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Could We Please Have a Random Element to Combat?

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Oh come on, please. Start combat, wait a bit, save game, see results. Load game, wait a bit again, compare results. They will be different. Conclusion: there is randomness.

Instead of random +3 -10, randomness is choice of tactics. This way when you lose, it's because that son of a bitch Philippe chose to charge when two other flanks were defending. NOT because you rolled -10.

This was all explained in diaries and it's a wonderful system.
 
I think the key problem with CK2 combat is that historically smaller forces did beat larger forces, but in CK2 this never happens except for amphibious landings which I don't believe even happened in real life except maybe in one of Richard the Lionhearts landings and attack which he waded ashore to fight the enemy.

What CK2 lacks is defeat of larger numerical forces by either tactically superior or technologically superior forces. Latin knights beat the numerically superior forces of the Byzantine defenders in the siege of Constantinople mostly because their armor and fighting styles were superior to that of the Byzantine defenders.

Both at the Battle of Crecy and Agincourt were the numerically superior forces of the French beaten by the English. This was either due to the bad tactics of the French or the superiority of the Longbow. (probaly both)

One thing I remember in CK1 was that a high stat martial rating army leader was hard to beat even with superior number of troops. I think we should go back to this and make martial rating even more important to battle outcomes.

Something needs to be done to give underdogs a fighting chance against blobs.
 
Everything besides free will (although that's debatable) can be predicted. Especially something as simple as medieval combat.
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Yes, by somebody with godlike powers.
And we all know medieval rulers just had to deal g-o-d and got all the enemy moves, so they just had to move in their armies in the most efficient way.
Since the other side also dealed the same or "a-l-l-a-h", they also got all the plans, so the outcome was decided by who got more troops with some minor variation, just like it is in CK2.

Right?
 
It was just a suggestion. No one has to jump on anyone else's toes.

Combat does seem lacking IMO, and perhaps the system that I proposed was a bad idea, but there is still something terribly wrong to me about the exact predictions that can be drawn from existing statistics, (I.E. "This flank will kill exactly 1.7 soldiers per day"). That seems silly, and while luck need not taint the whole of combat, it has to play some significant role, because IRL there are things that cannot be predicted in a strategy game that must fall under 'luck'.
 
I have no idea what ppl mean when they claim that numerically inferior forces never win. After what I have seen tactics and skill of the commanders makes a huge difference, especially if you have commanders with good combat skills (flank specialists leading flanks and so on and ofc decent Martial). Terrain modifiers are also important enough to decide an even number fight.

Now in medieval combat numbers was more often than not a crucial factor and so it shall remain. Most of the time where 'tactics' seemed to prevail it was more due to stupidity or overconfidence on the opposing side (Battle of Azincourt, Battle of Montgisard and Battle of Hattin to take a few examples).
 
Doppelsoldner said:
It was just a suggestion. No one has to jump on anyone else's toes.

Combat does seem lacking IMO, and perhaps the system that I proposed was a bad idea, but there is still something terribly wrong to me about the exact predictions that can be drawn from existing statistics, (I.E. "This flank will kill exactly 1.7 soldiers per day"). That seems silly, and while luck need not taint the whole of combat, it has to play some significant role, because IRL there are things that cannot be predicted in a strategy game that must fall under 'luck'.
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No. A good strategist never relies on or fails because of luck. (not in battle anyway)
 
MartinSWE said:
I have no idea what ppl mean when they claim that numerically inferior forces never win. After what I have seen tactics and skill of the commanders makes a huge difference, especially if you have commanders with good combat skills (flank specialists leading flanks and so on and ofc decent Martial). Terrain modifiers are also important enough to decide an even number fight.
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Hear hear. Just lost a battle (1100 vs 900 rebels) with far better commanders with (due? who knows) river crossing penalty.
 
This is supposed to be a realistic game. The game should, in its revision and expansion thus seek to be more realistic. In real life, there are events that occur and affect combat that cannot be theorized or programmed into a game. Yet, this still leaves the need to simulate these occurances, as it would be ridiculous to assume an absolute exact outcome from a battle, (and no, Prime624, no commander ever was able to calculate the number of casualties inflicted to one tenth of a man every day, and military strategy always lies upon probabilities and assumptions). The aforementioned random occurances would be 'simulated' or at least, accounted for, by luck in the form of a dice roll. This is all that I mean to say, here.

In that case, though, if the general consensus is that this is a bad idea, then so be it.
 
Doppelsoldner said:
(and no, Prime624, no commander ever was able to calculate the number of casualties inflicted to one tenth of a man every day, and military strategy always lies upon probabilities and assumptions)
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But those probabilities and assumptions were a lot more probable with a good commander. Sometimes to the point where it could be called a near certainty.
 
Lessing said:
(...)
I don't want to win or lose battles because of random stuff. (...) Why bother campaigning if it's mostly down to luck whether the big battle is lost or no?
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The Great Battles They Shouldn't Have Won, And Still Did Won Against All Odds.

There's a feature in MTW2, where a great battle won against odds was marked on the Map with a specific symbol with a short summary.
O Joy, O Felicity, when the Army you sent to sacrifice, in order to try and slow down a Stack of Doom threatening your Capital, actually managed to repel and inflict the Ennemy severe losses!

Hey, that's the kind of battles we learn in class!

I understand that, for small battles, there should be little place for randomness. Numbers, terrain, equipment, leadership and morale are what counts the most.

But big battles? Maybe a little more randomness would be appreciable when two grand armies meet (like 20K vs 15K).
Irrational movements of panic, for example, can cause entire flanks to route.
A rumor spread among the ranks of the Infantry can cause thousands of men to abandon combat. See battle of Tours/Poitiers (732).
Brilliant strategic moves can decimate or incapacitate entire battalions.



perpetualmuse said:
I agree that it would be nice to see the combat system expanded slightly.
(...)
Perhaps adding some kind of random mid-battle event that reduced troop numbers (similar to during sieges) might work well.

(...)
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More random battle events: Now, that sounds quite good!
 
I guess the biggest emotional problem for the player now is the lack of feedback why something happened or how actually the decisions of commanders made an impact. We dont need tactic combats , but maybe a summary of battles.
Would be nice for ....wait.... (1, 2, 3 ...) .... Immersion ! .... again. :blush: :D
 
Aardvark Bellay said:
I guess the biggest emotional problem for the player now is the lack of feedback why something happened or how actually the decisions of commanders made an impact. We dont need tactic combats , but maybe a summary of battles.
Would be nice for ...wait.....(1, 2, 3 ...).... Immersion !...again. (sigh)
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I agree. They say that all this stuff goes into who wins, but I can hardly tell.
 
Prime624 said:
No. A good strategist never relies on or fails because of luck. (not in battle anyway)
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Uhm, this is ridiculous. People have different limitations, emotions, strengths. You aren't putting a pawn on top of a bishop where the pawn always gets to take the bishop down and comes unscathed... in these large scale battles there is a number of variables that would cause a battle to shift to one side. There could be a battle between same # of troops but in one instance of the battle the cavalry happened to route the other cavalry and was thus able to flank the enemy sooner... In the other incarnation of this same battle pikemen had to climb up a hill and got decimated by archers... archers that in an alternate universe gotten chased down by cavalry. In my most recent game MY KING GOT CAPTURED LEADING A 100- 1 advantage and I lost all of Brittany when I was winning the war! To say there is no luck is a weird thing to say indeed.
 
vertinox said:
I think the key problem with CK2 combat is that historically smaller forces did beat larger forces, but in CK2 this never happens except for amphibious landings which I don't believe even happened in real life except maybe in one of Richard the Lionhearts landings and attack which he waded ashore to fight the enemy.

What CK2 lacks is defeat of larger numerical forces by either tactically superior or technologically superior forces. Latin knights beat the numerically superior forces of the Byzantine defenders in the siege of Constantinople mostly because their armor and fighting styles were superior to that of the Byzantine defenders.

Both at the Battle of Crecy and Agincourt were the numerically superior forces of the French beaten by the English. This was either due to the bad tactics of the French or the superiority of the Longbow. (probaly both)

One thing I remember in CK1 was that a high stat martial rating army leader was hard to beat even with superior number of troops. I think we should go back to this and make martial rating even more important to battle outcomes.

Something needs to be done to give underdogs a fighting chance against blobs.
Click to expand...

The bolded pretty much sums it up. Personally, I think Paradox made a mistake of showing us the combat breakdown at all. For starters, battles were not fought over x days back then, very few lasted a full day. The game should've just calculated a battle and given us a result without us visually watching a game of 'guess which number reaches 0 first', especially when 99 times out of 100 its the smaller number. If it were like that, there wouldnt be any need for combat modifiers, flanking, etc because we'd assume it is calculated (whether it is or isnt is beside the point cos we wouldnt know). It simply couldve been a result determined by troops numbers, martial stats and some sort of small variable the game producers couldve thought of to produce the odd, feasible upset (Perhaps consideration couldve been given to such things as veteran units, landscape familiarity, commander with 'legendary' status, fighting on de jure turf, distance from home, etc). As is now, we have a basic form of combat in what is a generally not considered a combaty type of game compared to others out there, opening up a can of worms with regards to it's integrity. And by letting the battle play out live it is difficult to include variables in a programable, realistic and gameplayable way.
 
Prime624, is obviously trolling, let's just ignore him.
There's simply no other way one could be spitting so much lalala.

I am amazed how you guys even discuss this.
Battle randomness is a fact of history, so the argument should be "should we have more randomness" not "did history have randomness".
 
binTravkin said:
Prime624, is obviously trolling, let's just ignore him.
There's simply no other way one could be spitting so much lalala.

I am amazed how you guys even discuss this.
Battle randomness is a fact of history, so the argument should be "should we have more randomness" not "did history have randomness".
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I'm not trolling. Things seeming to be random, are really either probable or improbable. Although that is a form of randomosity, it not dice-roll-random. It's 7-red 3-blue pick one random. Yes it could be blue, but unless red has been picked many times, you shouldn't bet on blue. And as a strategy game player, that is not classified random. Everything in a strategy game is random somewhat. From how skilled your child will be to if it's a boy or a girl.
 
We are talking historical unpredictability, not statistical randomness here, so you're in the wrong place with this.

The randomness OP was talking about was unpredictability of battle outcomes due to imperfections that statistical theory does not look at, such as lack of knowledge of enemy, the battlefield or even oneself, lack of experience, certain personal traits (brave, reckless, slothful, etc).
The implications of all those factors are so complex that even in modern days with all the sensor and computing technology it is impossible to predict the outcome of the battle before it happened. Yes, you can often say what is "likely" to be the outcome, but it can still go both ways by large.
It should be much more unpredictable for medieval armies.
 
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