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Incline Why Doomstacks Control The World

almondblight

Arcane
Joined
Aug 10, 2004
Messages
2,549
Actually, in Neptune's Pride, doomstacks offer very little benefits, because the point of a doomstack is to maximize firepower at a given location.
Given that the combat model is more or less trading 1 ship for 1 ship in Neptune's Pride (or rather tech level*ships for tech level*ships), doomstacking offers very little benefit (actually, launching lots of carriers on as many targets as you can is stronger, as it results in a larger production swing), but that is not a very interesting combat model (at least, it cannot be used in anything that aims a little to be a simulation).

That's not really true though; it varies greatly depending on the situation. If you know where your opponents ships aren't (or think you have distracted them), it makes much more sense to concentrate on a particular area than just attacking as many targets as you can. Attacking as many targets as you can let's the enemy easily fortify most of the positions (since they'll only need a few reserves plus the defensive bonus to hold off an individual fleet). Most likely they'd fortify anything worth having, smash the ships that come in to those systems, let you bleed on some empty border worlds and then turn around and take you out. Most of the time, attacking as many systems as you can means wasting a lot of ships for no reason.

There are going to be times where you want to concentrate your ships and times where you want to spread them out, and perhaps times where you try to concentrate them to distract an opponent while you launch a broader attack elsewhere. Or times where you want to concentrate your ships because a certain target is that important to your particular strategy.
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
Indeed, the combat model is uninteresting (but failing to predict where the enemy fleet will hit may cost key planets, so there is that.
I suspect the main reason for that is that the game is meant to be played in real life time (fleets move every RT hour, with games lasting several weeks). Going for a system favoring concentration would have given a huge advantage to the more available player (as it was the case in other similar games, like Hyperiums or Dark Galaxy).
Neptune Pride is mostly about diplomacy, so I can live with them going for this compromise.
I would have figured it was mostly about insomnia and bringing your own Zerg Swarm with you.

The difference with BG is that you could issue move commands then unpause and game responds immediately hence the real time.That is not the case in eu/ck/vic/hoi.The game waits for the "turn"(been day,hour or whatever)to tick for the AI to resolve all commands.This is clearly evident when you attack AI armies in neighboring province when AI is weaker,but it doesn't starts it's move immediately after you unpause,it waits for it's turn.There is ofc some commands that are resolved immediately like disbanding/buying units,DoW and such ,but they are player driven and again the AI will respond to them after the end of the turn.

That's not quite true, though. In BG, the game does NOT immediately obey your commands, it will drag its feet until the "turn". This is most evident if you try to launch a spell: Your guy just stands around looking like a doofus until the next "turn".
Ah, well, interesting catch: The moves are actually illusionary. The game PRETENDS it is responding to your commands, but the movement is actually purely visual and you will still get hit, the actual movement isn't really occurring.
 

kris

Arcane
Joined
Oct 27, 2004
Messages
8,836
Location
Lulea, Sweden
It's turn based because technology is not advanced enough.Good luck if you can't see that the mechanics of the paradox games are turn based ,not real time.

good luck? I could say the same, but why not go by what the all the game press and most importantly the actual makers of the game say? but sure, all games ever made are turnbased.

See here, you talk about technology, which isn't the issue. Autism detected. I am talking about gameplay and how the game is defined, even human brain makes calculations in a sequence. there is good reason Norfleet brought up "pause every hour" as that simulate what would fall within the definition of a turn-based game.

Or just explain were the technology would need to be for it to no longer be considered turn-based in your mind.
 
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Johannes

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Nov 20, 2010
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casting coach
The difference with BG is that you could issue move commands then unpause and game responds immediately hence the real time.That is not the case in eu/ck/vic/hoi.The game waits for the "turn"(been day,hour or whatever)to tick for the AI to resolve all commands.This is clearly evident when you attack AI armies in neighboring province when AI is weaker,but it doesn't starts it's move immediately after you unpause,it waits for it's turn.There is ofc some commands that are resolved immediately like disbanding/buying units,DoW and such ,but they are player driven and again the AI will respond to them after the end of the turn.

That's not quite true, though. In BG, the game does NOT immediately obey your commands, it will drag its feet until the "turn". This is most evident if you try to launch a spell: Your guy just stands around looking like a doofus until the next "turn".
Ah, well, interesting catch: The moves are actually illusionary. The game PRETENDS it is responding to your commands, but the movement is actually purely visual and you will still get hit, the actual movement isn't really occurring.
Wtf? You can move in IE at all times. You're maybe talking about attack animations which indeed don't match the dealt out attacks 1:1. Every round in IE you can move as much as you want, cast 1 spell, and attack as many times as your attack stat allows. These are more like cooldowns though, there's no delay in performing actions if they're legal on the current round. And movement is as said, always possible instantly.
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
Wtf? You can move in IE at all times. You're maybe talking about attack animations which indeed don't match the dealt out attacks 1:1. Every round in IE you can move as much as you want, cast 1 spell, and attack as many times as your attack stat allows. These are more like cooldowns though, there's no delay in performing actions if they're legal on the current round. And movement is as said, always possible instantly.
Yeah, but here's the thing: You can "move" as much as you want, but much of this is purely for effect and very little of this fine movement control is actually "real". It's quite common in games to have movement displayed at a level of detail that the game itself doesn't actually recognize or even record, and if you know what to look for, it's rather apparent.
 

Johannes

Arcane
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Nov 20, 2010
Messages
10,487
Location
casting coach
Wtf? You can move in IE at all times. You're maybe talking about attack animations which indeed don't match the dealt out attacks 1:1. Every round in IE you can move as much as you want, cast 1 spell, and attack as many times as your attack stat allows. These are more like cooldowns though, there's no delay in performing actions if they're legal on the current round. And movement is as said, always possible instantly.
Yeah, but here's the thing: You can "move" as much as you want, but much of this is purely for effect and very little of this fine movement control is actually "real". It's quite common in games to have movement displayed at a level of detail that the game itself doesn't actually recognize or even record, and if you know what to look for, it's rather apparent.
That's retarded. I don't exactly remember how granular the pathing map in IE games is, or how it draws the characters position / animation to that, but it's not even relevant here. Regardless you can move in the game and where you move has a real and obvious gameplay effect.
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
That's retarded. I don't exactly remember how granular the pathing map in IE games is, or how it draws the characters position / animation to that, but it's not even relevant here. Regardless you can move in the game and where you move has a real and obvious gameplay effect.
Wouldn't say that: It has an effect, but not a gameplay effect: You still get hit, even if you move out of the way.
 

Johannes

Arcane
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Nov 20, 2010
Messages
10,487
Location
casting coach
That's retarded. I don't exactly remember how granular the pathing map in IE games is, or how it draws the characters position / animation to that, but it's not even relevant here. Regardless you can move in the game and where you move has a real and obvious gameplay effect.
Wouldn't say that: It has an effect, but not a gameplay effect: You still get hit, even if you move out of the way.
No you don't.
 

Beastro

Arcane
Joined
May 11, 2015
Messages
7,952
Need to make armies have a unit cap (can be increased with research) and limit the player to controlling 1 (2-3 with research at most), then limit the players control of AI controlled units to basic goals and guidlines.

I've never played the HoI series, so I don't know if this has anything, but this really should be done in games like CK, EU and Vicky to hobble the players ability to out think the AI and allow the player to reflect the more competent commanders of their faction while the AI fucks up elsewhere to reflect the lesser leaders that are given less crucial assignments.

For an EU example, take the British invasion of the River Plate that was a disaster, but on the very edge of the Napoleonic Wars. Now you could either command it yourself and guarantee a victory in that theater, but it would mean giving up control of the European one that makes or breaks the war, what do yo do? How about the Indian front and gobbling up French Caribbean colonies? Leave it in less experienced hands or take control of it yourself, or maybe make progress in Europe, set the AI to be conservative there and then try to alternate with other fronts to improve or stabilize them.

It won't matter if you are undefeatable if you can't be everywhere at once and the player really needs to be taken down a peg without forcing the AI to cheat.

Also, if the AI is given more importance in how well the player does at a game, it would also give developers more incentive to make better AI for their games that would make the enemy more of a challenge as well.
 

MilesBeyond

Cipher
Joined
May 15, 2015
Messages
716
The battles are limited to 25 turns so your mounted/hasted units can run away from slow OP enemies like orc warlords.

The way you say this makes it seem like you think it's a good thing. It completely broke multiplayer (to say nothing of singleplayer) and more or less single-handedly resulted in flyers landing at the end of their combat turns in AoW 3.

I also don't think the AoW series is a particularly helpful comparison here. I mean, don't get me wrong. I generally prefer AoW to Paradox or Firaxis games. However, there's a key difference: AoW is on a much smaller scale. AoW revolves around one thing and one thing only, and that's combat. There's empire-building, there's magic, there's economy, but all those things only exist to help you win battles. The AoW series has great tactical combat because it's literally the focus of the franchise.

This is not the case in games like Civ or Paradox games, which have a much broader scope. In fact, arguably it's reversed - where in AoW empire building was the tool that led to more combat, in these games combat is the tool that leads to more empire-building. Combat is the means to the end, rather than the end itself. I don't think you could successfully add tactical combat to a Civ or Paradox game for the same reason that I don't think you could successfully add century-spanning empire building to an AoW game - you're diluting the things that make the game great, in hopes of making the mediocre part of the game slightly less mediocre. Civ V (yes, even with expansions) is, I think, a good example of this.

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

I wanted to dig this comment up. As others have mentioned, it's false, and there is in fact a winter penalty in EU and CK. Also as others have mentioned, it's not a huge deal. You'll take increased attrition, but your enemy will as well, and later in the game it will hardly be more than a drop in the bucket. The reason I bring this up, however, is because I think it's a question of scope. Seasons can be hard to effectively simulate when the game spans centuries and each season can often only last for a few minutes. They can also be difficult to simulate when you're playing a world-spanning game where the same month will have drastically different effects in different parts of the world.

I think more than anything, though, it's a fundamental design decision. I think that heavily penalizing winters could very easily make the game into too much of a Red Rover simulator. Already it has elements of that due to the massive bonuses terrain can confer to the defender prior to generals with decent maneuver (in EU4), or forts (in Vicky 2). I think the reality is that strategy games need to generally avoid penalizing offense too much. Turtling should be sub-optimal, because a game that rewards turtling is a game that often takes three times as long as it needs to. This can lead to the game being pretty ahistorical, but it also makes for a more interesting and exciting game. I think this is relevant to the thread at large, because I would argue that doomstacks tend to favour the attacker. They allow the invading nation more control over the location and terms of the war without having to worry about things like supply lines getting cut off, or guerrilla attacks.


One other thing I'll say in defense of the doomstack is that they are fast and they are neat. I don't think I've ever had an experience in a strategy game more tedious or annoying than trying to move a large force in Civ V. Even managing multiple smaller stacks in games like AoW or Warlords can get bothersome at times. The doomstack allows you to move armies quickly and conveniently. Since wars often come down to doomstack vs doomstack, it also allows most conflicts to be resolved fairly quickly. One massively unfortunate aspect of non-doomstack combat is that it will often reach a point where one side will very clearly win, but it's still going to take quite a while for them to achieve that victory and mop up all the nonsense lying about. Doomstacks help minimize this. Wars become (roughly) a process of "Two armies enter, one army leaves." Like I said: Neat. Tidy. Is it strategically shallow? Often, yes. Does it feel a bit unsatisfying? For sure. But for games where combat isn't necessarily the main focus, it helps make combat into something that can be resolved quickly and relatively painlessly, and I think, overall, that's worth the occasional bit of shallowness.
 

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