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Topic Closed06MAR12 - Gaming the Combat Casualty Algorithm

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HonoredMule View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Mar 2012 at 11:57
I love it.  It's a lot like my "non-instantaneous battles" idea, simplified to have the basic tactical balancing effect while skipping the complexity of battle duration.  I liked my earlier idea better because it offered other things as well (excitement, mid-battle tactical decisions, stalemates, etc.), but that's never going to happen and maybe this will.

One thing though: the combat modifier needs to be based on somehow aggregating the size of attacking armies, not number of them, and the effect needs to be organically related to how tightly coordinated are the attacks (i.e. combat modifier decays rather than suddenly expiring).
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Mandarins31 View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Mar 2012 at 12:51
HM, your instantaneous battle idea was wonderful... but it may not show its nose, indeed.

I like the coordinated attack decreasing a defensive bonus for big stack army.
Though i argree it would need to be refered to attack efficiency (total of attack power brought during a certain time), and not on armies count.

Though, i still see it exploitable... that is easyier to land few big armies than lots of small ones from different players. With that current idea, that would be possible to send tons of Little/medium armies over 20/30 minuts non stop, and end that action with the large ones, once the def stack bonus has been largely reduced or even became negative.

So, following that idea, maybe should that be calculated regarding number of different players attacking, lvl of coms, Etc... as it doest for def... that thing would sound like the grouped attack possibility we talked a lot about in old suggestions subjects... would be a very clever way to intruduce that "grouped attack" thing and more defensive possibilities.

Though, draw back of that is that it asks time to prepare a coordinated offensive/defense: need to set up a far enough time, for a maximum of players to be able to arrive in said time, depending on their travel times. In the case of a siege, the siegers would have all the time to prepare that... the siegers would really benefit of the surprise effect: the time the siege wipers prepare a coordinated attack to have a chance to destroy the siege, and do it efficiently, a city could be destroyed... well, you'll tell me that this is already the case, seing that a city can be destroyed in 24h or so from the  siege engines arrival.

It's also harder to coordinate an attack (moslty on a 10-20 minutes intervall), than coordinating a defense, for which arriving in a 12h range is pretty good (still surprise effect: aknowledgment, reaction, time of performing the plan (travel time))

I still like the idea, it's just that it would need to be developped to see the drawbacks, advantages, eventual unfairness, and adaptate in consequence.





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Albatross View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Mar 2012 at 16:23
This could be summarised in a single (new) attribute for an army: Stamina.

It's not so exploitable, is quite simple, and can be applied to travelling, attacks, sieges, raids, defensess, etc. Occupying and staying home would give a recovery proportional to occupation time.

The only dev problem would be when troops return home, and are redistributed among armies - what to do with the Stamina?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Mar 2012 at 17:10
Originally posted by Albatross Albatross wrote:

This could be summarised in a single (new) attribute for an army: Stamina.

It's not so exploitable, is quite simple, and can be applied to travelling, attacks, sieges, raids, defensess, etc. Occupying and staying home would give a recovery proportional to occupation time.

The only dev problem would be when troops return home, and are redistributed among armies - what to do with the Stamina?

The trivial option is to divide the "stamina" among the troops.  For example, a returning army of 100 units with 50% stamina and an army at home with 100 units and 100% stamina.  Transfer 50 units to the home army and you get 150 units with 83% stamina and 50 units remaining at 50% stamina.  Transfer those 50 units back and you have two armies with 100 units each, one with 83% stamina and one with 66% stamina.  If you keep doing that you will eventually have two armies with 100 units each and 75% stamina each.

That math is pretty easy to code.  Another option (to avoid the mm) is to automatically spread the stamina (mathematically) across all troops from the same player in the same square.  Same end result, two armies with 100 troops (or whatever the original ratio was) and equal stamina.  That's also easy to code.  Final option is to have a switch that allows the player to select between the two modes.  That would be somewhat difficult and would raise issues.  You could also track stamina on a per unit basis, but that would not be easy to code and would be a PITA from a player perspective.

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Rill View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Mar 2012 at 19:21
Stamina could also be a commander bonus/penalty applied to his/her division.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Mar 2012 at 10:49
After a few days (and a lot of battle report) I think this change has to be revised again.

Why?
The redistribution of casualties is not fair.

Let see this little piece of a report:

Commander: Arcorto da PiansanoElven Trueshots Elven Trueshot1Damaged for 0, 200 health remains.
Troops:Elven Trueshots Elven Trueshots2101209
Commander: Zoccolduro da PiansanoMarshals Marshal1Damaged for 0, 300 health remains.
Troops:Swiftsteeds Swiftsteeds21120
Troops:Sentinels Sentinels19118
Troops:Protectors Protectors20119
Troops:Wardens Wardens19118
Troops:Elven Trueshots Elven Trueshots21120
Troops:Wardancers Wardancers21120
Commander: Fone_Bone, ROCrossbowmen Crossbowman1Damaged for 0, 100 health remains.
Troops:Crossbowmen Crossbowmen101411013

This is a result of a tiny attack against an huge stacked army. As you can see here there are several different kind of units and all got 1 casualties. I think the last army (Crossbowmen) didn't partecipated in the redistribution and its 1 casualties is the original 1/1000 casualties hit.

Why this is wrong and bad ?

Because the program is redistributing casualties regardless of armies size.
Zoccolduro had an army of 120 units, and got 6 victims which is 5%, while the attack force was about 1/1000. This way 20 attacks with 1/1000 strength will completely wipe Zoccolduro army.

This is really a big damage for defenders, especially when we have MANY LITTLE PLAYERS helping a few bigger defending a place, which is usually what happen with new and little alliances.

I propose the redistributing has to be revised, it should take care of army size and avoid to wipe the litte one. May be using a limit, for example if the attack power is 1/1000 of the defender power, casualties should only touch armies where 1 units lost is no more than 1/100, or so....
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Mar 2012 at 11:40
I suppose that what you are showing is the particular case of the 0% casualties. The programe must have estimated all units was benefiting of the rounding equally and spread the casualties regardless to army size. I suppose this is what happens for each rounding at 1% of casualties close. If you get 25% casualties, it means you suffered a bit more than that as its rounded down as well, and that, enters in the 2nd pass calculation i guess.
Though, indeed, from what i understood, it didnt work as intended here, as only the weakest units should have been hit by the second pass and not all losing 1 unit... So yeah, in the case of a large stack that suffers less than 1% casualties multiple times, if that does that each time, that could be unfair for smaller players...
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Mar 2012 at 12:00
Originally posted by Mandarins31 Mandarins31 wrote:

I suppose that what you are showing is the particular case of the 0% casualties. The programe must have estimated all units was benefiting of the rounding equally and spread the casualties regardless to army size. I suppose this is what happens for each rounding at 1% of casualties close. If you get 25% casualties, it means you suffered a bit more than that as its rounded down as well, and that, enters in the 2nd pass calculation i guess.
Though, indeed, from what i understood, it didnt work as intended here, as only the weakest units should have been hit by the second pass and not all losing 1 unit... So yeah, in the case of a large stack that suffers less than 1% casualties multiple times, if that does that each time, that could be unfair for smaller players...

Yes.

And it also make defenders weaker, because wearing units from the little armies you also have an impact on commanders value and at a point, the army will be 0 units and the commander will disappear (I think this is happening, have to check because notifies are not clear to me atm).
So removing units from those little armies make a lot more damage than if they were removed from bigger one.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Mar 2012 at 13:10
Divisioning is simply not profitable anymore, actually it makes you loose more units. One huge stack would loose 1 unit as well.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Mar 2012 at 14:11
Originally posted by Bonaparta Bonaparta wrote:

Divisioning is simply not profitable anymore, actually it makes you loose more units. One huge stack would loose 1 unit as well.

I would be ok if it was just not profitable, but actually there is a relevant negative effect.
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