Print Page | Close Window

Illy Troop Update

Printed From: Illyriad
Category: Miscellaneous
Forum Name: Suggestions & Game Enhancements
Forum Description: Got a great idea? A feature you'd like to see? Share it here!
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=10446
Printed Date: 29 Mar 2024 at 04:52
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.03 - http://www.webwizforums.com


Topic: Illy Troop Update
Posted By: Morose
Subject: Illy Troop Update
Date Posted: 09 Apr 2018 at 14:52
So I have a project that I have been working on for a little bit and would like to share for comments.  Since I started playing back in 2012, the greatest changes in terms of game play by far was the Infantry updates and changes to troop stats.  Before this update, combat was very stale and only a few units were optimal for use.  This update made infantry into the juggernaut it is today, and really added additional flavor to combat and war strategy in Illy.

Since that time, combat has evolved into it's current form.  Towns placed surrounded by plains to defend against sieges, ability to overcome a small hill or forest adjacent if you have enough infantry close, mass stacking of t1 spears and bows for siege defense.  Unfortunately, there are a number of units that lag behind and therefore are not used.  Humans are stuck making T2 cavalry for the big hits but little else, making them somewhat one sided and stale.  Orcs are pretty decent, but if you aren't cranking Kobolds or Fangs what are you really doing?  Elves have turned from Trueshot city to Sentinel city, with some cavalry thrown in for fun.  Dwarves are doing dorf things, smashing with their Stalwarts but other than their T2 spears are kinda like Humans.

What I suggest is a change that while small, would shake the current military thinking and create for a more interesting war and military experience.  On to the changes!

1 - First off we need to look at military units themselves.  We have a Tier 1 and 2 version of each unit.  In most cases one is superior to the other in every way, relegating the other to the dust bin.  What I propose is to define the role of each.  To that end, I am proposing that Tier 1 be the premier defensive unit, whereas Tier 2 is more focused on offense.  It makes sense, especially given that each races specialty unit is Tier 2.  This would make each specialty unit feel really special, but also maybe see towns turn away from being 1 troop factories.

2 - Tiers established, now we need to look at terrain strengths and weaknesses.  As it stands a few units have terrain it really shines on, but I think we need a more uniform approach.  That being said, I propose a tier system where each troop type has a terrain it truly shines on where the others do not.  With four military units and four basic terrains, we can achieve this with assignments that mostly make sense realistically as well.  Below I will sort the troop and it's terrain from best to worst:

  • Cavalry - Plains (superior movement), Hills (poor mans plains), Forest (hard to maintain formation), and Mountain (this sucks).
  • Infantry - Forest (great cover), Mountain (breaks enemy ranks), Plains (good formations), Hills (biggest stretch I know, maybe they hate marching up and down)
  • Spears - Hills (formation w/high ground), Plains (allows for large phalanxes), Mountain (cover), Forest (unable to keep formation).
  • Ranged - Mountain (high ground), Forest (great cover), Hills (smaller high ground), Plains (they can get on you so fast).
3 - Terrain strengths and weakness established, we then need to revisit terrain bonuses to further reflect these changes.  After looking at spreadsheet numbers until my eyes bleed, here is what I came up with:



One other change with terrain I made was with buildings.  Since they are kind of an oddball, I made them as logical as possible.  One other item of note which is very important is how a city is handled.  Right now, if you direct a town you follow the underlying terrain, but if you storm to raze/capture you use buildings as your terrain.  I propose a town split the terrain bonus 50/50 with the underlying no matter how you attack the town.  So a town based on plains would be 50 plains and 50 buildings, direct attack or storm to raze/capture.

4 - Now that we have terrain bonuses set in stone we come to the meat and potatoes;  Troop values.  First, I established a baseline of what troops each race is best and worst at to allow for races to somewhat matter.  The ranking I came up with represents what is basically in Illy already (best to worst):
  • Elves - Ranged, Cavalry, Infantry, Spears
  • Humans - Cavalry, Ranged, Spears, Infantry
  • Dwarves - Infantry, Spears, Ranged, Cavalry
  • Orcs - Spears, Infantry, Cavalry, Ranged
As you can see we once again don't have any overlap, allowing for tactical decisions based on race as well.  The second major change was with a unit not known for it's attack prowess;  Spears.  In my mind a large phalanx of spears would be quite useful on the attack vs certain other units, and I wanted all T2 units to be viable attacking if the terrain and opponent warranted.  I created a spreadsheet that calculated values along with training times to get the Illy baseline, and then adjusted from there.  The result is fairly even, although numbers could be tweaked slightly.  I will post a picture of my adjusted troop types below, and also a link to a read only version of my final spreadsheet showing power values calculated by terrain and matchup.



As you can see, some minor and some major changes.  Here is the link to the spreadsheet for perusal:

http://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dIK21zq2xwWy3-s7xDYw7i8R6yaCcfY2kBNbp_TN9PA/edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow - Illy Troops

In summation, here is my rational and reasoning behind this.  Firstly, I believe with the above changes military strategy will become more of that (strategy).  Scouts will become even more useful, as unit matchups are even more pivotal to success.  More terrain will be used, and town on plains surrounded by plains will no longer be the most viable town placement.  Spears can attack, opening up more useful equipment.  The choice between units will be real, and towns with a mix of T1 and T2 will be more common.  

My biggest reason for doing this work is this:  These changes can be made with the least amount of coding possible for the single biggest update to Illy since Infantry changes and equipment update.  I believe if you made changes based upon this, more varied gameplay would freshen the game for all with a minimal amount of work.

Take a look and feel free to shred my logic!
< ="text/">

-------------
https://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/a/p/372651" rel="nofollow">



Replies:
Posted By: Tink XX
Date Posted: 09 Apr 2018 at 15:43
This is a very intriguing idea. Thanks for working it out, Morose! I totally agree that reshuffling the unit and terrain stats would freshen up our strategies. If the devs see value in this it would be great.
Right now the game engine heavily penalizes players who do not have city placement with plains all around. By the same token, players who try to siege on plains are also penalized. If the bonuses are more balanced every terrain and every race should have unique strengths and weaknesses.


Posted By: Dabrelis
Date Posted: 09 Apr 2018 at 16:10
“towns with a mix of T1 and T2 will be more common. “
Why???

If you make one for attack and other for defense? Instead you would have more specialized T2 towns and T1 towns.

Specialization comes from
A) sov
B) use case

Now - if you make Orc T2 Spears with current Orc bow stats (good defending bows, bad defending cav) and keep same
T1 units (good defending cav, bad defending bows), then you would have a shot at towns that mix those things greatly.


Posted By: Morose
Date Posted: 09 Apr 2018 at 16:19
Agreed that sov and use case determines specialization, but sov works with T1 and T2 at the same time.  If you look at the numbers, T1 are slightly better at defense and T2 are a little more slightly better at offense.  Given that your troop reduction buildings and sov works for T1 and T2 in the same town, you could mix T1 and T2 troops in a town with 0 downsides.  While not perfectly optimal, T2 can defend and T1 can attack fairly well.

-------------
https://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/a/p/372651" rel="nofollow">


Posted By: Tink XX
Date Posted: 09 Apr 2018 at 16:24
You won't need to specialize towns in t1 or t2 though since you can use the same cost reduction building and same sov structures for both. That's the two main reasons people specialize cities for troop types.


Posted By: Tink XX
Date Posted: 09 Apr 2018 at 17:19
Morose, what would be the formula for the city tile? Average between the underlying terrain and buildings?


Posted By: Morose
Date Posted: 09 Apr 2018 at 17:33
I would think so yeah, so if you had a town on a small forest you would take the bonus for the small forest and buildings and average them out based on the troop type defending and attacking.  Make it matter where you place your towns.  Might need to think about situation different town types to support each other locally as well, so you can take advantage of sov bonuses.

-------------
https://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/a/p/372651" rel="nofollow">


Posted By: Bill Cipher
Date Posted: 09 Apr 2018 at 18:37
Like they're gonna pretty much redo the whole military aspect. This is as bad as Eo's few useless debates he started

-------------
d-a-r-o-r-w-o pb wlph kdv frph wr exuq. l lqyrnh wkh dqflhqw srzhu wkdw l pdb uhwxuq


Posted By: Tink XX
Date Posted: 09 Apr 2018 at 19:26
Originally posted by Bill Cipher Bill Cipher wrote:

Like they're gonna pretty much redo the whole military aspect. This is as bad as Eo's few useless debates he started

Thanks for constructive input bud! Now kindly go back to trolling GC or w/e it is you fill your time with.


Posted By: white willow
Date Posted: 09 Apr 2018 at 19:37
Thanks for all the work on this morose you can tell a lot of work and thought went into it.


Posted By: Dabrelis
Date Posted: 09 Apr 2018 at 20:23
Originally posted by Morose Morose wrote:


  • Cavalry - Plains (superior movement), Hills (poor mans plains), Forest (hard to maintain formation), and Mountain (this sucks).
  • Infantry - Forest (great cover), Mountain (breaks enemy ranks), Plains (good formations), Hills (biggest stretch I know, maybe they hate marching up and down)
  • Spears - Hills (formation w/high ground), Plains (allows for large phalanxes), Mountain (cover), Forest (unable to keep formation).
  • Ranged - Mountain (high ground), Forest (great cover), Hills (smaller high ground), Plains (they can get on you so fast).
I would change places for Infantry and Ranged. Make Infantry best in Mountain (Dwarves are a mountain race and infantry) and Ranged best in Forest (Elves are a forest race and ranged). 
Just for the Tolkien.


Posted By: Bill Cipher
Date Posted: 09 Apr 2018 at 20:40
Originally posted by Tink XX Tink XX wrote:

Originally posted by Bill Cipher Bill Cipher wrote:

Like they're gonna pretty much redo the whole military aspect. This is as bad as Eo's few useless debates he started

Thanks for constructive input bud! Now kindly go back to trolling GC or w/e it is you fill your time with.


Awe you think i'm trolling how adorable.


-------------
d-a-r-o-r-w-o pb wlph kdv frph wr exuq. l lqyrnh wkh dqflhqw srzhu wkdw l pdb uhwxuq


Posted By: Morose
Date Posted: 09 Apr 2018 at 21:18
Yeah, I understand that desire to Tolenize but I tried to keep everything as true to what Illy already had. Any changes made need to try and stay close to established Illy constraints to not only keep players happy but also not completely upend established town placements and conventions.

I also desired ideas that do not fundamentally change the game code or how it works. All my changes are simply differences to already programmed values that require a handful of find and replace integers.

-------------
https://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/a/p/372651" rel="nofollow">


Posted By: Spartacus
Date Posted: 09 Apr 2018 at 23:52
Morose, you leave out one important factor in your analysis - crafted gear. Most people think this is something you use for commanders or elite squadrons. It isn't and you need to do the math on it. You can, for example, use cav effectively on every terrain type except buildings - likewise other types. If you change the scores you need to evaluate the effects of equipment on the new scores and I think you'd find a new but different set of troop configurations. 

The main reasons that equipment is not used as it might be are 1) the 100% drop rate in towns, 2) most military types don't hunt much to gather enough skins, 3) most players don't build enough specialised smiths etc to craft rapidly and 4) consequently gear is more expensive than it should be.

Remember that the bonuses add not multiply so a 60% weapon bonus and a -15% terrain is still +45%. The terrain modifier can be largely eliminated by the right gear - especially if the other guy has the wrong gear or no gear. 


Posted By: Morose
Date Posted: 10 Apr 2018 at 00:54
Originally posted by Spartacus Spartacus wrote:

The main reasons that equipment is not used as it might be are 1) the 100% drop rate in towns, 2) most military types don't hunt much to gather enough skins, 3) most players don't build enough specialised smiths etc to craft rapidly and 4) consequently gear is more expensive than it should be.

Remember that the bonuses add not multiply so a 60% weapon bonus and a -15% terrain is still +45%. The terrain modifier can be largely eliminated by the right gear - especially if the other guy has the wrong gear or no gear. 

You point out the reasons why crafted gear is not used large scale, but that being said while I changed numbers I did so in a way that doesn't change crafted gear in a meaningful way.  Since I amplified terrain bonuses and penalties, it is now even harder to counteract the effect of bad terrain.

Look at it this way, in my calculations Sentinels are bad at defending on plains.  Plains gear gives 120% bonus to defense, giving a sentinel an aggregate defense on plains still well below the attack value of cavalry (the attacker of choice on plains).  An army of 100k sentinels (not hard to aquire) fully equipped would have a much better advantage for one fight, then when most of the gear is lost it will take another crazy amount of time to accrue that amount of crafted gear again.  Because of this, crafted gear is best left to commanders and elite squadrons to help offset losses of larger armies.


-------------
https://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/a/p/372651" rel="nofollow">


Posted By: Tink XX
Date Posted: 10 Apr 2018 at 01:21
Yeah the only time you would have fully equipped armies with gear is in a city behind the wall. The wall still delivers the main bonus in that situation. Sure the numbers would shift around some but the change would affect everyone equally. I think it's a worthwhile trade-off to achieve a better overall balance.


Posted By: Lord Stanley
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2018 at 19:37
Morose,
I like your ideas in this setting. It combines creating more flexible and appropriate troop values and usage while not requiring the devs to rewrite the game to do so.

I have 2 additional suggestions, albeit more involved than yours.

1) to create some random factor for leadership. In real battles a smaller, less powerful army may defeat a larger one due to the decision making of the leaders.  Perhaps rather than just a simple increase in attack value that Heroism provides, how about a Leadership/Military IQ commander bonus that would offer some increase percentage likelihood of winning a battle that cannot be calculated exactly.  This would make military battles a little less exact to calculate and a bit more interesting to see play out.  As of right now, the key to military victory in a war appears to be troop production. If you can outproduce your enemy, you will eventually win. With this variable, it would make things a little more interesting I think.  
A variable in the game that I played before this significantly affected gameplay in a way that this could. In that game, Grepolis, launch times could vary up to 10 seconds either direction from the time the send button was actually pressed. Many times, exact timing to the second was of utmost importance. One or two seconds could be the difference between losing or protecting a city. In Illy, the mechanics are different so a variable timer would not make a significant difference, but varying commander win percentage would.

2) How about making the Chancery actually worth something in your city?  The small percentage benefit in gold and RP reduction you get for just L1 sov really does not justify the hourly resource cost.  Perhaps if COE were more powerful, like giving a benefit at every level, it would be a tool that could be used to actually increase usable sov.  This would be better for those in military and those not as well.

Lord Stanley


-------------
//elgea.illyriad.co.uk/a/b/309517/av.jpg


Posted By: Spartacus
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2018 at 20:26
Originally posted by Morose Morose wrote:

Originally posted by Spartacus Spartacus wrote:

The main reasons that equipment is not used as it might be are 1) the 100% drop rate in towns, 2) most military types don't hunt much to gather enough skins, 3) most players don't build enough specialised smiths etc to craft rapidly and 4) consequently gear is more expensive than it should be.

Remember that the bonuses add not multiply so a 60% weapon bonus and a -15% terrain is still +45%. The terrain modifier can be largely eliminated by the right gear - especially if the other guy has the wrong gear or no gear. 

You point out the reasons why crafted gear is not used large scale, but that being said while I changed numbers I did so in a way that doesn't change crafted gear in a meaningful way.  Since I amplified terrain bonuses and penalties, it is now even harder to counteract the effect of bad terrain.

Look at it this way, in my calculations Sentinels are bad at defending on plains.  Plains gear gives 120% bonus to defense, giving a sentinel an aggregate defense on plains still well below the attack value of cavalry (the attacker of choice on plains).  An army of 100k sentinels (not hard to aquire) fully equipped would have a much better advantage for one fight, then when most of the gear is lost it will take another crazy amount of time to accrue that amount of crafted gear again.  Because of this, crafted gear is best left to commanders and elite squadrons to help offset losses of larger armies.

Let me make a few points on this.

1. You say it takes a crazy time to craft gear - no it doesn't. The creatures that provide the raw materials (other than for plains gear) are in abundance. Lots of skinners and multiple specialised smiths produce the gear faster than the raw gear - its a problem if you're running cities of 5-8k pop as you havn't raised your building levels far enough - but that's a philosophical problem with some people's style of play. I regularly sent out 10k fully equipped armies - the equivalent of 22k or more - I only have to rebuild 10k and the equipment in parallel over multiple towns. I have sent out armies up to 30k fully equipped - the reaction tends to be 'Wow'.

2. Having an idea and getting your alliance members to come in and say 'great idea' is a bit rich. (Please don't take that as a troll but you have to know it makes your motives suspect).  Walled towns surrounded by plains is what twelfth century wars looked like with the walled city having the major advantage. Changing Illy so that towns can be more easily taken would only be welcomed by a few in Illy. Why not invent cannons?

3. The thing the devs could do without too much bother as they obviously have to do the calculation for battle resolution would be to put radio buttons on the army screen for the terrain type you are attacking and city wall levels, day/night/animals and give a proper reading for attack defence scores. Lots of people can't manage the math and only have the slimmest idea of what each piece of equipment does - show them the scores and they'll develop better instincts. You've surely scavenged daft equipment from battles? 

4. The problem with your sheets is that they are only 2d and not accurate when the third and fourth dimensions (weapon and armour) are taken into account.

5. Here's a suggestion that's easy to implement. Introduce weather to Illy. I know it's a big place but we shouldn't really object, in a magic kingdom, to having the same weather everywhere for a day at a time. Resource production varies by season so why not vary terrain bonuses by weather - Knights on plains would surely perform worse in rain! I'm suggesting that we know today's weather and our mages can accurately predict tomorrow's weather, We get a new forecast at midnight. I'm suggesting the terrain modifiers would be modified up or down between +5 and -5 depending on the weather - so 11 weathers. Tomorrow's modifier would be today's modifier +/-1 with 50% prob with obvious arrangements at the boundaries. Timing of sending would now matter and sending from farther away involves more risk as the weather may change. So, a total of two new variables, one of which is to be added into the battle calculation and a daily weather forecast announcement - put it in the 'world strategies' graphic on Attack Stats that can't be read anyhow and a whole new set of conversations about the weather which should be very attractive to British players. (Sorry! That's a troll.)

6. The 100% drop rate in towns has always irritated me especially if the attacker wins the battle - surely the winning army would be able to carry home one piece of their dead comrades' equipment a piece.



Posted By: Morose
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2018 at 21:30
I am not sure if you don't understand the changes or think I am a complete Illy noob, but let me reply:

1 - Yes, it is a fact that it takes much more time to create crafted gear as it does troops.  For instance, in a standard easy to do military town you can produce 920 sentinels per day (300% sov bonus).  1 bowyer level 20 and specialized for 1 type of bow can make 124 crafted bows per day.  There are 4 terrain types, so you would need 4 towns with bowyers to supply your armies for the 4 terrains.  If you had 2 level 20 bowyers you could produce 192 crafted bows per day, and if you had 3 it would be 216 crafted bows per day.  In order to keep up with production, you would need at least 2 level 20 skinners guilds per town.  Running the cost numbers, the going rate of plains materials is 10k gold per bow, hills is 1.5k per bow, mountains is 4.5k per bow, and forests is 3.4k per bow.  If we average that out, you get approx 5k gold per crafted bow.  This would cost you approximately 1 million gold per day per town in order to equip your sentinels with bows only for war.  216 crafted bows per day is the equivalent of 130 more sentinels in terms of military power per day due to their equipment bonus.

Conversely, you could increase your sov to 400% and produce more sentinels per day.  An extra 100% sov gets you an extra 230 sentinels and costs you 85k gold in additional sov upkeep and 1.1mil of basics per day.  Now you would have to ship in basics, which would cost you approx 1.1mil gold per day, so the cost is basically the same.  Now let's throw in the rest of the variables.  First, if you are hunting your own 216 animal parts per day you are losing troops due to the hunting and killing.  Secondly, at the time of writing this there are approximately only 5-10k of all of these specific parts in total for sale at Centrum.  Even best case scenario you are unable to keep up with demand for animal parts and you will not have full ques at all times.  Bottom line is equipment is great, and I use equipment all the time.  It is not feasible to use in most attacks or defense during a conflict due to production limitations. 

2 - Can't help who is active in the forums, and it does seem a bit trollish.  I personally don't care what 12th century warfare looked like, since this is a fantasy realm with very little in common other than it's subject matter.  Furthermore, the point of the game is to provide a balanced game play where possible, sometimes sacrificing real world logic (i.e. 50k knights being able to charge up a mountain or through a large forest).  The main point of the suggestion was to make it harder to take towns that are not surrounded by plains by changing the way certain troops perform on said terrain.  Right now if a siege lands on a mountain or buildings the advantage is very much in favor of the defenders (sieger).  With my proposed changes, whatever troop type is defending has a counter to basically every terrain, allowing for the breaking of those specific sieges easier.  If you actually read the PPH sheet I provided, you can see the balance between all troops and all terrain.  Also, I have made it somewhat easier to siege on plains which right now is complete suicide.  All in all it is a much more balanced system.

3 - Not sure of the point here, the math is quite simple and once again yes equipment is used all of the time.

4 - Once again weapons and armor simply change the number in a very linear fashion and is quite easy to figure.  Once again, the weapons and armor changes nothing of the balance since it is an outlier now the same as it would be after the changes.  They still function the same with the same percentages.

5 - My whole entire point was to show how changes within the code and requiring absolutely no rework or redesign could help further balance the military game play much as the infantry updates did, and I provided the proof behind the concept to show this fact.

I have been playing Illyriad since 2012, have taken part in multiple wars and fought in countless battles and taken part in a myriad of different strategies.  I and many others who fight see that there is a certain amount of staleness to the combat system, and these changes were simply suggested to solve this problem.


-------------
https://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/a/p/372651" rel="nofollow">



Print Page | Close Window

Forum Software by Web Wiz Forums® version 12.03 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Copyright ©2001-2019 Web Wiz Ltd. - https://www.webwiz.net