Make overkill count for more

[Bedwyr]

First, this is part of a broader effort designed to make war more interesting with minimal changes, see here http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,3933.msg97163.html#msg97163

So: This goes hand-in-hand with my first suggestion about limiting the size of the front line of battles.  What if overkill had a much greater impact on combat?  What if when you have room (i.e. have not hit the maximum line width of the battle) the game assumes you flank and can have your troops fighting three to one?  Then even your crappy conscripts will cut down armored footmen (while taking horrendous losses, of course, but they are cheap, armored footmen are not).  What if we say the game does not artificially need to help the smaller army, because the smaller army should be fighting in the woods and hills, in the mountains and badlands, not the rurals?

What if when you have hit the line-width, the game assumes you can only fight one to one, maybe one and a half to one with crowding?  Then your conscripts can charge the armored footmen for the whole day and barely make a dent.

This could be done, in theory, in a number of different ways.  Maybe have each region type have a set overcrowding percentage, just like battle-width percentages.  Maybe the game can check to see if your troop can move forward, and if not, then the overcrowding kicks in.  It really doesn't matter, even if it's somewhat less realistic one way or the other.  Heck, if the battle-width idea doesn't work, maybe just do this, and set the overcrowding percentage per region type and assume the smaller army is smart enough to find choke points.  As long as it is consistent, I don't care (and I doubt many others will) how "realistic" it is so long as it introduces real strategy to where you fight, and what troops you send.

[Indirik]

Love it.

[Poliorketes]

+1

The terrain will have (have now?) some effect in cavalry? archers?

[Anaris]

I think it's important to distinguish between two related mechanics with specific names in BM: overcrowding and overkill.

Overcrowding is the broader term, for when there are too many soldiers engaged in a melee in a single line for any more to join in. (Note that this is one-sided: as there is currently no effective maximum line width, this is dependent entirely upon the ratio of troops on each side. So, without looking up the numbers, if there are, say, 5 men on the attackers' side for every 1 on the defenders', no more attackers can join the melee, but plenty more defenders can.)

Overkill is essentially the single-unit version of that: when there are more soldiers fighting with a single unit than can easily engage with it at once. This leads to inefficient damage dealing, and reduces the number of hits the single smaller unit takes from the larger unit (or multiple units) engaged with it.

It sounds like what you are asking is essentially to make overkill wipe out any advantage the smaller unit may have due to better training or equipment, but I'm not entirely sure.

Perhaps you could rephrase with these existing terms in mind?

[vonGenf]

Overcrowding is the broader term, for when there are too many soldiers engaged in a melee in a single line for any more to join in. (Note that this is one-sided: as there is currently no effective maximum line width, this is dependent entirely upon the ratio of troops on each side. So, without looking up the numbers, if there are, say, 5 men on the attackers' side for every 1 on the defenders', no more attackers can join the melee, but plenty more defenders can.)

Is this the same mechanics that kicks in when assaulting walls with too few siege engines, or a completely different piece of code?

[Anaris]

Is this the same mechanics that kicks in when assaulting walls with too few siege engines, or a completely different piece of code?

Completely different.

[vonGenf]

Maybe the game can check to see if your troop can move forward, and if not, then the overcrowding kicks in.

Maybe this could be simulated by something like a pallisade in between every line in forest regions?

Then again maybe not, I'm just throwing ideas.

[Bedwyr]

It sounds like what you are asking is essentially to make overkill wipe out any advantage the smaller unit may have due to better training or equipment, but I'm not entirely sure.

Perhaps you could rephrase with these existing terms in mind?

Thanks for the difference between the two terms!  Revised to reference overkill where I spotted it.

What I'm actually asking for is slightly more complicated.  Not knowing how the game actually calculates these things, I'm going to make a few assumptions to illustrate:

1. The effective combat ability of a soldier is directly related to Training+Cohesion+Weapons+Armour (I'm sure this is horribly wrong, but it makes my math easier).
2. So, a good troop of soldiers with 70% on all those stats has a strength of 2.8 (.7+.7+.7+.7 = 2., while a crappy troop with 20% on everything would have .8 (.2+.2+.2+.2 = ..
3. So, with our above troops, our really good troop has a strength of 2.8, vs the 3.2 of four attacking crappy troops, and he gets cut down.  He takes two, maybe even three of the attacking crap troops with him, but he and all his friends still die.

Now, this is a vast oversimplification, not taking account how the game actually calculates strength, nor any morale or banners or anything, but it gets my point across: The point where overkill should kick in is long after the point where superior numbers will beat superior quality in an open field.

[Anaris]

Thanks for the difference between the two terms!  Revised to reference overkill where I spotted it.

What I'm actually asking for is slightly more complicated.  Not knowing how the game actually calculates these things, I'm going to make a few assumptions to illustrate:

1. The effective combat ability of a soldier is directly related to Training+Cohesion+Weapons+Armour (I'm sure this is horribly wrong, but it makes my math easier).
2. So, a good troop of soldiers with 70% on all those stats has a strength of 2.8 (.7+.7+.7+.7 = 2., while a crappy troop with 20% on everything would have .8 (.2+.2+.2+.2 = ..
3. So, with our above troops, our really good troop has a strength of 2.8, vs the 3.2 of four attacking crappy troops, and he gets cut down.  He takes two, maybe even three of the attacking crap troops with him, but he and all his friends still die.

Now, this is a vast oversimplification, not taking account how the game actually calculates strength, nor any morale or banners or anything, but it gets my point across: The point where overkill should kick in is long after the point where superior numbers will beat superior quality in an open field.

Overkill as it exists cares nothing for quality, IIRC. It is purely about numbers. After all, it doesn't matter whether your swords are blunt and rusty or razor-sharp, and it doesn't matter whether your opponent is wearing full heavy plate or a loincloth: you can still only surround him with so many people before you start getting in each other's way.

Also, I know your numbers were just for illustrational purposes, but I think that it's more likely that a single soldier with 70% in all stats could simply slaughter four soldiers with 20% in all stats. There gets to be a point where the quality difference is enough that you basically just have to have enough people to all jump on top of him and smother him (with your corpses if necessary), or you're not going to be able to defeat him.

[Foxglove]

What if we say the game does not artificially need to help the smaller army, because the smaller army should be fighting in the woods and hills, in the mountains and badlands, not the rurals?

There's a big flaw, there. What happens when the smaller realm consists mostly of rural regions? The realm with the larger army has the natural advantage anyway, so they'd just be even more free to rampage through rural regions. That being said, even as things stand now, I've never really seen the existing "small realm help" do anything of any significance to change the course of a battle or a war when it's small army vs large army.

[Indirik]

There's only so much you can do to help smaller realms without it getting ridiculous. There's nothing wrong with a large, powerful realm being able to roll over a smaller, weaker realm. That's just the way it is. BattleMaster is not some hyper-balanced RTS where each setup has some intrinsic bonuses and penalties to make each starting setup "fair". We have big fish and little fish. The little fish have to be careful not to piss off the big fish, or they will end up being a meal.

[Bedwyr]

Overkill as it exists cares nothing for quality, IIRC. It is purely about numbers. After all, it doesn't matter whether your swords are blunt and rusty or razor-sharp, and it doesn't matter whether your opponent is wearing full heavy plate or a loincloth: you can still only surround him with so many people before you start getting in each other's way.

Of course, I'm not suggesting it take quality into account.  I'm just using the low vs high quality troops as an example of how this would allow serious differences in combat effectiveness with the same CS.  If you have four high-quality troops fighting one low-quality troop, then the loner will be pulverized.

Also, I know your numbers were just for illustrational purposes, but I think that it's more likely that a single soldier with 70% in all stats could simply slaughter four soldiers with 20% in all stats. There gets to be a point where the quality difference is enough that you basically just have to have enough people to all jump on top of him and smother him (with your corpses if necessary), or you're not going to be able to defeat him.

As long as the numbers are appropriately tweaked so that if you recruit and train using X amount of gold, the low quality high quantity troops will beat high quality low quantity troops in a rural, then the purpose of this has been served. 

[Bedwyr]

There's a big flaw, there. What happens when the smaller realm consists mostly of rural regions? The realm with the larger army has the natural advantage anyway, so they'd just be even more free to rampage through rural regions. That being said, even as things stand now, I've never really seen the existing "small realm help" do anything of any significance to change the course of a battle or a war when it's small army vs large army.

Why do you assume the larger realm has a larger army?  Pretty much every war Arcaea ever fought in had the Arcaeans with the numerically smaller army, because Arcaea disproportinately recruited high quality (if I remember the numbers correctly, 65 90/90 and 70 90/70 infantry, 75 75/75 cavalry, and 65 75-4-75 archers composed the vast majority of every Arcaean army for the last four years) troops.

And, regarding your larger point, your smaller realm had better come up with an equalizer of some kind.  If you have a city-state that ends up fighting the twice-as-large realm next door with no allies, covert support/sabotage, better nobles, or any other method of equalizing things, then you should lose.  It's just that simple.  This feature is not designed to change that, it is designed to widen the tactical and strategic options available in the game.

[Foxglove]

Why do you assume the larger realm has a larger army?

That's a fair enough point. I have to say that in most of the cases I've personally experienced, the larger realm with more nobles has almost always had the bigger army. Although they weren't always more effective than the smaller realm due to poorer co-ordinatation, or what ever.

As you said at the start of the thread, this proposal and the terrain proposal seem as though they'd work best hand-in-hand. The idea of different types of terrain making a difference is a good one. I seem to have a vague memory of a similar idea being mentioned by someone about a year or so ago - something about cavalry having effectiveness penalties if they where fighting in woods or mountains, and archers having bonuses if they were fighting in the natural archer killing grounds of woods and forests. Can't remember what the objections to that were.

[Eldargard]

On the terrain type piece, are you suggesting that different terrains have varying bonuses to defending? Something like:

Rurals and Townslands are hard to defend
Forests and Badlands have a slight bonus to defense
Mountains have a small bonus to defense
Strongholds and Cites have bonus to defense based on their fortifications.

Or am I misunderstanding the terrain piece completely?