Re: What about interactive Tactical Combat ?
 

As someone stated before the inclusion of the option ( focus on option) of interacting in combat would mean a greater micromanagement burden.
What I meant would be the possibility to interact a bi more in tactical combat.
As an example (someone pointed that out sometihng similar) I had a spell caster that "incidentaly" destroyed everybody around him due to the nature of it own spell.
The ability to choose when to activate that spell would change completly the outcome of the combat.

The single ability for commander+squad to decide when to "attack|move| stay| spell" during turns would make a more deep commitment to the tactical decisions.
Of course a timeout would be needed.

For MP games the interaction during combat would not be needed.

Someone stated before the idea of a pre-combat set of orders (scripting) in order to achieve the ability to control the tactical combat...
If that is a way to achieve some control over tactical so be it...

Of course something like that would change the game mecanics a lot...
But for better I suppose.

Regarding the simulator issue I would agree that using a tool like that would ruin the "magic" deep of this game...

Re: What about interactive Tactical Combat ?
 

Also a lot of results involve random numbers which would be different.

Re: What about interactive Tactical Combat ?
 

Exactly. That IS what I think. Dont forget that I play it solo and I love randoms. So as far as Im concerned less strategy in facvor of more randoms is not a threat. But as far as MP gaming, Ive seen games destroyed where every little thing could be so completely tested that a slight benefit amounted to defining the ultimate absolute winning strategy. There was no more reason to buy it, play it, discuss it. Or it turned into a continual give and take between player-testers and developers that it also wasnt worth really playing the game. As far as Im concerned that would suck and it would be stupid to give that ability to the players. Yes, keep them in the dark and make them PLAY the game to find their strategys.

Oops. Sorry for that. What I meant to say was in MY opinion there are some factors which might make.. nahh screw that. You wont play diplomat so why should I.

Such a flat factual statement? Maybe you meant to say that in your opinion that was..
Scratch that also

No, I posted a link to a Battle Simulator. It works. It works better than Johans as far as Im concerned. You might like something fancier like some other games have but I see little benefit in having the devs work on one. Especially since the link I gave allows for well over 90% of whatever tests anyone wants to do and what little is left over Id doubt would show up in any other simulator.

Re: What about interactive Tactical Combat ?
 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with playing a game to win. If playing to win means that people use "unthematic" or "cheesy" tactics, then the problem is that the thematic and "non-cheesy" strategic elements aren't powerful enough. I also don't know why you feel that your games against the unintelligent AI would be threatened by the availability of a powerful learning tool to multiplayer players.

I'm glad that you feel that chess is a worthless strategy game thanks to its complete lack of randomness.

Personally, I'd also like to see some concrete examples of games that you think were ruined by such balancing.

It's _stupid_ to let players make meaningful decisions in a strategy game? If we follow that line of thought to its logical conclusion, it's clear that we must remove all decisions from the game. Everything shoud simply be a collection of random statistics where it's impossible to figure out any relationship between them. After all, it's stupid to let the players figure things out in the game.

I don't know why you feel that it's necessary to insult every player that wants more strategic decisions in their strategy game. I'd like to learn by playing the game. I'd even more like for new players to be able to learn by playing the game. Simulating battles is part of playing the game. It's merely one way of taking one of the most important parts of the game and working on learning that part without the distractions from the other parts of the game. Would you tell somebody who repeatedly practices a single measure of a difficult song to perfect it that they aren't playing properly? I'd hope not, because they are doing exactly what is needed to learn as effectively as possible.

Some statements are simply correct or incorrect. There is no question of opinion when somebody makes a statement of fact.

I don't see any program that you posted, and I'm not sure why you want to argue the semantics of what the term "battle simulator" means. You provided a link to a map file that can only be used to get an extremely rough approximation of the capabilities of a true simulator. There are dozens of critical variables that can't be controlled on that map that effect battles. You can't control who has dominion in the province, whether there's a magic or drain scale, the heat scale, what spells are available to the nations, what globals are in effect and how strong they are in the particular province, what afflictions the units have, etc.

I want to test 1000 (or 2000, or 100,000) gold worth of every national infantry unit against every other national infantry unit in enough battles to produce statistically significant results. Such results would be extremely useful in providing players with concrete information about the actual capabilities of the units that they have available to them.

Now, I'm not sure why you think that your opinion of what the devs work on should rule the day, while those people who disagree with you have opinions don't matter. After all, you're the one who constantly tells us all that every opinion is equally valid.

Re: What about interactive Tactical Combat ?
 

I don't think there can be much reconciliation between the type of gamers that want

Every mechanic explicitly stated and equation defined. Maps out income over time in a spreadsheet to see effects of growth or death. Etc..

vs

Keep everything a mystery and just let me get a "feel" for the game after playing it several times. Eventually I will learn what works through enough trial, error and exploration.


I fall into the first school and it is completely infeasible to me why someone would desire the second (but of course many people do). I imagine those the second school can’t imagine why someone would want to “waste” all of their time calculating out all the details. I doubt there is any reason to debate it as you are not going to change anyone’s mind about it.

The simple fact is that the first school of thought will absolutely win more games and be more competitive then the second group.

I'll admit that I have killed many "shallow" games by going to GAMEFAQs and reading every rule, spell and mechanic then deciding that "I know everything about the game now... no reason to play it.". There are a lot of games that hide "boring, obscure or easily abuse-able" mechanics behind this "mystery".

Dominions has enough depth and already is EXTREMELY transparent in how the mechanics work that I have little worry there will every be a master document that would make be bored with the game after I read it. You may end up with something like the chess books have where you have some optimum openings and counters to them… but once you get a few turns in (or through in a few more variables) all bets are off.

So does an easy to use battle simulator help the 1st school or the 2nd school more? I don't know?

If there was an easy way to test how well 100 netted Merman (how do nets affect glamour) vs. 20 Helheim PD would the "mystery" player want to find out before they committed the action in their MULTIPLAYER game… that they have already spent countless hours on over weeks or months?

For me (if it was a critical component of my strategy)... falling into the first camp I would setup a 2 player game, build up the armies and test it manually. So maybe this takes me 10 minutes... way to much time for the player from the second school.

BUT... if running that test only took 2 minute due to a semi-automated way to build the map files and start with all the needed troops would that be easy enough for the "mystery" player to play out the situation.

BTW, I ran this test a few days ago and the merman netters didn't have the slightest chance of victory. (due to javelins and no protection)

To me the challenge and FUN is finding the solution to the problem. What can Oceania do vs. Helheim that is effective? (nothing I’ve found yet) So if someone comes at me with a specific army that is destroying me… I want to find the counter to it. And I don’t want to lose the game trying to find that counter… or lose the game without finding the counter.

Tools to help me with this research are greatly desired. The great thing about Dominions is there is so much variety that their will never be “Turn 1 to 40, Complete path to Victory” document. Even if you wrote 200 articles (one for each nation vs. another) it still isn’t going to be comprehensive as you don’t know what independent troops, lucky magic sites, pretender designs, scales, actually recruited troops are… they are just guides.

Is Chess boring because of the 100’s of strategy guides and books made for it? Its fun because all the rules are transparent and how you apply them determines your victory or success.

And you are never going to have a simulator that makes things like the effectiveness of raiding with stealth troops broken down into spreadsheet format.

Gah… guess I didn’t listen to my “no point to debate it” comment at the beginning. Nor have I spent the last hour on WORK that I need to do.

Anyways… my chapter is complete.

Information hiding.
 

It's also true that there are behaviors that would be known to an actual commander, but are nowhere documented and thus can only be found by experimentation.

Behaviors such as a half-dozen mage-priests ALL completely neglecting to cast Bless when there are a few dozen sacred units in range, for instance, in favor of skellispamming; archers firing into a melee; troops cheerfully running through the left-behind cold/poison auras of their fellow monsters and dying because of it; mages casting Touch of Madness on their own side's archers and mages, thus stupidly ruining an otherwise perfectly valid deployment... and since the AI is perfectly incapable of avoiding much of what can go wrong, the only way to deal with this is to be aware of all this nonsense beforehand. That's the "unfair advantage" waiting to be discovered. Knowing one's own army is required for any commander.

ALL of that should, in fact, would be perfectly reasonable to know before battle. A simulator would NOT grant any additional information in pinpointing an opponent's disposition, tactics or use of resources. It WOULD grant information about what behavior they might have so people don't have to GUESS about such things as, say, "what happens if I mix units with different speeds in a squad with attack orders" or so forth.

Re: Information hiding.
 

A big advantage of a simulator is that it would improve our ability to balance the units, nations, and PD. I'm playing Pythium MA solo right now and I'm pretty shocked how strong its PD is compared to other nations I've played. The AI is clearly underestimating it. Is the Pythium PD too strong for the cost? It's hard to say without a more rigorous test and that's not too practical at present.

Re: Information hiding.
 

The manual lists it as Velites, 2xAlae Legionnaires, and Hastati after PD 20+. Do they have something else in addition? Slingers?

I think any third types of units received in PD under 20 aren't included.

It doesn't sound that powerful, though. Lots of chaff, albeit with a slightly better morale than is usual, and some good infantry as well. Tien Chi gets 3 Footmen and 1 Imperial Footman after 20+, but that isn't good either. Marignon gets Pikeneers and Crossbowmans, and Halberdiers after PD 20+; that's much better IMO. They get ranged units AND infantry. Then there's Mictlan, which gets Jaguar Warriors!

Re: Information hiding.
 

Hmmm PD could be tested on the Mini map also. I can set the nation that owns a province, and the PD of it. Then I can attack it to see what I come up against. Attacking it with the same army each time would be an interesting benchmark. That would probably be worth doing.

Re: Information hiding.
 

No, the Pythium PD doesn't sound strong at all. That's part of why I was puzzled at the result. Some slingers do show up so they are part of it. Mostly it's just that the defense is mostly shielded medium infantry, which is hard to kill, and they're not breaking. It could be that my opponents (Caelum, Mictlan, and Ermor) have fairly light units (Ermor already has lots of undead).

With AI positioning, an almost-all-ground force might be an advantage. The armies will normally meet in the middle and most archers have pretty mediocre aim at that distance. The Caelum archers are probably hurting their own force almost as much as mine, and I have a lot more infantry.

Incidentally, it's not that the forces are totally unbeatable by what the computer has. It's more that the computer now tries to send the minimum force to do the job and it's not sending enough. On more than one occaision the computer has split its force and what could easily have taken one province has gotten beaten attacking two. Even so, though, several times I'd given up a province for lost and then the computer failed even with a respectable force. Maybe I just got lucky on the morale checks. It would be nice to be able to test it.

Re: Information hiding.
 

I like the idea of a Battle Simulator, personally. It's hard to abuse it for multi-player reasons, considering how many unknowns you need to consider when looking at an enemy army, even with scouts. Scouting doesn't mention the four Magi the enemy has with the army, that one of them was (For some reason) empowered to cast Blade Wind, and that the Archers have experience 3. Even if you attack with that scout to get some more information you still can't predict Morale checks, projectile deviation, Magic Resistance saves, etc. And even after that attack, you still don't know the scripts for later turns, if the foe will add more units, if a Global Enchantment will be cast, or many other things.

I can't imagine it would be that hard to program in either, since it's basically lettting the player punch in variables for something the program's already doing.

Re: Information hiding.
 

I think a battle simulator would be really cool.

If nothing else to try out all of the really expensive summons and spells that you rarely get to use in a full game.

Re: Information hiding.
 

One more comment on the information people.

Wouldn't it then be cool that you could simulate all the battlers before you submit your turn.

"If there enemy doesn't bring reinforcements, do I win?"

I think it would utterly ruin the game. But it's more information, so the people who want information would definitely want the game to just tell you if you win or lose even before you fight? It'd be fun playing then when you'd know all you'd be losing in every fight (unless conditions change, they don't always change). And against indeps they never change, what fun would taking indies be after that!:) "Hmm, if I move this squad two suares to the north, I reduce my losses from 2 units to 0, whee!".

Too much information is bad. Enough information is good, and enough is a personal preference.

I think Dominions is pretty well around the 'enough' for me right now, there's some details I'd like to know, but definitely I don't want to be able to check my battles before I fight them.

Re: Information hiding.
 

If Johan has the time to work on the tactical engine I would prefer anything improving the tactical battles in the actual game (more choices of orders, better AI, etc) over a battle simulator. I am not strongly against the concept but don't think it's so necessary (adding 2 or 3 map commands, to determine the dominion of a province, the research levels of a nation at start etc..., would make any simulations possible, and looks easier to do than a whole program).

About tactical MM, I've also not the same opinion as many people here. Having more choices will never be seen as a bad thing by me, I would be glad to have options like playing with longer scripts, deciding how long the troops hold before attacking or chosing the spells the tactical AI is allowed to use. The strategical part of the game has lot of possible different settings, I would like to have as many options for the tactical part.

Re: Information hiding.
 

*yawn* One note Johnny, the way Dom works, you can have the _exact_ same battle, with the same troops, same scripting, and win with zero casualties one time, and get butchered another time. Or have you forgotten the pretty darn significant random factor? Spell / missile targeting - one time they hit friendly units, another time they hit the enemy. One time a key commander gets spells off, the next time they fail an MR roll or get killed by an arrow. One time a unit keeps fighting with 75% casualties, another time they turn and run after taking two minor arrow wounds.

Re: Information hiding.
 

True, but if it's trivial to run the battle a few dozen (hundred?) times, it won't be hard to minimize losses.

Much more significant is that you can't know what your opponent forces and scripting actually are.

Re: Information hiding.
 

You can get a pretty good idea about that if you feed some sheep to them before the big fight. Although you can't know them exactly, you might now them better than a 'wild guess'.

Re: Information hiding.
 

... which means, if you get to fight some random "retreat" scouts, you should change your scripts. Maybe just reverting left/right (top/bottom in the scripting screen) could work, if you don't feel like really changing your battle order (I have no idea how precise people's battle orders can be).

But, the random factor is pretty important, or at least it was in DomII - while the randgen bug still was there, it wasn't that rare to completely wipe off the opponent in the replay, just to discover you had actually lost...

Re: Information hiding.
 

Try again without a bogus reductio ad absurdum. You don't play Dominions 3 blindfolded, do you? If not, you play with information. The question is what information is one likely to have.

I submit that any sane commander will, given time to prepare, attempt to determine his troops' capabilities before ever seeing an enemy. Ever hear about training exercises and war games? At the moment, you can't even see the placement of your troops without a battle -- if your squads are large enough, you can get some fairly silly or dangerous results. It would also be obvious to see how mixed-unit squads behave, what commanders might consider casting or doing -after- they've finished their scripts, how eager your troops are to charge through killing clouds, et al.

If you wish to object to excessive information, the obvious points to object to include the lack of fog of war during battle replay regardless of whether it's real or simulated -- you know EXACTLY what happened, which is tricky -- while you may be able to count bodies on the field if you win, would you really know how many enemies were wounded, or what was cast, or all the equipment belonging to enemy leaders? Units are never misidentified or miscounted. In particular, information would justifiably be worse with a rout, while individual details are more likely to be lost in a large battle... and if everybody dies and you have no scouts there, where are your eyewitnesses?

Re: Information hiding.
 

Now, the obvious retort to that is that information on enemy capabilities before and even after contact is made is going to be fairly dubious; furthermore, that some capabilities are difficult to simulate safely.

That would suggest
(a) simulated melee, with minimal lethal spell use, between units one actually has, and

(b) actual combat against target summons that one has little compunction killing -- for instance, summoning Mechanical Men, phantasms, low-level undead, any living units if you're the Ashen Empire... that -would- allow demonstration of lethal capabilities or lack thereof. Done in-game, this would cost resources.

Ex. in-game command 'Stage attack' for a leader, where the mage serves only to direct the target units in an attack but does not actually participate.

That would be fairly realistic, avoids the palette / spoiling issues, and still gives useful information regarding what troops might do (whether they tire too easily, whether they can hit the broad side of a barn, et al)... and, as a battle, it would actually give experience to the units.

Re: Information hiding.
 

Heh. The "broad side of a barn" / accuracy issue is always a worthy question, given that archers with 13/14 accuracy can still generate more friendly casualties than enemy. But then again, some question exists whether that's accuracy or AI.

Re: Information hiding.
 

I usually script specifically for every major battle. And of course, everybody who can hide is hiding until then (in particular gem and item carrying scouts). Any reasonable opponent will make reconnaisanse attack (and not with a scout, but with something more serious to better identify enemy's plans), so you never reveal what you have in mind.

I think the points about optimizing your scripts against unknown enemy plans is moot. You really need to figure out what the opponent is going to do. If you can do it accurately you usually win without any simulations. That's a real challenge though. I can only see simulator as a help in exploring unfamiliar troops and situations. Good for general Dominion education, but not something that allows you to win games by itself.

Re: Information hiding.
 

The entire thought of a battle simulator being of advantage in multiplayer is somewhat moot.

As already pointed out, your unlikely to get the same random numbers generated (unless you can force the same seed, but even that could be screwed up with multiplayer).
Secondly, you don't know your enemy's script, powers or similar. No matter how many times you win in the simulator, if you don't realise that the enemy has six mages scripted to spam blade wind, it's going to be a somewhat devestating shock, or the fact that the enemy commander has Tempest and your strategy relies on archers...
Finally, you run several thousand simulations, get the optimal army to defeat your opponent and finally attack, only to find a completely different army. If your opponent is also using the simulator, then surely he's just as likely to alter their forces to the 'optimal' build as you are, at least if he realises an attack is imminent.

I doubt a battle simulator would actually be of any benefit to multiplayer in the sense most seem to think it would (in fact, I'd go so far as to say it might actually be detrimental, for the reasons listed above). What it would be useful for is running experimental combats - how many Androphag archers do you need to defeat 300 barbarians. Is it possible for a ***** Queen to kill a VQ if tooled up with the right equipment. That kind of thing...

Re: Information hiding.
 

Of course, Vampire Queens can have VERY different magics and battle scripts. If your ***** Queen happens to be able to cast Faery Trod, and you know where that one particular Vampire Queen attacked and what her script was, though, would give you the simulated results of a battle and the best item combination (especially when you only choose from items you can make yourself in a game).

It COULD change the game. I don't know whether or not it would - but it could.

A full-flexed battle simulator doesn't work for all the things it has been requested. I'd rather see what my army would look like in a battlefield - because, as Taqwus said, large squads act strangely, sometimes. This has nothing to do with a battle simulator that wouldn't affect the gameplay, because such battle simulator can't be used test squad-positioning (you can't copy squad locations with enough accuracy).

Re: Information hiding.
 

In that case, you'd be hoping you either had the items at hand, or could forge them before the VQ moved off somewhere. Your still going to be relying on the random numbers generated too - a single hit doing less damage than it did in the simulator could result in an entirely different outcome.

I'd assume the simulator would be accessible from the main menu rather than from within the game itself. You could then pick your forces, mages, scripts et al without worrying about research (would be annoying if you simply wanted to find out the effect of having a mage cast one spell or another, but had to first research the spell in the game). As a side bonus, it might actually give some purpose to the battlefield designer too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif (by allowing you to use the custom battlefields in the battle generator).