I think Combat is generally pretty good. My main concerns with combat mostly come down to the combat strength balance, especially with some unique units.

I think spearmen's anti cav bonus should be higher. Spearmen have a base combat strength of 20 and anti cav only gives it plus 4 when fighting cav for a total of 24. Swordsman have 25 combat strength, so I feel that once you get swordsmen there isn't much of  a reason to use spearmen. 

Archers are very fragile, and its difficult to bring them with armies on invasions, as they can easily be one shotted out in the open. I mostly used archers to defend my territory by positioning them on cliffs and mountains.

There is a pretty big change I would like to see given to archers and other ranged infantry units. What if archers got a bombard ability similar to industrial era artillery or flying units? (but obviously not as powerful.) I would like this change because defending with archers is kind of awkward, and in some instances when you're fighting units that just have too much combat strength and not much of a counter (units like elephants and Hun and Mongol hordes,) whittling down the opponent with range is essential. Defending with archers feels awkward or not as ideal for a few reasons. First as and example, say I have archers on a high cliff that's overlooking my borders, and an enemy army walks by. Unlike other games like Civ 5, I cannot shoot them from the cliff immediately, I have to either run down the cliff with my army of archers and engage in melee to start the combat phase and essentially loose my position. Alternatively I could wait for the enemy army to climb up the cliff and come to me, but the issue with that is that the enemy can easily surround and cut off deployment points at the start, giving me no room or time to defend my archers with some other unit, and compromising my position I so carefully planned. My best method that I have found so far is to position a melee army at the bottom of the cliff to engage with the enemy army, and have the archers from above reinforce. Still there are a few problems with this. Because I am the attacker, I am required to capture the enemy flag, and in these situations where I just need to whittle down my enemy because they are too strong to fight directly, that mostly likely will not happen, thus causing my army to retreat by default, and loosing the high ground position.  Without some sort of a way for archers to shoot outside of the combat phase, its too easy for the enemy to simply run past them, or run towards them and killing them out of position easily. So in conclusion what I'm proposing is to have ranged infantry have a bombard ability like air units or industrial artillery, but instead of doing damage in an area, only have it do a very small amount of damage to the units in the targeted army, also keep the range of this ability equivalent to the ranged units actual range. That way ranged units can whittle down enemy armies without needing to attack directly and cause a forced retreat loosing the high ground. It would also give players more of cleaner way to deal with trespassers. This would be a good way to warn enemy trespassers they should probably leave, or a good way to force an approach from the enemy.

AOM wrote:

FaeBriona wrote:

Not sure where this should be put -- in all three games I played through completely I researched "Three Masted Ships" but was never able to build a Caravel.

This issue is the result of the unusual naval system in the game. Basically, there are two types of boat you can research. The first is the kind of boat your city builds that appears in your harbor when it is completed. The carrack is an example of a city-built boat. The second is the kind of boat your military units turn into when they hop into the water. The caravel is an example of a unit boat. When you research caravels, your military units will turn into a caravel when they get in the water. They get this free unit-boat upgrade immediately upon completion of caravel research.

Thank you -- that was not at all clear to me in game.

Azanek wrote:

I find the combat really interesting and i enjoy to make plan where to start a fight to take advantage of the terrain. I love the reinforcement mechanic also. But :

- The mongol horde is way OP actually. Move and fire and ignore zone of control is too much.

- The battle between 2 civs in another civ territory with Fortification is realy hard to figure out, especialy with cavalry which can not pass through

- Line of sight a really hard to figure out

- There is no mention of what type of siege weapon you need to build against what type of fortification. I was besieging a city and i could not build any siege weapon even if i had the trebuchet unlocked => maybe a bug ?

- The attacking army should have a flag to defend also.

Thanks !

It seems when you reach industrial era you lose the ability to use trebuchets, which is absolutely insane.

FinalFreak16 wrote:

Ciabat wrote:

bingbongler wrote:
Had some bugs in the closed beta where my units wouldn't act on the command I gave them. They would just have that buffering symbol on them and then the action would resolve itself without any of the animations playing out.

Anyway, the only thing I'd like to see in the game for launch is probably going to rub some people the wrong way, but I don't care. It's realistic and would balance the game better.

Make cities harder to capture. This is far too easy in the closed beta and Victor open dev was the same. I would suggest making walls stronger and giving more defensive bonuses on districts too. I would also make it so the attacking units cannot move into the city while the walls are still standing. Siege engines are kind of pointless right now. You don't need them to win and I think more emphasis needs to be placed on getting at least one of these built before you attack. Breaching the city walls is important and it's far too easy right now because it doesn't matter if they are at 0% or 100%. If there is a free hex, attackers can move into the city with full strength walls. That's not a good thing. Now, I'm not saying if a defending unit and an attacking unit are next to each other with a wall between them they shouldn't be able to attack. They just shouldn't be able to move past a wall that wasn't destroyed. Attackers definitely shouldn't be able to start within the city walls either on the setup.

This would just work so much better. Taking a city should NOT be an easy thing.

It is a point here, sieges should be hard and competitive, I think that walls standing == unable to enter the castle for enemy is great idea, 

they will have to make a hole in walls to enter and this will be more aesthetic and not confusing for players on the map too;) now everybody stands where they want, enemies, allies and it is hard to tell if they are defending on those walls or what ...

 but then siege engines should be more tanky now, because if you loose it you cant take the city

I remember criticising how ineffective walls were in the previous open devs as well. So far the only change seems to be that cavalry units cannot move past them. Which is a step in the right direction but I definitely agree that this should be the case for all units.

The only change I would make from this is maybe give melee units the ability to directly attack the walls to do minor damage in an attempt to bring them down, so that if siege engines are lost there is still a potential way inside. For palisades this would be fairly plausible but could take a while. For stone walls, good luck, maybe come back with those siege engines or just wait out the seige in an attempt to starve out the population inside. 

Ive found another problem with it, when defender will try to unblock city siege and production with sortie he needs to kill all enemies in battle (there is only flag to defend but waiting and wasting those valuable turns... I think we need flag for defender too to capture ? ) , but when enemy got walls nearby, like neighborhood city to cover you will need to destroy it to get them (now if you have only horses you cant reach him and he can block you forever)

Movement

I'm not a fan of the high movement speed of units in combat. Cavarly has barely any advantage over infantry since most of the time 4 moves is all you need to get pretty much anywhere in the combat zone (because you start in the middle of it). I would prefer 3 / 5 moves instead of 4 / 6. Or maybe this could be fixed by making the other actions (attack/defend) also cost a movement point? So you could either move 3 spaces + attack/defend, or move 4 spaces and do nothing. Or apply more movement cost penalties in combat? Like for going uphill or trough a forest?

Bugs

There were some combat bugs like random "over river" penalties in the middle of the desert with no rivers nearby, or "no line of sight" penalties in the middle of an open field, or random "over river" penalty for the defending unit.

Damage

I don't like the current damage scaling and damage randomness. It's way too easy to reach minum or maximum damage. Imho it should be spread out more so that not every +4 or -4 modifier completely changes a unit's damage potential. At the same time I would lower the damage randomness. Especially for the minimum damage so that if a unit is really a lot weaker then it can't randomly deal 25 damage while the much stronger unit deals like 32 damage because it's unlucky.

I'd say something like 5-15 minimum damage reached at 10 less combat strength feels adequate.

Then +2.5 min damage and +3.0 max damage for each additional point of strength with lower combat strength than the enemy.

So 18-30 at -5 strength and 30-45 at equal strength.

And then +3.5 min damage and +4.0 max damage for each additional point of strength with higher combat strength than the enemy.

So 48-65 at +5 strength, 65-85 at +10 strength, 83-105 at +15 strength, and 100 guaranteed reached exactly at +20 strength.

Combat Modifiers

At the same time some underpowered combat modifiers could be made more important to match the other modifiers and this new scaling.

These lacking modifiers are Defending (+1) and Wounded (-1/-2).

I'd bump Defending to a +2 or even +3. And I'd bump Wounded to -1/-2/-3/-4 reached at 80/60/40/20 HP.

Other modifiers are mostly already overpowered but that would match the suggested damage scaling so no changes needed there.

I would also remove the Ferocius status or rework it to do something different completely. It's just way too random occuring, not telegraphed at all, and totally breaks combat balance.

Apart from the mentioned issues - I like the combat system.

Combat was much better than before. The river mechanic is good, its consistent and accurate, giving a more strategic approach to positioning. But I have issue with two topics:

- Retreat: Many times I encountered an army at my borders, I attack them at the end of their movement, they chose retreat, going around my units and ending up at the heart of my territory. How is that possible?! There should be a different loss than just war support for doing it, and for sure not doubling their movement points and least going foward and around the enemy units. I think something like the mechanic of Endless Space 2, you loose a part of health (maybe just 20% and not 50%) and are sent back from where you came. Maybe punish the army if they don't have movement points at the end of the turn, too. And the war support lost is just not real. Historically speaking people stop supporting wars when soldiers die, cities are being invaded and the economy is going very bad. Just retreating to avoid unnecessary human casualties doesn't seem a bad choice, on the contrary, many times is a good decision. 

- Defending the flag: on a siege is reasonable to have the flag as an objective, but in the open I don't get it. I "lost" some battles because the 3 rounds ended and I didn't get to the flag, even if the enemy units are almost dead and mine are practically untouched. This happens specially in narrow points when number doesn't count as much. From my point of view, I won that battle because next turn the enemy has an almost dead unity to defend against mine, unscathed. Or at least it was even... but I end up loosing war support because I didn't reach an unimportant point in the middle of nowhere. It doesn't make sense.        

Naval Gameplay

Issue: There is not enough incentive to build boats and thus naval gameplay suffers. In addition, you can't besiege island cities if there's no tile to land. There must be stronger incentives to build a navy than there are currently.

Solution: First, it needs to be worth and profitable to build near the coast so the navies have targets to attack; Second, there must be ways that the navies should interact with the coastline. In the Economy feedback I tackle the first point, and to tackle the second one we can have: a) navies (not embarked units) being able to ransack adjacent land tiles; and b) grant Early Modern and Industrial Ships (not embarked units) a limited bombard ability so they can menace inland tiles and break down walls in island cities, creating opportunities for embarked units to land.

In my opinion, you should really think about movement order during battles:

• The attacker already has many advantages: They get to pick the terrain of the battle and they get to move first.
• The AI has an obvious advantage over human players in this regard. Taking into account that turns for map movement are simultaneous and not sequential, the AI can move their units much more quickly than the human player and almost always gets the jump on them, making retreat the better choice oftentimes when you're attacked (even if your armies are evenly matched in strength and you have an ok position in the battlefield).
• My suggestion is that the attacker should only get the first move IF they have at least the same amount of remaining map movement points as the defender. Not only would it balance the attacker/defender advantage in battle, but it is also more realistic. For me it makes no sense that an army that just marched thousands of miles to reach the battlefield has a mobility/tactical advantage over an army that is fortified in place. This also applies for ambush-like situations where an enemy army meets your army by surprise, but gets to move first only because the AI is faster at clicking the "engage" button than the human player. And, again, this would make it so that retreating is a choice you would make only if you really are at a strength or terrain disadvantage, not just because you were slower at clicking a button. Another example is, if you're on the defending side of a war and you have to mobilize your army to confront an enemy that is ransacking or occupying a strategic location within your borders, then you shouldn't have a tactical advantage over the enemy.

You know, despite playing through Victor and the Beta, and enjoying both, there are a couple things that rankle the more I consider them:

1) As has been mentioned ad nauseum, the retreat mechanic is not good. Forward "retreat" should just not be an option.

     a) Player controlled retreat should be... player controlled (with no forward "retreat")

     b) AI retreat should only be able to follow the path (or cleave along the path) which brought them to where battle was commenced.

2) Multi-Player battles. This needs to be figured out, period. Some people seem ok with, simply, "don't allow my units to be caught up in an unaffiliated battle," and whilst true, that isn't enough. In a historical game with a HEAVY battle focus and the veneer of diplomatic relations, 1-on-1 ONLY is really unacceptable. What is the point of an alliance if not the security of regional stability? Not being able to break a siege on an ally's city (or vice versa), or join in a battle far afield, is counter-intuitive to how battle should work. If it truly *IS* a technological/coding issue, that's a shame, because this game is never going to be the opus it could (should?) have been.

Honestly, I personally could take ALL of the other oddities people have discussed here, if these two things were addressed. OP Huns/Mongols/other EUs? Arguably strange river/malus interaction? Meme Anti-Calvary? Calvary movement not meaning much? Unclear (ha) LOS? All fine IMO at this point, because they pale in comparison to the issues listed above.

(I have two games under my belt: the first on nation difficulty, the second on empire, both are with the closed beta.)

1. Retreat mechanic is bad. Discussed already. Retreating armies should go towards the motherland (capital?).

2. When i am attacked (and fight and win) i should not lost my movement points. The AI does not use this cheese deliberately however, but it is a game changing tactic.

3. We should be able to exchange places between two units during battle. (Like in endless legend...)

4. In order to get the charge bonus on a cavalry unit i have to move it at least 2 hexes. In order for proper placement we need a similar mechanic like in endless legend: shift-click (or ctrl-click?) to highlight the target hex for the movement, and click to attack. I am surprised that is not implemented yet (or maybe it is but i was unable to find the right combo). One thing for sure: the AI is capable to do just that.

5. Simultaneous turn: it is not about combat per se, but is connected to that. We need a button (like in endless legend and endless space) which executes premoves first, before dealing all the pop-ups and whatnots.

Why do gunpowder units like arquebusers and conquistadors sound like they  are shooting darts?

Big fan of the overall feel of combat, though I wish more than 2 players could participate. Having an alliance should be impactful on the battlefield.

I'm also not a big fan of the combat overlay I find it hard to differentiate trees from rocky fields and such. In my opinion it may be better to have no overlay at all and just use the 3D models already present.

I think linking to this make some sense here as it is a look at the strength and cost of units per era: Unit strength and cost

I agree with everyone who has mentioned the difficulty determining the terrain, especially during the setup phase of combat. The overlay washes out the terrain details quite a bit.

Combat is looking great! Terrain was difficult to identify level changes and routes, with some nasty surprises at times. Playing repeated battles on the same map made this manageable, but being on a random map each time in the release version will make this painful.

Combat strength and ranges were about right, but not being able to use cavalry at all to enter a fortification was annoying, even if the fortification was minimal and destroyed by siege engines. I would even appreciate a dismounted option or just straight penalty because the cavalry troops are running around on foot instead - but at least still able to contribute! I had some battles were the enemy was off their flag, walls were broken, but still my cavalry were prevented from entering.

Naval combat was pretty basic, but I did not explore it hugely. The ability for ships to directly impact cities or land was missing. I don't expect them to be too influential, but some potential would be interesting.

I think some units' battle animations are not good. For example, if you compare combat animations of units consisting of one model (howitzer, navy...) with other units, you can see that.
I suggest that the combat animation of those units be improved by exaggerating sound and visual effects, and making the animation itself slow.

Thank you. I'm looking forward to this game.