Strategy, tactics and role playing

To start off with my own point of view: I'm mostly a general. Well, actually an inventor, but you need the politics to get your project completed.

So, I like preparation work, and I expect that everyone knows what to do when the shit hits the fan.

If they don't, I do step up to salvage the situation, and will discuss the problems with my people afterwards. Not to share the blame, because if things go wrong it's my fault, but just to help them evolve.

Because, I'm to blame. I should have educated and instructed them better, or delegated the workload better, or assigned them better. Or even by requesting more/other/better people, although that is rarely needed.

If you translate that into an RPG, I'm the general. Prep time is important, but battles should be run on automatic. If I have to pause and adjust, I failed.


That looks like a point of view that would translate better to Strategic games, like RTS games. Which aren't very much about strategy, but more about tactics, seen from the commanders' POV. Which is what you play.

Mostly because in real life, strategy translates into politics.


What do you think?

 

I've always thought of a totalwar-like game where you pick and choose your captains and assign whatever troops to them. They would each have their own personalities and objectives which affect their performance on the battlefield and suitability to certain assignments, as well as affecting off battlefield politics.

Before battle, you would draw up a plan based on possibly incomplete intelligence, where each captain has their objective(s) to carry out. They might have their own opinions that you might want to take into account. Then the battle starts and each captain has their own AI where they carry out your orders to the best of their ability and when things turn out unexpectedly and you'll have opportunity to adjust timing or send new orders. If everything goes well which will be rare, it'll run like clockwork. Afterwards you'll have the opportunity to promote, demote or execute to strike fear in your other subordinates. Basically Alexander on campaign.

If only CA was more imaginative, or competent for that matter...

I think there are some older games in this style?

 

Dominions 4 is pretty obvious, no? Except you are a god-pretender, not exactly a general.

 

There are two games like that, and i spend many hours over them to finish them off .
They have concept of being commander fo the troops, they have great climate, they have great gameplay value with very hard battles, and they are close to crpg as they are based on fantasy world of tabletop games. They are called Warhammer : Shadow of the Horned Rat and Warhammer : Dark Omen . One of the best strategy games for pc ever created, hard as shit, but every troop, and every character had deep background and that "feeling". You were almost chained with general of mercenary troops, and "live" through his adventures, while modifing troops, choose ways of non-linear campaign with different outcomes after battles, etc. If you have possiblity to buy them, or if they show up on site like Gog.com do not even think, get them!
I still remember playing them as teenager and getting back from office where i played them at 4am on my bike to home at dark summer dawn.
From that time i never meet battle games with that "magical" something. Sure Total Wars are nice, but they are more as history titles, and have nothing in common with fantasy settings [but i still hope that they make Warhammer TW in style of these two games i mentioned above. We have great strategy games for cprg fans too, like Endless Legend, HoMM series, Eador, Age of Wonders etc. but they are nowhere near these two magical games, just great but completely different kind of games.
So we need games like these Warhammers, strongly focused on main character, but with whole tactical and strategy level too, plus great story and mechanics.
Just think how great game like that can be - something like Mount & Blade + Total War + Ultima . If i only have programming skills...
Just look:



As a crpg and strategy gamer at once[ and i love both genres most] i could say : give me modern version of these games with much longer campaigns and modding abilities and world could end.
And as WH:FB real life freak, that kind of game will be like heaven for me.

{there were other WH: FB titles many years later but they were just shit]

 

Sound like a typical Romance of the Three Kingdom game.
If you are a graphic whore, forget what I just said.

 

Actually, I'd be content if this single concept was explored further. I wish there was a total war game where all you do is fight battles and manage grand scenarios through the lens of a man confined to the war room or tent. More specifically I'd hide all the campaign map nonsense from the player and have him merely fight battles. Then, you'd have to make do with terrible scenarios generated by the AI.

 

You mean making a game where you are not a combat commander but a military organizer. Sounds like a Civ game and Alpha Centaury.

 

I've been meaning to try it actually. Is there any particular version that I should play?

 

Not really. You'd remain as a military commander. However, your overarching concerns would be mostly about military logistics as opposed to building farms. Most importantly, this would happen from a 'first person' perspective. You'd send for recruitment drives and such from your tent, you'd move your armies while interacting with 'cloth' maps and missives. Further, politics and empire management could be mostly hidden from the player as well, with different scenarios arising from a CK esque system. That way, your decisions would hang on potentially faulty intelligence about those situations and your actions might lead to underwhelming or overwhelming results -- more soldiers might be recruited than you expected, or you might catch the enemy king all alone.

Essentially, the campaign can be the silliest part of total war and I think hiding AI stupidity is a good first step into making the game more interesting.

 

Not sure about which is the best. If you can tolerant aged graphics, I recommend starting with the wall of fire for the gameboy advance with an emulator.

Otherwise, go for Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI, there is an English PC version available.

 

I get you now. Mount and Blade is definetely your best bet. It got mods on all kind of settings (modern, medieval, fantasy) to suit your tastes.

 

Yes I've been meaning to try it for years now. But I simply lack the time. What's a good place to start? What's the one Mount and Blade + Mod that marked the franchise?

 

Mount and Blade: Warband with latest patch is your vanilla version, upon which you can install mods. There are several stand-alone mods, that don't even requre MB: Warband to be installed, like "With Fire and Sword". Otherwise you should find what suits your fancy best. Among the most popular:
- Prophecy of Pendor - people like it a lot, but I personally can't stand it. Because of elves and shit. Also, faceroll for the win.
- Brytenwalda - my personal favorite, set in England of Dark Ages (after Arthur Pendragon's death and Roman withdrawal), very dark, realistic. Best shieldwall experience you'll ever get.
- Vanilla Warband is actually good to start. It has balancing issues (heavy cavalry is OP), but still pretty fun. Medieval fantasy, but without magic and elves.
- ANNO 1400 - forever developing mod, forever alpha version, but still very good looking and historically accurate.

Sorry, can't exactly name a lot of good mods with modern setting. There are many of those, but I only tried out "With fire and Sword" a long time ago and it's not that modern either. Powder rifles and dragoon knights, you get the idea.

 

I really loved the kind-of-rpg-ish singleplayer of Warhammer: Mark of Chaos. It was kind of a long time ago, but I remember individual units being persistant, having inventories, being able to level up your few important dudes, all on top of total-war-like combat and that sweet warhammer setting. I dropped it immediately after they forced you to switch to elves though, leaving behind everything you had up until that point basically.

 

He forgot about Floris, which is Vanilla+ pretty much. It just adds some diplomacy and order systems that were missing, a bit of faction balance and expand on content.

 

Siege-wise, Rhodok xbowmen and Nord Huscarls ftw.

If you thought Rhodok xbowmen and Nord infantry were strong in vanilla, wait 'till you seem them in this munchkin mod.

...

I recommend Gekokujo, hard to believe one guy made this.

 

Never played Floris mod. Only used Diplomacy mod in my vanilla experience, which added some minor diplo options and IIRC fixed some broken issues.

Huskarls and xbowmen are better siege-wise fo sure, but does it really make a difference against AI? No, it does not. Every siege is more a slaughter than a proper battle.

If you play vanilla, you can stick to home rules, then it would be pretty fun. I liked playing a nord with nord-only national troops, assigning horses only to my officers and myself. But then Brytenwalda came out, and it's basically the same

 

Other ranged attackers are squishier, and sieges have limited ammo so RoF of archers is outstripped by Rhodok accuracy+dmg. Also, Rhodoks are tanks, the board shields on their backs protect them from responding hail when they bend forward to reload.

Huscarls outstrip other melee tanks, by far. They have the staying power plus they have the DPS. Rhodok sergeants are good against cavalry, but in sieges they're less effective. Huscarls also have the added benefit of throwing weapons, before the melee engage. Not so useful in sieges, but its just another perk on the open battlefield.

 

No, my point is: does it make a difference while fighting against truly idiotic AI? If you got a HC-only army, they will pretty much cut through AI defences during sieges with little or no loss at all, because AI combine its troops smth like 50% shit tier / 40% medium tier / 10% top tier. And elites play no role at all if they fight side by side with peasants. 3 elites > 2 elites + 5 peasants, that's what I'm talking about. When you roll with HC-only troops, you can siege castles with garrisons 5 times larger than your actual army, and with good medic you won't get any heavy losses. Sieging with huskarls is even more effective, but why bother with slower map movement issues, if AI can't put up a fight in either case?

So its either LARPing and home-ruling a lot, or really just facerolling with HC, coz they are fast and get the job done, be it sieges or field battles.

 

Slower mapspeed is somewhat offset by killspeed in sieges, I play with very large battle size and max diff. Plus sieges are also about defense (mapspeed means shit here). It also just seems crude to send in dismounted cavalry in sieges, to me. And only Khergits have dismounted archers, who can't take an arrow. I also try not to exploit AI, else I could win sieges with no troops at all, just me and a few heroes. Whatever floats your boat, though.

 

My memory may be bad, but not THAT bad. Two weeks earlier:
"The reason I don't play Warband now is that I figured out all the AI exploits in sieges/open field, and its just too easy to reflexively abuse them." (c) Lilura

I try not to exploit it too, that's why last time I played vanilla I did it with no cavalry at all. And it really doesn't matter how large is your size of battle, in vanilla all sieges are basically fought on a tiny ladder. AI peasant troops get in the way of heavy infantry, cockblocking them and making them approach one by one, while I always get 3-4 HC guys fighting side-by-side.

Vanilla is fun until high levels. Good thing we have mods.

 

I tend to find Huscarls chop up the ladder pretty quick, then bully their way onto the palisade as a pack, able then to attack in different directions. Then they tend to spread out all over the besieged fortress, hunting down archers. When the Rhodoks run out of ammo, they clamber up too and switch to sword n board, being quite effective meleers in a pinch.

An easily-avoided exploit is not to use the reach of polearms at the top of a ladder to crush the skulls of enemy units, with overhead swings, who can't attack you back. Though single-handedly getting 100+ kills is a good laugh the first few times.

 

In other words, you prefer dominating over poor helpless AI, rather then exploiting it?

Now you're really making me blush. So what? We all have our sins.

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

Besides, when you do it in Brytenwalda it make such a tasty squishy sound, mmm

So you're saying that your personal favourite is Gekokujo then? Right, I'll put it on my list.

 

Well yeah, these games are built around the idea of efficiency: max that. Pathology of power-gaming. But you yourself mention mapspeed as a major consideration, that's gaining a strategical advantage over the AI...

It takes a fair bit of experimentation to achieve these "feats", I get bored so tend to explore the possibilities in most cRPGs I play. Have you seen my Median XL: Ultimative topic, or my archery topic? They're rife with such considerations.

I'll try Brytenwalda someday...

 

I've read Median XL thread, it even made me install the mod afterwards (never played it before). I got owned by unique boss that is summoned by mixing TP scroll and statue. Forgot his name already. I decided to try it out later with a more serious approach.

Can you give a link to archery topic you've mentioned?