Battles observations

[GreenDestiny]

This is just few things that I would like to bring up about the Hex battles in the game.

1. To me I think the shooting range for infantry is to high. Shooting at someone three spaces away or more just does not look right. The most for infantry should be two hexes and maybe three for the rifle units.

2. I would like the casualties numbers to be color coded that float above the units for attacker/defender.

3. I also think the attacker/defender should start on opposite sides of the map, they start to close to each other as it is right now.

4. To me it looks like routed units always move to the top of the map or run around in circles. I had a few battles were everyone ran and gather at the top part of the map. It look kind of strange.

5. I think you should be able to place your units at the start of a battle depending on if it's a meeting engagement, defend or attack.

6. In my last battle I had artillery on a hill top. And I shot at a infantry unit that was six spaces away, they shot back and almost inflict as much casualties as I did. I think this maybe a bug, but can somebody try this out and confirm it ? Also shortly after that my game froze and I had to turn it off.

Well these are just some of my observations I'm sure they be properly ignored.[;)]

[ericbabe]

Thanks for the notes GreenDestiny. My counter-comments:

Infantry divisions are considered to have some intrinsic combined arms (some divisional artillery in this case) which justifies giving them some attack value at a longer range.

In older development versions of the game we started units closer to the edges of the map. The average playing time for an average detailed battle was about three hours. We thought this was too high.

I plan on changing routed unit behavior in a patch.

Artillery do much reduced damage when on hilltops -- someone wrote an excellent explanation for this elsewhere in the forum, but basically when cannonballs are fired from a height they don't skip but rather sink into the ground.

Eric

[Reiryc]

Infantry divisions are considered to have some intrinsic combined arms (some divisional artillery in this case) which justifies giving them some attack value at a longer range.

Since this is an upgrade choice (divisional artillery), shouldn't such a longer range only come into play after this selection becomes available?

[sol_invictus]

I assume the Upgrade simply improves an already intrinsic ability.

[JWW]

I had a most interesting battle yesterday. I spent one entire day and night searching for the enemy. No enemy forces were in sight when the battle started, which was unusual. I assumed a defensive position and awaited attack but nothing happened. So I finally sent my cavalry out and found them. I had to march my infantry and artillery across half the map to get to them. Very interesting, and differing greatly from what I've usually found. FYI, there were about 50,000 taking part on each side.

[GreenDestiny]

Thanks for the reply Eric.

As for the artillery on the hill top they were shooting at a unit that was 6 hexes away. the unit getting hit should be way out of range to return fire. And also they were in column formation and getting hit from behind or was it the flank? I don't know.. Anyways...I understand about intrinsic combined arms but this maybe a little bit to much, can you please reconsider.

And also thanks for making the game and I'm glad to see that the routed unit behavior will be look at in a future patch.

[jchastain]

ORIGINAL: JW

I had a most interesting battle yesterday. I spent one entire day and night searching for the enemy. No enemy forces were in sight when the battle started, which was unusual. I assumed a defensive position and awaited attack but nothing happened. So I finally sent my cavalry out and found them. I had to march my infantry and artillery across half the map to get to them. Very interesting, and differing greatly from what I've usually found. FYI, there were about 50,000 taking part on each side.

That is unusual, and encouraging. As I noted in another thread, the game usually does not seem to appreciate when it is the defender and can assume that posture. It sounds like in your case, it did just that. Bravo. Perhaps that capability does exist within the AI and it will only require a bit of tweaking to make it smarter about doing just that.

[ericbabe]

ORIGINAL: Arinvald

I assume the Upgrade simply improves an already intrinsic ability.

That's how I envision it as well. It would be fairly unusual for an infantry division to have absolutely no artillery attached. And giving infantry a bit longer range makes the game more enjoyable, I have found.

[ericbabe]

ORIGINAL: jchastain
That is unusual, and encouraging. As I noted in another thread, the game usually does not seem to appreciate when it is the defender and can assume that posture. It sounds like in your case, it did just that. Bravo. Perhaps that capability does exist within the AI and it will only require a bit of tweaking to make it smarter about doing just that.

The AI does have a defensive posture, but it perhaps doesn't employ it as often as it should. I shall tweak some values in this direction for the first patch.

[Jordan]

Artillery do much reduced damage when on hilltops -- someone wrote an excellent explanation for this elsewhere in the forum, but basically when cannonballs are fired from a height they don't skip but rather sink into the ground.

Arcing a rock into a pond vs skipping a rock across a pond

[Uncle_Joe]

The AI does have a defensive posture, but it perhaps doesn't employ it as often as it should. I shall tweak some values in this direction for the first patch.

Something to keep a potential eye on would be whether the game needs 'objectives' in the tactical battles. Currently there is no incentive to fight for control of the field per se. As human player, it makes sense to look for something defensible on the map and head there and ignore the rest of the map. Between two human players, this could lead to the 'Mexican standoff'.

Is there a definate battle timer to force the action? Would it be beneficial to have the players (including the AI) defending certain key spots rather than the more free-form battles?

Just some food for thought. I'm sure we'll get more input as human vs human TCP/IP games start to occur.

[ericbabe]

ORIGINAL: Uncle_Joe
Something to keep a potential eye on would be whether the game needs 'objectives' in the tactical battles. Currently there is no incentive to fight for control of the field per se. As human player, it makes sense to look for something defensible on the map and head there and ignore the rest of the map. Between two human players, this could lead to the 'Mexican standoff'.

Is there a definate battle timer to force the action? Would it be beneficial to have the players (including the AI) defending certain key spots rather than the more free-form battles?

There is a battle timer but it's pretty slow...it drives the attackers from the field after day 3 or 4. A faster timer (starting after day 2) may be in order.

I actually started to add objective points (control them all and win the battle...) to detailed combat but was worried that this would involve a major re-tooling of the AI (which it would!) It may be worth doing if it makes detailed combat sufficiently more enjoyable.


Eric

[jchastain]

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

ORIGINAL: Uncle_Joe
Something to keep a potential eye on would be whether the game needs 'objectives' in the tactical battles. Currently there is no incentive to fight for control of the field per se. As human player, it makes sense to look for something defensible on the map and head there and ignore the rest of the map. Between two human players, this could lead to the 'Mexican standoff'.

Is there a definate battle timer to force the action? Would it be beneficial to have the players (including the AI) defending certain key spots rather than the more free-form battles?

There is a battle timer but it's pretty slow...it drives the attackers from the field after day 3 or 4. A faster timer (starting after day 2) may be in order.

I actually started to add objective points (control them all and win the battle...) to detailed combat but was worried that this would involve a major re-tooling of the AI (which it would!) It may be worth doing if it makes detailed combat sufficiently more enjoyable.


Eric

The manual states that every unit of the attacker's forces loses morale every turn. If that is true, then it forces the attacker to take the iniative or grow constantly weaker until they break and flee. Such losses should impact each unit's max morale and should not be recoverable through rally. Personally, I find that to be a very effective design and far better than a random timer.

[Mynok]

The one observation I've made during all my detailed battles (numerous as France, one as Turkey vs Austria) is that the AI is very aggressive with its cavalry. Others have mentioned this as well. My Turks destroyed the Austrian cavalry in a hour because they rode up and charged steady infantry on heights, got disordered then were routed by concentrated defensive fire. I can see using this tactic agaist infantry in open ground or when there is a lot of artillery available to blast the infantry squares. But up on the heights? It was like Waterloo East.

[Reiryc]

ORIGINAL: jchastain

The manual states that every unit of the attacker's forces loses morale every turn. If that is true, then it forces the attacker to take the iniative or grow constantly weaker until they break and flee. Such losses should impact each unit's max morale and should not be recoverable through rally. Personally, I find that to be a very effective design and far better than a random timer.

I agree with this...

I like the push coming around day 3. Anything earlier could sometimes take away from an epic clash where both sides are down to their last unrouted units after each side took a proper beating (or in some cases some units high-tailed it out due to low morale to start with after only receiving light fire).

I think I've only had 2 battles go into day 3 and they are my most memorable as regards fun.

Now we just need to fix that mfc error! I've turned off detailed battles since the game crashes too often on the larger fights.

[Titanwarrior89]

I like what you have done with artillery. I wouldn't make too many changes.[:D]

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

ORIGINAL: Arinvald

I assume the Upgrade simply improves an already intrinsic ability.

That's how I envision it as well. It would be fairly unusual for an infantry division to have absolutely no artillery attached. And giving infantry a bit longer range makes the game more enjoyable, I have found.

[marc420]

Is there a table anywhere of the firepower of units at various ranges?

If we could see that the musket fire really has effect at range 1, with limited effect at range 2, and its almost only divisional/brigade artillery beyond that, then this would be easier to make sense of.

Is there anyway to slow down the messages during battle? Particularly when an ally is involved, I see long stretches of lots of messages going by too quickly for me to make any sense of. Battles like that can be a bit of a blur. I do like the idea of color coding the casualtie numbers that float up off the units. But I'd make it national colors instead of attacker/defender. That way, if I'm French I know the blue numbers are me.

Personally, I'd like to see the sides start a bit further apart. To me it would add some tactical interest as you could develop your battle plans more instead of finding yourself in instant melee. Lt Cavalry could become more useful if it serves as a scouting/screening force in the early parts of a battle. Personally, I'd gladly trade the extra time a battle takes for that. Maybe make it an option players can select? When setting up a game, players could chose "close battle start" or something like that to get the current system. The alternative would have almost all troops entering the battle map from a map edge as reinforcements. Maybe it could be different if the defender is stationary, or if both sides are moving into a region as a meeting engagement.

I don't mind if battles last longer than 3 days, and I'd hate to see an arbitrary rule forcing that. I view the "battle" as the coming together of the armies in a big region. For example, I'd view the whole sequence of Quatra Bras, Ligny and Waterloo all as one "battle" where armies all meet in a region. I'd like maps big enough and battles long enough for what would essentially be a series of engagements in a region like that to play out. I'd even say you might want to make the tactical battle maps bigger to handle cases like that.

As for objectives, about the only things I can see would be river crossings, cities and retreat hexes. If I'm attacking across a river, then as the attacker I should have to secure a river crossing to get to the enemy, and if I don't that should be an automatic retreat back to the side of the river I came from on the strategic map. Cities are already in the game, and you should be able to assault a city as part of the tactical battle. Gaining certain hexes in the city should count as capturing the city on the strategic map. And for retreats a player should have to get to certain hexes to retreat in certain directions on the strategic map. An attacking player that lets a defender get behind him and take his retreat hexes should now be forced to have any retreats go a direction he doesn't want to go on the stratgic map.

But for most tactical size battle games, the "objectives" are really just forcing the players to follow the historical battle. Ie, a village or hill became important in the historical battle, so its an objective in the game. But for CoG, just let the opposing generals decide which villages and hills they want to fight over. Just generally say the attacker has to push the defender out of the way, or else the attacker is the one retreating at the end.

[Reg Pither]

ORIGINAL: marc420

Is there a table anywhere of the firepower of units at various ranges?

If we could see that the musket fire really has effect at range 1, with limited effect at range 2, and its almost only divisional/brigade artillery beyond that, then this would be easier to make sense of.

If I'm attacking across a river, then as the attacker I should have to secure a river crossing to get to the enemy, and if I don't that should be an automatic retreat back to the side of the river I came from on the strategic map. Cities are already in the game, and you should be able to assault a city as part of the tactical battle. Gaining certain hexes in the city should count as capturing the city on the strategic map.

Very good ideas. I'd love to see those features implemented if possible.

[GreenDestiny]

I agree, an option that lets the player decide what kind of battles they want to have would be great. Then if you feel like it you could go for quick, close, or far detailed battles. The more options the better I say.

I would also like to see something like a mini campaign on a larger battle map in which reinforcements could show up on day 2or3 or more from a different side of the map depending on the terrain and were they came from on the strategic map.

And color code for casualties float text could go something like Red=Great Britain, Blue=France, Green=Russia, Black=Prussia, White=Austria, Yellow=Spain, Orange=Sweden, Tan=Turkey and all the others Nations could be gray.

[Heartland]

ORIGINAL: marc420
Personally, I'd like to see the sides start a bit further apart. *snip*

Agree completely, as in my mind there should be just a bit more time to array forces in proper way, not mention that some scouting could be fun as well. The suggestion about having an option for "close battle start" is excellent, IMHO.

Of course, allowing players to further optimize their starting positions could make the tactical battles easier (too easy?) in a way, as I'm sure the AI could be tricked somewhat easier...?