#First turn matter

34 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

keen cedar
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Curently more than before, having first turn matter the most in battles. Is there any incentive to solve it?
I have curentlly 3 problems:

  1. Why armies start so close to each other on the battlefield, that its posible to basicaly wipe enemy army before they even have a chance to play? Why not start further, so each player get at least one turn to set up?
    2)The casters ultimate pasive skill, Protective Spirit(efect when STARTING Battle) seems nicely designed to mitigate first strike when not starting first, but the problem is...is does not active when Battle is started...its efective when YOUR FIRST TURN in battle starts, meaning, enemy gets free turn on unguarded units anway. Woudnt be posible to have it trigger indeed when the battle starts?
    3)When units starts i ndefended stance, why not trigers abilities that are trigered by defending?

All those changes would make battle more equal and not coinflip about who starts first.

Also, when deploing units before round 1, you cant see who starts that battle, if you or an opponent...would be nice to have that info somewhere 🙂

neon cipher
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I agree, the hereos are overpowered now. Before it actaully seemed balance. now you can have a level 3 archer hero do rain of arrows and deal 120 damage to your entire army first turn. i just immediately reload when that happens to me. LOL

livid halo
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AOE attacks are really powerful, but also moving all units once, before the enemy even had a chance to move.
I would either recommend:

  1. Instead of attacks units should engage in combat. Meaning both sides dealing damage to eachother. To keep the attacker advantage the defending units might have their damage reduced.
  2. Like in chess each player can move one unit only, then it's the other player's turn. This would significantly reduce the advantage of initiative (rain of arrows would still be OP).
hollow smelt
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The dream is to have initiative back... I think it should settle this problems...

pallid ocean
# hollow smelt The dream is to have initiative back... I think it should settle this problems.....

I kinda agree on this.

I think k the heros/aoe/etc problems exist but overall they are their own thing that just serve to make first turns even more important.

Honestly,

I think best simple without reworking everything for the devs solution would be to add a iniative system.

Iniative system imo should probably be something like this:

  1. combine each speed of each unit in the army into one value and divide by number of units. To get the average speed of the army.
    Higher number wins.

  2. if both numbers are the same, resolve it by checking if both hero. Army with hero goes first.

2a) if both armies have a hero, and same speed avg. Then army with the hero with higher Intelligence value goes first.

2b) if both armies have same speed, and a hero with the same int values, then army with highest level hero goes first.

2c) assuming that both armies have the same speed avg and heros of the same level and same Intelligence, then the army who attacked, goes first.

  1. assuming both armies have same speed, and hero, army with the most veterancy levels combined goes first.

3a) assuming both armies have same speed, and no hero, and same veterancy level combined, army who attacked goes first.

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This way you incentives people to use "scout" units in their main army and not just build range/soldiers for war because having scouts means that you have a slight advantage over your opponents. It also gives thes another lever to pull as needed to weaken/strength units without changing the actual stats, as going first is a HUGE advantage now, even without a hero. It means you want heros leading your armies, and armies without a hero are going to always feel less power then once with it a hero. And it let's tou decide where you want your heros to go and which armies to lead. As sometimes you might want to split your veterans away from hero, because you know the hero army will go first and your veterans will win any ties vs non veterans in non hero fights leading to more strategic choices being made.

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And to implement all this would be less then like 5 If statements on the dev side.

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Without changing anything else

agile loom
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just gonna say that I hate initiative in most tacticals

pallid ocean
agile loom
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It's clunky, and doesn't solve the fact that the first turn matters the most. At best, it means you have another thing to minmax. At worst, it changes nothing saves adding clutter

tight halo
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I would argue that initiative helps quite a bit - there's a difference between being able to attack with one unit or your entire army before opponent's turn. That said, I don't really see initiative system working in this game, as it tends to increase time spent on battles by a lot (and battles taking too long in multiplayer is already a prominent issue).

hollow smelt
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But if you think about it, it’s better to have the first turn decided by a single unit than by an entire faction. I like the idea of determining the turn order based on the army’s average, but I still prefer using real initiative.
Maybe a new attribute (agility) for the units could work — that way, extremely strong units (Chosen and juggernaut units) would have a drawback by being slower.

agile loom
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are they even the issue right now

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seems like the real problem is alpha strikes sweeping the field before you can do anything

frosty flume
boreal bobcat
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Please do not add some sort of initiative stat. The combat does not need to be slowed down by people trying to figure out which unit to move next or even worse, which units will move in which order. Just don’t hand out move speed too readily. A more intuitive way to understand how close battles will start could really help the people asking for initiative. Or making them a consistant distance.

agile loom
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Or bigger deployment zone so you can spread out against aoe

hollow wadi
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I'm starting to warm up to the combat, but I still have mixed feelings about it.

Mostly I'd like to share my pov to see if you guys resonate with it.

Combat system in Humankind felt like a step up from the classic "Civ formula ", and was fun to play around positioning/elevation.

Combat system in EL2 feels like a step down from AoW. It feels like skills/spells are too impactful, fun stuff is locked behind passives (guard to get shield? Why not just click a skill to get a shield?).

It feels like we want complex units with big boom skills, but the system does not support it in the current iteration.
Combat maps are too small and too simple, first turn advantage, skills either too impactful or forgettable.

It kinda feels like the combat system is in an in-between state?

cursive willow
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Close starting positions, high-impact actions, and igo-yougo turns: pick two.

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If armies start close together, units have powerful attacks and spells, and the first player gets to do their whole turn before the opponent can move, the second player will get wiped out before acting.

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If you make the battlefield bigger, then the first player can't attack anything on their first turn and has to set up instead. Range and move speed becomes more important than turn order and the game works like AoW.

If you make actions much lower impact, then the first player has an advantage but it's reduced because they can't actually kill anything on their first turn. Battles last longer and might feel more grindy but the first turn advantage is reduced.

If you move from whole-army turns to an initiative system (where individual units act in initiative order) or activation system (each player can pick 1-2 units to activate each turn and can't re-activate units until everything in the army has acted once), you get a different but still fun combat system with many more shorter, less impactful turns.

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Of these three, I don't think making the battlefield much bigger is possible, given the battlefield is the world map. And making turns less impactful just makes fights longer and more grindy without fully fixing the problem.

I would recommend an initiative system. Yes, it will be slower in multiplayer but single player will go at almost the same speed

zinc sparrow
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what you describe in that last paragraph sounds suspiciously similar to what was done in mechanicus

cursive willow
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(you could also go back to the endless legend 1 system where you placed all the orders at once but units acted in initiative order. I don't think this is a good idea, but it could potentially work as a compromise for multiplayer enthusiasts who don't have the patience for single-activation turns)

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Actually, you know what might work? Initiative system as the default, with an option for EL1 style planned turns for MP, if people find single activations too slow. Yes, it would mean MP players have to learn a whole new system, but let's be completely honest with ourselves here - every 4x multiplayer scene ends up with a massive number of house rules, MP balance mods, and meta strategies that nobody in single player uses. They can handle it.

tight halo
hollow wadi
zinc sparrow
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with units not being customisable (apart from 2 upgrade paths) heroes should matter much more I dont see a problem with that.

hollow wadi
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Plus I can only advocate for effects on activation: choosing to push the button makes me feel smart unreasonablyhandsome

supple briarBOT
tight halo
hollow wadi
lyric crescent
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-1 range is nothing in the late game where roads are up (through Trading Center techs).