How would a Real Time Tactical game on a 1:1 scale play?

[Samurai Waki]

Perhaps a more intuitive system should be put into place, where it could still have that TW feel. Like switching between a birds-eye view map of the area, with blocks representing the units, from this view you could issue orders and formations, as well as get your battlefield information (geographical information as well as troop movements... where it would have blocks representing seen enemy units which would have to be of a different colour than your's to avoid confusion) after you issue all of your orders, you can go back to real time, either using the traditional TW panasonic view of the battle, or being able to switch between the individual units, which would focus in as a 1st person view of the Unit's Commander, from there you could see what that commander is capable of seeing and assess the situation. Also whilst in Realtime, other AI commanders could give reports on their current status, like having a commander from the opposite end of the battle line saying "A Unit of Cavalry is moving to Flank Us!" From that information you could pause, switch over to see what that commander sees, assess the situation, go into you're tactical birds-eye view map, change change orders, and continue.

[Duke John]

Have you never tried Mount & Blade, DJ?

I have, but I do not plan or wish to use such a system.

But I would like to avoid micromanagement and avoid the absolute control aspect that makes games quite so gamey.

I agree, although deciding how much influence a player gets while still keeping the game enjoyable is a difficult choice to make.

Although it would be good to play the larger battle on a board representing the greater battle outside and then resolve the turn

I do have some plans to have a map that lies between the TW campaign map and the battlemaps. A map where only whole armies can be controlled and not the individual units. This will create great situations where an army must try to outmanuevre the other army and if succeeding prohibiting the enemy from joining with its other armies or reaching a city. A turn should then of course represent a smaller time period (half a day or so).

Combat mathematics
I have been thinking about how to simulate the following situations that occured during the Wars of the Roses:
- Army A pushing back the whole of Army B (Battle of Wakefield)
- Both lines rotating as each line is winning on its right flank (Battle of Barnet/Towton)
- Making a dent in the line and being pushed back again (Battle of Bosworth)
I came up with the following theory:


Casualties during melee wasn't usually that high. And with units being represented by blocks there is no little visual indication of how the units are doing. My solution focuses on how lines gave ground as during the battle of Towton where the Yorkists were in the danger of being pushed over the hill only to be timely rescued by the arriving duke of Norfolk. During this battle the line also pivoted as the Lancastrians attacked the Yorkist left flank with ambushing cavalry.
I want to use these visual changes of the battlelines to show where the player's units are winning and where they are being losing. To calculate this I use add up several factors of which the sum represents the force with which the line is pushing against the opposing line. The player can influence the magnitude of these factors by concentrating elite units, by bombarding the enemy with archers and cannons before the lines clash, by having deeper ranks or by occupying higher grounds.




With the sum of the forces it is calculated how the line deforms. As you can see above it is quite clear that red is losing on the left flank and winning on the right. This will cause a rotation of the lines. If red keeps losing and winning on respectively the left and right flank the lines will keep rotating.


You can see that blue has made a big dent in the left flank and this may stretch and thus thin reds line so much that its left flank detaches from the center. As these units are no longer strengthened by the closeness of the other units they will be pushed even further which will most probably result in a rout. However if blue was told to hold ground and the captains can keep in control of their soldiers then the blue line will not push further and red's left flank would have either routed or fold back towards the center further rotating the line.

Tactical map
The tactical map will be 3D. The player can rotate and change height and angle (within certain limits). It will be very much like the maps of Osprey, you can zoom in further though:

Terrain textures are tiled and only certain pieces can be joined (like with M:TW and unlike R:TW which has texture splattering). The battlemap will be large enough to allow some movement before battle and detailed enough to be able to take advantage of small hills. Terrain will affect combat and you should be able to place terrain fortifications if you have the time, although visually not very detailed.

Visualisation of units
Below is a possible visualisation of units. It will be visible how large indivudual units are and they will be given enough geometry to be able to follow the Bezier curves. You can see that four units have linked to form a bigger unit and clicking on a flag will allow you to perform certain actions; breaking up, linking with other units, advance, change facing/formation, etc.


I'm looking forward to read what you think about the above system.

Cheers,
Duke John

[Just A Girl]

I tried to read everything but theres a lot of txt and i must go do something soon,

I wish to know what kind of sprites will you be using?
2d sprites in the style of stw or mtw Would be The most logical As renderd 3d sprites would undoubtedly Lag the game up,
Im a belever that games should be made to encompass as many computers as possible.
I.e
There able to run on the most basic to the best availabel.

I have also always beleved RTW should have had a 2d option.
Where it could revert back from the new RTW gfx to the Physicaly better For the game MTW or STW gfx,
"well i beleve theyd be better for the game and allow more to play it"

Maby you are thinking of something like that.
i already understand That that would be A LOT of work,
But prehaps it would be a valuable addition to the game which would entice Not only the true Game play Players.
but also the GFX junkies.

As for the battle style,

I like the TW controll system, I dont like the Preset group formations though I think they suck.

If your going for realism in the unit numbers.
then i spose you need to be quite realistic with your command system aswell.

As some 1 sudgested Prehaps A delay when commands are issued,
Or even better.
You would need to have a unit close enough to your general for it to hear his command.
if hes not close enough,
But a nother unit is, And the 1st unit is close enough to them,
The message gets passed on, With a slight delay obviously.
And a multiplyer to this effect could be created,

So if your general tells a distant unit to do soem thing
The more units that haft to pass the message on The biger the delay,
also it could be fun to Include "Common hearing mistakes"

like you tell your muskets who are a mile of to Hold there fire.
But by the time the message gets there. They miss hear the command and think theyve been told to fire,
This could be set up with a % variabble and also be attached to the Multiplyer of the command delay, So the longer the delay the higer the % that they will mess hear the command..

This should increase the realism

[Duke John]

I tried to read everything but theres a lot of txt and i must go do something soon

But I even included images for the

GFX junkies

I wish to know what kind of sprites will you be using?

I won't. While I did wanted to initially, it would add alot of complexity and the workload to create all those sprites while not adding that much to gameplay. Others have already encouraged me to take the more abstract route of using blocks to represent troops. It doesn't make the game tactically less interesting but it does cut greatly on development time.

Im a belever that games should be made to encompass as many computers as possible.

The game will be developed with MacroMedia's Director (a 30-day trial, which I use, is freely available for the ones wishing to aid me in programming). The program will be a ShockWave "movie" and should consequently be compatible with any computer that has ShockWave installed. I doubt that it will require a high-end computer to run.

As some 1 sudgested Prehaps A delay when commands are issued,

Issueing commands will be differently from TW. Delay in execution, misinterpreting orders, orders not arriving at all or units taking action on their own are all methods to make the game more realistic. But they should be used carefully as they can easily frustate the player, although that is not entirely unrealistic either as when the battle of Tewkesbury was lost the duke of Somerset killed Lord Wenlock for not supporting him.

[Randarkmaan]

I think that one thing that should be included in such a game would be subordinate commanders. For an example; you control the main-battle, an AI subordinate commander controls the fore-battle and another one controls the rear-battle. Before the battle you, the commander-in-chief, would "discuss" the strategy with your subordinate commanders and advisors, for an example, when I raise and lower the red standard two times you charge into the enemy with the heavy cavalry. How your subordinate commaders follow these orders would depend on their tactical ability, self-control(maybe merge self control and tactical ability?) and loyalty. Take the same example, the subordinate commader has low self-control and charges the enemy long before your sign, this causes the entire situation to unfold differently and forces you to improvise. If he has a really low loyalty he may simply abandon you or refuse the order. Or if he has a high or low tactical abilty he may either do something else, either for better or for worse.
Within your own force you should have a sort of "area-of-command", all troops of your force within this area can be controlled say just like in Rome, though this area propably should not be too big and should usually be used only if you use your general to lead a charge or something like that. Troops outside the area, should be controlled roughly the same way as the subordinate commanders, except maybe only self-controll should play a part.

What do you think of this "system"?

[Duke John]

Personally, I would prefer turn-based for such a game - the BG-system sounds very intriguing, though.

Using a turn-based system raises the question in how many turns should a typically battle be completed? Players have all the time they want and some might even spend ten minutes on 1 turn. If a battle would be finished in 6 turns (as most miniature wargames) you would lose finesse and have a more crude system in which a melee can end in just one turn. 40 turns could be absurd, but it might not be. In BG you usually finished your turns fairly quickly as the interface was easy to use and the options were easy to oversee and reach.
The BG-system should be seen as an extra that allows the game to show the changes of the battleline in realtime. There won't be the need for frantically clicking buttons as the amount of orders you can make is probably limited.

And thanks for the encouragement!

I think that one thing that should be included in such a game would be subordinate commanders.

These features are certainly something I want to put into the game. But one must watch out for taking too much control out of the player's hands.

Before the battle you, the commander-in-chief, would "discuss" the strategy with your subordinate commanders and advisors

Planning the tactics before the battle can be interesting and is certainly more realistic, but could also take too much from the actual battle as it results in the player looking at a movie with little interaction.

How your subordinate commaders follow these orders would depend on their tactical ability, self-control(maybe merge self control and tactical ability?) and loyalty.

The tactical ability will certainly not be translated into a bonus on combat stats. It should translate into how the commander is able to handle different situations. For example during the battle of Towton, Lord Fauconberg (high tactical ability) ordered his archers to loose one volley and then take a few steps back. The Lancastrian Commander (low tactical ability) responded and let his archers loose their volley but as the wind and snow was blowing into their direction their arrows fell short and hit nothing. The commander did not realize this and all arrows were spent. The yorkists stepped forward to shoot their and the lancastrians arrows resulting in the Lancastrians moving forward abandoning their prepared positions. Writing an AI to simulate this will definitely be a challenge, but so is accepting the state of R:TW's AI

Within your own force you should have a sort of "area-of-command"[...] What do you think of this "system"?

I will need to think about this. As I said in the beginning this could result in taking too much out of the player's hands.

[Ser Clegane]

Using a turn-based system raises the question in how many turns should a typically battle be completed? Players have all the time they want and some might even spend ten minutes on 1 turn. If a battle would be finished in 6 turns (as most miniature wargames) you would lose finesse and have a more crude system in which a melee can end in just one turn. 40 turns could be absurd, but it might not be.

Yep - 6 turns would probably be way to short and not allow for much tactics. 40 actually sounds more realistic - could become cumbersome if you have many battles, but IMHO the TW games tend to have too many battles (personally, I would have loved RTW to have a significantly lower number of battles, with the individual battles being more important and epic).
So, as long as there are fewer battles, it might not be as much of a problem if the individual battles take longer to fight.

If you have something like a battle that takes e.g. 20-40 rounds, each unit could receive e ceratin number of "action" points per round that could be used for e.g. movement, change of formation, reloading (casualties and effects on morale in e.g. melees could also be calculated per round in a manner that it could take several rounds to resolve a melee between units).

Note, that I have no clue about programming such things and that I am just throwing some thoughts around , but in principle in think that turn-based battles have a lot of potential...

[English assassin]

IMHO turn based has quite a bit to recommend it in terms of game play.

As far as I can tell from reading historical accounts, an army commander doesn't actually make all that many decisions in battle anyway. It simply wasn't possible to exercise that sort of command across the battlefield, and of course in real life the general doesn't have to worry himself with micromanagement of issues like "hang on, those idiots are getting ahead of the line, they are going to be cut off and massacred, slow down you fools". (Well, he may well worry, but he can't do anythign about it)

Of course a player does need enough decisions and involvement in the action to make the game fun, so simply setting up the initial deployment and some overall orders and more or less letting things evolve from there wouldn't be viable, even if it might be reasonably accurate.

IMHO the suggestion of something a bit like combat mission was a good one. So, you have a "paused" orders phase where you can instruct each unit as you wish. Then when you hit go, first, there is a delay while the orders make their way to the units, (or you can build in a delay to get all units starting to move at the same time) then the units all move according to the orders AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO UNTIL THAT GAME PERIOD ENDS (in CM it was a minute at a time IIRC, here it might be, say 10 minutes, so a two hour battle would give 12 turns. I would guess you could make that variable reasonably easily, so the player who wanted 12 turns an hour or 24 turns an hour or whatever could just adjust it themselves?)

Units aren't stupid, of course, they do respond fairly sensibly to the situation around them as it changes rather than just marching blindly forward because that's what your orders were, while the hidden machine gunner takes them all out. And of course you can order a depleted unit to advance at the charge up a steep hill towards a fresh dug in unit, but it doesn't mean they will.

Then you have another order phase and it starts again (you can order units todo things that take more than one period to complete in which case you don't need to repeat the orders of course)

Duke John if you can pick up a copy of CM cheap (it should be remaindered by now) it would be worth having a go or two to see how it worked. The clincher was the range and subtlety of the commands you could give, so you really could try to pull off some pretty sensible infantry tactics.