Concerns with life & death magic » Forum Post by StoweMobile

Unless you don't have the more efficicent unit...... as emmagine said, not every game will have equal resources.

How does this add a choice to the mix? You use the most efficient units available, there's no strategy to it.

Ummm...... maybe that it makes them stronger?

But if you can have less of them, then what have you gained? It's like trading a hundred pennies for one dollar. Not only is it not interesting, but it's a waste of time as well.

I know that the term was borrowed from statistics. However, when used in the context of a game, it means simply that the game must make some sort of sense: It can't contradict itself.

I know what internally consistent means. I am arguing that it has little value in game design. Many of the most beloved and revered games in history (including chess, almost all video games, board games, table-top RPGs, sports) are internally inconsistent and self-contradictory. Clearly, this fact has not held them back from being good games.

Personally, I believe that a game which is too consistent is boring and bland, and often flawed. There are often edge cases where you must make exceptions to a rule to avoid undesirable gameplay results.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I know what internally consistent means. I am arguing that it has little value in game design.

As I said before, it's not the rules that need to be consistent, it's the explanation for those rules. In any event, the problem with a stack limit is not in the internal consisstency, it is in the explainability and believability. I only even mentioned internal consistency becuase it is closely related to explainability and believability.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting ChongLi,

reply 24

So what is the point of training your troops if it reduces the number of them that you're allowed to field? Essentially, you're trading 50 peasants in for 9 paladins and if the equation is not equal, you'll always do one thing or the other.

Well trained troops only cost one person (people are themselves a resource) and one set of gear. Poorly trained troops are cheaper, but you're going to need more of them.

Of course, with no stack limit it's not really a problem in the first place. Field whatever you want, which is how it should be.

Successfully updated karma reason!

As I said before, it's not the rules that need to be consistent, it's the explanation for those rules. In any event, the problem with a stack limit is not in the internal consisstency, it is in the explainability and believability. I only even mentioned internal consistency becuase it is closely related to explainability and believability.

Games don't need to be believable or explainable but just to humor you here's an explanation for hard stack limits: it makes the game better. Just as the limit to the number of players on the field makes sport better. Just like any rule in any game that is there solely to improve the entertainment value.

Well trained troops only cost one person (people are themselves a resource) and one set of gear. Poorly trained troops are cheaper, but you're going to need more of them.

Of course, with no stack limit it's not really a problem in the first place. Field whatever you want, which is how it should be.

Yes, but this ruins the strategy of the game. It turns the whole affair into a mindless zergfest where the only strategy is to build more.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Games don't need to be believable or explainable

So, you don't care if macemen spontaneously appear on the tops of trees whenever you attack a swamp creature, or if farms produce nothing but research points?

Successfully updated karma reason!

So, you don't care if macemen spontaneously appear on the tops of trees whenever you attack a swamp creature, or if farms produce nothing but research points?

How is that any more unbelievable than somebody throwing fireballs out of their fingertips? The only difference is what expectations you bring into the game. I've played plenty of independent games that shatter your expectations and for the most part it's a refreshing experience, but that's not what we're talking about here.

We're discussing the relative merits of unit cap vs. no unit cap. I argue that a unit cap dramatically enhances the strategy and tactics of a game by placing the focus on the small number of units you are allowed to use in a battle. Each unit is important and must be carefully considered in the context of your strategy, including all of the spells and buffs that you assign to that unit and how it interacts with the other units you have.

This fundamental aspect of the game is lost in a game with no cap, transforming the units into little more than cannon fodder to be heaped on the pile. It's also in opposition to Stardock's stated influence (for the tactical combat aspect), X-Com, which imposed such a cap on the player.

Successfully updated karma reason!

You don't get to be the judge of who you insult with your childish remarks, sorry. If your opinion of other human beings is so low that you prefer not to interact with them in a competitive game, that's your right. Please don't try to shove your beliefs down other people's throats.

Well said.

Brown noser! You must be his PAL or lil BUDDY! lmao

Successfully updated karma reason!

How is that any more unbelievable than somebody throwing fireballs out of their fingertips?

Well, the fireballs are obvoiusly generated by magic, and subject to its caveats and vulnerabilities, plus that is a sensible application of magic that people would really use. Why would anyone powerful enough to cast a "thou shalt not have more than nine soldiers within one area of land" spell even care?

We're discussing the relative merits of unit cap vs. no unit cap.

I am well aware of that. I am discussing them as well, although the mention of common-sense explanations appears to have dreailed the discussion. Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I'm off topic.

In any case, I feel I've presented my arguments, and that you have yet to come up with a coherent response. Therefore, I will reiterate them:

A unit cap eliminates the chance to create a vast, untrained horde-style army, since your hord cannot act as a horde.
It is very difficult to "justify" in any way that makes sense to the player.

Psycho, just because somebody agrees with somebody else does not make them into some sort of conspirator. My advice is to grow up, or everyone else will ingore you.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I am well aware of that. I am discussing them as well, although the mention of common-sense explanations appears to have dreailed the discussion. Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I'm off topic.

In any case, I feel I've presented my arguments, and that you have yet to come up with a coherent response. Therefore, I will reiterate them:

A unit cap eliminates the chance to create a vast, untrained horde-style army, since your hord cannot act as a horde.
It is very difficult to "justify" in any way that makes sense to the player.

My argument is that horde-style armies detract from the tactical nature of the game. Just as a horde of players stampeding onto a football pitch detracts from the tactics and overall strategy of that game. It's not at all hard to justify. Many games have restrictions on the number of concurrent participants in the action.

What Master of Magic did right that I have yet to see duplicated well in other games (Warcraft 3 comes close) is its emphasis on quick, small-scale tactical combats. The game places a very strong emphasis on each individual unit, allowing you to buff it with dozens of different buffs. The heroes in the game emphasize this aspect even more with all of the abilities and items they possess.

Large-scale horde combat is just a different style of game, a game more like Civilization which, frankly, has grown long in the tooth.

Psycho, just because somebody agrees with somebody else does not make them into some sort of conspirator. My advice is to grow up, or everyone else will ingore you.

I've already reported him as a troll, I invite you to do the same.

Successfully updated karma reason!

My argument is that horde-style armies detract from the tactical nature of the game. Just as a horde of players stampeding onto a football pitch detracts from the tactics and overall strategy of that game. It's not at all hard to justify. Many games have restrictions on the number of concurrent participants in the action.

Except for the fact that large groups of people are a challange to control. If that horde of players on the football field were still under the coach's control, and were used to conduct various plays (I am referring to American football, since I understand the terminology better), I imagine it would be quite interesting. Besides, a balanced system would make horde combat optional, so you could still use your few elites all the time if you wanted to. And by "justify" I meant explain in a sinsible way why it is the way it is.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Except for the fact that large groups of people are a challange to control. If that horde of players on the football field were still under the coach's control, and were used to conduct various plays (I am referring to American football, since I understand the terminology better), I imagine it would be quite interesting. Besides, a balanced system would make horde combat optional, so you could still use your few elites all the time if you wanted to. And by "justify" I meant explain in a sinsible way why it is the way it is.

It's only optional if you don't need to do it to win. MoM speaks for itself. It's the best turn-based strategy game there is, in my opinion, and the 9 unit limit is one of the reasons why (not the only reason).

Have you ever played Empire: Total War? That game has tactical combat typically involving 1000-2000 men under your control. It may be very impressive from a graphical standpoint, but the gameplay is tedious and gets really old, really fast. Battles last so long the game has a feature that allows you to put a time limit on them (typically an hour).

You may like that, I find it totally unappealing, and I don't need to justify my opinion.

Successfully updated karma reason!

It's only optional if you don't need to do it to win.

Which you won't. The training system will balance it out, and if it doesn't, then that's just bad betaing on SD's part.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I think you misunderstand the game mechanics of MoM. giving +1 atk to a squad of pikemen didn't give you +8 atk. It gave each figure +1 atk true. Each figure in a stack rolled to hit, and had a 30% chance to hit. modified by + hit modifiers, or - hit modifiers. Then as I recall, it's attack strength (swords) were rolled off vs the defenders strength (shields). It was not an attack made at the sum total of the attack of each individual figure, it was one attack per figure at it's attack. This was important, because if you had drasticly more swords than your opponent had shields, you clobbered him. The forumla is all in the manual, but I know it was not as simple as adding the entire attack strength for all the figures together and attacking.

Everything the developers of this game have lead us to believe, imply to me that when you produce a pikeman you will get one pikeman. Not 8. What you are arguing for is pretty much exactly the same thing as a tactics skill. you should be able to field 8 pikeman, or one great wyrm. I think there is some dissagreement about just how many pikemen vs how many great wyrms, but that's really something for the beta to figure out. So really, you are arguing for the same concept. but you want them clumped into little exactly the same sized boxes like MoM? In Master of magic you were limmited by "square foot" of troops for lack of a better term you could field 8 pikemen, because they took up the same ammount of space as one great wyrm

I like the idea of this system better, you have a squad of 8 (for continuity's sake) pikemen, one of which you want to give a +3 pike you made to, and leather armor of bravery or w/e and make him the leader of the squad. The rest are just cookie cutter pikemen.

I don't think the entire system will be reactionary. I think some of it will. Being hard coded into your strat in master of magic once you'd made your picks with really no room for variation could have been brutal if the AI was smarter. I think there will be plenty of choices to make initially, and plenty to make as the game goes on.

You'll make choices about which tech tree you like, which general spell set you like the idea of having (like you did in MoM) without geting specific spells (by chosing your faction), and the rest will be determined by what research you get (like in MoM), and what shards you get to amplify your spells or maybe some of the more powerful ones will require you to go get specific shards (not like MoM). This sounds to me like it could be modded to master of magic with the drop of a hat, but sounds more fun this way!

(and I don't know about you, but my pikemen never did manage to fend off calvary to any measure of effect. )

Again, master of magic used it's own form of logistics, it was just rather basic, because of the limitations of the tactial engine. The tactical engine is not going to be turn based as it was in MoM, and you are not going to have neat little squares of troops to move "one square" at a time across a tactical map, at least that's what I gather given the screenshots we've seen.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I think you misunderstand the game mechanics of MoM. giving +1 atk to a squad of pikemen didn't give you +8 atk. It gave each figure +1 atk true. Each figure in a stack rolled to hit, and had a 30% chance to hit. modified by + hit modifiers, or - hit modifiers. Then as I recall, it's attack strength (swords) were rolled off vs the defenders strength (shields). It was not an attack made at the sum total of the attack of each individual figure, it was one attack per figure at it's attack. This was important, because if you had drasticly more swords than your opponent had shields, you clobbered him. The forumla is all in the manual, but I know it was not as simple as adding the entire attack strength for all the figures together and attacking.

Actually, each sword was calculated at a 30% chance, whether the unit was 1 figure or 8, didn't matter. 8 figures did in fact receive 8 times the benefit of such a buff compared to a single figure.

The big difference in calculation is where defense was concerned. A single figure got to use its shields against each of the 8 attacking figures independently.

The other major difference is the fact that multi-figure units decrease in attack power when they take enough damage to lose figures whereas single figure units stay at full strength until their last hit point.

Everything the developers of this game have lead us to believe, imply to me that when you produce a pikeman you will get one pikeman. Not 8. What you are arguing for is pretty much exactly the same thing as a tactics skill. you should be able to field 8 pikeman, or one great wyrm. I think there is some dissagreement about just how many pikemen vs how many great wyrms, but that's really something for the beta to figure out. So really, you are arguing for the same concept. but you want them clumped into little exactly the same sized boxes like MoM? In Master of magic you were limmited by "square foot" of troops for lack of a better term

you could field 8 pikemen, because they took up the same ammount of space as one great wyrm

Take a look at this screenshot, particularly the unit that is currently selected:

Looks to me like they are using an 8 figure unit. Lots of neat little squares too.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Looks to me like they are using an 8 figure unit.

..... with all attack, defense, speed, and HP values cumulated as opposed to being kept seperate. Probably like in GC2 fleets, where there were individual ships but all the stats were added intoa single total.

Successfully updated karma reason!

..... with all attack, defense, speed, and HP values cumulated as opposed to being kept seperate. Probably like in GC2 fleets, where there were individual ships but all the stats were added intoa single total.

I doubt it, take a closer look. The unit is 8 figures and has an attack strength of 12. Do you honestly believe that each figure has an attack of 1.5?

Successfully updated karma reason!

Could be. We know nothing about how numbers will work here, and decimals would make a lot of sense at the lower training levels..... plus, we son't know whether that attack is buffed or penalized in some way, or if attack even behaves like the rest of the stats. It's also possible that unit number is some sort of "engurance" system: if you lose health to a certain point, a unit dies, and you can't heal "past" that point.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Could be. We know nothing about how numbers will work here, and decimals would make a lot of sense at the lower training levels..... plus, we son't know whether that attack is buffed or penalized in some way, or if attack even behaves like the rest of the stats. It's also possible that unit number is some sort of "engurance" system: if you lose health to a certain point, a unit dies, and you can't heal "past" that point.

"Engurance" is not a word, but ok. I don't like the use of decimals in these types of games, it's aesthetically unpleasant.

Units in MoM lost strength as the figures died. Many of the weaker units had only 1 hit point per figure, so taking 4 damage would kill off 4 figures. Healing and regeneration spells brought back figures that were lost. This was important to balance these units against powerful single figure units which did not lose any strength until dead.

Here's hoping that whatever system they use for doing the actual math involved, that it will be moddable. MoM basically rolled 10-sided dice for each and every point of damage a figure was attempting to do. If the roll was 3 or less (30% chance), it scored a hit. All of the successful hits were tallied up, then the defender's shields were calculated in the exact same way (10-sider, 30% chance) and successful blocks were subtracted from the successful hits.

This system allowed a unit with 10 swords to attack a unit with 10 shields and be capable of doing anywhere from 0 to 10 damage, with 0 damage being the most common result (and 10 damage being very rare).

Successfully updated karma reason!

haven't there been more recent ones where they showed a much more chaotic looking battle? or am I imagining it? If this is obviously the route they are going, I don't see the reason for the big debate?

Saying that they get 8X the benefit is misleading. If you gave a great wyrm 8 +1 dmg buffs, it had a much more drastic effect than giving a squad of spearmen a single +1 buff.

Successfully updated karma reason!

haven't there been more recent ones where they showed a much more chaotic looking battle? or am I imagining it? If this is obviously the route they are going, I don't see the reason for the big debate?

Saying that they get 8X the benefit is misleading. If you gave a great wyrm 8 +1 dmg buffs, it had a much more drastic effect than giving a squad of spearmen a single +1 buff.

It depends entirely on how many shields the defender has. A defender with no shields would take the same damage from multi-figures as single figures. The difference really shows up when the defender has a lot of shields.

Essentially, the game calculated a spearmen's attack as 8 separate attacks, rather than one big one.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Here's hoping that whatever system they use for doing the actual math involved, that it will be moddable. MoM basically rolled 10-sided dice for each and every point of damage a figure was attempting to do. If the roll was 3 or less (30% chance), it scored a hit. All of the successful hits were tallied up, then the defender's shields were calculated in the exact same way (10-sider, 30% chance) and successful blocks were subtracted from the successful hits.

This system allowed a unit with 10 swords to attack a unit with 10 shields and be capable of doing anywhere from 0 to 10 damage, with 0 damage being the most common result (and 10 damage being very rare).

Ugh... more RNGs...... they make me nausious..... praying to the Big Roulette Wheel In The Sky is no way to go through a game...... but in any case, one of the more annoying features of Civ was the multiple individuals that rose from the dead as a unit healed..... hence my hope for an endurance system......

Successfully updated karma reason!

Ugh... more RNGs...... they make me nausious..... praying to the Big Roulette Wheel In The Sky is no way to go through a game...... but in any case, one of the more annoying features of Civ was the multiple individuals that rose from the dead as a unit healed..... hence my hope for an endurance system......

Oh, this didn't happen without a healing spell (or regeneration in the case of trolls), unless the unit was stationed in a town. In that case, it's assumed the figures are replenished by recruitment.

As far as RNGs go, if you don't like them, you can always go play a FPS or other purely skill-based game.

Let me just say that the results of combat in MoM were very reliable due to the fact that they used a lot of die rolls averaged together instead of a single die roll.

Successfully updated karma reason!

As far as RNGs go, if you don't like them, you can always go play a FPS or other purely skill-based game.

That's not the point:

FPSs are not totally skill-based. In fact, I can't think of a single game that is.
It's not a matter of "just go play something else". How wpould you like it if somebody told you "since you don't like a sepearte life/death system, just go play MoM"?

Successfully updated karma reason!

FPSs are not totally skill-based. In fact, I can't think of a single game that is.

Quake and Unreal Tournament series are. As is tetris, super mario bros and many other console games.

It's not a matter of "just go play something else". How wpould you like it if somebody told you "since you don't like a sepearte life/death system, just go play MoM"?

I apologize. It's actually a pretty stupid thing to say "just go play something else" when you just want to see a game you're interested in get better.

Would you prefer if all combat calculations in the game were non-random? How would that work?

Successfully updated karma reason!

Would you prefer if all combat calculations in the game were non-random?

Actually, no: A little bit of randomness is fine, with "critical hits", occasional misses, and that sort of thing, especially when the game doesn't really do it randomly so much as intentionally to stir things up a little (think mega events in GC2, or Great People in Civ 4[although I'm not entirely sure if the latter are actually "intelligently" placed]). However, randomenss should be relatively rare, and you should have a pretty good idea of what will happen if you bother to crunch the numbers. In short, combat (and the game in general) should largely reward skill and power as opposed to blind luck, but add in some unexpected occurances to spice things up.

Successfully updated karma reason!