Incline Why Doomstacks Control The World

[tyrannosaurus rex]

The reasons the Doomstack occurs is relatively simple to understand: Low granularity of movement and engagement (and lack of nuclear weapons). The Doomstack occurs in EU because the smallest unit of movement is the province. Anything occupying the province that the Doomstack enters is immediately subject to the full fury of the Doomstack. You cannot be partially engaged with the elements of Doomstack. Either you are engaged in an all-out battle against the entirety of the Doomstack, or you are not. The infeasibility of avoiding the doomstack either through maneuver or limited engagement means you're unable to avoid or circumvent the Doomstack.

So let's look at games that have Doomstacks:
EU/CK/etc: Low granularity of movement (province only), no ability to engage in a limited fashion: Perfect conditions for a Doomstack
Old Civs: Low granularity of movement (tile only, most units having only a few tiles worth of move, not nearly enough to go around anything), little capacity for limited engagement: Good conditions for a Doomstack, at least until you get NUKES.

Games that do NOT have effective Doomstacks:
Dominions: Tactical combat permits limited engagement with Doomstack, prevalance of both tactical and strategic nukes inhibits use and formation of effective Doomstacks. This doesn't stop people from trying, but I've killed an awful lot of doomstacks.
SMAC: Prevalence of nukes, 1v1 unit combats, and units that explode on death strongly discourage doomstacking.
Basically Any RTS: Tactical combat and thus the ability NOT to engage in battles to the death against superior forces, are, again obstacles to doomstacks. Also, nukes. Real-time high-granularity movement further permits avoiding the blob of death in favor of causing havoc elsewhere.

So what do we find kills Doomstacking? Tacticalesque Combat. The Dominions example clearly shows that it doesn't even need to be real-time direct-controlled tactical combat. Just SOME kind of tactical combat, even if the user controls it only indirectly, is enough to severely inhibit the Doomstack. Also, NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

I couldn't express that in word.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

To solve doomstacking in Paradox, EU-like(HoI is a different animal combat-wise) games:

• reduce combat width even further
• shorten combat times(increase morale attack or whatever)
• make the "non-fighting" units in combat suffer from attrition(especially if combat isn't shorter), with daily ticks(calculated like monthly attrition/30)
• increase attrition overall

That would just encourage micro split stacking. Have a gazillion mini stacks all around in the same area.

Your other points are good though it could be abused as long as there's no way to make a fleeing enemy quickly regret not engaging you (marching on his capital). An enemy with a strong cavalry should also be able to catch you, would finally make them useful.

If the game board covering the Eastern Front consisted of one region bordering the Soviet Union, then they doomstacked, didn't they? These are abstractions we're dealing with; abstractions with an underlying military principle.



Again, these are abstractions at a level that the tactical maneuver you describe doesn't play into. Why would anyone fault games that make no pretense at operating on that level for not operating at that level? These aren't tactical simulators, the op was specifically referring to 4X games. He also mentioned Paradox's grand strategies. Which part of 4X/grand strategy revolves around tactical maneuvers of small bodies of troops?



Depends on the level of the map (scale). But, regardless, yes, they have. Many, many times. In fact, until the Industrial Revolution and the professionalization of officer corps, this was the standard operating procedure.



So what?

1. No it wouldn't because the Germans did not doomstack. These other armies were in the vicinity were taken into consideration in the glocal strategy. You're calling surgical strikes and columns doomstacking... You using a prepared opponent fighting one of the most clumsy inadequate force in modern history as an example is cheap.

2. ''Which part of 4X/grand strategy revolves around tactical maneuvers of small bodies of troops?'' that's exactly what we are discussing in this thread. You are now passing doomstacking as the central element of 4X?

3. The operations of an army could cover a very large area especially when cavalry columns were involved. Supply lines, raiding, scouting all made an army much more than a single point on a map. The Medieval era was probably the one where individual forces had the most autonomy over the main army. Even in the renaissance it was common to send only a few columns at the enemy, see their progress and retreat if they didn't allow for an opening. Francis in haste was able to block entrance to the Spanish Forces by guarding the entire bank of the Rhone from them. Crossing a line of forts without bloodshed was considered a feat.

4. I know right? It's almost like we're arguing about the pro and cons of doomstacking.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

That would certainly work in a turn based game, I'm not so sure about a real time one like Paradox does. I'll be implementing something similar.

paradox games are actually turn based, and include both those points by slowing armies the bigger they are and with attrition.

 

[Lone Wolf]

1. No it wouldn't because the Germans did not doomstack. These other armies were in the vicinity were taken into consideration in the glocal strategy. You're calling surgical strikes and columns doomstacking... You using a prepared opponent fighting one of the most clumsy inadequate force in modern history as an example is cheap.

'Surgical strikes'? Barbarossa involved >85% of the combat capable Wehrmacht. In other words, they 'stacked' almost all available troops in East Prussia, Poland, Hungary and Romania, established 10:1 superiorities in breakthrough corridors and slashed through the Red Army in the border battles. When you zoom in far enough down and look at it on a regimental - maybe even division - level, there's plenty of maneuvering happening. Tactical nous. Surgery. Whatever you want to call it. But zoom up to the level of grand strategy, and it looks like a few doomstacks sweeping forward as AGN, AGC and AGS.

I didn't use the example because the Germans had initial success against a poorly prepared opponent. I even mirrored it with Bagration, which was the Soviet equivalent later in the war. These were just examples of the military principles of force concentration and mass in action. There are, literally, thousands of others...

You are now passing doomstacking as the central element of 4X?

No, I'm passing off doomstacking as a sound representation of underlying military principles (force concentration and mass).

3. The operations of an army could cover a very large area especially when cavalry columns were involved. Supply lines, raiding, scouting all made an army much more than a single point on a map. The Medieval era was probably the one where individual forces had the most autonomy over the main army. Even in the renaissance it was common to send only a few columns at the enemy, see their progress and retreat if they didn't allow for an opening. Francis in haste was able to block entrance to the Spanish Forces by guarding the entire bank of the Rhone from them. Crossing a line of forts without bloodshed was considered a feat.

You're zooming in, without rhyme or reason. Why? Why does 4X or grand strategy have to be operational in scope? Because the strategic scope doesn't lend itself to 'supply lines, raiding, scouting'. Or cavalry columns. It's abstracted to the point that armies are, indeed, dots on a map, because the scale of the map allows for it.

Your renaissance example is, essentially, tactical.

Maybe your perfect game is one of the Total War series?

4. I know right? It's almost like we're arguing about the pro and cons of doomstacking.

Well, I'm not.

 

[laclongquan]

With SMAC I prefer to smash border towns quickly then station troop on border line to prevent them getting in my territory and wreck my shits. if I have to attrition big factions, it's better to do a quick hit to capture one town, then defend it against their counterattacks. They will wreck shits in THEIR territory, and if I am defeated, or repelled back into my own, at least the war-ravaged land is not mine to fix.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Wow, a gaming thread actually worth reading. indeed.

 

[mondblut]

The reasons the Doomstack occurs is relatively simple to understand: Low granularity of movement and engagement (and lack of nuclear weapons). The Doomstack occurs in EU because the smallest unit of movement is the province. Anything occupying the province that the Doomstack enters is immediately subject to the full fury of the Doomstack. You cannot be partially engaged with the elements of Doomstack. Either you are engaged in an all-out battle against the entirety of the Doomstack, or you are not. The infeasibility of avoiding the doomstack either through maneuver or limited engagement means you're unable to avoid or circumvent the Doomstack.

So let's look at games that have Doomstacks:
EU/CK/etc: Low granularity of movement (province only), no ability to engage in a limited fashion: Perfect conditions for a Doomstack
Old Civs: Low granularity of movement (tile only, most units having only a few tiles worth of move, not nearly enough to go around anything), little capacity for limited engagement: Good conditions for a Doomstack, at least until you get NUKES.

Games that do NOT have effective Doomstacks:
Dominions: Tactical combat permits limited engagement with Doomstack, prevalance of both tactical and strategic nukes inhibits use and formation of effective Doomstacks. This doesn't stop people from trying, but I've killed an awful lot of doomstacks.
SMAC: Prevalence of nukes, 1v1 unit combats, and units that explode on death strongly discourage doomstacking.
Basically Any RTS: Tactical combat and thus the ability NOT to engage in battles to the death against superior forces, are, again obstacles to doomstacks. Also, nukes. Real-time high-granularity movement further permits avoiding the blob of death in favor of causing havoc elsewhere.

So what do we find kills Doomstacking? Tacticalesque Combat. The Dominions example clearly shows that it doesn't even need to be real-time direct-controlled tactical combat. Just SOME kind of tactical combat, even if the user controls it only indirectly, is enough to severely inhibit the Doomstack. Also, NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

tl;dr: when warfare is abstracted to blobs of numbers teleporting between map nodes, bigger blobs typically win.

 

[thesheeep]

Doomstacks in EUIV are a bit more varied, though.
Quality, morale, etc. allow you to beat a large doomstack with a much smaller one.
Unit composition matters. Good luck fielding no cannons against a stack who does.
Terrain matters.
So it's not like you could stack completely without thought and be done with it.

None of that allows the depth of tactical combat, of course.
But imagine EUIV with full tactical combat. It would be an unplayable mess, as long as humans are limited to 2 eyes and 2 arms.
Tactical combat only works in small scales (typical RTS games) or in turn based mode (Dominions, etc.).
I could imagine very limited tactical settings similar to Dominions working in EU-style games, though.

Also, combat is only one part of the whole game, whereas in games that have tactical combat it is usually almost completely about that.

 

[Norfleet]

But imagine EUIV with full tactical combat. It would be an unplayable mess, as long as humans are limited to 2 eyes and 2 arms.

Untrue. Just because there is tactical combat does not mean that it has to be tactical combat you micromanage. Dominions, for instance, has tactical combat, and while the player exercises some degree of control over it, he does not micromanage it in the middle of the battle, and the combat resolves itself based on the general instructions given (or not given) by the player, and it certainly does matter: Battles are not necessarily fought to the total destruction of the losing side and a doomstack rampaging through the lands can inflict very little actual military damage as the weaker stacks scatter before them, and avoid major losses, and the difference between glorious victory and total, crushing defeat in which your entire army is massacred to the last man can hinge on a single order given or not given, and, of course, NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

Late game Dominions battle micro takes hours to actually do though. That kind of a thing working for a MP RTS game like an EU game seems like a fantasy.

Anyways, what I don't see mentioned is that Dominions 4 at least has raiders, stealth attacks, summoned and teleporting instant attacks, ritual spells that can hit entire armies out of combat, actual combat spells that do hit entire armies castable by one cheap wizard who can function as an army-wide landmine, one man armies, different type of armies that shouldn't be mixed, sieges which are best done by thrash units instead of your actual combat forces, local supply caps that can make unprepared armies starve, assassins and multiple front combat of course.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

And it's fantasy as not trying to be historical or realistic,which is a big draw in games like EU/CK/Civ.

 

[Gondolin]

I don't remember the EU/CK/Civ games taking into account seasons. Winter attrition should be a bitch, especially for doomstacks.

 

[Norfleet]

ritual spells that can hit entire armies out of combat, actual combat spells that do hit entire armies castable by one cheap wizard who can function as an army-wide landmine

I mentioned those under "NUKES", which are, of course, a major health hazard to any would-be doomstack.

 

[Agesilaus]

I never had a problem with doom stacks, they just make sense to me. The issue revolves around the ability of the combat engine to simulate two doom stacks clashing, not to mention the general game engine being able to model the assembly and supply of the stack. Paradox obviously fails big time at that, there's no tactics once the doom stacks are formed (beyond camping a river and laughing at the dumb AI).

Like other people have pointed out, doom stacks are p realistic. It's more about assembling and supplying the stack, and the tactics when two stacks clash. Ancient greek conflicts were typically resolved with doom stacks; even wars involving other tactics (peloponnesian war is an obvious example) were ultimately pushed forward whenever a doom stack style battle did eventually take place.

 

[thesheeep]

Untrue. Just because there is tactical combat does not mean that it has to be tactical combat you micromanage. Dominions, for instance, has tactical combat, and while the player exercises some degree of control over it, he does not micromanage it in the middle of the battle, and the combat resolves itself based on the general instructions given (or not given) by the player, and it certainly does matter: Battles are not necessarily fought to the total destruction of the losing side and a doomstack rampaging through the lands can inflict very little actual military damage as the weaker stacks scatter before them, and avoid major losses, and the difference between glorious victory and total, crushing defeat in which your entire army is massacred to the last man can hinge on a single order given or not given, and, of course, NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED.

Dominions is not full tactical combat.
Full tactical combat for me means something like CoH or Total War throughout the whole encounter.

But honestly, no matter what kind of tactical combat we talk about, there is a limit to how much the CPU can handle. EUIV already pushes many machines to their limit with so many things going on at once in real time (or at least very, very fast turns). And mods push that even more.
If every combat on the world map would have to be calculated in even more detail at that speed.... good night, performance.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

I don't remember the EU/CK/Civ games taking into account seasons. Winter attrition should be a bitch, especially for doomstacks.

you remember wrong. ck and eu do, but it's just such a small change it's not going to affect much more than the standard attrition rate. it should be much more punishing.

 

[Gondolin]

you remember wrong. ck and eu do, but it's just such a small change it's not going to affect much more than the standard attrition rate. it should be much more punishing.

I see. Thanks for the info.

 

[MoLAoS]

Late game Dominions battle micro takes hours to actually do though. That kind of a thing working for a MP RTS game like an EU game seems like a fantasy.

Anyways, what I don't see mentioned is that Dominions 4 at least has raiders, stealth attacks, summoned and teleporting instant attacks, ritual spells that can hit entire armies out of combat, actual combat spells that do hit entire armies castable by one cheap wizard who can function as an army-wide landmine, one man armies, different type of armies that shouldn't be mixed, sieges which are best done by thrash units instead of your actual combat forces, local supply caps that can make unprepared armies starve, assassins and multiple front combat of course.

I mentioned these in the blog post. And I talked about those ideas outside of dominions as well.

 

[MoLAoS]

Dominions is not full tactical combat.
Full tactical combat for me means something like CoH or Total War throughout the whole encounter.

But honestly, no matter what kind of tactical combat we talk about, there is a limit to how much the CPU can handle. EUIV already pushes many machines to their limit with so many things going on at once in real time (or at least very, very fast turns). And mods push that even more.
If every combat on the world map would have to be calculated in even more detail at that speed.... good night, performance.

I originally planned to develop my game in the Paradox style with super fast 1 day turns but considering the much larger complexity of my game I had to swap to turnbased. I also had to drop buildings existing as individual entities for a similar reason, but there wasn't too much lost in either case.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

A good model would be that of Nobunaga's Ambition when it comes to military strategy, but that would require a complete redesign of the province model. Basically the appearance of roads in the game and rewarding the player/AI for splitting up his forces to envelop or surround the enemy mass, cutting off it's escape route etc. All of course done on the strategic map, no tactical combat. Penalizing the stacking of forces early on with more than just attrition, such as organization/morale malus and slow movement and allowing that viable stack amount to increase as your tech level goes up would also be a good idea.

 

[whatevername]

In AOWSM you can have at most 8 troops in a stack. Saruman has a massive army of 6 full stacks on the screen and he has 2-3 more cities with even more troops, which is more than my army or my dumb retarded AI allies. If it were some shitty carebear game with afterthought combat slapped on it he'd just RAEP everyone with a doomstack. But here you can see my army standing next to a bridge that's blocking the only passage to the east where he would RAEP Theoden. NONE SHALL PASS! Because of the bridge he can only attack with 1 stack and if he does, he'd get RAEPD over and over again. In the open 6 stacks vs 1 translates to 48 troops vs 8. He doesn't have waterwalking or move across the mountain spells or air transports so he can only go north to attack Agent Smith in a castle where I have 3 stacks, take a long boring journey through Moria or go through the northern mountain pass. If he does that I will reinforce the army at that bridge and RAEP him in his tower. Because 2 of my armies are tied up in containing Saruman and Sauron in the west, Sauron's gonna RAEP the dwarves or Gondor because I'm fighting the Goblin King and can't be in 4 places at the same time.
I went too much offtopic... basically this is how you avoid doomstacks.

 

[Johannes]

Remember that the more you add complexity to the combat, it favors the player over AI's and makes the game more about the player maneuvering to destroy vastly superior forces. If you want the focus to be on economy and diplomacy, you keep the combat straightforward.

 

[Sranchammer]

AGEOD handles this with command penalty which I find works well. Unless you have an amazing general, your doomstack is worth shit.

 

[Norfleet]

Remember that the more you add complexity to the combat, it favors the player over AI's and makes the game more about the player maneuvering to destroy vastly superior forces. If you want the focus to be on economy and diplomacy, you keep the combat straightforward.

But the more you simplify combat and make it more about simply numbers, the better the conditions for a doomstack. If force composition, tactics, and strategic positioning are minimized, then all that matters becomes who can throw the largest numbers at the other guy: The Doomstack.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

In AOWSM you can have at most 8 troops in a stack. Saruman has a massive army of 6 full stacks on the screen and he has 2-3 more cities with even more troops, which is more than my army or my dumb retarded AI allies. If it were some shitty carebear game with afterthought combat slapped on it he'd just RAEP everyone with a doomstack. But here you can see my army standing next to a bridge that's blocking the only passage to the east where he would RAEP Theoden. NONE SHALL PASS! Because of the bridge he can only attack with 1 stack and if he does, he'd get RAEPD over and over again. In the open 6 stacks vs 1 translates to 48 troops vs 8. He doesn't have waterwalking or move across the mountain spells or air transports so he can only go north to attack Agent Smith in a castle where I have 3 stacks, take a long boring journey through Moria or go through the northern mountain pass. If he does that I will reinforce the army at that bridge and RAEP him in his tower. Because 2 of my armies are tied up in containing Saruman and Sauron in the west, Sauron's gonna RAEP the dwarves or Gondor because I'm fighting the Goblin King and can't be in 4 places at the same time.
I went too much offtopic... basically this is how you avoid doomstacks.

it's everything wonderful and stuff, but you're not taking into account that most of those strategic occurrences happened because the map let it so, and from how you said it i guess that map is hand crafted to make the most out of those mechanics. most of the 4x are played on random maps.