Marshal formation

[Solari]

I think that having *more* control is the desired separator, but what constitutes more control is difficult to say, as on one end we have no marshal settings and on the other we have full customization of every type of unit and their settings.

And somewhere in all of this care has to be taken to avoid turning nobles into travelbots, with no real input or purpose in battle.

[Longmane]

And somewhere in all of this care has to be taken to avoid turning nobles into travelbots, with no real input or purpose in battle.

I'll second that as one of the most important, and indeed enjoyable, roles of a Marshal is actually communicating with this/her troop leaders on a personal basis, be it either while campaigning and attempting keep them becoming a bunch of merry tourists abroad, a rousing speech and explanation of your chosen settings etc before a battle, or else simply keeping them sharp during those damn times when nothing to do but sit around camps all day.

[cjnodell]

And somewhere in all of this care has to be taken to avoid turning nobles into travelbots, with no real input or purpose in battle.

I agree %100. I would honestly hate knowing that all the battle fun was being controlled by someone else. I have always liked the whole idea of: The Kings can ask the Duke, the Duke can ask the Region Lord, the Region Lord can ask the Knight but there is no guarantee that any of them will do what was asked. It should, in my opinion be the same with the military chain. In many ways I dislike the idea of Marshal override formations all together. If he wants the troops deployed in a certain way, then he must ask and they must comply. In that sense we already have a powerful formation builder. The marshal tells everyone how to deploy and depends on them to do what is needed.

At the same time I understand the frustration of having a third of the troops under your command using last battles defensive line settings while the rest updated there line settings for the coming attack. It can really suck and there is no way to ensure that even a majority will log in and make the needed adjustments before battles. The Marshal formations help to solve this though it does limit how ones men can be deployed. I figured that if there was going to be a Marshal override, like there is, it should allow flexible creation of creative, new and fun formations.

In the end though, making sure my troops were in order before a coming battle has always been one of the things that kept me logging in and caring. Take that away and how much and the new player really control? At the least, I would love to see an option in the line settings that would let the troop leader decide if he will deploy per the Marshal formation and fall back on his own settings or instead simply deploy per his own settings.

I am not really sure if I would at all mind if all Marshal override formations made a departure from the game...

[Indirik]

There is a careful balance between giving the individual players control, and allowing the marshal to do what they're supposed to do, which includes making sure that the army is prepared and ready for battle. Personally, I think that the system that we have works pretty well.

The majority of the time, the only thing a marshal formation affects is the row in which your troops line up. You have to get to the much more advanced settings before you start affecting things like formation, retreat settings, etc. (From what I've seen, those are rarely used.) And I personally appreciate that there are marshal settings to catch me if I forget to update my settings. I know that I've forgotten to change something, and wound up as the only infantry on Front. And not just once.

So yes, while I agree that characters should not be turned into travel bots, we should also make playing the game easy and friendly for casual players. (How often do you really want to not line up where the marshal wants you to line up? I would think that most of the time people are out of formation, it's an accident and not intentional.) This means a balance between automation of certain things like formations and line settings, while also allowing personal choice with nobles be able to choose their own.

While we may not be tactical military geniuses, and legendary leaders of men, we play characters who are. We shouldn't have to do *everything* ourselves.

[Solari]

There is a careful balance between giving the individual players control, and allowing the marshal to do what they're supposed to do, which includes making sure that the army is prepared and ready for battle. Personally, I think that the system that we have works pretty well.  While we may not be tactical military geniuses, and legendary leaders of men, we play characters who are. We shouldn't have to do *everything* ourselves.

Agreed.  I've often thought that moving the unit settings to a more prominent place within the game would go a long way toward ensuring people are regularly checking and updating their settings.  When I give (gave) marshal orders, I made sure to include the unit setting key in all orders (ex: 1DL, 3AW).  That way, you only need to glance down at the status bar.  But to change them should probably only require one click-through, either down in the status bar as a direct link or as dropdown boxes on the Order page itself.  Far too many critical items are buried two or three links deep.  Thoughts?

[Longmane]

Speaking for myself as a player rather then from the point of view of my marshal/general, and likewise one who not only gets a great deal of enjoyment and satisfaction out of BM personally but also wants others to do similar, I believe the current system concerning orders and command setting etc is already near enough perfect, as while the very limited amount of command settings, and likewise their unsuitability for many situations, can be highly frustrating for a new marshal, and indeed rather much so all the way until reach they've reached their max complement, I nevertheless myself found it not so much as something to hate and bang my head against the wall over, but rather a system that not only encouraged me to use a "more hands on" attitude when setting my armies out before battle, inasmuch as began formulating and using custom setting very early on, but also to build up a personal rapport with, and between, my troop leaders. 

[Indirik]

Agreed.  I've often thought that moving the unit settings to a more prominent place within the game would go a long way toward ensuring people are regularly checking and updating their settings.  When I give (gave) marshal orders, I made sure to include the unit setting key in all orders (ex: 1DL, 3AW).  That way, you only need to glance down at the status bar.  But to change them should probably only require one click-through, either down in the status bar as a direct link or as dropdown boxes on the Order page itself.

That's a good point. We now have them displayed all the time, it would be interesting if we could get it so you could actually change them from there. Change the "1AL" from just a text field to a set of three drop-downs where you could just change it. I like it.

Far too many critical items are buried two or three links deep.  Thoughts?

I tend to agree with this. If you have any more suggestions on how to rearrange things, I'd say start a new thread with some suggestions.

[Bedwyr]

So yes, while I agree that characters should not be turned into travel bots, we should also make playing the game easy and friendly for casual players. (How often do you really want to not line up where the marshal wants you to line up?

99 times out of 100, you want to be in the Marshal's formation.  I personally think that there should be a tick box to say "ignore Marshal formation orders" to handle those very few times when it's otherwise.  However, there's a lot of stuff I want to see done before that, tee hee.

[Jeckyl]

The only thing that an "experienced" marshal has over a newbie marshal is the Leadership skill. If you train Leadership at the academy, you could easily have full access to all marshal settings for the instant you are appointed as marshal. Which is really the whole point of academy training. So there's no reason to toss the whole idea out the window.

What you can do is tie the implementation of these formations into the leadership skill rating.
* Higher leadership: + chance of success
* Very high leadership: ++ chance of success

* Specifying more options = - chance of success
* Specifying "overrides" for noble units settings (formation, encounter reactions, etc.) = -- chance of failure

Put all this together and calculate a chance to successfully implement a formation. If you fail, the consequences could range from nobles just lining up according to their personal settings, to being +/1 a line, depending on how badly you failed.

For an Epic Fail, when a newbie marshal tries to use a super-complex setting with lots of overrides, you could even assign completely random lines to each individual noble on that side.  :o

And you can even tie in the number of available custom formations to the leadership skill. One custom formation stored per 20% skill?

I think you're going about this the wrong way. I think that the options within the Formation Builder should have the Leadership requirements. The way you had it sounds reliant on D&D style dice rolls. Here is what I propose:

Leadership and/or H/P unlocks the Formation Builder. Because the Marshal does not always have experience in telling nobles how to precisely deploy their unit (outside of formations), an additional Leadership value will be required (to formulate a new strategy) for each level of sophistication.

Basic formation options such as Infantry, Cav, and Archers being deployed in the Front, Middle, Back, and Rearguard be made available immediately in the Formation Builder, but only in baby steps. Defaulting to what is possible with Infantry Charge, Archer Opening, Fortification Deploy, and Infantry Wall. As leadership improves, or maybe even use of custom formations increases by the Marshal, more options such as having the infantry deploy in Rearguard, and Cav deploy in the front, become available.

Eventually, when the Marshal is able to use some of the very advanced stuff, such as Weakening Skirmish, they will still not be able to change Withdraw settings in the Formation Builder. They will still need to increase their Leadership (or use more custom formations).

Perhaps also limit to how many formations they are able to have or use through the Formation Builder? If someone had 10 custom formations, then ya, units would become travel bots. But if they could only have say, one attack formation and one defence formation, then not really.

What I would like to see though, is be able to have maybe ten custom formations available, but only have one or two "active" to use within a given time frame. Example:

I have Formations named: Slay Those Monsters, Skeleton Explosion, Eat His Horses, and Bite the Dust. I choose to have Slay Those Monsters and Eat His Horses active. I decide that since the other guy doesn't tend to have a lot of cavalry, that I want to be able to use Bite the Dust instead. Well, now I have to wait a week, two weeks, or something in order to actually be able to use it. In the mean time, I still have to issue new line settings to nobles in my army so that I can hopefully mimic that formation.

And since people WILL forget what each setting does, a way to review what is in each formation the marshal has created.

[egamma]

Better yet--one offensive, one defensive formation. Marshal picks one "starting" formation as a template, and can only change one setting per day (infantry/starting row).

So they can reach a unique formation, but it takes a while to create.

[Longmane]

Perhaps a melding of both ideas would prove a good base to work this up from, as not only be user friendly enough (AKA buffoon proof) if people simply take the  time to plan things out, ie at least have an idea what situations/forces might face in the coming days, but also offers a sliding reward for the more experienced a marshal becomes.