Elegant decision!

[GloatingSwine]

I was wondering about that too. We still don't have much info about how distance on the strategic map affects the distance on the tactical map. It doesn't really need to be a number of turns delay for units to arrive. They can be placed farther away on the tactical map.

I expect tactical maps won't be too different in size to Planetfall. If they were much bigger there would be a lot of turns before anything happened in every fight.

The other alternative would be to have them lose 1AP on turn 1 for every hex away from adjacent they were, so they've rushed to arrive in battle and now they have to catch their breath.

 

[Iguanaonastick]

I expect tactical maps won't be too different in size to Planetfall. If they were much bigger there would be a lot of turns before anything happened in every fight.

The other alternative would be to have them lose 1AP on turn 1 for every hex away from adjacent they were, so they've rushed to arrive in battle and now they have to catch their breath.

You could add systems like that, but I wonder: What problem does it solve?

The zone of reinforcement solves the problem: "You have to move your units in an exact formation, otherwise they're vulnerable to being picked off. The AI is bad at this and in simultaneous turn multiplayer it requires house-rules to stop abuse."

Introducing mechanics like this that punish not moving in exact formation just re-introduces that problem, albeit in a much less severe way. I think it'd just make battles more fiddly without making them more fun.

Now, I get wanting more realism/simulationism to make it "feel" right. But battles and turns are abstractions anyway. In reality big armies typically needed several hour just to get everybody to deploy in formation. So I'm fine to just hand-wave it as "the battle only starts once everybody has gathered up their forces" to keep the pace of the battles good.

 

[Big J Money]

Any units that are in defensive positions i.e. City Walls or Infestation Defenders will not join a battle if a stack outside of it is attacked.

In the case where the AI can calculate that it would lose the battle if the city defenders do not sally, but it would win if it does sally, I hope that it will try to assess rather than to always hold the city. Especially considering that cities can fend off attackers for a few rounds even when empty (if I've been understanding the dev diaries). In the long run, losing the single army but staying in the city could be the bad choice, and if it's 100% predictable it can be exploited.

 

[Burjis]

In the case where the AI can calculate that it would lose the battle if the city defenders do not sally, but it would win if it does sally, I hope that it will try to assess rather than to always hold the city. Especially considering that cities can fend off attackers for a few rounds even when empty (if I've been understanding the dev diaries). In the long run, losing the single army but staying in the city could be the bad choice, and if it's 100% predictable it can be exploited.

I don't think that's such a big problem. Knowing this mechanism, one shouldn't leave their armies loitering outside the safety of the city if there are enemies around that could attack them. If their goal has been to reinforce the city for an impending attack, and they just didn't manage the movement points to reach the city, and then the invading army managed to picked them off, then I count it as an unfortunate mistake by the defenders. I just hope the AI is smart enough to not make such mistakes.
I am also hoping that armies can move faster in friendly domains than in hostile domains similar to how it was implemented in planetfall.

 

[Iguanaonastick]

In the case where the AI can calculate that it would lose the battle if the city defenders do not sally, but it would win if it does sally, I hope that it will try to assess rather than to always hold the city. Especially considering that cities can fend off attackers for a few rounds even when empty (if I've been understanding the dev diaries). In the long run, losing the single army but staying in the city could be the bad choice, and if it's 100% predictable it can be exploited.

I think that would be exploitable by the player too easily. The AI often thinks it can win when it can't, because the player is better, and then by sallying they'd just make the player's job even easier.

Instead we'd get the normal AI logic: If an army is standing in the city's domain and it seems weak enough to attack, the AI will simply attack it in the AI turn.

 

[Big J Money]

I don't think that's such a big problem. Knowing this mechanism, one shouldn't leave their armies loitering outside the safety of the city if there are enemies around that could attack them. If their goal has been to reinforce the city for an impending attack, and they just didn't manage the movement points to reach the city, and then the invading army managed to picked them off, then I count it as an unfortunate mistake by the defenders. I just hope the AI is smart enough to not make such mistakes.
I am also hoping that armies can move faster in friendly domains than in hostile domains similar to how it was implemented in planetfall.

I think you misunderstood my post, because I wasn't talking about players leaving armies outside the city, and the conclusion you came to in your 2nd to last sentence is exactly what I was saying in my post ("I just hope the AI is smart enough to not make such mistakes")