, you get fame the first time you:

1. Kill 3 units while defending with a shielded unit like hoplites or legionaires.
2. Kill a knight with a longbowman while they are bogged down in a marsh.
3. Slay an enemy general.
4. Torpedo 3 transports with a sub.
5. Destroy some walls or a fort with a trebuchet.
6. Fight with a Zero plane and have both units die.

Dinode wrote:

invesua wrote:

That's quite interesting idea, but i think that should be made in some other maner. When u decide to start a war you should make a plan of your "Millitary Campaign"(atleast at some tech/culutre development level)  where you choose what u wish to achieve, and perhaps choose what bonuses you will get. Both goals and rewards should be heavely regulated by your "Cassus Belli" What say you Dinode?

So a strategic layer mission? Maybe, and it could also affect what happens after the war is over. For instance, Alexander the Great conquered a huge part of the world, but after he died it all got split up, and while there were some Greek/Macedonian influences left behind the native cultures still persisted to an extent. Basically, a "conquest" style war could result in half of all conquered territories get returned to their previous owners but you get a good deal of fame. Still doesn't stop the individual battles from being "kill all the enemies" though.

Perhaps there can be certain acheivements you can do with units in battles to get fame, even if the overall objective is the same? For instance, you get fame the first time you:

1. Kill 3 units while defending with a shielded unit like hoplites or legionaires.
2. Kill a knight with a longbowman while they are bogged down in a marsh.
3. Slay an enemy general.
4. Torpedo 3 transports with a sub.
5. Destroy some walls or a fort with a trebuchet.
6. Fight with a Zero plane and have both units die.

The list is actually resembling the Eurekas from CiV 6. But you suggest that they give you fame instead of e.g. science?

I really liked the idea of Eurekas in CiV. It just felt realistic if you were able to achieve archery quicker if using such a unit. Maybe this feature could be implemented a little smoother, but I do not know how tbh.

quite easy i think, for exapmple, when u research archery, every previous unit u are creating and using, give u % discount on mentioned tech, for example, creating slinger give 0.5% discount, combat performance give u aditional 0.1%, lossing unit to cavalry unit gives 0.15% discount, on tech cost, aswell as effective use of ranged unit, such as not reciving damage on turn (if combat will be civ styled) will give u another 0.15% discount. So intensive use of slinger will greatly speed up ur research.

As for Dinodes idea. Well i'll return to what i told previously, "War plan" perhaps there you should choose ur maximum and minimum desired resault as well as Casus Belli, and type of war (Blitzkrieg, Domination, Long War). During actual war depending on situation, there could be an oppotunity either choose bonus "war goals" such as Dinode suggested with short term buffs, or bonus rewards at the end of war, or they will just randomly popup.

This is a very cool idea. It can also be easily mixed with military doctrines. For example, you can use the tactics of “shock and awe”, when targeted attacks on enemy territory are combined with intimidation and suppression of will. Such tasks may include breakouts, encirclement, destruction of key targets (enemy headquarters). Although due to such mechanics the game may turn into a wargame, but as a warmonger I really want to expand the combat system.

And here we face a Major problem of every Civ, Warmongering have no consequnces, u can stomping others and don't have any problems with other civs no matter which age u are at. Main problem is because map are realy small, that's why there is not 2 much place for other great empire that could contest u, aswell as not realy much place for number of civ which could create alliance against you. So before inplementing this idea of war, there should be developed new diplomacy and political system, which will grant u equaly strong bonuses or even better ones. Also bigger map will alow actual incirclement of more then 1 unit (which in civ demands from u up to 6 units). Still making non stard war and combat mechanics would be lovely, but they should not become main thing, mostly because almoust all grand strategy games solve any problems with war, to trade alliances and other things. 

It's a fundamental issue with the historical 4x genre.  If you want to play a game about human history, there are very real and consequential impacts to conquest that limit its long-term usefulness for empire expansion.  If you want to play a game that lets you conquer the globe as the [insert favourite cultural group here], you don't want any of those impacts modelled into the game.

If you want to sell a successful historical 4x genre game, you want to design systems that give both player sets enough of what they're looking for that they buy the game, even if they grumble from time to time about the compromises.

Pardon an old professional soldier for getting involved here, but what everybody is talking about is the principle of the Objective. Every military operation, campaign, battle, or unit in everything that it does, has an Objective to accomplish. Ideally, individual Unit Objectives contribute in some way to achievng the Army, State (Political or Diplomatic) Objectives.

AND Objectives are of two kinds. On the one hand, they can be established in individual orders to the unit or army (what Dinode started the Thread talking about) but they can also be Doctrine: what every unit or all the units of a given type are expected to accomplish all the time.

For example, Spartan Hoplites were expected to Win - kill the enemy or force him to run away. If they couldn't win, they were expected to Die. Any other Objective given to a Unit of Spartan Hoplites would be subordinate to that Doctrinal Objective, because that one was set by their entire Culture and reinforced by their families and community. You cannot tell a unit of Spartan Hoplites to Retreat on Orders - they flat Will Not Do It.

A similar Doctrinal Objective governed Samurai: Personal Preservation was well down on any list of Objectives, to lose a battle was death either at the enemy's hands or your own.

So, your Culture may establish some Objectives for all or most of your Units. Others can be 'developed' by General Staffs, or History - the Prussian Army and later the German Army developed a 'tradition' (what R. Citino calls the "German Way of War") over two centuries of ending battles and wars fast by Attacking - as rapidly as they could, everywhere they could. That became Doctrine, so that even when on defense a German unit would Counterattack at every opportunity. The British Royal Navy developed much the same tradition: when 3 small British cruisers met the pocket Battleship Graf Spee at the beginning of WWII, they attacked, because that was what they trained to do and what every officer and Sea Lord in the Royal Navy Expected of Them.

So, within the context of Missions/Objectives, the game could 'expect' that every Unit will act in certain ways based on the Doctrine, and Units could win Fame or other benefits by following their Doctrine ("They came forward in the same old way, and we beat them in the same old way") while within specific campaigns, wars, or battles an army or a unit might be given specific Objectives to accomplish (Take X City, Destroy X Army/Unit, Ni Shagu Nazad! (Russian: "Not a Step Back!" from Zhukov's first Order to his troops in front of Moscow, October 1941). Accomplishing one of these gets the General promoted, (traditionally, a general who took a fortified city became a Field Marshal, for instance) medals for the troops, and perhaps a new Honorific Title for a Unit ("Flying Tigers", The Iron Division, The Immortals, etc) and in Game Terms, Fame or Experience points or a Bonus towards tactical improvements.

I suggest that the place where Fame Points were gathered in would also make a spot for a Terrain Feature: a small monument at Thermopolye or Cameroun, a Battlefield Park at Gettysburg, Borodino, or Waterloo - if the map is going to be as graphically important as appears from the Trailor and revealed screenshots, let's use it to mark Great Events in the 'narrative' of each game.

Thanks for the insight Ivan. I guess the question then becomes how many of these Doctrines result in just plain bonuses or special abilities for the unit type or your army as a whole and how many are selectable items. I know in the Endless Space games you have "Tactics" that you can give your units during battle that affect how well they fight, such as telling your units to get in close while giving a bonus to physical defense or an ability that heals a little mid-battle. In both games you have to unlock these options over time, and in ES2 you can only keep a few at a time to select from once the battle starts. I could see a similar system being used in Humankind, where you can select one of your "Doctrines" to employ during the battle that give certain bonuses and penalties to your army as well as secondary objectives that get you extra fame or other bonuses if you complete them. You also know what your opponant is trying to do, so you'll need to plan keep them from completing that as well. Another option would be to make it so that you can't give exact orders to your units, forcing you to just define their broader goals to fulfill as best as they can based on their own doctrines, such as focusing on destroying a particular unit or general, capturing a strategic point, or keep enemy units out of an area. The later the era, the more detailed you can make these orders.

I also really love your monument idea, they had a similar thing in some DLC for ES2 that caused major battles to leave ruins that could be explored by like curiosities. The question is what the cutoff point would be for whether a battle deserves a monument. Perhaps a certain number of unit deaths, with the number increasing each era?

TravlingCanuck wrote:

My understanding - which could be wrong! - is that certain battles generate Fame for the victor.  That may be a natural cut off point.

I think the key word there is "certain", I'm pretty sure all battles give a little fame, although I bet only some create stars, so that may be a better cut off point.

Doctrine is a tricky thing. If the tactical doctrine doesn't work at all, it gets abandoned pretty fast. In most historical cases, it worked most of the time, but failed spectacularly when it didn't work. Good example would be the French Napoleonic Doctrine of a charge with columns of infantry to break an enemy line fast. When it came up against British infantry in line that could outshoot them and held their fire until point blank range, it failed virtually every time. Lots of examples like that, so In-Game 'Doctrines' and their bonuses will have to be very carefully thought out.

In Most Cases, though, Doctrine is related to 'normal' terrain, weapons technology and culture. I suggest, then, that some Cultures will start out with a Tactical Doctrine that predates the game or that they developed from so many interlocking cultural factors that it's not worth trying to model them explictly in the game.

So, the Impetuous Charge was a normal combat technique among people from ancient Celts to Revolutionary French, the Fight To The Death a normal combat tactic for Spartans, Samurai, and the French Foreign Legion. In those two cases of Doctrine, the obvious Bonus to Impetuous Charge would be a major bonus to Combat Strength from charging X distance in a straight line to contact. Fight To The Death might mean that the unit in question keeps fighting at Full Strength regardless of casualties/losses until it is destroyed. In both cases, there is a pisitive In-Game Reason for having that Doctrine: it's not something the game makes you do against your will - usually.

I suggest tha the generation of Tsctical/Combat Bonuses and Fame should be Separate. A unit or an army may have tactical Bonuses from their Doctrine - permanent or temporary - and they may get 'Promotions' from Battlefield Feats that add Bonuses for the unit (or, more rarely, for the entire army) but those may or may not generate 'Fame' for the Culture/Civilization.

Fame From Battles is going to be a bit tricky. Some of the most 'Famous' Battles in History have been Famous Defeats, that nevertheless generated 'undying' Fame. Think Thermopolye, The Alamo, or the defining battle for the French Foreign Legion, Camerone, Mexico. Also, all of these 'battles' were pretty small on at least one side: 300 Spartans, 200 revolting Texians, 65 Legionaires. Their effects on Fame and Reputation were completely at odds with their size and final result.

That means, 'Fame' can come from a battle that generates no Bonuses - either because no one survived to get a bonus, or because, while Thermopolye might be Famous, nobody really wants to repeat it on the losing side if they can avoid it and not lose their personal reputation and self-image.

Dinode wrote:

So someone here was mentioning how they wished combat was more X-COM like. I thought about it and I realized that X-COM and a lot of other tactics games have something you don't see in 4X combat much if at all: mission based combat. The objective usually just boils down to "kill all the enemies". What if instead, each time you did a battle you had some mission that gave you some form of reward if you win and your opponant an award if you lose.

I'm really enjoying this thread, especially Ivan's contributions :) Unfortunately I can't reveal much at this stage about how the battles will work, but I will say that we're big fans of X-COM and that we've been faced with similar problems, notably first move advantage and the advantage that the defender has in this kind of incomplete-information game. X-COM's designers added "Meld" as a secondary objective to push players to move forward quickly and take risks, and a bucket-load of timed objectives were added for X-COM 2.

Long story short, having some kind of objective other than pure attrition is necessary to make sure the game moves forward at a reasonable pace. Before people get overly excited though, we're not pushing the idea quite as far as some of your propositions - we have a set of fairly simple rules for how the battles are resolved, who wins and how fame is earned. Again, I can't go into the specifics right now or but, well, watch this space :)

Mars Forbid that we try to make a  miniatures-rules type complicated tactical game out of Humankind !

But. Doctrine can be used to Remove many of the complexities of 'battlefield' decision making from the Gamer.

For example, a Greek Hoplite Phalanx Required that individuals were shoulder to shoulder, shields designed to cover both the man holding them and also the man to his left. So, an Army composed of several Units of Hoplites will Always form up in a line, all units adjacent, and then they will charge the enemy at speeds varying with terrain and equipment (one reason the Spartan charge was so devastating was that they never wore body armor, relying on their heavy shields for potection, so they hit with more speed and impact than more heavily-encumbered spearmen did).

No tactical decisions required by the AI or Gamer: the equipment (Hoplon Shield, Xyton Spear, close formation required by them) and the chosen Tactical Doctrine pretty much dictated battlefield actions. In fact, the Greek leaders, the Strategos, mostly fought in the ranks, because there was no need to stand back and give orders!

Much later, the European armies of the 18th century were all armed with the fusil - flintlock smooth-bore musket and bayonet. That meant, they all formed up in multiple lines of infantry, marched forward keeping their flanks covered as much as possible by other units, and blazed away in volleys at anything in front of them. Military Method dictated by weapons. Tactics consisted of 'weighting' the advance on one flank or another or at some perceived Critical Point or 'softening up' the enemy with artillery, but while there were lots of Great generals in this period, the Battle of Mollwitz was won by the Prussian infantry after their general, Friederich, had fled the field - 'generalship' as it turned out, was Not required.

In the 20th century, the German Army made quite a thing out of Auftragstaktik - the Mission or Objective was given to subordinates, and they were left to work out how to accomplsh it. Since tactics at the low and intermediate (company to division) levels had already been well worked out (they thoroughly studied the tactical lessons of WWI with staff officer committees in the 1920s) this meant that German small units could act and react faster than anybody else - without waiting for orders from above. In game terms, give them a bonus for Initiative and a bonus for Superior Tactics, a bias for Offensive Action, and in an individual Battle the gamer doesn't really have to work out exactly what to do with them.

Except indicate what the Objective Is, and that could be a simple (possibly even Invisible to the Gamer) Matrix:

Objective: Destroy the Enemy Army/Force - offensive oriented units get a bonus while attacking, but no Fame or other points if the enemy gets the bulk of his units away

Objective:  Hold X point/line/position - possible bonus to Defense, but no Fame or 'points' for destroying enemy units

Objective: Preserve Your Force - You can run, hide, dodge - no penalties except for losing Units, no bonuses for anything that happens to the enemy.

Note that just from these examples, there are Battlefield Results where both sides can claim a 'victory' because both managed to achieve their Objective: one side took X point, but the other side Preserved His Forces, Celebrations/Fame Points All Around.

To follow on Ivan's post, the flip side of the Hold X objective could be Capture X.  It may also be possible to structure these two as a single objective.  

If it turns out that this is a direction Amplitude wants to go, we can likely brainstorm whether any other, AI-friendly objectives are worth adding to the mix.

I agree with Ivan's statement that it would be out of scope to try and create a miniatures-style wargame out of HK's tactical battles.  I think the objective, though, is to bring some of the fun of those games, in a simplified manner, to HK.

In that regard, I know that elevation is a factor in assessing combat success.  I'm not sure if flanking rules are also included?  It's more difficult to create interesting tactical combat without accounting for the impact of flank- or rear-attacks.  Including this, however, puts more pressure on the AI to understand the tactical situation, and wouldn't be worth havig if it puts the AI at a big disadvantage.

Piling on . . .

"Tactical Force Multpliers", cover both Terrain Advantages - better observation, better cover, better concealment, better fields of fire or avenues of attack - and Position Advantages - flank and rear attacks, surprise counters from concealment, 'hidden' reserves appearing from behind hills, towns, or woods. etc. Note that many of the Terrain Advantages could be connected with 'Height', but not necessarily: Caesar related the nasty tactical situation he got into when the Celtic Gauls charged out of the woods and surprised his entire army, and in the 'rifle' period of the late 19th century several battlefields (St Privat in 1870, Gettysburg in 1863) included low hills that were no special obstacle to movement or source of cover, but provided almost perfect Fields of Fire for riflemen that massacred an enemy trying to attack them (respectively, the Prussian Guards and Pickett's Confederate Division).

IF the game is going to include both types of Advantages, we have several things to consider:

1.  Terrain Advantage changes based on units and technology and tactics. A hill too steep for cavalry to gather moment charging up it can be a near-decisive advantage to infantry defending on top - as at Hastings in 1066, where Senlac Hill allowed axe-armed Huscarles to literally hack the Norman knights to pieces because the horsemen couldn't get up enough momentum to break the infantry line until late in the day. That same height, visible for miles, is a death trap if the enemy has long range artillery that can target the hill - the best position is on the Reverse Slope behind the hill, invisible, with only Observation Posts and artillery forard observers on the crest - technology effectively changes the Terrain Advantage.

2.   Flank and Rear Attacks or Threats have as much psychological effect as physical. People really don't like to get hit or shot in the back, or from a direction that they cannot face quickly to meet. That means just the appearance of an enemy unit on the flank and rear should cause a reduction in Combat Effectiveness/Morale before any actual physical damage is inflicted. Experience, Training, and Leadership all can reduce this effect dramatically, but a Unit composed of 'farmers with spears' may collapse and flee just from the threat.

3.   There is a difference between On Battlefield and Off Battlefield. For most of history, only what was physically On the Battlefield was important: as Timur-i-Lenk put it succinctly: "It is better to be on hand with 10 men than absent with 10,000." But Napoleon's Army Corps system was specifically designed so that that Corps moved separately for supply and speed but were always close enough that within a day they could converge to support any one of them that was attacked. What you faced on the immediate battlefield, then, was the Least of your worries when facing Bonaparte or one of his Marshals. 

As ranges increased, more and more of the major combat elements moved off the battlefield: indirect fire artillery, air power, armored or mechanized reserves intervening from a start point kilometers or dozens of kilometers away within hours. Today, I would argue that Most of the combat power is nowhere near the battlefield - it is Drone-delivered or air delivered munitions, air and satellite reconnaissance, long range artillery, cruise missiles or rockets that are all much deadlier than the weapons carried by anybody actually standing 'in sight'.

That means the game will have to see some major changes in the way 'Battles' are conducted from first Era to last Era. Tanks and Artillery are not just more powerful Cavalry, Chariots, or Catapults, they are Units that can intervene in the battle from orders of magnitude further away, and faster than anything before them. Either the tactical battlefield is going to have to expand with the changes in Technology (or Era?) or the process of 'reserves' intervening in a battle will have to Speed Up to reflect that Cavalry 10 km from the battlefield might not even know a battle was taking place in 1600 CE, but an armored or mechanized unit in 1945 CE will learn that the battle is taking place by radio and can cover that 10 km distance in minutes to join the battle, and possibly join it from the flank or rear or by surprise.

I think a lot the ideas for missions, objectives, or doctrine are getting too specific for this game, and in some cases get things out of order.

Battles are fought to make the best of the resources the commander has.

You don't pillage 3 tiles because that's the mission of the day. You pillage because you don't have the logistics to feed your troops/pay the mercenaries, or to deny the enemy aid.

You don't get close to the enemy because you selected that doctrine, you do it because you have fewer ranged troops than the enemy.

You don't preserve your force because that's the objective, you do it because you can't replace the manpower.

Keep in mind that simplicity is the key to making combat an enjoyable feature for everyone. I would like to try the ideas like tweaking the fame conditions or adding doctrine in a mod, but not in the base game.

Logistics and Casus Belli are good ways to influence how the player approaches battle, and can discourage world-conquest style gameplay