I'm not sure how much will be changing in comparison, but a good benchmark for Amplitude's style of "unstacking" army combat is Endless Legend, since a lot of Humankind's features appear to be based on EL's groundwork.

You can absolutely draw battles out if you want, but more often than not the only reason why you would is specifically for the purpose of buying time or stalling the battle into a draw rather than a total loss. I believe you can also set turn timers in the pregame options.

dragontyron wrote:

I'm not sure how much will be changing in comparison, but a good benchmark for Amplitude's style of "unstacking" army combat is Endless Legend, since a lot of Humankind's features appear to be based on EL's groundwork.

You can absolutely draw battles out if you want, but more often than not the only reason why you would is specifically for the purpose of buying time or stalling the battle into a draw rather than a total loss. I believe you can also set turn timers in the pregame options.

Plus, you can only go 6 rounds of combat per turn, so it's not like huge battles will take that much more time away from the overworld.

or make them autoresolve, that would be nice. =D

indeed, just want to make sure ppl are not locked into them and cant do their own turn

blaze051806 wrote:

...
in the Civ 6 world. we simply use a who ever click first gets a first move in the combat. the combat is based on numbers but is 100% instant. sometimes players can get 3-4 moves off before another can react this style of rush war fair is very fun and it adds new levels of stratigy to this style of game. all id like to ask is you really test both systems out before going into one fully because picking one really removes tactics from the other thanks for reading

I also would like to draw attention to inconsistent speed between development and combat in Civ 6, especially when you play on "Multiplayer speed". I mean your nation growth much faster than war advancement, units have the same points of movement on any speed and you can't update them outside your territory, while you mobilizate your army, it already getting old ;)). Thus according to game speed, it may influence to the value of war. I really hope there will not be this problem in Humankind.

I agree, the value of war changes according to game speed in Endless Space and Endless Legend too (this is not good). The way to make this the same across game speed is to affect unit speed. So if the baseline is "Normal" speed and online speed is "Fast", or 2x as fast, then the unit move speed on the metamap should also be twice as fast. Likewise on slower speeds, it should be proportional.

The game looks good!

WARNING: IF MP battles are in Endless LEgend style this game will die online as fast at that game did. Civ style fighting is the only style that works online for turn based games. A game of MP civ takes 3-7h+ as it is. Adding more time for mini combat screens isn't viable. I loved Endless Legend but it died online. I loved AOW Planetfall but it died online. In fact it never had anyone playing it past the frirst week.If Amplitude are smart they will adopt the civ style, perhaps improve it with smart balanced units and player choices and we can have a real competitor to Civ.

There is also no fast movement and combat in EL. If this was added it would be a lot more enjoyable than that is is now because it would be a lot faster. 

So adding fast movement and combat to humankind would surely improve the multiplayer quality.

While we appreciate your concern, as outlined before the combat system in Humankind will be an iteration on Endless Legend's system.

I would also like to point out that Endless Legend did offer higher animation speeds for combat, but it was a setting during game creation. You could set the "Speed Scale Factor" to (if I recall correctly) 6 times as fast as normal.

Furthermore, in Endless Legend you could issue your orders for the battle, then turn your attention elsewhere to manage your empire. The same will be true in Humankind: You will be able to handle other matters in your empire (including other battles) while your enemy take their turn in a battle.

Honestly, EL's combat style was never my cup of tea, but that's because I grew up a Total War man.  Because what Cat o Nine Tails has said, I'm confident it won't be too bad.  I don't remember if there is an autofight mode in EL, but I think it could be useful here. So if I don't care about a particular battle, but my opponent does, I can have the AI make decisions for me while I go manage something else.  Furthermore, this "Battle in the Overworld" is a great idea in my opinion.  This opens up some nice avenues for other players who are interested in the combat.  If you are close enough to the field/have spies/ something else espionage-y, then other players can watch the combat to see unit types and general strategy.  I feel like if Amplitude makes spying on other people's battles more accessible to other players, then it would give the waiting players something else beneficial to do while waiting for battles to finish.  Possibly even if the spying player could get something tangible out of watching an engagement, such as a tech boost, military buff, or something, then it wouldn't make sitting and waiting for somebody else's battle to finish so painfully long.  It would be something everybody (but the loser) benefits from.

LeMecDePhalanx wrote:

Honestly, EL's combat style was never my cup of tea, but that's because I grew up a Total War man.  Because what Cat o Nine Tails has said, I'm confident it won't be too bad.  I don't remember if there is an autofight mode in EL, but I think it could be useful here. So if I don't care about a particular battle, but my opponent does, I can have the AI make decisions for me while I go manage something else.  Furthermore, this "Battle in the Overworld" is a great idea in my opinion.  This opens up some nice avenues for other players who are interested in the combat.  If you are close enough to the field/have spies/ something else espionage-y, then other players can watch the combat to see unit types and general strategy.

Yes, EL had the autoresolve, though I don't remember how it was handled in multiplayer if one player hit autoresolve and the other wanted to fight, but if you got dragged into a manual battle you didn't care about, the units did always have pre-assigned orders (unless on Hold Position) and you could just hit "play". Humankind will have an auto-combat option as well if you don't want to control the battle yourself.

And you are right, the "Battle in the Overworld" system does open up interesting possibilities, like... Oh wait, I'm not supposed to talk about that yet. ;-)

Just to provide a different opinion: yes, please focus on singleplayer and make the battles interesting! In comparison to Endless Legend, I was always bored by Civ 5 & 6, including their battles. I want to immerse myself into the world and am not interested in battles that are over by the click of a button. To be fair, even the battles in Endless Legend are the least interesting aspect of the game for me, and I’m only now – after almost 200 hours in singleplayer – experiencing my first multiplayer session with an IRL friend, that we are approaching like a singleplayer game over several days. And it’s great fun! It’s good to have someone to talk with while playing and to see what they are doing in the game, so I’m glad multiplayer exists. And if I have to wait for his battles to finish, I have plenty to do … planning the next turns, reading up on the lore, marvelling at the beautiful art and the world of Auriga …

In short: different people like different things, so it’s good that we have different approaches to the 4X genre, isn’t it? If you want another 4X game with a Civ-like battle system, be sure to check out Old World, which is due to release into Early Access within a week on the Epic Games Store.

GaelicWarrior wrote:

This is a real shame as it appears that Amplitude are following Firaxis by focusing on single player first.  By not having unit/hex based fights , online play will take much longer per turn and this will stifle online games. A vibrant online competitive community will not thrive. Most players are not willing to sit down and play an online game for more than 3 hours. Currently, a 6 player game of Civ 6 with simultaneous turns takes 3hours roughly and scales up from there depending on the nuumber of players. I really wanted Age of Wonders Planetfall to be great online but guess what killed it...

I'm not saying remove the seperate EL or Xcom style fights form the single player game but remove them for online or at least give us an option and give us Civ style fighting online.

Developing the game with online competitve in mind will enrich the strategy of the game rather than focusing on single player and AI since no AI can replicate humankind!

But there are unit/hex based fights. Did you not look at the picture? The units are fighting on the overworld map like in the Civ series, except instead of one action per turn they get three so there is a bit more complexity than Civ but without making all the other players wait for a battle to finish like in EL.

ok perhaps i didnt understand it. Excited to try the combat system out and hope it works in multiplayer.

id love to try it before i get any real opinions on it.

I am so hype !

I highly agree with gaelicWarrior. If 5 players have to wait for more than 1-2 min for each battle the others fight, no one will play MP.
playing one on one with a friend is great fun with long strategic battles, but its not MP.
I played many Amplitude Games and the first and legendary and highly recommendable Endless Space had that problem that MP was difficult, not due to the battles since they were autoresolved, but simply because a game could be over 300 turns and roughly anywhere between 3-8hrs.

So I would agree that a Combat system, that allows players to progress the Battle while others wont need to wait (maybe a battle over several turns? one movement/attack for each unit, each Overworldturn?), would be great for MP!
And why not have a slightly different combat mode for SP and MP? Let us choose wether we want just autoresolve or a quick combat Mode in MP. In Endless Space you could put ships in different positions and give them different fire modi while therer were 3 kinds of dmg and according defenses. Maybe Humankind can have something similar.

For Example, before the Battle you decide where your infantery, artillery and bowmen stand and wether they act aggressive, guarding, passive... And you give similar orders to your cavalry, then the battle goes on and you can only once maybe change each units tactic? Your bad luck if you ordered your Cavalry to charge in on the left side and then find out your enemy had his spearmen waiting there.

blaze051806 wrote:

in the Civ 6 world. we simply use a who ever click first gets a first move in the combat. the combat is based on numbers but is 100% instant. sometimes players can get 3-4 moves off before another can react this style of rush war fair is very fun and it adds new levels of stratigy to this style of game. all id like to ask is you really test both systems out before going into one fully because picking one really removes tactics from the other thanks for reading

I compleltely disagree that "whoever clicks first gets the advantage" is a fun, fair and tactically meaningful battle system.

I can see that it saves time, and I too am worried that the current humankind battle system may lead to problems in multiplayer. I hope they can reach a balance between deep and meaningful combat, while also not becoming boring for everyone else. Of course they can adjust the amount of rounds per turn, but even then having multiple frontlines can make a turn take long.

I think it's not as bad as you may expect though, because of several reasons:

1. Units tend to be grouped in armies, leading to fewer battles with more units (but all units in an army take a "round turn" at the same time.
2. Armies near each other can join the same battle, leading to even fewer individual battles.
3. Battles have a limited amount of rounds per turn, meaning the game will never grind to a halt.
4. There is a soft-cap on total number of armies.

GaelicWarrior wrote:

WARNING: IF MP battles are in Endless LEgend style this game will die online as fast at that game did. Civ style fighting is the only style that works online for turn based games. A game of MP civ takes 3-7h+ as it is. Adding more time for mini combat screens isn't viable. I loved Endless Legend but it died online. I loved AOW Planetfall but it died online. In fact it never had anyone playing it past the frirst week.If Amplitude are smart they will adopt the civ style, perhaps improve it with smart balanced units and player choices and we can have a real competitor to Civ.

Is the concern that if your friend is having a battle, you have to wait, if he has 2 or 3 her turn could take a long time, or is it that player to player battles take too long?

You're incorrect on the turn modes. What you describe is the dynamic turn mode. This mode allows simultaneous play until war, when the warring players go into phased turn mode. Its very rare for this mode to be used in mp Civ, because of the turn lengths and the other players having to wait. Simultaneous mode had everything happen in real-time within the turn. This gives you the potential for "horror clicking game" you refer to. 

I feel the phased combat system of HK is a major drawback to online play. You'd have to have dedicated groups playing as major battles will take considerable time online with the phased combat system. Some players will find the phased combat a major part of their game enjoyment experience and not play online if not included. I believe many players will tire of the waiting game if the phased combat system is used. I would be interested in viewing a video of the players doing the testing of the multiplayer game, to get a feel for the pacing of the online gamer.

Yes, I though about dynamic turn mode, you are right. And yes, I would love to test MP too! I am playing competitive since 2001, mostly in RTS. And I do not like playing Civ6/HK like a RTS game, because that is not what it build for.