Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - Beta Lone Trooper suspiciously good in autoresolve.

No, that's exactly what I try to avoid. RTS shouldn't be counted into autoresolving battle for 2 simple reasons:

1) Your starting units are rather unimportant when you can build many other units in the RTS mode. So the only important thing which lead to the outcome of a battle is the random principle (AI fights against AI). If I follow this logic there must be a fight about each country without any units in it. If I attack an empty country with a lonely trooper there must be an RTS simulation as well. Because even if you don't have any starting unit you could built them on the RTS map.....so why is there not fight if you invade an "empty" county which belongs to the enemy?

2) The system in place now can be seriously abused. As I said, if you only build single, cheap troopers, send them in countries of your enemy and solve each battle with the autoresolve battle you will definitely kill more enemy (campaign map) units than seems reasonsable because your chances to win are way too high because there is the possiblity(!!!) to engage in RTS battle. My point is: RTS shouldn't play ANY role by autoresolving. It's just a bad and abusable system.....


Fighting with a lonely trooper against an army of nine enemy troopers shouldn't lead to 10% chance to win, it should lead to a 0% chance to win. BUT you could still engage in the combat personally and still win the day. But there shouldn't be ANY way to win that fight (or just even kill five enemy troopers) by autoresolving it. That mechanic destorys the balance on the campaign map for no apparent reason....

I'd like to point out a couple of things regarding my calculations:

* I am fully aware of (and I thought clear on) the possibility that this is not how it happens.
* I am fully aware that allowing the one trooper to take on each enemy one at a time is unrealistic; that is part of the point.
* I find that if such a lone-trooper friendly resolution is employed, a lone trooper should have about 3% victory chance against a force of 5 equally powerful troopers with no other modifiers, whereas another likely percentage is 16% (direct proportionality)

The visual presentation may be covering a completely different process, but if 1v5 (equal power to each unit) results in odds of 3% or better, they're being nice to the loner (seeing as that is the overall chance of victory under very unlikely and highly optimal conditions for the loner), with 16% being extremely loner-friendly. Now that I'm at a gaming computer I can actually try to establish a test case, although I'd need a human partner to reliably establish a battle that meets all criteria. (Of course, 3% and 16% are far enough apart that AI battles can give some indication still.)

And you should potentially fare a bit better in RTS than with the Imperial Army, since the dragon is not present in autoresolve and there are no generals. But individual skill applies to RTS, so that's not easy to work out. If autoresolve should correspond to RTS, it should correspond to RTS with all sides controlled by AI at the same skill level with no dragons. Shouldn't it?


UPDATE - TEST: Best test I got.
1 trooper (1 star) against 4 troopers (no stars) resulted in 20% chance of victory. By my reasoning a 1/16 chance (not accounting for the research advantage) would have been generous towards the lone unit. To give it a 20% chance of victory means you must force it to win against 50/50-odds four times in sequence (using the 1-on-1 assumption as a sanity check only). A 6% chance of victory would have been a fair starting point, not accounting for the obvious fact that the lone trooper could be attacked simultaneously by multiple enemies. (And not accounting for the RTS feature of constructing additional units to even out the battlefield if it goes past the opening move.)

Autoresolve shouldn't correspond to RTS after all. It causes more problems than it solves....

I think that is a fair argument, it only leaves the issue of autoresolve leading to better victories (lower losses) than RTS in those cases where you have more troops than the enemy.
Because a fight in RTS practically always will result losses for me (numbers depending on the exact units involved of course).
In other words you are then punished for going into RTS.

The problem is that you'd THINK that at least some of the time, the guy who has spent the most gold on his Strategy Map troops would be able to see the benefit of that gold. It does not seem to work out that way.

I've currently playing a campaign and am keeping detailed notes. 9 turns in I've done 4 autoresolves. Chances of 81%, and 3 times 85%. I've won all of those, but I've lost more gold in victory than the enemy (except for the 3 Ironclads versus 1 Transport Autoresolve, which I won without casualties).

Just now a Lone Trooper (3 Gold) facing 1 Hunter, 1 Armour and 4 Shamans (38 Gold). In terms of Gold cost, my army is worth 12.67 times more than his army. He killed 1 Hunter and 1 Armour with that lone Trooper before it was killed by the Shamans. Net Result: For every 1 gold the enemy lost, I lost 4.67 Gold.

I'll keep playing, but I'm pretty sure that this will keep happening and there may only be one or two times at most where the trooper will not inflict damage out of proportion to its cost. I think it's a problem when you are basically guaranteed to make your opponent lose money by sending a single weak unit into his territory.

I do think RTS mode should be more valuable than autoresolve - most of the time. I accept that autoresolving at 80% or less is too risky and I should fight those battles. I don't want to have to always enter RTS mode or else lose far more money. When I've got an 85, 90% chance of victory, I just want to get that easy pushover fight done with so I can save my energy for a REAL battle where I only have a 65, 75% chance or less of winning. These 85+ situations are what autoresolve was meant for.


EDIT: I tried this tactic myself:

I invaded heavily fortified (but NOT entrenched) enemy capital)

Allied Forces:

• Trooper (EE,SW) * 1

Allied Gold Value: 3

Enemy Forces:

• Hunters * 6
• Armours * 7
• Devastators * 2
• Troopers (EE) * 5
• Grenadiers (IB) * 7

Enemy Gold Value: 159

My odds of winning: Just 3 percent. That still seems a bit high for a gold difference of 156.

I lost of course, but I took out 1 Hunter and 1 Armour with me, costing the enemy 14 gold for just 3 of mine. That's worth it. I'll try it again and again, I think.

Yes, that is indeed not how it works. In earlier betas you could see the money effect for autoresolve. Now, it has been changed to match the actual RTS outcome. For the RTS outcome, the gold spent on the Strategy Map did NEVER have ANY effect. I am just a little bit confused why people think that money spent should matter for autoresolve but apparently do not mind that it is still a waste if you personally engage in a battle.




How much gold would you have lost if you were actually fighting the battle yourself? If it were my battle, I would have very surely lost all the shamans because they just get killed very easily. And I would have also lost this 1 Hunter since I would send him to capture the nearest resource points and he probably would not have survived the first enemy attack. The 1 Armour would be probably also dead once the enemy would have produced a few grenadiers. I think I would have ended even with higher losses on my troops than the result by autoresolve.




It is not the trooper who makes you loose money, but this unit production on the RTS map. If this issue is adjusted for autoresolve, than the other (human) player can still send a single weak unit into your territory and just not autoresolve but choose to play it as a dragon. And you will again loose money spent on the strategy map...



I have in fact made the experience that I loose at least as much money when I fight myself as when I autoresolve battles. If you tend to loose less money - than you are definitely better than autoresolve and should probably fight the battles yourself if you want to avoid losses caused by autoresolve. That is exactly the situation for which the player ability matters.

EDIT: @ Stabbey: Try the same tactic again, however, do NOT autoresolve!^^ Try to play the fight yourself^^. If the enemy rushes on you, then build all the turrets and many light units. By the time the enemy is in the vicinity of your base, you will be surely able to kill quite a few of its troops

I've said it before but I think there's an issue with the level of casualties in matches you resolve yourself as well. If I send a single trooper against an army worth 50 gold and manage to get 50% casualties before I'm defeated it seems unreasonable that I should wipe out 25 gold worth of troops on the strategy map. If we're using the rules that I can only participate in one fight a turn then maybe that can be justified but in that case we certainly shouldn't be using this kind of modelling for auto-resolve.

With the way casualties are currently organised there's no tension between creating a strong force that can battle effectively versus keeping all areas of the map defended because a single large force is much less effective than a number of small forces.

If I remember correctly, it is Larian's intention to make the strategy game relevant during the RTS game, and there has been some discussion on that subject (including my stated preference for strong restrictions on unit production during RTS). I agree that the RTS battle still goes far in negating the initial advantage you have.

I have noticed that one battle forge can beat quite a few hunters if they're just stationed near it to end the enemy. So if I send 4-5 hunters to finish the last standing battleforge and concentrate on the big battle on the other end I may well find that base reconstructed and my hunters gone. While this may be to my shame, it still indicates that strategy units are only there because somebody has to start the battle and grab the first sites.

That's not what we're discussing here, though. The autoresolve is also bonkers. (Which is more easily discussed because the numbers are there on the screen, and the tests run rather quickly.)

The victory probability for autoresolve appears to be a very simple proportionality: Your chance of winning = your force's share of the power on the battlefield. Which leads to one trooper versus 4 having 20% chance of winning instead of a more realistic 6% (realistic given that it is allowed to fight enemies one by one and takes no damage from the enemies it defeats).

For 1v4 to give 20% overall, the lone trooper's probability against each individual enemy would have to be just below 67%. In other words, troopers are ninjas. (This number is probably a little off. I'll put in a more accurat one if I produce a more accurate test case.)

AS I just wrote in the patch thread from yesterday, multipliers now work correctly.
I've set the recruit cost to 2.5x in a game I started today and it helped quite a bit with the problems I had with the RTS combat.
The effect is that battles now develop slower, have less additional units and initial units are very important.
I even manage to win fights with no or relatively low losses, if I take some care.

Consequently the high loss rates in autoresolve could be toned down as well, without having to worry too much about balance vs RTS.

Now, I understand that it al comes down to personal taste, but I feel that the game is (even ) more enjoyable like that. The only downside so far is that difficulty might be too low, since the AI (medium) fields too few units on the strategy map.

The problem is:

1) There is the possibility of abusing cheap units like troopers to break the balance on the campaign map (like a glitch). Like Stabbey wrote: you lose less units weithed in gold than the enemy with the bigger army....

2) There is the intention to "force" people to engage in RTS which is bad decision in itself. If I don't like RTS that much there shouldn't be any mechanism "by design" which let me worse off. At least the game should give me the possiblity to avoid that. Else people who don't like RTS gaming that much will be forced to play the battles on the field which is perhaps not what they initially wanted. Sure, you can always reduce game difficulty. But that's not the best solution imo.

3) The mechanic which motivate yourself to engage in combat would be even better WITHOUT the RTS in autoresolve. When you have a clear 0% chance to win (or 5% or something) and you still want to attack a country there is no other way than engaging yourself in battle. On the other hand: with RTS involved in autoresolve the motivation to engage in combat is ALWAYS the same. Is that better than the way without RTS involved in autoresolve where you are more motivated to engage with a small chance to win and less motivated with a big chance to win?


To the point: the balance of fight on the campaign map is bad as it is now. It's not well balanced and not well thought.

IF you want to have a real random element on the campaign map battles, use a dice system just like when playing Risk (the board game)......at least this concept proved to work well...

I agree. However, if you adjust the autoresolve in such a way that it prohibits such a possibility, this problem you mention will remain NEVERTHELESS. Then, your opponent can still attack you with one single trooper and choose to fight the battle - the outcome will be the same as it is now with autoresolve. Just adjusting autoresolve does NOT eliminate the problem of ninja troopers.



Why do you think that you are forced to engage in RTS by the autoresolve now? For an average player it yields pretty much the same results as actually fighting the battle. If you are better than average, you should either do battles yourself to achieve better results or just accept autoresolve. As I have already written, that is exactly the point of the player's ability. In contrast, if you adjust the autoresolve in such a way that it yields better results than an average player would achieve in the battle, then you will rather force the people to do autoresolve rather than fighting an RTS.



Why do you assume that you get a better result when you fight a battle with a big chance to win rather than autoresolve it? As far a my experience goes, I always get a comparable or even a worse result when I play RTS rather than autoresolve.

All right I played 18 turns before saving and quitting. I started a strategy of sending 1 Trooper at a time into enemy territory, no matter how heavily occupied.

Of the 9 battles where it was my lone trooper against other guys, only TWICE did my Lone Trooper die without killing anything.

Three times I entered an enemy capital territory packed with troops (Value of 159 Gold, 143 Gold, 176 Gold) with just a lone trooper. My chances for winning were just 3% each time.

I think we can all agree that entering a territory defended by 150 Gold of units with a single 3 Gold Trooper is a Dumb Idea. And yet...


My cumulative losses:
- 3 Troopers (9 gold)
Their cumulative Losses:
- 3 Hunters
- 3 Armours (42 Gold)

I am being rewarded by causing the enemy losses of 4.67 times the losses I am getting for sending that single trooper. Plus, if my turn comes before the enemy, they can't even invade me back. I am being rewarded for doing the stupid thing.

There is no, no possible justification AT ALL for this. NONE.

Yes, you are being rewarded for doing the stupid thing. However, it is not the problem of autoresolve (I assume you did autoresolve, didn't you?). Your enemy would probably suffer the same (or even higher) losses if you invaded his country with just one trooper and chose to fight the battle as a dragon each time.

Correct.
Unless you choose to adjust the recruitment costs.

And yet that strategy has been used effectively throughout history.



And you got/kept the country, so get more gold and research points the next turn (and as Elwyn mentioned, you are not comparing that to losses in RTS). If sending out lone troopers is an effective strategy that will win the game, then there is a problem with game balance. If not, a loosing strategy being a little less expensive than a winning one isn't a big deal.

Are you going to continue sending lone troopers into entrenched territories to soften them up? Other than complaints of auto-resolve results, nobody has said that that was their main strategy or that insane AI wasn't good enough because it is easily defeated by lone troopers.




It is pointless to be consistent or logical? So the game should require 2 different strategies, one that works well if you autoresolve and one for the RTS?

Somehow a single bomber balloon or upgraded imp fighter being able to wipe out vast armies of ground troops without anti-air capabilities is much more realistic than a lone trouper managing to take out a couple hunters or armours?

How much would it slow down the strategy phase if you had to take all the unit types, upgrades and counters into account there, as well? Would that make the game more fun?

Yes it was all autoresolve.

No, the lone trooper never did win any battles.

The problem is that the Lone Trooper is consistently doing too well against the enemy, no matter how big the disadvantage.

If 50% of the time, the Lone Trooper was causing proportionate or less casualties, that would be okay. But when almost 80% of the time, (77.8% to be precise) of the time, the Lone Trooper can cause substantially more damage in gold than it costs, that is a balance issue.

A lone trooper should not have an 80% chance of causing enemy losses far exceeding the Trooper's cost. If I send my lone Trooper to invade a country with

• Hunters * 4
• Armours * 5
• Devastators * 3
• Troopers (EE) * 17
• Grenadiers * 7

A 176 Gold value, and a 3% chance to win, I should get laughed to death. In an actual RTS, the enemy would just run up and squish me before my Battle Forge is done. I would not live long enough to kill 2 Hunters and 2 Armours with my 3 Troopers.

If I have a 97% chance to win when facing a lone Trooper, I should not have to waste my time actually entering the RTS mode myself just so I don't lose two far more expensive units to those lone troopers.

It does. If your lonely ninja trooper has a 0% chance to win it's just pointless to send him at war....


The problem is the that when you attack a country with a huge army which has an 80% to win you still lose quite often. If not the battle so at least MANY units and as Stabbey said: the bigger army loses more troops weighted in gold than the small army. THAT'S JUST A BAD DESIGN DECISION. It breaks the balance on the campaign map. And yes, the problem is the RTS simulation in the background when autoresolving. It takes away weigth from my units on the campaign map because there can be new units build in RTS. Bad that's the wrong transition from campaign map to RTS.
When you atack with a big army, you loses should be smaller or equal the enemy losses at the maximum and the other way round. If you attack with a small army you should lose when autoresolving. That's why there is an RTS mode after all. To give you the chance to win battles which a bad percentage to win or a 50/50 percentage to win. At least that's my point of view. Well, if you bad at RTS, you just shouldn't attack with a small and insufficient army...



The problem is the transition from campaign map to RTS and back. Even if you win a battle in RTS your loses are often way too high. I think that's even the biggest problem of the complete game so far. Total War avoided that because you can produce troops in battle. So the transition from the RTS map to the real time battle an back is quite easy. It's simple "count the death units" maths there. But it's way more complicated if you can build units in RTS battle.
I think that the RTS battle and the campaign map battles should be somehow "decoupled", so exactly the opposite of what Larian has done in the last updates. It's just bad balancing so far, just look at STabbeys examples....

Best example: In the last build I once fight with one fully teched-out Juggernaut against a single enemy transporter and lost the unit. Come on, that's just hilarious.

Give us at least something to reconstruct the outcome. In Risk I see the results of the dices thrown....

That is more or less the point of the whole discussion: Where is the guarantee that a single trooper does LESS damage to your troops when you enter the RTS mode? Remember, that it is not the lone trooper which is waiting for you on the RTS map, but that your enemy can produce hordes of units during RTS, build bases, turrets etc. I always tend to loose the same amount of units (or even more) during RTS compared to the autoresolve result. And I think that an average player would do the same. If you recognise that you loose less units during RTS than autoresolve would suggest - then you are probably a very skilled player and undoubtedly better than average. In that case you are superior to autoresolve and should just choose whether to employ your skills and loose less units during battle or just accept the autoresolve result which is balanced against an average player.

But I agree, that it is the balance issue - PRIMARILY in directly fighting RTS and just SECONDARILY in autoresolve that allows the lone trooper to do such a huge damage. This is just an inevitable consequence of the possibility to produce units during RTS phase.

And that's the reason why I claim to decouple RTS and campaign map battles again (coming to the results of battle).

But it's a tough one, the whole game depends on that deicision and how the transition between RTS and campaign map is handled....