gigaudobaix wrote:

I'll join my voice to the chorus about the frustration regarding the retreating units.

Especially as this issue compounds with the fact that, given the size of the battleground, all the units in the vicinity of the battle get involved in the battle, even with the retreat... so, if you have a cavalry army nearby to run the retreating forces, they are stuck because "they were involved in a battle"... that is completely wrong.

I can see two solutions:
1. if the the enemy retreats, armies that are not the army starting the battle should be able to move

2. we should be able to say that armies nearby are not to be involved in the battle

I understand those two options have their drawback... but the retreating feature all the time is darn frustrating.

I had another thought regarding that retreat thing: i assume "retreat" is more like "evade enemy, void battle".

I think that foot soldiers should only have a percentage chance of avoiding battle when attacked by other foot units.... same for horse units when attacked by other horse units.

Horse soldiers should have an easy time avoiding battle when attacked by foot units... but foot units should have little to no chance from avoiding battle when attacked by horse units.

gigaudobaix wrote:

I had another thought regarding that retreat thing: i assume "retreat" is more like "evade enemy, void battle".

I think that foot soldiers should only have a percentage chance of avoiding battle when attacked by other foot units.... same for horse units when attacked by other horse units.

Horse soldiers should have an easy time avoiding battle when attacked by foot units... but foot units should have little to no chance from avoiding battle when attacked by horse units.

What about extending that notion to "Base Movement Speed difference"?. When Units are assaulted by other Units, the chance of successful retreat should be determined by Base Movement Speed difference. If the attacker has higher value, then the defender should have little or no chance, while in the opposite situation, defender should have high or (in some cases) 100% probability of evading.

200mm wrote:

gigaudobaix wrote:

I had another thought regarding that retreat thing: i assume "retreat" is more like "evade enemy, void battle".

I think that foot soldiers should only have a percentage chance of avoiding battle when attacked by other foot units.... same for horse units when attacked by other horse units.

Horse soldiers should have an easy time avoiding battle when attacked by foot units... but foot units should have little to no chance from avoiding battle when attacked by horse units.

What about extending that notion to "Base Movement Speed difference"?. When Units are assaulted by other Units, the chance of successful retreat should be determined by Base Movement Speed difference. If the attacker has higher value, then the defender should have little or no chance, while in the opposite situation, defender should have high or (in some cases) 100% probability of evading.

Very good point, indeed... that makes even more sense.

I would just give back movement points when a battle gets concluded with retreat. So that the victor can actually chase retreating armies. No need to introduce RNG when game mechanics can do the same.

Overall, I feel that combat is working fine.

Regarding retreating, possibly, problems with it can be resolved, if the retreating army gets teleported into the closest city and for a few turns becomes unable to move and gets a debuff or low HP.

In history, I guess, there were times when one army followed the enemy army while the enemy army retreated over and over again, but if the developers want to make the game more consistent, retreating can be simplified.

So combat is fun an satisfying, especially the larger battles. The AI is decent, though sometimes seems to deliberately seek out bad positions just to attack me.

I still think that small differences in power still produce too extreme outcomes. I also don't like that every battle must end in the total annihilation of one army, when this rarely happened in the real world.

As for the retreat conundrum, I think that can easily be amended by not emptying all the attacker's movement points for the attack. Instead, just substract two or halve what's left of them.

ThosDowling wrote:
6. Sieges feel weird. I like suggestions above that you shouldn't be able to cross walls while within the zone of control for anyone on the inside. Furthermore I don't think cav should be able to cross the wall at all, and that if infantry can, it requires their whole movement, the way embarking does (takes a while to get up those siege ladders after all). Otherwise, fortifications in combat should get a bit of a buff, and/or levies/peasants/etc should. Perhaps defenders next to a wall also get high ground advantage (maybe once you build palisades instead of fences).

Agree completely with your comment I highlighted above. Last I knew a horse couldn't climb a ladder. The only way they should be able to get across is if the wall was destroyed.

As I am not naturaly aggresive player, I was really surprised how much I like Humankind's combat system. I would even go as far as to say that I enjoyed most games where war or two occured, as it brought more realistic flavour to the gameplay.

Apart from things like hard-to-read terrain and elevation, it feels rather intuitive and engaging when you get a gist of how features as High Ground, Rear Attack and Friendly Units work - that said, it would be really user-friendly for new players to brought aspects of combat like this to their attention when first time comming into battle. Anyways, being able by good tactical maneuvering to beat opponent with superior army feels really rewarding.

Only feature I did not like was - as many others pointed out before - Retreat mechanic giving Retreating army ability to both run away from battle and prevent not only one engaging army, but several armies stretched out on quite a big territory from doing anything in my turn felt really unrealistic. Not to say AIs exploited this (only thing I really found the AI does perfectly) by sending one man army turn after turn stalling the whole war that could lasted few turns into dozen or more - I felt kinda like Napoleon in Russia.

This AIs behaviour led to another small nuissance - I really liked the idea of fighting only couple of big but meaningfull battles in course of war instead of tedious small skirmishes every turn that Devs mentioned on occasions in the past (like Imjin scenarion in OpenDev no. 1) - but AIs failed to deliver this experience by focusing on this "guerrila warfare". But it might be actualy smart and intentional decision on AIs part, as I had vastly supperior numbers most of the time.

Thanks again for the opportunity to enjoy OpenDev, cheers!

Combat was great but others have already mentioned the issues with retreating. I'd also like the option to not have reinforcements automatically enter the battle, unless there was an option to not include reinforcements before combat that I missed it's annoying having a unit sapped of all its movement.

Aside from that Combat felt wonderful with the only issues being that of individual unit balance, which admittedly wasn't that bad aside from Peasants/City defence being so bad that I never once spent a turn besieging. Also an increase in ship range and an increase in their STR would be fantastic, as they get gun downed by muskets on the shoreline, the ability for ships to also engage in sieges would be great and add a new element to combat.

In case of river attack mali I could imagine a percentage one, what would result in having a consistant impact even later in game.

In case of retreat action it could be useful to give a new skill to units like fresh changing to tired coming along with mali for units stats (speed, etc.). I could imagine to have different stats for units, what restrict retreat action in a row. So it could be useful to split an army to save a part of it, or to go for specialized armies (i. e. cavalry, only).

Zolobolo wrote:

But question: if a land battle is initiated, does it make sense to include naval units in the battle as well?

I gues it makes sense during sieges (citiy defences cannot run away or reposition easily from the coast) but not so sure for army on army combat

They could in the Stadia OpenDev, although they couldn't do anything against land units sadly. As of the 1st Steam OpenDev land units can't participate if they would be isolated from the rest of combat by terrain, so you can't just stick archers on cliffs (sadly), don't know if they will apply the same logic to naval.

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Monger wrote:
Archers drop off in effectiveness too quickly

This is my main issue, no unit type should be put on a bench for an era, like archers do. Unit types can become obsolete - halberdiers are great example of retiring melee types, but with archers you have to keep them hidden until crossbowmen become available, or they'll just get steamrolled in battle while doing basically no damage in return.

Same fear about lack of dedicated Early Modern cav, I get it from era perspective, it's time of transition period for heavy lancers, represented by knight unit that is still available, but, imo, some form of period-proper cavalry (hell, you could just call it 'heavy cavalry' and put early cuirassiers, schwarze reiters, ironsides and hakkapeliitta in one bag), even maybe as a dead-end research, so it's optional, should become available considering that cavalry unit will be returning in next era (unless it's just the unique units again that are there, which would be even more annoying).

docktorkain wrote:

Basically this: https://www.reddit.com/r/HumankindTheGame/comments/kk0z2j/combat_adjustment_suggestion_description_in_first/

I'll repost my comments to save a click.

In my experience with the OpenDev so far, I've been surprised on how one-sided warfare is. Once a side gets any meaningful Combat Strenght (CS) difference, it can steamroll the opposition, with little to no damage. Having the warfare be more dangerous to the winning side makes it more risky and gives better comeback opportunities so the losing side is not steamrolled so easily. To address that, I suggest a small change to the combat mechanics. In the table above, you have the damage dealt per blow based on the CS difference. The second column represents the damage dealt to the lower CS unit by the higher CS unit, which I think is fine and should be kept as is. The third column represents the damage dealt by the lower CS unit to the higher CS unit and, IMHO, it falls too quickly, going to the floor of dealing 5-10 damage per hit at a measily 4 CS difference. My suggestion is to increase the damage dealt by the lower CS unit, according to the fourth column, thus making battles less one-sided and IMHO avoiding the one-sided warfare we have on the current build. 

This is a very good point and one of my major concerns too about combat. It is possible for one side to steamroll the others.

I understand that devs want to make terrains playing important part in battles (Like high ground advantage gives +4 to Combat Strength as an example), but with how large damage differences are, it is unbalanced. As others pointed out, I also want to voice my concern about naval units not able to attack land and retreating mechanic too.

Couple of other issues I have...

- After researching technology allowing reinforcement, nearby units being forced or dragged to take part in battles without confirmation. It was annoying that I had to waste some of my units' movements to be in battles that I did not want them to be unless I was missing something with how combat UI work.

- Siege Battle: I did not like how our armies cannot perform other certain actions when sieging enemy cities. Actions such as being able to ransack/raid nearby enemy districts.

This is not to mention the scale of siege battles is usually large covering up more lands than standard battles. This results in some units outside not being able to pass or cross over to the other side due to on-going battle. Also, units outside of siege area cannot even take part in it as possible reinforcement too due to being locked out. Sometimes, players might want them to either travel to other important areas quickly or at least help sieging units to rush that siege just so that they can cross over quickly. So the only way to stop this deadlock is to order the sieging unit(s) to stop the siege which can lead to loss of sieging progress after many turns.

In short, I do not like how current siege mechanics work. Enemies cannot use or send their own reinforcements from outside to their besieging cities too. I would not mind if this lock out mechanic applies only to standard battles, but for siege battles, I want to be able to reinforce my own siege as well as giving my enemies a chance to defend themselves.

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Next point, this is not directly related to combat, but I would like it if we can give some sort of extra/special equipments or allow small degree of modifications to our units. (Just like how we can modify units with gears/equipments in Endless Legend) The choices do not have to be that large in variety but just a few unlocked by certain technologies would be great.

This could make some outdated units able to fight in current era. (Like giving Ancient Era units being given some armours/weapons from Classical Era allowing them to still be useful.) Additionally, it is possible that players can have slightly larger variety of units in later Era too. Example: Standard tanks being given either better engine for +1 Movement point (Fast/Scout tanks), extra or padded armour (Heavy tanks), or drones giving +X Combat Strength only on offense (Assault tanks). More mods could be made from this idea too.

Waper wrote:
- After researching technology allowing reinforcement, nearby units being forced or dragged to take part in battles without confirmation. It was annoying that I had to waste some of my units' movements to be in battles that I did not want them to be unless I was missing something with how combat UI work.

You could toggle an armies reinforce status by clicking on the plus or minus before confirmation of battle

Waper wrote:
- Siege Battle: I did not like how our armies cannot perform other certain actions when sieging enemy cities. Actions such as being able to ransack/raid nearby enemy districts.

You can always detach units to be able to ransack

Waper wrote:
Next point, this is not directly related to combat, but I would like it if we can give some sort of extra/special equipments or allow small degree of modifications to our units. (Just like how we can modify units with gears/equipments in Endless Legend) The choices do not have to be that large in variety but just a few unlocked by certain technologies would be great.

This goes against the design philosophy of having units be self-sufficent, instead of requiring equipment, and adds an unnecessary layer of complexity to the game.

I noted that one of my armies got trapped by an ally attacking a city. Despite not being involved in that battle, my units were stuck many tiles away, unable to be interacted with while the very weak Ally AI spent many turns sieging a city that I could have easily taken if I were actually attacking without any siege at all. Luckily I didn't need that stack during the siege, but I would have hated to have lost the use of my army to defend myself because an Ally AI decided to attack while I was walking by...