Solving the Mutual Annihilation Issue

Two, six, twenty seconds, this isn't the main issue.

The critical issue is making army engagements more than a single blob of units smashing into another blob of units. Blobs colliding that annihilates one blob and just shrinks the other one is an incredibly boring way to conduct a war, and armies should interact in a more intricate manner. The time it takes for one blob to kill another blob is of minimal importance by comparison.

Obviously groups of units will sometimes get into close combat. But if these groups are small pieces of an army rather than the entire army in one blob, it doesn't matter if they resolve quickly. Those units are committed regardless of the pace of such a pitched battle.

When you talk about retreating or disengaging, you should be talking about the rest of the army, not the units trading shots at close quarters with the enemy. Running away from a fight in close quarters is called a rout because the enemy will just chase you.

Exactly. Formations are partially important in the current build (particularly flanking tanks). You can smash blobs, but defensive lines do well at resisting that. Particularly if you can reinforce the defensive line or out range the units moving in. And even in a same unit type engagement, it seems that surrounding enemies on multiple sides does a better job than just moving one dense blob into them.

The current pacing (I know... I often argue in favour of status quo, I'm working on being more open minded) does mean that your units are committed to an attack and you're not randomly telling units under fire to do pirouettes.

And I am talking about the rest of the army. My point is that it rewards scouting because it means you have to do your micro before battle actually commences. Once you've been ambushed you're pretty much screwed.

You guys have really discussed this at length already.

I feel units die too fast right now.
Don't get me wrong, I like waves and waves of cheap units.
And yes, smooshing yours against enemy units from different angles = strategy.

But there is not enough time for a player to notice, decide and then react to what happens on the battlefield.
This new camera/minimap thing may help battlefield awareness a bit and shorten response time required.
However, squishy cheap units make it feel like we are playing with a bunch of fleas.
I'm not attached to those units at all, and even if I was, my attention is better focused on econ and base building.


Being able to execute a strategic retreat is a good thing too.
I feel that we have lost good micro and tactical movement of units.
We currently reward the player for engaging with the right quantity.
But really, there is not much reward for making a smart retreat onto higher ground.

That's true.

Mouth locked and key thrown away

I think formation rules and better unit management UI would help on this front. Units firing uphill should have shorter range and vice versa due to gravity's effects on projectiles. If we could organize units into formations like circle/square/wedge, etc at the cost of speed, that would help too.

Finally, there needs to be siege units of some kind to take down defenses. Right now flanking with units is sort of an ill proposition because you're just going to run into perimeter defenses and die.

I disagree that micro has been thrown away.... maybe it's just me but when I see an opponent trying to blob my blob I always immediately break my blob into two groups sometimes up to five and micro around their blob drawing fire with on squad then another constantly making the opponents units redirect their fire. Just because you don't take the time to watch your assault and micro them doesn't mean micro is dead. I ALWAYS micro my assaults ALWAYS!!!


Now would a slightly more lengthy battle interaction make micro an easier task??? Most definitely. I'm curious, extremely, curious as to what formation options uber will give us however, hopefully they stole some techniques from the total war series.I really liked the formation options in shogun2.

The same micro strategy applies to attacking ones perimeter defense as well. Draw fire between different squads until one slips in and smashes those defenses...... more unit hp would definitely make me happier as thwarting those God like defense turrets would, be easier.

I'm hoping we get the classical formations (Flying V, Refused V, Line, Cannae Tactic, Protected Flank, Strong Right/Left flank, Zama tactic)

Look, formations are all well and good. But there must be reasons why those formations are functionally different when used. If a formation is just a shape for a blob then it is pointless. A blob of units that just arranges itself in a V is silly. It's still a blob; if two V formations collide and mutually annihilate, you have changed nothing.

For example, the entire idea of "flanking" depends on directionality of engagement. A blob does not have a direction, and it cannot be flanked.

A line of battle is multiple groups of units arranged in a line. This line has a direction; forward, where the front units are the shortest range, and are the most mobile, hardiest, and most expendable main combat units. Back, where longer-range units are protected by the front, and the back field where soft targets like support assets are hidden and kept a safe distance away from the enemy.

To "flank" a line formation, you put a group of units arranged in a line facing the END of the line on one side, in an act which is more properly known as "crossing the T" when applied to formations (technically enfilade and defilade for land units, but bear with me). This creates a shape of units that looks like a T, with your units forming the top of the T, and the enemy forming the vertical line. Your units can effectively engage all the units on one side of the enemy formation, and the enemy's forces are arranged ineffectively since most of them cannot actually fight.

Lines also engage each other in much more interesting ways than just blobs of units colliding and annihilating. I won't go into too much depth, but suffice to say that a "retreat" of a formation behaves extremely differently from just running away with a blob units that you just committed and now want to disengage.

We have to make players arrange their units across space and in formations with shapes, instead of just blobbing groups together which just collide and annihilate.

In my opinion, making players cautious with fragile units, incorporating intelligence gathering into gameplay in a fundamental way (i.e. radar not sufficient), and making defensive plays and small maneuvers potentially highly efficient will cause players to spread out in a shape in this way.

A well-arranged line of battle could actually stop a blob very efficiently. And two lines can engage one another using artillery, missiles, air units, and a variety of different small unit groups in a lot of interesting ways.

The problem is the BLOB, and the idea of having variable combat effectiveness and relatively fragile units inspiring caution will cause the blob to stop being optimal. A blob attack into a fixed point is still perfectly doable- but it would be a deliberate assault into an enemy formation at a certain location. Not just two blobs that annihilate and leave nothing on the field.

If both sides have many units spread all over a large area within which an engagement happens, then a confrontation of units does NOT clear the field immediately. Some bots or tanks can collide, with one group being victorious, but the engagement between the large formations is still ongoing, but now with some tactical changes as a result of the recent development.

Ledarsi - When you say blob, I understand a ball.

I don't understand what you're arguing for anymore. Are you basically saying that 4 dox, fighting 4 dox, will always completely destroy the other group? Because we know that isn't the case. I have had hero doxen who kill multiple dox before finally dying themselves.

Blob, ball we mean the same thing.

I will throw together some vector illustrations in a minute that should show the difference between a blob and a more interesting battlefield. That should greatly facilitate understanding of the idea, especially since it requires an immense amount of verbiage to explain.

Nice that would be helpful.

OK here is what I mean. A blob or ball of units is simply a single object on the map that occupies a small amount of space surrounding a specific point. Two blobs may rove around the map before colliding, but in the grand scheme of things you really have to just get reinforcements to actually change the outcome of the confrontation.

Battles between armies should take much more time, and also have much more structure than blobs that mutually annihilate. Blobs can engage in any direction, they can move in any direction without strategic considerations, and the only real strategic question is "to attack, or not to attack?" They only interact through an all-out pitched battle, and the bigger blob always wins.

I propose adding unit types to discourage this, including defensive tools as well as tools to deal damage to an enemy army a bit at a time instead of all at once in a single pitched battle.

The following is a diagram of two armies composed of a variety of different units arranged in simple lines. Bear in mind that each symbol represents several individual units, and that the distances between the groups represented by icons are significant. It would be entirely possible to attack just one of the groups without being shot at by other groups unless they have excellent range, or are close by.



Each formation has a screening line of combat units (tanks) at the front, with scouts on each side. The second row of defensive anti-tank units that make it inadvisable to just directly attack with a huge number of tanks, and I just threw in a combat engineer in the middle because it would probably be common in PA to bring constructors with an army that is far afield. Lastly, the artillery and missile anti-air are in the very back due to their long range and vulnerability.

Neither side should just blob up all their tanks into one very large group and just attack, because the army being attacked will probably get a very favorable exchange. So instead, both sides should scout, use their artillery, air support if they have it, and maneuver around to try and get free kills and advantageous positioning.

For example, attempting to get a scout to view the enemy anti-air and using the artillery to destroy it, and then bomb the anti-tank units and tanks. Eventually the enemy army will be weak enough that a direct assault will crush it. However the other player probably knows this, and will instead retreat, walking the line backwards and ceding territory while regrouping with reinforcements.

These line formations don't just collide into each other, and then one of them is gone. They both get chewed up a little bit at a time, and the engagement takes enough time that reinforcements can arrive for both sides. Both sides maneuver with small forces, use long-range weapons to soften the enemy army and snipe specific targets, they can move groups of units forward and backward, and expand the front along the sides. The front moves forward and backward across territory, instead of a single pitched battle after which one army is just gone, and the other just drives on. Such a crushing victory that the other army can just advance like the enemy isn't even there is possible, but will be very rare.

Battle lines also don't actually have to be straight- when a long line gets pushed back at one point, it curves. It can also be assaulted and broken, giving the attacker free rein to attack the back of the line from within, and even push right past and start killing mexes and other units and structures that are probably relatively unprotected. A breach is a huge problem, one which the attacking player will exploit to break through and deal huge damage to soft targets for free, and will also try to roll up the line. A breach must be addressed immediately by the breached player, and with all the resources available in the area.

To return to the concept of flanking, the following is a diagram of one force completely "crossing the T" on an enemy formation.



The blue force can bring all of its weapons to bear, but the red force is extremely ill-positioned to fight back. Its vulnerable assets in the rear can be attacked by tanks, and most of its tanks are not even close to the enemy. Crossing the T allows you to "roll up" the line by killing its combat units on the front a few at a time.

The above is obviously an extreme example; you will virtually never see this actually happen. Under normal circumstances, the red force would turn to face you as you maneuvered into position. Which means in order to get into this position, you would need a second army to hold red in place and then move in from the side. And if you outnumber the enemy by 2 to 1 or better, the enemy should probably retreat instead of allowing you to obliterate them.

Still, flanking with some units (instead of an entire army) has the same effect, but to a reduced degree of advantage.

There are a huge number of possible ways to deal damage to an army without just a direct charge into pitched battle with all your units. A maneuver like flanking is just one. And these methods should be more common in terms of the amount of time players spend using them than pitched battle. A pitched battle such as two groups of tanks fighting it out should be over quickly.

But going back to the first image, suppose both sides send a group of tanks around to the right side. The two groups of tanks fight it out, and the battle is over in a few seconds. The engagement is hardly over. That wasn't even a very significant portion of either side's strength.

Increasing unit HP will make a pitched battle tank longer. It will make that tank battle between two groups take longer. And it will make pitched battles with the entire armies take longer.

But here is the problematic part, in my view. Increasing HP will also make it easier to just attack directly into an enemy formation. The critical factor of having such a prolonged engagement between armies is that neither side can just blob up and charge. And the reason that is true is because they will suffer so many casualties during that charge that by the time they close to range, they will be at a strength disadvantage, and will be crushed.

Giving every unit more HP means it becomes more effective as an assault unit, and defenders require far more firepower to inflict enough kills to change the outcome. Instead of bothering with a complex, mixed army which is spread out, it makes sense just to make a single enormous group and overwhelm the enemy immediately. In response to this fact, the other side won't do this, and will also just make a large group, knowing that the key to victory is simply having the larger group.

A variety of ways to have a highly efficient exchange is critical to having an interesting strategy game. The most important is the defender's advantage, but there are many others that should not be neglected, including alpha strike units, long-range units, and yes, even assault units, which are specialized to be used as an assault force to attack an enemy formation and crush it.

Fragile units must respect the enemy's weapons and stay out of range unless you decide to engage. They are also easier to pick off, especially for picking off just a few at standoff range, or small groups of units fighting in the field. However each individual unit is also relatively unimportant, so you can lose some of your troops to being picked off without much incident. It is only after a considerable amount of time, and many actions by both sides over the course of an engagement of two formations, that your force starts to be significantly weakened.

The engagement is slow, even though a pitched battle is both quick and bloody.