In this post, I am going to talk about the battle system.

There are several issues related to the battle system. Some of them are very critical that needs to be fixed first and foremost.

Of course there are hundreds to point out but I am going to cover part of it which I think more important. 

I believe rest of them will be discussed by other's feedback. Please take care of those feedback as well.

1. When I start a battle, if the enemy army retreats, my army's movement points are gone including those of my reinforce armies.

 When the enemy start a battle, regardless of the whether my army retreats or not my reinforce army's movement points are gone as well.

 This makes my armies get stuck in some area during the war

2. Nearby armies are involved to nearby battle compulsively.

3. Battle can occur over multiple turns depending on the magnitude of the battle.

This is the new change in OpenDev Victor and sound plausible generally but there is a serious problem with this change.

When there is a third one's army in the battlefield, that army gets stuck in the battle until the battle is over.

It was not a problem when the battle ends within that turn, because the army can move when the battle ends.

However, if the  battle lasts multiple turns, that army cannot move, which makes the owner very annoying.

This could be a critical problem in multiplayer game.

For example, let player A has huge armies marching toward the city of player B. Player B and C can conspire to start a battle near the A's armies, prolonging the battle without actually hitting the opponent's units,

which leads to getting stuck A's armies several turn without any cost. Then player A may feel fury for this annoying situation.

Issue 1 ~3  works collaboratively and make player feel annoying.

This issues is completely destroying the game and need to be fixed first and foremost.

This must be fixed before the launch unless Amplitude want to throw their money and manpower into nothing and disappear in the mists of history.

4. Even siege the city makes the battlefield locked so when my capital is under siege, my units produced by other city cannot help.

5. Unexpected army participates to the battle. That army did not appear in the preview of the battle. This may be because the size of battlefield varies when the battle is about to start.

Below  is just my first estimation.

1) I start a battle

2) Nearby army reinforces

3) The system thinks that the magnitude of the battle increases

4) Battlefield size increases

5) New army that was not originally involved in the battle participates compulsively

6) Battlefield size increases again.

...

If above estimation is true, then it is totally non-sense.

Below is the second estimation.

1) The preview of the battle is based on information of my vision, so the army that I cannot see does not appear in the preview.

2) After the battle starts, the actual battle size and involving armies are revealed.

3) That's why I sometimes feel the preview is wrong and the battle size varies.

If above estimation is true, then it is good and nothing needs to be change.

If there is a brief notification saying that the preview is not always true because it is  based on the player's vision.

6. Offender always acts first so the defender is under disadvantage being hit or losing some of or whole units at the beginning of the battle.

Acting first posses lots of meaning. Offender can shoot first or preoccupy better position or break the enemy's formation effectively.

I know the defender also has advantage that the defender has flag first and defensing combat bonus (+1) but the advantage of offender is way much bigger I think.

7. The size of battlefield is to small that both army begins the battle with their face close to others.

Moreover, there is too less available position for arranging the units. I doubt whether the 'tactical' battle can happen under this suffocating situation.

Also this issue is related to the issue 6, which makes offender has more advantage.

In order to solve the issues mentioned above, here I present my suggestion for change.

For the record, this is just my suggestion so it can be biased by my experience, play style, preference.

Therefore, Amplitude studio needs to gather tons of opinions including that from me in order to find the appropriate solution for this issue, which must take a lot of effort and time before the release.

1. When the battle is not actually begins in case one of the both side retreats in order to avoid the battle, the movement points should be gone except those of retreated army,

because that army used them for retreating. The movement points of the offending army, reinforces of both side should be gone unless the battle actually begins.

One problem with this change is that if the movement points of the offending army remain the same, that army can chase the retreated army in order to start the battle again.

In order to solve this problem, let us make a new point here. Let the offending army and its reinforce lose 1 movement point if the battle actually not begin.

Then, the offending army cannot chase the retreating army unless it has higher movement points (For example, only cavalry for offending army and infantry for retreating army.)

Therefore the army with 4 movement points can have 4 chance of starting the battle at the maximum.

This case can happen when the army has 4 adjacent hostile army, 3 of which retreats and the last army retreats or not.

The defending army and its reinforcement will not lose any of movement points because they are attacked.

The offending army and its reinforcement will lose whole movement points if the battle actually begins.

I hope the devs understand my point for this suggestion. Please tell me if any of above is either ambiguous or not clear.

2. Let us be able to choose whether nearby army involve in the nearby battle that is about to start.

If I remember correctly, former version of OpenDev let us do this but from the certain version has not.

I guess there must be some discussion for this issue with conclusion that nearby army has to participate compulsively for some reason which I am not aware of.

I guess that reason may be related to the battlefield lock-down, movement point system or other else.

However, what I feel and most players would feel I guess is that the change worsen the system more than ever.

Thus please let the nearby army retain its freedom of participating the battle.

Considering suggestion 1 there are two types of involved nearby army. One group who decided to participate loses 1 movement point if one of both side retreats.

That group loses the whole points if the battle actually begins. Another group who decided not to participate preserves the points regardless of whether the battle begins or not.

3. Please no lock-down for battlefield. It is highly related to suggestion 2 because even if an army decided not to participate the nearby battle, it will be meaningless if that army locked down due to the battle.

I believe this lock-down system made compulsive reinforce happens. If it is true, removing the lock-down for battlefield would solve the issue naturally. In order to do this, the world map and the battle map needs to work as

independent object partially or fully. I know this is complicated job for Humankind where the world map and the battle map are bound together sophisticate.

For example of other 4x games, Sid Meier's Civilization has one map, where the world map is the battle map itself. On the other hand, Age of wonders has totally independent world and battle map.

However in Humankind, the battlemap is crop of the world map, so the battle map literally depends on the world map and the world map is influenced by the world map.

I believe this is the reason why the devs got no choice but lock-down.

Here is my suggestion. Let the battlemap be duplication of the world map not the crop. After duplication occurs the world remains the same and works as it does and the battle in the battlemap goes on independently.

For this issue, there must be some function for players to easily move between battlemap and the worldmap even if the position of tiles are the same. 

I hope this be clear to devs, because this is very important point so it needs to be understood whatever it takes.

In addition there can be multiple battlemaps in the same area of the world map, which means the same tile can exist in the multiple battlefield.

Imagine the phasing of the World of Warcraft. Of course they are not the same can be helpful to imagine what it would look like.

Recalling the battle map system of Endless Legend may also be helpful. I wanna show what I imagined if it were possible to open my brains to show what I think because it is so hard to describe by writing.

For implementing this it will take horrible times and consumes manpower, but trust me this is critical.

Above is just my suggestion if there is better and neat solution that's great.

The point is do not overlook this issue. If does the dream of Humankind to become one of the greatest 4x games will be laughing stock. Trust me.

4. Removing the lock-down will solve the issue 4 as well.

Since the battle may happen for multiple turns, it will be much better if additional army who was not involved in the beginning of the battle joins if the army approaches to the armies in battle.

This would solve the problem that additionally cannot help the capital under siege.

5. If my second estimation for issue 5 is correct then nothing wrong with this issue. If my first estimation is true, please fix this. The second estimation can be one of the solution

6,7 There can be multiple candidates of solution for this issues.

1) Let their be 4 tiles between both armies in arrangement phase of the battle.

Then the offender's advantage that they can attack first may diminish somehow.

The problem is the size of battlefield. It will much larger if there are reinforcement.

If the world map and the battle map remain still like current version it would be impossible to implement.

2) The offender act first but the defender arrange its units after the offender does so the defending unit at least has better position and formation.

3) The defender act first but can only move. The defender can move to better position under circumstance of ZOC, unit block but can move beyond area of arrangement phase. 

The offender can attack first. This may make the advantage of both side somewhat equal.

Again, this is just my suggestion. If there  be better one, that's great.

Regarding this issue you may refer to one of the fine tactical battle game such as Age of Wonder or Vantage Masters for example.

Let me conclude this post. I mentioned several issues and suggestion related to battle system of Humankind.

Please take enough time for this. It will be better to postpone the release again and be criticized than ruining the game.

Again, trust me.