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Topic ClosedTo dodge, or not to dodge?

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Poll Question: Allow unopposed armies to reduce population?
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13 [34.21%]
25 [65.79%]
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abstractdream View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Topic: To dodge, or not to dodge?
    Posted: 17 Aug 2013 at 18:32
From the Myr Player Spotlight interview (16 August, 2013):
What area of the game do you think needs the most improvement?
Originally posted by Myr Myr wrote:

Battle mechanics. The way things are set up there is no way to damage your enemy without sieging and destroying cities. If I send my troops at a city my opponent just needs to move their troops out of the city and nothing happens. I think troops hitting a defenseless city should burn, loot, and kill, doing damage to a city without completely destroying it. There should be resources stolen, buildings de-leveled, and a corresponding loss in pop. The way to stop the intruders would be to defend. I think it would take a lot of bitterness about war out of the game.


Originally posted by Halcyon Halcyon wrote:

I disagree that direct attacks doing damage will lower the bitterness about war. Much shorter time for developing cities will cause war to be less frightening. As things stand, there is too much to lose when going to war. It takes a year to build a city and a day to lose it. That's a bitter lemon to swallow.


I agree with Myr's assertion. She stated that allowing attacking armies to do REAL damage to cities (IE: reducing population) would cut down on some of the "bitterness" currently associated with war. I believe this would result because currently, the only way to cause damage in any meaningful way is to use catapults.

When a siege with catapults gets going, especially on a large city, some MAJOR damage can be done in short order. Conversely, if an army could march into an undefended city, set fires, kill innocent civilians, along with the usual pillaging before returning home, the "victim" of this attack would be more likely to keep their army stationed inside the walls of their city to defend it rather than sending them on bivouac outside the city for a few minutes while the attack takes place. I believe this would reduce the number of catapult sieges being launched during wartime, thus overall reducing serious damage. It would also add new strategies and dynamics to warfare, therefore increasing the enjoyment of the participants.

I believe that neither shortening build times nor increasing siege times is a viable option. If (high level) buildings were quicker to build it would considerably reduce the challenge and prestige associated with becoming a large, veteran player. If sieges were made more difficult by lengthening the time required, a major element of battle in Illyriad would virtually disappear.

Ok, so cast your vote and if you like, make your case:
Bonfyr Verboo
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Sloter View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Aug 2013 at 19:33
I voted NO.

Mostly because it can already be done by sending siege engines to attack directly, something that Myr knows already :) so attacking army can make some real damage with some effort invested in preparation (producing siege engines, paying its upkeep and sending it to the target)

If for some strange reasons devs decide to consider that option of allowing attacking army to reduce pop of targeted city without siege engines than maybe there should be some special order for that army other than Attack (Pillage sounds ok) but it should also result in reducing attacking army attack points by 50% at least (write it off for exmpl as lack of formation while troops run around city with torches stealing stuff and killing civilians)



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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Aug 2013 at 20:12
I voted no. Population in Illyriad is tied directly to building levels. It's an abstraction--it might not make logical sense, but the simplification makes the game playable. I'm comfortable with requiring players to invest their effort in a siege to do permanent city damage.

I would, however, like to see unopposed armies carry off valuables. It seems silly that your infantry would haul back 200,000 stone when they could have looted 500 pikes from the armory. Maybe we could get a Plunder setting that would set soldiers to haul off 1/10th their usual capacity in items instead of resources? And I also want a Rustle option for taking their herds of cows and horses. And a Pillage option for stunning or damaging sov structures outside the city (I'd resolve it like a direct siege, vs. the defending army inside the city, but inflicting harm to a specific sov structure within 6 squares of the city).

There should be negative aspects to your army abandoning the city when it gets attacked. I just don't think building damage is appropriate due to the game mechanics, no matter how realistic it might seem. I mean really, if your army marched into a city and attacked, why couldn't it just capture the city right then? At the very least, the home army and/or commander should suffer a penalty to morale and its defense stats, for abandoning their homes against the enemy.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Aug 2013 at 22:21
I have only simple cavalry dudes and no tanks.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Aug 2013 at 23:07
I voted no.  I agree with what Sloter said about an existing mechanism.

However...
I think there should be a consequence.  The population should at a minimum be rendered ineffective for a period of time (no production, no builds, no research for X amount of time).  It is unrealistic to think they would continue to be productive little drones when their world is crashing around them.

and/or... give the attacker a temporary boost to production for a fixed amount of time based on the production/build/research of the undefended town. 

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Aug 2013 at 00:00
it's worth remembering that a part of the penalty imposed on an army for doing population damage  is paid in speed.  allowing an all-cavalry army to do so with no additional rules changes will rebalance the military game far(ther) to the favour of humans and elves.  Myr's comment appeals to realism, but how is realism served if a cavalry army is allowed to loot and pillage a town with a lvl 20 wall without the service of siege engines?  are we to assume the horses are stackable?
i do not think the builders of the community will have a more positive attitude about the loss of population after a change that makes the loss both more likely and more abrupt.  i would counter that what illyriad actually lacks is a mechanism for credible defensive strategy.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Aug 2013 at 01:58
That's true. If building damage were allowed for attacking armies, the attacking armies should be 100% blocked by the city wall. Cavalry would be unrealistic, but perhaps ground troops could use ladders or something.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Aug 2013 at 05:35
I like the plunder option idea as well as the population being rendered useless to work for a period of time. I just think that there should be some additional penalty to leaving your helpless citizens at the mercy of an enemy army. What if an army hit an undefended city and did one of several random things such as burning food storage which would wipe out any food in the city? Maybe rustle cows or horses? Or poison the wells and make the population unable to work for a period of time? 
It would also add a challenge to troop balance since it would be beneficial for each town to have defensive troops in the city.


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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Aug 2013 at 07:33
Originally posted by Myr Myr wrote:

I just think that there should be some additional penalty to leaving your helpless citizens at the mercy of an enemy army.
i don't disagree at all that it's a very silly mechanic, worthy of Monty Python, to have all the armies leave the city for their own protection while the the attackers sort through citizens looking for anyone in armour, finally leaving in disappointment.  i'm only saying that it works that way because the abstraction of combat in illy is so very...abstract.

to put things on a firmer basis, unwalled cities would have to be immediately raidable while walled cities were not; t1 and t2 siege engines would need to be collapsed together (because really, there are siege engines that only affect walls and others that only affect buildings?); siege attacks would attempt to focus on walls and some number of "misses" would hit buildings; and once walls were reduced (or sapped by engineers, or gate security infiltrated by spies in place) the raid/razing/conquest could occur.  cities would need to take population damage in a raid based somehow on the amount of goods taken.  and why stop there?  sieges without engines should still be effective, because the food production is not really "in the city", it's in the surrounding countryside, outside the walls.  so a siege in progress should disrupt growing, mining, etc., hindering or preventing the generation of resources.  at that point, a patient player without siege engines could fairly well starve a village in the same way we currently reduce population with siege engines...just like they did in the "good old days" of real siege warfare.

defenders, of course, ought to be doing more than sallying forth from within a sieged city.  why not allow their own siege engines to fire on the besieger's engines (with similar collateral damage for misses)?  what about a sovereignty building representing additional fortifications, whose purpose would be to increase the bonus awarded by the wall?  might the long-awaited battle magic help to even the contest, since the defenders would be so much closer to their mana than the attacker?

i don't have the depth in illy combat that a lot of you in this thread do, but from what i have seen making it "realistic" would require more work than a point fix or two.  i can only speak for myself, but the reason my defensive garrisons leave a city under attack is that defending is a fool's errand in illyriad.  if my troops had some way to sell their lives more dearly in defence, with cover behind a thick stone wall, than attacking without any such advantage, that would be enough to keep them in town.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Aug 2013 at 09:23
Some good points here especially regarding cav having the advantage even if walls are lvl 20. I have two ideas to add to Myr's that offer a compromise. One, the amount of damage to population troops would do should be considerably less than that a catapult could do and maybe even have % chance ratio in order with the catapult/ram hit & miss ratio. Two, should wall levels begin to affect troop units' ability to "get into" a city to attack maybe based on a % chance also? This would, in effect, offer more of the realism Myr is looking for as well as give walls more of a role in the game and increasing their defensive worth. An alternate method of bringing realism to wall defenses is to implement the building and use of wall defense "units" such as spiked barricades and wall top crossbow engines within the wall tab. These could be limited to so many per wall level & wall level requirements for the building of each type unit if more than one. This would add many new dimensions to the war mechanics of Illy. Instead of dodging being your only option facing a set of troops outweighing yours, you would have more options for defending your city. Let's face it, a loss is a loss Cry and Myr's idea reflects this.



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