Vengeance of the dead, what the hell

[Taqwus]

GrobRIM said:
But maybe the 50-turn limit should be made more flexible; for example, once turn 50 is reached, give another 5-turn grace period, after which the battle is ended, unless at least one unit has been killed, in which case we reset the countdown to another 5 turns; or, instead of counting the number of units killed, take into account the net amount between units killed and units created.

Non-summons units, perhaps. If you just kill battlefield summons, the battle may be at a stalemate (ex. two skellispammers facing off...). If you're killing the -original- components of the armies, those numbers can't increase during battle.

[thejeff]

The problem is not the limit, or even that the defender loses, the problem is that these attackers don't respect the auto-rout limit.

If they did, then they would auto-rout properly and flee, before the target auto-routs himself, and well before the auto-kill kicks in.

Now, changing that, which seems buggy, or at least unintended, to me, might weaken Vengeance too much. It's always seemed more useful against battle mages who are vulnerable without there meat shields than against true SCs any way.

[Loren]

GrobRIM said:
If I may, I think the whole problem is the 50 turn limit.

I guess this limit has been set up to make sure that all battles eventually end, so battle resolution cannot lock-up turn resolution; and I can think of many more-or-less theoretical situations where a battle might not end in a reasonable number of turns, like two SC's fighting heads up, each one with a life drain attack; or a skelly-spamming high-reinvig necromancer against a good banishing priest.

But maybe the 50-turn limit should be made more flexible; for example, once turn 50 is reached, give another 5-turn grace period, after which the battle is ended, unless at least one unit has been killed, in which case we reset the countdown to another 5 turns; or, instead of counting the number of units killed, take into account the net amount between units killed and units created.

This proposition should take care of the "SC against horde of chaff" situation raised by Kuritza.

I also agree that I don't like the turn limit. I understand that something is necessary to avoid infinite battles but I see other fixes:

1) After reaching the turn limit compare the total hp of real units (not anything that was summoned for the battle and won't persist afterwards) for the last 5 turns vs the 5 turns before that. So long as the current number is lower than the previous one the battle continues.

2) Retreat from an infinite battle should not be deadly unless there is no other way to resolve the situation:
2a) The defender keeps the province no matter what.
2b) Assassins and other such stealth units go back into stealth.
2c) It should be an orderly retreat instead of a rout. All units should remain with their leaders and go back to a single randomly-chosen province. Even units like mercenaries should do this.
This leaves only one truly deadly situation: Attackers who teleported in and can't go into stealth.

[NTJedi]

GrobRIM said:
If I may, I think the whole problem is the 50 turn limit.

That's exactly why I recommended a game option where the player can choose the battlefield turn limits. I have two fast computers which can easily triple the battlefield turn limits. I'm sure some gamers have systems even faster than mine. It's sad losing a battle because the attacker runs out of turns. It's like some union law which forces all soldiers/commanders to flee at 5pm... and golems can stay until 8pm.

on a side note

During DOM_2 I lost my attacking SC during a battle because my SC was paralyzed from the dispossed spirits and the dispossed spirits couldn't flee because my SC was blocking the way. As a result after 100 turns... my SC was auto_killed. This should be changed to auto_retreat.

[sum1lost]

Possible solution- in some results, 'ghost version' of the target attacks the mage.

[Gandalf Parker]

Purely on an RPG thematic argument (translation: getting Kristoffer to bug Johan about this)...
it seems to me that if someone is attacked, and outlasts the combat, that should be considered to be a win. If you want a thematic result to the fact that the combat ran into overtime with attackers still on the field, then toss them into a general combat as if they were attacking the province.

[lch]

Gandalf Parker said:
it seems to me that if someone is attacked, and outlasts the combat, that should be considered to be a win.

A draw you mean, I hope. Suggesting that both, assassin and victim, survive the combat. Regardless who would "likely" win.

[Gandalf Parker]

lch said:

A draw you mean, I hope. Suggesting that both, assassin and victim, survive the combat. Regardless who would "likely" win.

A draw would be better. But the game might not support a draw. In some cases that would mean that the attackers would still be in the province (altho not with the vengeance of the undead thing in their dreams I guess). But in cases like that, I would feel that I have "won" the test or conflict if it ends without my death.

[K]

I think its very important that SCs can be killed this way. If they couldn't, then the best and only tactic in the game would be to eventually create SCs. Right now you often can't kill an SC even when you have brought your anti-SC tactics into the battle, since even reasonable protections can be brought by the SC player (like a few Fire or Astral or Death or Water mages for the W9F9 Shadow Vestal assault mentioned above).

[sum1lost]

K said:
I think its very important that SCs can be killed this way. If they couldn't, then the best and only tactic in the game would be to eventually create SCs. Right now you often can't kill an SC even when you have brought your anti-SC tactics into the battle, since even reasonable protections can be brought by the SC player (like a few Fire or Astral or Death or Water mages for the W9F9 Shadow Vestal assault mentioned above).

As it is, SC's are extremely powerful. This keeps them from winning the game on their own, thankfully.