This problem is sort of unavoidable with the scheme where one player goes, then the other. Particularly as the number of units climbs the advantage of whoever goes first increases.

You can sort of offset it by giving the person who goes second other advantages. At least, the defender's units should have a defensive bonus as if they had selected the Defend action the hypothetical round before the attacker's move (currently +2 Combat Strength). Increasing that number would also disproportionately benefit the defender on their first turn, as in nearly all circumstances units will attempt to damage the enemy rather than 'do nothing' and gain combat strength. Which of course they can't use since they aren't attacking, unless the enemy attacks into them, which is intrinsically disadvantageous compared to simply striking first.

Zone of control and less range on early game missile units would help a lot.

At the moment, the attacker can ignore the front line, take high ground and ignore their inferior position all at once.

A functioning zone of control and a much larger initial deployment area would help with all of that.

Early game ranged units having 3 range is a way too much considering the small size of the map. They should be able to fire over the heads of their front line onto the enemy's front line, not to any position on the map.

Under all circumstances, defenders should move first.

Or at the very least, there should be some kind of mechanic, that determines who goes first, not always attacker like it seems to be the case right now. The advantage is just too bit.

Fuyuan wrote:

Under all circumstances, defenders should move first.

Or at the very least, there should be some kind of mechanic, that determines who goes first, not always attacker like it seems to be the case right now. The advantage is just too bit.

My guess is that this may have been tried, and it resulted in armies dancing around each other waiting for the other side to attack.  I definitely agree that the attacker advantage is too big, but I don't think just flipping the script would solve it.

I truly believe defenders should get a bonus. If you are attacking, it is either because you are ready, or your opponent is not. By deciding the timing of the attack, the attacker already has an advantage.

If the initiative going to the defender would really create such a problem as you described, there would still be possible ways to mitigate that.

1) Randomize who goes first.

2) Make unit stats / unit numbers / terrain decide who goes first.

3) A mix of 1 and 2

4) Reduce the advantage of going first by reducing unit movent speed by half for the first turn, and even more importantly, half the damage done by the player who goes first in the first round.

5) Nerf ranged attacks. Seriously, that would be a good idea anyway.

They do read like overly complicated ways of saying: give the Defender a 'first round only' defensive bonus.

I'm not sure I understand the problem... I LOVE being the defender... You get the first turn defensive bonus on your units, and you can set them up strategically to gain maximum bonus from this, and force the attacker to attack where it's not in their favor in most cases.

In-fact, I'd argue defending is the points that's OP.. 9/10 of my wars is me sitting there doing nothing, constantly abusing the defense bonus if your units don't attack, and watch as the enemy (both players and AI) kill themselves on my indomitable front lines. 

Could just make it so each player gets one activation a turn instead of activating all units before the other players gets to. I think this whole "activating all your units" was grandfathered in from old civ games, where you didn't have a separate battle map, so you HAD to have it so that one player takes all his turns first before the other could. But with the way they're doing it here (which is great) they really should just make it so that you alternately go through all your units and activate them one at a time.

As I see it the three big things making the attackers advantage as big as it is are that ranged units take no damage attacking, that the attacker can block the defenders reinforcements but not the otherway round, and the attacker can better set up their army to exploit terrain advantages.

The first one, ranged units doing free damage isn't to big a problem in the early eras since archers don't do much damage and die easy to melee, but by the early modern era and later not only are ranged units capable in melee but soon all units are ranged, when two ranged armies clash the attacker brings the full force of their army and the defender gets what they have left.  Luckily there is an easy solution: return fire, if a ranged unit is being shot by another unit that is in line of sight then it should shoot back, that way both sides take damage on all turns even in the late game (and naval combat) mitigating some of the first turn advantage.

As for the other two, I don't know, maybe give the defender a larger deployment zone and let them move the flag, maybe restrict how many rinforcements can spawn in from one point in a turn so both sides can fight to stop the others reinforcements

TheRobin wrote:

Could just make it so each player gets one activation a turn instead of activating all units before the other players gets to. I think this whole "activating all your units" was grandfathered in from old civ games, where you didn't have a separate battle map, so you HAD to have it so that one player takes all his turns first before the other could. But with the way they're doing it here (which is great) they really should just make it so that you alternately go through all your units and activate them one at a time.

If you're defending in a good spot, you have no problem with any of what you mentioned above.

And i'll strongly disagree with the return fire part, the attacker has to take a flag, not the defender, so now the defender could just defend, and return fire ? Well, better never attack then if i'm gonna get mauled for trying to be aggressive, let's sim city.

If he can block your reinforcements, they were in a bad spot in the first place. 

Plan before it's too late, not when the battle is engaged, you saw mountains ? Use them before. Interesting rivers ? Plan ahead.

defekt wrote:

They do read like overly complicated ways of saying: give the Defender a 'first round only' defensive bonus.

Would simply increasing the 'dug-in' bonus by a lot work? Dug-in comes around the time that we start getting away from melee units. That way unless the attacker has artillery they can't dislodge infantry, which is quite historical (WWI trench warfare). 

Another suggestion might be to give initiative to the side that has the most movement points available at the time of the combat - so all tank armies can initiate and bring in their reinforcements. Advancing rapidly with infantry will lead to you getting 'ambushed' by the defenders.

defekt wrote:

They do read like overly complicated ways of saying: give the Defender a 'first round only' defensive bonus.

ledarsi wrote:

Making the battle area a tile or two bigger and increasing the Defend action bonus from +2 Combat Strength to +3 would probably do it for the defender if it applies to all their units during the first turn. Boosting your combat strength in exchange for not actually attacking is a pretty big drawback, but matters greatly on that very first turn for the defender since an attack before then is impossible.

It would probably also help to add stronger defensive terrain. For example making Garrison tiles themselves give more to the single tile than they do adjacent tiles. Especially when upgraded. 

For example it might go like this; Garrison gives +3 to its own tile and +1 to adjacent tiles. Garrison upgrades like Castle (Medieval Era) and Fort (Early Modern) increase this bonus by +5 on the Garrison tile and a further +1 for adjacent tiles. It might be interesting also for these to have some more flavorful effect like Castle giving large missile damage resistance for a unit standing on its tile.

Like LadyAthena says (Bold and underline from me):

LadyAthena wrote:

I'm not sure I understand the problem... I LOVE being the defender... You get the first turn defensive bonus on your units, and you can set them up strategically to gain maximum bonus from this, and force the attacker to attack where it's not in their favor in most cases.

In-fact, I'd argue defending is the points that's OP.. 9/10 of my wars is me sitting there doing nothing, constantly abusing the defense bonus if your units don't attack, and watch as the enemy (both players and AI) kill themselves on my indomitable front lines. 

You all want as a defender to just sit there and do nothing. Since the enemy needs to attack to win while you can safely sit on you flag. So you want first:

1) defender bonus always, since there is no reason to attack as a defender

2) return fire for ranged or nerf ranged to the ground

3) you want to defend each important position with your one unit army while the enemy should be only allowed to win if he least field 10 times your number.

That's what these suggestions actually become to. Have any of you actually thought about decision consequences aside from your "fix"?

The problem lies more with even if one unit is heavily underpowered, it can still get very lucky with its damage rolls. I see 3 things which may help some:

1. Introduce traits for the more armored units to prevent the Arrow vs. Tank win.
2. The damage inside the min/max range should be rolled differently to help mitigate the several 25dmg rolls if you are very lucky (this is not a change for the min. and max. damage that are possible):
   For determining the damage to the attacker and defender units they roll a dice and compare this to a total and then looked at the percentage of the sum and apply this to the min -> max damage range. This would be rolled twice, once for defender and once for attacker.
   example: The prospective damage for both attacker unit and defender unit is min = 5 and max = 25 (example, but can be easily applied to any range).
• Damage to the defender: Both roll a d10. Result: Att = 8; Def = 4. Sum of both rolls = 12 (4+8). Att = 66%  (8/12*100). 66% of the 20 (25 max dmg - 5 min dmg = 20) is 13.2 this plus the min. damage = 18,2 Damage to the Defender. For the damage to the attacking unit (if the defender is able to return it), uses the same roll but uses the Def percentage then.
• With later ERAs, the Units gain more dice for the roll. Which also means, the likelihood of old archers doing damage against a modern riflemen is usually on the very lower end of the spectrum, which prevents the lucky rolls. As a List: Ancient 2d, Classic, 3d, Medieval 4d and so on. 
• Also, with this you can apply modifiers to the damage rolls and not only to the overall strength of the unit, like advantage which lets you roll one additional die and use the highest two.
  Another example: (W)arriors (Str. 19) vs. (S)wordsmen (Str. 25). I do not know the table for the min./max range and I can't find it anymore. But lets say hypothetically each step in each direction reduces the range by 5 points, while 10 - 30 is the even breakpoint if both units are the same strength.
  Which means Warriors will do between 0 and 20 damage (this is the minimum) to the Swordsmen, while the Warrior will receive between 40 - 60 damage. Resolution W attacks S:
  W 2d10; S 3d10. Result 5 for Warrior, 14 for Swordsmen = 19 (Sum). 26.31% on the 0 - 20 scale = 5,26 damage to the swordsmen. Best possible roll (W = 10; S = 2), the damage to S would be 15,6 dmg. Worst result would be under 2 damage. The average is around 8 dmg(?). On the other hand, the S will do at least 42.6 dmg and at most 58.8 dmg to W. Average around 52. Though the dice number needs to be looked at to increase the average in favor of later era units maybe. Maybe the minimum damage can be removed altogether with this.
• Alternative: dice size changes instead: Ancient 2d8; classic; 2d12; medieval 2d16 and so on. Though the steps are need to be looked at more closely.
3. A workover of the min/max range table.

Extremly easy and boring idea:

Attackers 1st turn is 75% dmg.

How does this work once you hit gunpowder/contemprory? doesn't that just mean that your guys get shot to death without doing damage?

LadyAthena wrote:

I'm not sure I understand the problem... I LOVE being the defender... You get the first turn defensive bonus on your units, and you can set them up strategically to gain maximum bonus from this, and force the attacker to attack where it's not in their favor in most cases.

In-fact, I'd argue defending is the points that's OP.. 9/10 of my wars is me sitting there doing nothing, constantly abusing the defense bonus if your units don't attack, and watch as the enemy (both players and AI) kill themselves on my indomitable front lines.