Battles shouldn't last more than a month

[Efimer]

...This is a game designed as an n-player realtime multiplayer game...
...Automatically pausing the game for every player whenever a battle occurred for any player would destroy the game's multiplayer...

I'm fairly sure that Imperator is a game focused in singleplayer campaigns so your reasoning that pausing the game would be incompatible with the multiplayer seems to be out of the matter here, besides it being questionable.

...game for continuous playing without pausing, with optional pausing in reaction to game events...
...PDS is not going to do that, just like they don't implement any other regular game mechanic that requires pausing the game...

You're contradicting yourself.
I don't understand why pausing the game is detrimental for the playability. Actually Paradox games have a pause button and they pause automatically with every event, because if the games didn't stop time at some points they would become precisely unplayable.

What you are suggesting would work in a singleplayer game without multiplayer or a singleplayer with a multiplayer nobody but the most masochistic would play...

You've nailed it

 

[Efimer]

...a battle that causes 80,000 casualties, I want to see 2 months of almost no casualties, just small hits here and there with mostly days of no casualties, and then a single day with the vast majority of the casualties all at once. That would make sense to me. It doesn't make sense for roughly similar numbers of casualties distributed evenly across the two months which is more or less how CK2, EU4, Vic2, etc. work.

In the old EU:Rome the battle system worked inversely. At the start of the battle both armies were at full morale and strength, so the main part of the casualties were in the firsts days.
The battles lasted from 1 to 3 weeks usually.

 

[Vohen]

I'm fairly sure that Imperator is a game focused in singleplayer campaigns so your reasoning that pausing the game would be incompatible with the multiplayer seems to be out of the matter here, besides it being questionable.



You're contradicting yourself.
I don't understand why pausing the game is detrimental for the playability. Actually Paradox games have a pause button and they pause automatically with every event, because if the games didn't stop time at some points they would become precisely unplayable.



You've nailed it

And pausing the game (edit: not only pausing, but simply shortening combat altogether) isn't a problem only for multiplayer, but in singleplayer as well.
As one day is one tick, you could only have a single dice roll per day at most, and damage values would have to be ramped way up as well to keep the same casuality numbers.
Those two factors together pose a serious problem, because it will skew the the damage numbers way up towards the early dice rolls.
So a bad roll on the first day could already settle the entire encounter, which isn't unrealistic per se, but it serves absolutely no purpose gameplay wise, as it just leaves too much in the hands of Lady luck.

All in all, if you want to have that game pause, fine, it's possibly doable, but it will not solve the issue without some major overhaul on how combat operates, because a tick isn't going under one day in a game of this scale.

 

[PK_AZ]

I think a way to go about it would be for battles to have a "preparation" or "maneuvering" phase that lasted a while before going for the actual combat.
Some morale damage could be taken, as well as a very small amount of casualties.
The dice rolls in this phase could add up until reaching a treshold, and that's when the battle would transition to open combat, with the army that got the higher number on the sum of their rolls holding a proportional boost, up to a cap.

I will just quote it here, to show how much (in general principle!) I agree with you.

I don't think there's a way to do that currently in any PDX game, but having the battle script laid open for us, giving the ability of adding more phases, with diverse modifiers, manipulation of dice rolls, custom length, and maybe even a battle scope for variables and such doesn't sound like something impossible to ask for.

I think you could do (/test) something like that in CK2, by manipulating skirmish/meele phase (actually meele in CK2 is already much bloodier than skirmish).
But if you decide to do so, you have to be prepared for redesigning basically everything, from that tactic thing to base unit stats. For example, in vanilla CK2 longbowmen are good at dealing damage in skirmish phase. With that new approach, they should have little skirmish attack, and high meele ('actual battle') attack, therefore invading HI/Pikemen/Knights area of expertise...

but why GS fans would loathe anything about Football Manager style simulation? Our contribution in battles right now is non existent, we can only reinforce our troops unrealisticly, everything else happens with mathematical simulations of numbers

Because, as my experience from CK2 and Stellaris indicates, battle simulations doesnt generate too much coolness factor, and at the same time they show you how retarded AI battle algorythms are.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

I'm fairly sure that Imperator is a game focused in singleplayer campaigns so your reasoning that pausing the game would be incompatible with the multiplayer seems to be out of the matter here, besides it being questionable.

Guess you'll just have to ask Johan whether PDS grand strategy design philosophy is n-player real time continuous games that don't require pausing or not; He's been pretty clear on it in the past, and the game designs of every PDS grand strategy game so far reflects that when one looks at the choice of game mechanics.

n-player of course includes the special case of 1-player, singleplayer.

But I guess it is possibly that despite their tradition of design, and despite claiming that their newest grand strategy game Imperator: Rome will be the (spiritual) successor to EU: Rome, they will now make a game focused on singleplayer campaigns rather than on being an n-player game.

But I'm not betting on it.

You're contradicting yourself.

No, I am not.

All prior PDS grand strategy games are designed for continuous play such that they can be played without ever requiring the game to pause, and I am excepting that for I:R too.

This is the way their games are played in multiplayer and (for some people in some of their games) in singleplayer.

This design informs every choice of game mechanic, by ruling those out that would require the game to pause.

Since the developers are far from stupid, for the convenience of those playing the game in singleplayer their games have the option in singleplayer only to automatically pause in response to events and certain game triggers. This is certainly very welcome, because for n=1 there's only one human whose sense of the passing of time matters to the enjoyment of the n players in the game.

I don't understand why pausing the game is detrimental for the playability.

For n>1, the game pausing for any reason that matters to one or more players, but not to all, annoys and wastes the time of all those players that the pausing reason doesn't matter for. And the more players in the game, the more pauses the less in-game time progression and the less playing.

Actually Paradox games have a pause button and they pause automatically with every event, because if the games didn't stop time at some points they would become precisely unplayable.

Again, you are talking the special case of n=1, singleplayer, here. That's not how their games work in the general case.

For multiplayer it will not pause for ANY event (but may for technical reasons, such as rehosting for a dropped player), only manual pausing is available - and the degree to which this is tolerated tends to be fairly low in playing groups.

You play singleplayer and like playing with lots of pauses and it is great if you like to play the game like that. Many - possibly most - players do, but it is not something that is necessary.

I can assure you that playing PDS games with no pausing or with only minimal pausing in singleplayer (by choice) or multiplayer (by necessity) is not only possible, but - for me and many others - enjoyable, and certainly not unplayable.

(Whereas the game pausing for all players whenever any player had an event, started a battle, or just felt like it, would render the game maddening in multiplayer, bordering on the unplayable for higher values of n.)

One big difference in how single and multiplayer feels different - and it is a very big difference - is that when playing with lots of pausing in singleplayer, it is also normal to jack the speed up high when needing to pass the time, secure in the knowledge that if anything interesting happens that the player in control isn't planning for, the game will pause for it.

Whereas when playing multiplayer, the game speed is usually set low by the host and kept constant most of the time; it depends on the people playing, of course, but something like playing on the second slowest speed setting when none of the players are at war, and possibly the slowest setting during important wars, is not uncommon. Some players also play with allowing pausing the game when a human player is attacked by another player, others do not - house rules differ, obviously.

Constant speed 1 or 2 may seem very slow to somebody coming from a singleplayer perspective of just pausing as necessary, but it is amazing how fast that can feel at times when there's no pausing going on and you have to deal with both making your own plans, executing them, dealing with whatever events and crisis the game or other players throw at you, and conducting diplomacy in chat while the clock is ticking.

 

[Vohen]

I think you could do (/test) something like that in CK2, by manipulating skirmish/meele phase (actually meele in CK2 is already much bloodier than skirmish).
But if you decide to do so, you have to be prepared for redesigning basically everything, from that tactic thing to base unit stats. For example, in vanilla CK2 longbowmen are good at dealing damage in skirmish phase. With that new approach, they should have little skirmish attack, and high meele ('actual battle') attack, therefore invading HI/Pikemen/Knights area of expertise...

CK2 might be the one where it'd be possible come come the closest, but even so, it'd be a stopgap, shoehorned solution at the very, very best, far from ideal.
Not to mention all the imbalance that it would bring, seeing as units are balanced around the phases they are best at, simply putting the skirmish units in other phases wouldn't be nearly enough, the balancing would have to be done pretty much from the ground up, it would not be trivial by any means.

That's why I thought it'd be nice if we had access to battle scripting, then a real solution might be done.

 

[General WVPM]

But HOW would instant battles work mechanically exactly to make them fun? There is no way you could influence them. You couldn't send reinforcement etc etc.

I have an idea for this.

You have scouting, maneuvres and camping for days until both sides agree to do battle.

Each side can change their tactics 1 day in advance. A hoi4 like planning bonus could be implemented.

Both sides will defend on terrain in their favor. 1 side has to agree to attack.

Tactics would include one to fake a defence as was a common confederate tactic in the us civil war. This would stal your opponent.

The longer you wait, the more you will know about the enemy and the better your tactic efficiency will work. Up to a cap.

So a confrontation between armies might take weeks if noone wants to attack. If one side rushes in, it might be over in a few days.

 

[Thure]

I have an idea for this.

You have scouting, maneuvres and camping for days until both sides agree to do battle.

Each side can change their tactics 1 day in advance. A hoi4 like planning bonus could be implemented.

Both sides will defend on terrain in their favor. 1 side has to agree to attack.

Tactics would include one to fake a defence as was a common confederate tactic in the us civil war. This would stal your opponent.

The longer you wait, the more you will know about the enemy and the better your tactic efficiency will work. Up to a cap.

So a confrontation between armies might take weeks if noone wants to attack. If one side rushes in, it might be over in a few days.

Sounds like a lot of micromanaging for just one battle... If we imagine this game will be full of battles it could became quiet annoying to have keep track of all the battles and make sure you attack at the right time. And hard to remember all this battles and actually manage it.

 

[General WVPM]

Sounds like a lot of micromanaging for just one battle... If we imagine this game will be full of battles it could became quiet annoying to have keep track of all the battles and make sure you attack at the right time. And hard to remember all this battles and actually manage it.

An AI general would pick the tactic they think is best based on their orders. Orders could be represented as a stance as mentioned earlier. By default the battle would be automated. Generals would maneuvre until they think they have a good position. When their tactic planning has finished and they are willing to attack, they attack.

No need to dumb this down with dice rolls and chances to engage. That's not how battles work. If you have an aggressive army that is fighting an escalated skirmish, they will attack forcing their opponent to fight or retreat.

You can very easily force battle by moving your troops forward in battle formation. The enemy either fights or flees.

Fabian delay tactics are all about not making your enemy attack. If you take good positions then the enemy might estimate that he'd lose and not engage. This is how the Romans defeated Hannibal.

 

[Drazer]

Sounds like a lot of micromanaging for just one battle... If we imagine this game will be full of battles it could became quiet annoying to have keep track of all the battles and make sure you attack at the right time. And hard to remember all this battles and actually manage it.

It is usual having complexity in most paradox games, so I dont think that would be a problem. I think something new would be cool in a paradox game. I really dont want this game to feel like a EU iv mod running in the ancient world.

Also, any need to micromanage can be countered by good and intuitive user interface. If I can manage my armies easily, than the game will be only better by the increase in complexity.

Even so, the developers could simply include a "low risk, low reward" stance and you can leave that on default if you want. For example, we could have the following maneuver instances:

- Offensive: the battle happens quickly, but this army may lose the territory advantage and may be weak to ambushes;
- Normal: the battle happens in a average time, no bonus or malus;
- Evasive: the battle is delayed, but the other army can freely disengage (move to any neighboring province) and the province is lotted while the combat doenst happen (causing unrest)

 

[Efimer]

Guess you'll just have to ask Johan whether PDS grand strategy design philosophy is n-player real time continuous games that don't require pausing or not; He's been pretty clear on it in the past, and the game designs of every PDS grand strategy game so far reflects that when one looks at the choice of game mechanics.

n-player of course includes the special case of 1-player, singleplayer.

But I guess it is possibly that despite their tradition of design, and despite claiming that their newest grand strategy game Imperator: Rome will be the (spiritual) successor to EU: Rome, they will now make a game focused on singleplayer campaigns rather than on being an n-player game.

But I'm not betting on it.


No, I am not.

All prior PDS grand strategy games are designed for continuous play such that they can be played without ever requiring the game to pause, and I am excepting that for I:R too.

This is the way their games are played in multiplayer and (for some people in some of their games) in singleplayer.

This design informs every choice of game mechanic, by ruling those out that would require the game to pause.

Since the developers are far from stupid, for the convenience of those playing the game in singleplayer their games have the option in singleplayer only to automatically pause in response to events and certain game triggers. This is certainly very welcome, because for n=1 there's only one human whose sense of the passing of time matters to the enjoyment of the n players in the game.


For n>1, the game pausing for any reason that matters to one or more players, but not to all, annoys and wastes the time of all those players that the pausing reason doesn't matter for. And the more players in the game, the more pauses the less in-game time progression and the less playing.


Again, you are talking the special case of n=1, singleplayer, here. That's not how their games work in the general case.

For multiplayer it will not pause for ANY event (but may for technical reasons, such as rehosting for a dropped player), only manual pausing is available - and the degree to which this is tolerated tends to be fairly low in playing groups.

You play singleplayer and like playing with lots of pauses and it is great if you like to play the game like that. Many - possibly most - players do, but it is not something that is necessary.

I can assure you that playing PDS games with no pausing or with only minimal pausing in singleplayer (by choice) or multiplayer (by necessity) is not only possible, but - for me and many others - enjoyable, and certainly not unplayable.

(Whereas the game pausing for all players whenever any player had an event, started a battle, or just felt like it, would render the game maddening in multiplayer, bordering on the unplayable for higher values of n.)

One big difference in how single and multiplayer feels different - and it is a very big difference - is that when playing with lots of pausing in singleplayer, it is also normal to jack the speed up high when needing to pass the time, secure in the knowledge that if anything interesting happens that the player in control isn't planning for, the game will pause for it.

Whereas when playing multiplayer, the game speed is usually set low by the host and kept constant most of the time; it depends on the people playing, of course, but something like playing on the second slowest speed setting when none of the players are at war, and possibly the slowest setting during important wars, is not uncommon. Some players also play with allowing pausing the game when a human player is attacked by another player, others do not - house rules differ, obviously.

Constant speed 1 or 2 may seem very slow to somebody coming from a singleplayer perspective of just pausing as necessary, but it is amazing how fast that can feel at times when there's no pausing going on and you have to deal with both making your own plans, executing them, dealing with whatever events and crisis the game or other players throw at you, and conducting diplomacy in chat while the clock is ticking.

Thank you for the answer, I understand your point now: pausing the game is a pain in the ass for the mmo players.
I wasn't aware of the weight of the multiplayer fanbase and I agree that every mechanic of the game should be enjoyable for all the players.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Thank you for the answer, I understand your point now: pausing the game is a pain in the ass for the mmo players.
I wasn't aware of the weight of the multiplayer fanbase and I agree that every mechanic of the game should be enjoyable for all the players.

It's not so much the weight of the multiplayer fanbase, as the weight of the development team and the consistency of the PDS grand strategy brand.

They hit on the idea of doing grand strategy as n-player continuous realtime gameplay, pioneered it with EU1, and built on that success ever since. It is an integral part of these games' brand.

Develop a game to play well without pausing, and it will play well both in MP without pausing and in SP with and without pausing.

Spoiler: Anecdote time

More than a decade has passed and many things have changed since Johan, during one of the larger forum-organized EU2 MP games when we first tested large scale multiplayer, said something along the lines of it being a cold day in hell before he'd develop a singleplayer strategy game rather than a game he could play with his team in the office, but I doubt he has mellowed much on that point.

 

[Etrutian]

Its good game design. PDX does not have tactics heavy games. Its Strategy. While a lot of us would like a more 'Total-War' battle system, its frankly not how the game plays out.

I also do not know how such a system would work with the 'real-time' nature of the PDX grand strats. A step beyond that, an AI would need to be developed that can also manage 'on the ground' battle tactics and the different variables that entails.


Taking a view that the battles are a rough estimate of actual battles (3 weeks is not one decisive conflict, but scouting, harassing and then execution) makes a decent amount of sense. If PDX could be expected to do anything, it might be to better relay 'what phase of conflict' the battle is at.


Make a scouting phase, mobile phase, engagement phase and retreat/hunting phase. Communicate to the player what phase is going on. Create some force discrepency modifiers that relate to some arbitrarily set 'Phase time'. Phase times are based around a value of '1', which is a force ratio. If Forces are even, then the modifier is ofcourse 1. If the forces are 10:1, then if the normal 1:1 is 5 days, the 10:1 scout time is .1*5 days. Scouting happens very quickly.

The scouting, mobile and hunting phases are all heavily based on unit types, not unit count. Mobile phase could be related to how the armies are composed from a wheels vs feet.

The engagement phase is mostly a factor of how many troops are on the field.

All phases can be increased or decreased by troop types. So a Phalanx heavy player could increase the length of engagement phase to allow for reinforcements. A barbarous player might go full Calvary, which decreases all phase times.

 

[Thure]

The biggest problem with TW Battles in Paradox games... do you even know how many battles are there in the games? If every battle of this was a TW style battle the games would never end, especially multiplayer would be annoying. The other players would have to wait until the other players finished their battle...

 

[One Proud Bavarian]

I wish they'd throw out the old combat / army mechanics entirely.

Chasing armies and sieging provinces (even if it takes no time whatsoever to take most provinces) is not good gameplay. There is no skill required except looking at the ledger and the enemy idea/techs (now traditions, I suppose). WIth a province density as seen in Imperator: Rome, it will be tedious and nothing else.

I wish they developed a mechanic that is more character oriented. Give a commander a legion and then assign said legion to a region with a command (such as "Collect additional levies", "Build a colonia", "Build Streets", "Conquer this province"). The way the commander approaches each mission would depend on many factors including his traits, legion setup, legion loyalty and so on and so forth. It would make war more character based and would be managable via event decisions depending on whatever the player put into the warzone.

Sadly however it appears we are not moving into that direction at all, but I do keep my hopes up.

 

[Blackwhitecavias]

I wish they'd throw out the old combat / army mechanics entirely.

Chasing armies and sieging provinces (even if it takes no time whatsoever to take most provinces) is not good gameplay. There is no skill required except looking at the ledger and the enemy idea/techs (now traditions, I suppose). WIth a province density as seen in Imperator: Rome, it will be tedious and nothing else.

I wish they developed a mechanic that is more character oriented. Give a commander a legion and then assign said legion to a region with a command (such as "Collect additional levies", "Build a colonia", "Build Streets", "Conquer this province"). The way the commander approaches each mission would depend on many factors including his traits, legion setup, legion loyalty and so on and so forth. It would make war more character based and would be managable via event decisions depending on whatever the player put into the warzone.

Sadly however it appears we are not moving into that direction at all, but I do keep my hopes up.

Such as system could be great if its done well, but I doubt that they will go that way, as direct control of your armies takes up most of your gameplay experience, and they would have to put in a lot of other activities to ensure players don't get bored (I would totally support such a move, as it might solve some other issues aside from realism like the attention problem where you have to keep your eyes on all fronts all the time (which can probably become a problem in MP as some people might need a lower speed for it during wars)), however if they add enough other features while keeping at least some sort of indirect control (as a commander still wouldn't be allowed to do everything), it would be fantastic.

 

[General WVPM]

...

Make a scouting phase, mobile phase, engagement phase and retreat/hunting phase. Communicate to the player what phase is going on. Create some force discrepency modifiers that relate to some arbitrarily set 'Phase time'. Phase times are based around a value of '1', which is a force ratio. If Forces are even, then the modifier is ofcourse 1. If the forces are 10:1, then if the normal 1:1 is 5 days, the 10:1 scout time is .1*5 days. Scouting happens very quickly.

The scouting, mobile and hunting phases are all heavily based on unit types, not unit count. Mobile phase could be related to how the armies are composed from a wheels vs feet.

The engagement phase is mostly a factor of how many troops are on the field.

All phases can be increased or decreased by troop types. So a Phalanx heavy player could increase the length of engagement phase to allow for reinforcements. A barbarous player might go full Calvary, which decreases all phase times.

Why make something arbitrary, unrealistic and heavily simplified while you could also make a more realistic system as described in this thread using army stances and tactics?

 

[Etrutian]

Why make something arbitrary, unrealistic and heavily simplified while you could also make a more realistic system as described in this thread using army stances and tactics?

Its all arbitrary. The issue is a lack of communication to the player about whats going on. Solution is to communicate it. If we are able to communicate the 'phase of battle' and tie it to a time, why not make it something a player can influence? Beyond that, 'battles' are generally simple affairs in PDX games, as they should be.

 

[Efimer]

Thinking a little more about our problem perhaps modding could be the solution. It could be created one or more specific mods for the single player with most of the changes proposed here. We should ask the developers if this is possible.

 

[Undead Martyr]

I think armies should have stances: Fabian / Direct. If both generals are on direct, the battle is fought quickly. If they are both fabian, it could take months and months. If one is direct and the other is fabian, then depending on general's skill, a direct battle could take a long time if ever.

The multi-month meat grinder is pretty silly and there has to be a fresh idea to balance usability with reality.

This, also a raiding or siege stance perhaps. It would allow for greater control and tactical/strategic maneuver, which as of right now is basically absent (battles basically come down to "stack general bonuses, pile on the numbers and maybe try for a mountain pass or river crossing") and IMHO that robs the game.