What about interactive Tactical Combat ?

[Cainehill]

Hullu said:
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!".

*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.

[thejeff]

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.

[Hullu]

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

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'.

[PhilD]

Hullu said:

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'.

... 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...

[alexti]

PhilD said:
... 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).

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.

[Archonsod]

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...

[Endoperez]

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

Is it possible for a ***** Queen to kill a VQ if tooled up with the right equipment. That kind of thing...

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).