Non-instantaneous battles

It does seem that some of the others discussing this point are swallowing vast tracts of complexity or injecting vagueness and confusion without batting an eyelash.  Just imagine how much more complex things get if you expect idle parties to wait on adjacent squares, which then get occupied/attacked by parties!  And what if the required square (or all of them) is lake or a city?  However, I think my initial proposal addressing this point was actually fairly complete and functional:

HonoredMule wrote: [Occupying] newcomers get paired with the earliest nap/confed found, or if there are none, takes a new side.  Every time there's 2 idle sides, due either to new arrival or battle completion, those two sides duke it out.  The results would be very chaotic and costly, but that's probably how it should be in hotly-contested space.

In retrospect however, I might change it to latest nap/confed found, depending upon whether it's desirable that the first battle last the longest.  Many later armies would be most interested in focusing their expense on influencing the earliest battle, which might be one containing a siege army or whose outcome dictates the recipient of some reward such as control of something.  But then maybe it should be required that one fight his way through the more recently begun battles surrounding the original one...and if control is based on some aggregate measure of presence across all battles, it won't matter as much for non-siege scenarios.

I knew this would be dug up!

some random guy wrote: I knew this would be dug up! Good job Hora!  A new army should face the 2 others like they were united against it, and the 2 others should have the same predicament.

Thanks
Well, yes, but I thought of the new army only facing parts of those armies already there.

Let's make a very easy example, with 3 persons a 100 of the same units (like the other ones with equal defense, attack and evrything..)

Player1 occupies the square with 100 units
Player2 attacks with 100 unit, that would give a hard battle
player3 attacks after player2. With the current rules he would take over the square killing off the on remaining unit, and looses noone...

not instantanious (or something..) battles would give some other scenarios...

ok, then scenario 1: player3 attacks immediately after player2, also with 100 units
he would find two equal armies struggling each other, so half of his army attacks player1, other half player2. Those would have to defend while continuing their fight with half the force.
So it would look like 3 battles 50:50. If one battle is over, the one remaining unit of the winner would join in on one of the other fights, until only one (or perhaps even two) units of one player are left...well, he would have won obviously.

now scenario 2:
player 1 and 2 are halfway through their battle when player three arrives
makes 50 players each.
player three would see two equal armies, so split his army 50:50
player1 has now to fight with two enemies, same player3
That inflicts some calculation actually...hmm...oh, ugly
I tried to calculate for a dividing the forces they get actually attacked with, so player 1 divides 25:25, player 2 then must divide 17 to 33, but that inflicts back on player 3, giving an ugly three body problem (I think most of you know that from physics)
after some rounds I got a result, where player1 and 2 defended with their whole army against player3, so exactly what I didn't want

So it seems, we should go for total size, means players 1 sees 50 and 100, so divides 17:33, same player 2, player 3 stays with 50:50
So that gives battles 17:17, and twice 33:50, giving all in all 0 Survivers for players 1 and 2, with player3 taking the square with aproximatly 40 remaining  units (still haven't fully understood the victim calculation ).
A further possibility is to readjust armies during battle, means introducing some steps. That would inflict even more victims on player3 (don't want to calculate victims depending on number of steps )

So I'd prefer a new calculation each time an army arrives, parting the armies on total starting number of possible targets. Gives the most realistic result and further would inflict smallest calculations at least...


Edited by Hora - 22 Jan 2011 at 13:00

Hora, I avoided 3-way battles at all cost expressly to avoid the spider's nest of complexity that would result.  I wanted to minimize not only the complexity but also the amount of code reconstruction required to implement progressive battles.  Features that are too ambitious have a nasty habit of exploding in spectacular fashion, and as it is Stormcrow weighed in on the other thread alluding that the idea was too big an overhaul on the current system.

The fallout of making others wait in line is that the odd party enjoys an easy battle against the leavings, but I believe that is fair, realistic, and interesting.  It introduces risk on players who would conduct battles whenever there is a 3rd party likely to take interest.  It represents an opportunistic advantage that the 3rd party could and would take if given the opportunity.  And, it interacts with new forces in interesting ways.  For example, the 4th party could be reinforcement for one of the first 2 parties, but it gets delayed by fighting the third.  I could suggest other fallout and intregue, but I've got to run at the moment.

The '3 body problem' relates to planetary mechanics I think? does that even apply here?

But yeh maybe HM (and SC) have a point here with regards to complexity. I think maybe we are overthinking this a bit.