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

The auto-resolve rates Troopers too highly. It's goddamned absurd. I've seen auto-resolves where the enemy had 1 trooper, and yet it inflicts hugely disproportionate damage on the forces arrayed against it. This is not an isolated incident, it happens time and time again. I'm sure others have seen this as well.

Troopers cost 3 gold on the strategy map (SM) and 1 SM Trooper translates into 3 RTS units. Hunters and Armours cost 7 gold and translate into 2 RTS units.


In a fight between overwhelming forces (2 Troopers, 2 Grenadiers, 2 Shamans, 1 Warlock, 2 Hunters and 2 Armours) versus 1 Trooper, that lone Trooper beats 2 Hunters and 2 Armours. 3 Gold beats 28 Gold, including 14 Gold of PURE COUNTER.




A 92% win chance in a fight (2 Hunters, 1 Devastator, 3 Zeppelins) versus 1 Trooper ends up with a victory, yes, but one Hunter was destroyed. 3 Gold beats 7 gold of counter.

A 75% win chance in a fight (2 Armours) versus 1 Trooper has 1 Armour destroyed.

A 97% Chance to win - NINETY-SEVEN - between huge forces (6 Hunters, 7 Armours, 1 Devastator and 3 Shamans) versus 1 Trooper: The lone Trooper (3 Gold) beats 1 Hunter and 1 Shaman (13 Gold)

On and on and on...

I admit that confirmation bias probably leads me to notice the oddities more than the expected outcome. There are times when it's not so bad: I did note a fight (2 Armours, 3 Ironclads, 5 Juggernauts, 2 Transports, 5 Shamans, 1 Warlock) where the Lone Trooper only killed a Shaman. And once or twice I actually beat a lone trooper without suffering casualties.

But you know how people were worried about Civilization-like autoresolves where a 10 AD Phalanx beats an 1960 AD tank? When 3 Gold of units can beat 28 gold of units... that's your version of that.


Conclusion:

In RTS mode, you get 3 troopers per strategy map unit, and 3 Troopers is not enough to kill anything bigger than infantry or Transports. And yet time and again, on the campaign map, a single lone trooper takes a huge amount of much more expensive troops down with him.

Either make the RTS Troopers as powerful as the Strategy map Troopers or nerf how powerful Troopers are in autoresolve calcluations, because the Troopers shouldn't be both at the same time.

I agree that it looks strange at first, BUT I think it actually makes sense within the scope and internal logic of DC.

Just take a look at the RTS part:
You will often build much more troops than what you bring to the battle initially.
Even if you attack with overwhelming forces, the enemy still will have time to build some more troops until you arrive at his base, resulting usually in higher losses than what you would expect.
Consequently, if you want to bring RTS and autoresolve in line and balance it against each other, you need to have such high losses even if they look somewhat non-sensical at first glance.

Before autoresolve often was the better choice in such cases, since it resulted in lower losses than fighting it out yourself. Not exactly desirable either, is it?

So, as long as DC keeps the current balance and the way the RTS part is handled I think such high losses are perfectly logical.

That is true, Autoresolve is definitely not longer the best way to go, and that's generally good, whereas it is possible to enter a battle with a 33% chance to win myself and win. I don't mind RTS battles being more desirable than Autoresolve. Although it's unwise to try and autoresolve any battle with odds of 70% or less, those tend to be Phyrric victories at best.

It's the fricking LONE TROOPERS that bother me. A lone Strategy map Trooper is three in the RTS map - an amount which is almost totally worthless. Those three RTS Troopers are somehow magically beating 2 RTS Hunters or more before being taken down.

My problem is not that I'm taking losses in an auto-resolve, it's that the gap between what the Strategy map troopers can take down in Autoresolve and what the RTS troopers can ACTUALLY take down is too wide. I know there's a certain amount of cheating which is to be expected, but I would like the game to have the courtesy of not blatantly pulling aces out of its sleeves, arms are on the table in full view.

Think about what happens when you go into RTS mode:
You build a base and produce more troops.
If you enter a RTS match with 2 troopers, you will build dozen more over the course of the match.

Why should it be different in autoresolve?
It wouldn't make sense to assume that in autoresolve the lone trooper is directly fighting against your troops alone.
Rather I think you should consider that the same happens as in an RTS match:
Your troops build a base and produce more units, and the enemy does the same.
Thus the losses are explained.

As long as the RTS part stays teh way it is, i.e. with the possibility and often necessity to produce much more units than what you initially brought into the battle, autoresolve SHOULD end with similar results as a typical RTS match (a bit worse probably, since you should be a better commander than the AI on its own).

However reasonable, it still looks bad when 2 troopers take out 6 or 8 upgraded hunters before the remaining dozen can finally win, though. There should maybe be an icon / progress bar representing units built during the RTS.

I agree that it looks a bit bad, but it makes sense in the light of what we see in the RTS part.
So either Larian adjusts the RTS part, changes autoresolve back to probably being too forgiving in comparison to the RTS part or keep it the way it is now.
In the two latter cases we might have to accept that there will be some strangeness to it, I think.

You seem to be misinterpreting me. I am not calling for ALL auto-resolves to be lowered in difficulty. I am saying that this particular one, the trooper (especially the lone trooper) is quite blatantly punching above its weight class. Its Auto-resolve is writing checks its RTS can't cash.

You have repeated the same point twice (the first in another thread). I do not find it any more convincing the second or third time.

Yeah yeah yeah, in RTS mode you can build more stuff. I could build Juggernauts and Bomber Balloons in RTS mode, but unless they're actually on the territory, that doesn't count for autoresolve and nor should it. Autoresolve is difficult enough to program without trying to calculate the effects of units that aren't there. You have to auto-resolve for the units you have, not for the potential units you could have.

Reasonable justifications or no, it is at the very least irritating to see a representation of one of the weakest units in the game take out 4, 5, 9 times their cost in gold. This is a beta and we're supposed to give feedback, yes?

Even a simple change of making Troopers and Grenadiers be worth 5 per strategy unit instead of 3 would help the appearance problem - without touching the autoresolve at all!

I've tested 10 Troopers versus 3 Armours (equal supply), and they can indeed win. 3 Troopers versus 2 Armours, not a chance.

It also looks odd when Imp Fighters without the ground attack researched - can influence an autoresolve battle where there are no air units for them to attack.

I didn't assume that you only want the difficulty to be lowered across the board.
And I understand your concerns about the strangely high success rate of the single weakest force in the game.

I'm just saying that if autoresolve follows the same internal logic as the RTS part, then we will and should see such things as you are describing (we probably should for balancing reasons alone).

Because in that case (same idea behind RTS AND autoresolve) we have to assume that the battle is resolved by the same process that's behind the RTS part, i.e. building a base and more units - and then such things can and will happen (I know there's no calculation going on internally where that is happening, but wouldn't we have to imagine that this is happening in the game?).
Anyway: the results should be in line whith each other then.

Or the other way around, if I routinely see something like that in the RTS part, why should autoresolve behave differently?
Because, when I play out exactly the same battle as RTS instead of choosing autoresolve, I might very well see just the same results. Simply because it's not that 1 trooper (or the 3 it's representing in RTS) fighting against my 5 hunters (or whatever troops I brought), it's my 5 hunters attacking the enemy base that had already time to produce some more units at the point I reach it.

I'm not saying that I like that idea - only that it would be logical to assume it, because why would those troops face each other directly in autoresolve (and only there), while I have to bother with the whole base-building stuff in RTS?

Saying that the autoresolve should just be thought of as an abstraction of an RTS match (and there's actually base building and other units built) will NEVER convince me no matter how much you repeat it. That is because I am very, very sure that the autoresolve does not actually build a base and new non-existent units. How could it? That would be way too complicated for what it needs to do.

It's all well and good to tell someone to imagine that their car works by magic pedaling pixies under the hood, but that's not going to help them fix a problem when they open it up to take a look.

If it does not actually work like an invisible RTS match, I'm not going to think of it like that - especially not when stuff like this happens.




It doesn't happen to this extreme very often, but this is a dramatic example of how absurd it can get.

Of course it doesn't do that, and I said that it, indeed could not.
But I guess it should be balanced according to the RTS part.
Otherwise it would be just as strange, imho.

It's very strange but I would rather not be punished for going into the RTS and having some wonky results is a small price to pay.

I completely and totally agree. I would also like to not be punished for wanting to autoresolve. Plus, in single-player, you can only do one RTS a turn. Having a good autoresolve is really important.

Just now, a battle where I had an 82% chance to win, (2 Hunters, 2 Armours, 1 Troopers, 1 Shaman, 1 Warlock) versus 1 Trooper and 1 Transport. I do tend to go into RTS battle for sub 80% chance of winning, but I thought autoresolve here was safe.

Results: The enemy lost 1 Trooper and 1 Transport (11 Gold) and I lost 1 Hunter, 1 Armour, 1 Trooper, 1 Shaman (23 gold).

I had a 82% chance to win. I feel a little bit like I was being punished for auto-resolving. I like the campaign battles, but a campaign is LONG. I don't want to have to personally manage every battle with a chance of less than 90% to not lose twice the gold cost of hte casualties.

Yeah but autoresolve has some random chance in there. When you have a 80% chance of winning you still have a 20% chance of losing. I like having a bit of chance in there. If you can reliably get a result without any chance autoresolve feels too.... 'mechanical' for lack of a better word. Just my personal opinion though.

Yeah... this is better than it was earlier when auto-resolve was so much better that entering RTS mode was more a liability.

It's taking wildly disproportionate losses compared to the gold cost of the enemy that's a bit irritating and a bit frustrating.

Maybe I should incorporate those into my strategy: Send tons of those Lone Troopers at the enemy and deplete their resources and army until they have nothing left..

Well Ive seen the reverse happen too, Swarms of troopers are defeated by a grenadier or something. I think you might just have some bad luck against troopers. Also I think there is some built in attrition to fights. I'm debatable on if this is good or not. On one hand it feels a bit weird, on the other hand I find I get similar results to the autoresolve when I RTS even if it is a small to decent sized force against 1 trooper. In general I like the current way better as it gives me very similar results to RTS battles but I can see your point.

On the bright side, in single player there will be the possibility to delegate battles to your generals, which will usually increase the winning chances a bit.

By the way, when did you tend to see those high losses due to the Rambo-Trooper? On attacking, defending or both?
If they happen more frequently on attacking some enemy country it might have to do with the entrenchment bonus.

Defending, usually. The Entrenchment bonus only tends to apply if you're skipping to countries in the middle. It was not entrenchment, OR mercenaries. I can remember who was in a fight once the screen changes to the results screen.

There's a pretty clear overarching problem here in the way the campaign strategy works. Entrenching positions and building up strong defensive forces is pretty meaningless when sending a single of the cheapest unit in the game is such a devastating manoeuvre. The auto-resolve is trying to match how the rts potion works but they're both broken. Sending a constant stream of cheap units into battle is a completely degenerate strategy and there seems to be no counter to it.

There should be a clear stone, paper, scissors mechanic for the campaign units as well. A trooper must have at least one dedicated counterpart against which he most likely can't ever win. And a much more costly unit should also have more power on the campaign map.

Larian should bear in mind that NOT everyone wants fo fight each battle in the RTS mode. Therefore there must be a reasonabe balance between units on the campaign map ALONE no matter what happens on the RTS maps.

Everything else is in danger of leading to game-breaking balancing issues....

What my theory on the autocalc is is that I want to get the same results that I would get if I RTSed the battle. I usually do with autocalc and even though it can be a bit wonky I prefer that over a system where autocalcing is better/worse than going into RTS. It's not a perfect system but it's better then the earlier system where autocalc almost guaranteed victory with light casualties if you were over around 50% and as a result no one ever took control of a battle that was going well for them.

As for sending in a stream of cheap units to wear down the enemy. Those results are reproducible easily in the RTS mode. It's not a problem with the autocalc it's a problem with how the game is structured (being able to recruit units to accompany your starting forces). It's a little late to change that now (and it is not a huge problem, every game has some OP strategies).

As for rock paper scissors I don't really like that 100%. I like a measure of it though. Because if you fight a imp fighter with a trooper and you enter RTS, you will recruit some units that can fight air units. As a result a trooper vs imp fighter on the strat map can be easily won by the trooper in RTS mode. I guess what I am trying to say is the autocalc should not have it's own rules. If you get the same results as the autocalc when you RTS then it's a great autocalc. I don't think they play a whole RTS in the background (it's probably an abstraction) but it works. If you notice population goes down when you autocalc too. The autocalc is not just fighting those troops that you brought in. Now if the autocalc gave a different result from if you RTS like a much earlier beta did then we would have a problem, but it doesn't.

No, I don't agree. In RTS the success depends on my skills and decisions. When I let the AI autocalculate the whole stuff this element is gone. Therefore it shoulnd't be the same as an RTS match.

Just because a lone weak unit can sometimes do larger than expected damage, doesn't mean that that would be an effective long term strategy.

Even if that did prove to be effective (has anyone actually recommended spamming cheap units and spreading out as thin as possible?), it could easily be countered by using cheap units along the border of someone doing that, or by advancing your own cheap units.

The problem is if you remember an earlier beta they had it like many people are suggesting and had autocalc a bit firmer (you tended to win with very little casualties as soon as the win chance crept over around 60%). Not only did most people hate it as it punished you for going into RTS (you took higher casualties so many people were complaining that you were penalized for going into RTS and they were right). That would also really suck if you were the person with the 40%, I know i would be very angry if I had a 40% chance of victory and 9 times out of 10 I lost (or worse I auto-lost because the rules were too firm). If I have a 40% chance of winning I want to win 4/10 times.

If you made the rules not match the RTS then you WILL be penalized for wanting to RTS. Maybe it's a really important big battle that you want to fight (say attacking their capitol) and you have a 60% chance of victory. Under firmer autocalc rules you would never in your life take control of that battle! 60% chance to win means that you will almost always win with lower casualties and if you took control personally you would probably have a 40% chance of losing. Therefore noone would ever play battles that they have a decent autocalc chance if we reverted to how it used to be.

Not only that but I seem to recall that the campaign usually featured larger enemy armies to counter your dragon ability and you can only RTS once a turn there. Do you really want to lose almost every battle that isn't the one you RTS because the autocalc rules were too firm.

The auto-resolve results should be comparable to what the AI (or an average player not using the dragon) would do with the RTS battle.

That can't be comparable by no means. How could the AI calculate my RTS behaviour? Perhaps I would only build air units? Or only ground units? Perhaps I would kill everything with my dragon?

I think that battles with balanced armies should lead to various results based on some kind of random principle. But a 20%-20% battle shouldn't lead to a victory of the enemy by autoresovling it. Perhaps once every 20 or 30 campaigns but not in almost every game I play. This mechanics forces the player to engage in battle which isn't my take on the game. You should consider engaging in the field with a 60-40 or 50-50 or even a 30-70 balance against you in order to make a difference. But forcing the player to engage in EVERY battle is wrong.

Well, the AI isn't calculating your RTS behavior, autocalc is just calculating the results of the fight base on what an average RTS player would get in terms of losses. If you want special strategy, play the fight yourself. At least that would make sense.

As for the percentages, as I said earlier, right now they seem to be indeed your chances to win or lose, so you should see your troops losing an 80-20 fight 1 times in 5.
But people seem to have issues with that, so it might be adjusted e.g. as I suggested in the other thread by giving you practically 100% win chance once you outnumber the enemy substantially and replacing the percentage to lose a fight with a percentage to suffer losses.

Anyway the latest patch has adjusted something about the autoresolve, I think, so we might first want to see how it plays now.

If I have a huge army I shouldn't lose a "small fight" agaist a weak enemy. I should lose some units of course but not the whole battle, especially not if something like an RTS is simulated in the background. With a huge army I could overrun the enemy in the first minutes.....

The game doesn't have to calculate your RTS behaviour, merely a reasonable RTS behaviour. If you want it to use your behaviours and choices, enter RTS yourself.

If a 20% chance to win a battle means that you can not win, then it is not a 20% chance to win. One out of every 20 or 30 is a 5% or 3% chance. An 80% chance to win is not a guaranteed win, nor is a 90% chance to win, nor should it be.

You are not forced to engage in every battle. Giving results that ignore the chance to win would do that much more than that chance being accurate. Remember in an earlier beta when the auto-resolve was not accurate, and people with a low chance to win would always enter RTS because they could win against the AI that way, or even the odds with another player?

I found that if the results are significantly in favor of one person the fight still usually ends with little casualties on the larger side. How about this as a compromise. If you outnumber the enemy by a significant amount (it would have to huge, say your force is 5x or 10x the amount of gold) then each unit counts as twice as strong in autoresolve. This would keep the current system but allow massively larger forces to steamroll. This is not ideal (I really like how the system works now. I find them very realistic although I haven't played the new beta that just came out today) but could possibly be a good compromise for players who feel that they can game the system with small armies.

Well, the way it is now is a more "systemtic" approach, very Risk-like. You roll a dice and the outcome is calculated.

Another approach would be to take the balance of armies more into account which would be a more realistic approach.

In the end I understand that you can find arguments for both approaches so any solution will be legit.

Agreed.



Disagree with both points. It's an issue with how casualties are calculated in both the rts mode and autoresolve. At present it's based on a relatively direct proportion of how many units die in combat which doesn't respond well to starting with a few or even an overwhelming amount of extras. Instead of this you could match the units against each other more directly and apply far less of a weighting to what happened in the RTS portion. So even if you lost that battle between 1 Trooper vs 3 Hunters an Armour and a Shaman you might only expect to lose one of the Hunters, the other units would be pushed back.

I'd also say while every game will have some slightly overpowered strategies good games never have completely overpowered strategies. In particular though sending streams of cheap units against armies completely kills any depth in the campaign map.



This is not acknowledging the scale of the issue, it's not that cheap units sometimes do higher than expected damage, it's that singular units almost always do massively disproportionate amounts of damage against large numbers of entrenched foes. Not only is it an effective long term strategy it's the only effective long term strategy. Keeping your army behind the lines and using singular units to counter singular units is just wasting resources by never bringing them to bear, and risking them being brought into combat through the use of strategy cards.

singular units almost always do massively disproportionate amounts of damage against large numbers of entrenched foes.

That has not been my experience. I've taken higher than expected damage with a good advantage or not, gotten off lightly with even odds or barely won, and done better than expected with poor odds or simply gotten wiped out.

I'll try a campaign tomorrow against the insane AI and keep track of the battles.


Not only is it an effective long term strategy it's the only effective long term strategy.

Then why have people complained that the AI doesn't expand fast enough on Center Mass, letting you take over most of the neutral countries?


Keeping your army behind the lines and using singular units to counter singular units is just wasting resources by never bringing them to bear

So when an AI sends out singular opponents it is the only effective long term strategy. If you send out single units you are wasting resources. Are you assuming that you will never win a country with a 50/50 chance, so you can never get close to anywhere the enemy has units massed?

There is one thing naturally in favour of the lone trooper: Under no circumstances will the larger force take out more than a lone trooper.

If autoresolve corresponds somewhat to the visualisation, with units going against eachother individually (one squad on your side versus one squad on the other side), a single trooper versus 5 troopers with no other advantages or disadvantages has:

- A 50% risk of losing without causing any damage
- A 50% chance of taking out at least 1 unit
- A 25% chance of taking out at least 2 units
- A 1/8 chance of taking out at least 3 units
- A 1/16 chance of taking out at least 4 units
- A 1/32 chance of anihilating the enemy (without casualties)

Perfect casualty-distribution across 32 battles
x1: Army 5, Loner 0
x1: Army 4, Loner 1
x2: Army 3, Loner 1
x4: Army 2, Loner 1
x8: Army 1, Loner 1
x16: Army 0, Loner 1

Total loss over 32 battles:
Army 31, Loner 31

Given such a system, it seems that the effect should even out over time. For the sake of realism, the loner should be under fire more frequently than it should be able to fire when pitted against an army.

Given that units on the same side are not equal in purpose, cost or power, this is obviously a lot more complex, but I'd care to know whether or not the basic principle or the results are anything like what I describe. (Does 1 against 5 even units have a 1/6 win chance <16%>, a 1/32 (3%) win chance or something else; which is closer?)

If you're getting 16%-like numbers on that, isn't the autoresolver being awfully nice to the weaker side? (Getting to face your enemies 1 by 1, you'd have 50% five times, which is what I find to be slightly in excess of 3% chance overall. Having to face your enemies all at once should not be easier.)

Certainly it's been my experience, while occasionally a single troops will fail to kill anything it seems like better than half the time it will wipe out 3 to 4 times it's own value. Hard figures would certainly help pin things down though, especially since the matrix has apparently been tweaked in the last patch.



I might be missing something but that seems like the same problem to me, fast expansion and spreading your forces thinly is the only effective long term strategy and the AI isn't doing it.



No, maybe I could have explained that better but sending out single units is by no means a waste of resources, some die to no effect but in general they pay for themselves many, many times over. The waste is in having a large number of troops in one location, either you deploy them and suffer tremendous casualties to little benefit, or you don't deploy them and they achieve nothing. By spreading your forces evenly across the entire map you can easily and quickly wear down any force the AI brings to bear.

I fear your calculation is wrong because your assumptions are wrong.

You assume that this is like a mathematial experiment in which the lone trooper fights against only one trooper of the enemy army at the same time, so one after the other. If he survived against trooper one, he will fight against trooper two, and if he survived that fight again, he will fight against trooper three, and so on.....and then you calculated the probability of the lone trooper to win this game.

But the "reality of war" is different. In reality the lone trooper has to fight against all five enemy trooper AT THE SAME TIME. The moment he can fire one single shot at one of the enemy troopers he is hit by five shots of the enemy. His chance to win this fight is about 0%. His chance to take out only ONE enemy trooper is also about 0%. Let's assume that a trooper dies when he is hit by five shots. Then the lone trooper wouldn't survive even the first "round of fire". And even if he dies after 10 shots he would die before he could even endanger one of the enemy units.....

Therefore a "reality-based" or even "RTS-based" autocalculation of a "1 trooper vs 5 troopers" battle had to lead to a 100% chance to lose the battle and a very, very, very tiny chance to even kill one single enemy unit.

While I'm not so sure about Sinister's calculations either, I think you are potentially wrong with that quote as well (sorry).
At least given the internal logic of the game.

If we would play the battle in RTS mode instead of using autoresolve, we wouldn't see our troops directly facing of against the lone trooper.
We would have our troops start at their base. Likewise would the enemy trooper.
While we would directly march towards the enemy base, the enemy would instead start building more troops. Of course it wouldn't be a lot of troops, but let's assume that by the time we reach the base, he has produced ~5 more troopers. Suddenly the odds are totally different.
While the enemy still has no realistic way of winning the battle, he will still inflict higher losses than a single trooper could.

Now, we are talking about autoresolve here, not the RTS mode, but autoresolve should still be balanced somewhat to the RTS part (otherwise autoresolve would be vastly superior to RTS mode for such battles, which is strange considering that the RTS part should probably give better results due to it being controlled by yourself, in form of a friggin dragon).

My personal suggestion would be to first adjust the RTS part in a way that what I described is less likely to occur (e.g. increase building time/costs, put in a timer before you could start building new units in RTS, etc.). That would probably result in lower losses in a RTS match, in turn allowing for more sensible losses in autoresolve as well.

I only wanted to demonstrate that his calculations were wrong from the beginning.

But I still don't see the point why the outcome should be different. If a match between two armies is simulated like an RTS AI vs AI battle there is no point that the result would be different because the AI would be identical. If not either the AI is implemented poorly or the element of randomness is way too weighty which is again the result of an AI poorly implemented.....

I think (and that's my honest opinion) that there shouldn't be an RTS simulation in the background because it's completely pointless. You could roll some dice in the background, it would be the same. At least, rolling some dice would reflect the Risk-origins much better....


And I don't agree that autoresolving would be superior to personally engaging in battle:

Simple example: you have only one trooper, the enemy has five troopers (like in the example above):
a) You autoresolve the combat. Result: you lose
b) You personally engage in combat: Result: It would be very hard to win but there is a chance.

Another example: you have five troopers, the enemy has one trooper (opposite scenario):
a) Autoresolving. Result: you win
b) Engaging. Result: You most likely win but you could also lose if you make bad decisions or play poorly.

Third example: you have three troopers and the enemy has three troopers (balanced scenario):
a) Autoresolving. Result: 50/50, pure random principle
b) Engaging. Result: Depends on your skill but you have a fair chance to win.


So what's the result of these three examples? In two of three basic scenarios you have an advantage to personally engage in battle. Only in the scenario in which you have a far bigger army there is just no point to personally engage in battle. And that's how the game should work imo. The 20% probability to lose a battle if you fight with one trooper against four enemy troopers is just wrong imo. You should have way worse chances to lose this battle and same is true for the other way round. If you attack an enemy with a very small army your chances to win by autoresolving should be minimal (REALLY minimal). So if you want to do that, you should be literally forced to engage in combat personally.
Everything else is just "betting on the system": produce one trooper in each round and send him in a country with a big army and autoresolve the battle. After X rounds you will win this country and the enemy army by pure random principle, because the chances of winning the battle are just way too high.....

You know what I mean now?

Not to engage personally in battle shouldn't be rewarded.....

This in a nutshell. If anything we should be penalized for not fighting as a dragon rather than the reverse. That way you feel your presence actually matters. Otherwise why even bother playing RTS matches?

I don't think there is. I just said that it is (or the results are) balanced accordingly.




It used to be in older builds, for a simple reason:
When you go into RTS, you have to build a base and produce more troops.
This will almost inevitably lead to higher losses (at least for me, and I assume the average player as well).
In contrast, autoresolve produced the results one would expect from directly putting the units against each other, without any additional units produced during the fight, i.e. a single trooper did not cause such high losses as it does now.
Consequently, in such cases using RTS was a bad idea, because autoresolve used to give more consistent and lower losses.



Actually I think our oppinion on the matter is not so different, I merely argue that it is that way for balancing reasons.
Bringing it more in line with expectations would however potentially favor autoresolve over RTS again, unless RTS is rebalanced a bit as well



Before you used to be punished for doing so, which isn't so great either.

I agree with what you say if there weren't the possibility of unit production during RTS battle... The point is that 4 troopers against 1 as starting units is not such a huge advantage - especially, if you play 2x2 (even if the other two factions do not have starting units at the beginning of the battle). I think I am quite an average player and I have made the experience that if I start the battle with 4 troopers versus 1 (or vice versa) I can either win or loose very easily (depending on the map). If I rush on the enemy base with my 4 troopers, all of them will be likely killed - either due to produced units or turrets. And even if I succeed to take down this base there is still another opponent in 2x2 who has already produced Giant Blob of Death during the time while I was engaged with the first enemy. As already stated, at the end I can win or not (depending on the map), but I will very certainly suffer heavy losses.

So, my point is: 4 troopers are just a very small starting force compared to all the units which can be produced during RTS. If I engage in battle I am likely to loose all the units - and it is now pretty much what the outcome of the autoresolve is.

The problem is not the autoresolve which promotes the thin-spreading of units but rather the possibility of unit production during RTS. In earlier betas the player was punished for going personally into battle, because the autoresolve gave a result with no losses in the 4 versus 1 trooper situation. Now, it just mirrors what happens if you enter the battle as a dragon.

In the reverse situation, in which I attack with only 1 trooper against 4, I also have a pretty decent chance to win the RTS battle (because I can produce lots of units during RTS). That is also the result which I get with 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....

Sorry, but I do not get it how it should eliminate the problem. Send a lonely ninja trooper with a 0 % chance to win, choose to enter the battle instead of autoresolve, produce hordes of units on the RTS map - and your trooper (and all the support units produced) will kill kind a few enemy units before you are defeated (if at all). At the end, you will get the SAME result screen from which it seems that the lonely trooper has ninjad quite a few more powerfull units.



Absoulutely agreed.



Agreed as well.




Basically, you are right. However, you seem to oversee one important point. If you have a large chance to win the battle (say 80 %), than your enemy has necessarily a small chance to win the battle (20 %). So, if you are playing againts a human opponent, he would very probably like to fight this battle. And once the RTS is in progress, you will very likely suffer the same losses as you do if you now autoresolve this battle.



Absolutely agreed.




Why should different rules apply? I mean, it is still the same battle - no matter whether you choose to fight it or autoresolve? There is NO difference between campaign map battles and RTS battles - it is just the way how you choose to fight it. It is a bad balancing, I agree, but what is the point of eliminating the bad balancing for autoresolve while it is still present if you fight the battle yourself?

EDIT: What I mean is the following. Let us assume that we adjust the autoresolve in such a way how you suggest. So, you do not loose any troops and almost always win if you have an 80 % winning chance. Now, let us take the viewpoint of your human opponent. He has a winning chance of just 20 % and would loose if the battle is autoresolved how you suggest. Of course, your enemy is not very keen on such a prospect. Well, the most obvious choice for him is to select the dragon form. Then, the RTS battle begins and you are very likely to loose the same troops as by autoresolve which is implemented now (even if you win the battle at the end). And, I am pretty sure that this scenario will happen EVERY time there is a 80/20 percent battle. So, adjusting the autoresolve in the way you suggest is just to make it unfair for the player with a small winning chance and will force him to always fight the RTS battle.

EDIT NO 2: Adjusting autoresolve without changing the underlying RTS mechanics just does not make sense. Player who is unsatisfied with the autoresolve result (if it is decoupled from RTS as you suggest) can just force the other player to fight the RTS battle. And the result after this RTS battle will be pretty much the same as it is now with autoresolve.

I think EVERY battle has to be solved in RTS when playing against a human player???

So the whole thing is only important when you play against AI.

Well, the percentages then would have to be adjusted of course, but yes, I agree that this might just relocate the problem somewhere else.
Either one of the two ways to resolve battles might lead to exploits.

I wonder what might happen if building units in RTS would actually cost gold, just as when you buy it on the strategy map?

No, that is unfortunately not the case. In multiplayer each player has the possibility to decide whether he wants to fight or to autoresolve. And even if there is at least ONE person who wants to play as a dragon, all the other players are forced to enter the battle as a dragon. That is why adjusting autoresolve as you suggest would probably be unreasonable. If it does not mirror the actual outcome of an RTS battle, it just won't be used in multiplayer. That is because the person who has a disadvantage due to autoresolve will just probably almost always force the others to play the RTS fight. (See EDIT NO 2 in my previous post )

In the advanced options it is possible to limit the number of RTS fights to one per player per turn, so if there are multiple battles you have to choose which do yourself.

So I should be happy that having an overwhelming advantage only ended up costing me, the victor of the battle, 4.67 times the gold cost of the single unit?

(Assuming a 3 gold territory) It'll take at least 5 turns to get enough gold from that territory to replace the Hunter and Armour that the 3-gold Trooper killed. The enemy can replace the Trooper in a single turn with a single 3 Gold territory and do it again.

That does not exactly seem worth dancing a jig over.




The problem isn't that the lone Trooper strategy will single-handedly win the war. (Although it probably can, eventually.)

The problem is that 7 times out of 9, sending a lone trooper versus an army is a worthwhile venture, and only 2 times out of 9 is the lone trooper destroyed harmlessly. At least half the time or more, sending a lone Trooper against a vastly more powerful army SHOULD be a waste of resources for the side sending the trooper. The side who has the overwhelming advantage should not be punished with disproportionate losses 7 times out of 9.

If I am at a 97% chance to lose, facing 176 Gold worth of units with 3 gold worth of units, I think that even a 3% chance of victory is 3% too much.

I like the RTS mode, I really do. I do not want to be punished for not wanting to play the RTS mode for literally every single battle.




Yes, yes it is. Ground units without anti-air cannot attack air units. Hunters and Armours can attack the Trooper, and Hunters are a counter to Troopers.




I'm confused. I thought that the whole idea behind the system was that you should be taking unit types, upgrades and counters into account. You should be building a balanced force.

Man, this stuff gives me a headache.....

ATM I don't see any good way to solve this problem tbh. There is just no good solution (at least I haven't found one yet) to the problem of the transition from "static" campaign map to "dynamic" RTS battle. Other than with Total War they just don't "fit".

Even from a design persepctive they don't fit. Think about that. On the campaign map you cannot build units everywhere, only in countries with a capital or war factory. But as soon as you go to RTS battle you can - oh suprise - suddenly build unit in this country regardless if there is a war factory or not. That's in itself inconsistent design. And it makes the production of units on the campaign map kind of "useless" because their weight against the units created in RTS is way minor.

This is a serious flaw of game design I haven't noticed before tbh. But now I fully understand some problems I had on the campaign map.

@Stabbey, you have written a few posts above that you tested a lonely trooper against an enemy army by doing autoresolve. Could you please make the same series of tests, but just enter those fights as a dragon now? Write down the losses of your enemy, average them and compare them to your test results with autoresolve.

If you find, that there is a huge discrepency between these two approaches (i.e., your enemy's losses against your lonely trooper are much smaller in the RTS approach compared to autoresolve, or vice versa), then there is indeed an issue with autoresolve. If, in contrast, the results are pretty much the same, then it is how autoresolve should work.

Well, the inconsistency in that you can suddenly generate troops in the RTS portion is pretty much insoluble. The relative ineffectiveness of units on the campaign map is easier to handle, though I fear not something that can be fixed before release.

The simplest method is to upweight units on the field. If a hunter unit translates to 5 units rather than 2 a decent sized force will easily stomp the enemy before he can build an army up. As a result losses will be much reduced and the autoresolve numbers can be shifted accordingly.

The other solution is to de-emphasise the impact the RTS battle has on the campaign map. If I send a trooper against a large force and actually win the battle I should still only do minor damage to his army, the rest should be forced into the nearest friendly square. Only if I manage to surround his forces should they be wiped out. Of course if I sent a similarly sized army of my own then a strong showing in the RTS map could wipe out his army at a cost of significant casualties on my own force.

I will see what I can do.

But that's apples and oranges. My problem has nothing to do with the balance of an actual RTS match. My problem is with the balance on the STRATEGY MAP.

Troopers are overvalued on the STRATEGY MAP. In the Autoresolve, for a series of 9 matches in which one sides entire forces was only 1 Trooper (a 3 Gold unit), the enemy took the following losses in gold: 14, 14, 9, 10, 0, 10, 14, 0, 8. That's an average of 8.78 Gold destroyed for each 3 gold Trooper destroyed.

And it's not a bunch of light units that are get destroyed first, if it was a Trooper taking out mixes of Warlocks, Grenadiers, Shamans, other Troopers, that would be easier to understand. They're taking out heavier, more expensive units.

My problem is how Troopers cost 3 gold to make on the Strategy map, but in autoresolve, they seem have the combat effectiveness of a 9 gold unit. It has nothing to do with how an RTS battle plays out.

That is in fact the same problem. There is no difference between a Strategy Map battle and the RTS battle during the campaign (I do NOT talk about the stand-alone skirmish mode): It is always the same battle, but you can only decide whether you would like to fight it yourself or autoresolve it. Autoresolve should be adjusted in such a way that it mirrors the outcome of the underlying RTS battle (if it is actually fought). For an average player the results on the screen which you see at the end of the battle should be roughly the same - no matter if autoresolved or not.



Yes, I completely see your point. My argumentation is, however, the following: Even if you fight an RTS battle where one trooper faces a huge army as starting units, on the screen which you get at the end, the huge army will very likely have quite substantial losses (because the lonely trooper gets support from units produced during RTS), so this is where the 3 gold versus 9 gold problematic which you mentioned comes from. A good autoresolve should take into account this mechanics - that is why you see the ninja trooper duing autoresolve.

There is actually a flaw in the system behind the auto-resolve and we'll be working on it tomorrow. It remains a system of chance but the odds you're seeing for the moment are not by design. I lost 4 juggernauts to a grenadier yesterday, and I can assure you that nowhere in the specs a juggernaut loses from a grenadier

I fear so as well. And I even don't see a "perfect" solution for the long run yet....


Yeah, but that would probably cause serious troube for balance in RTS combat. What's the point of creating units on the field and conquering building spots if you can wipe out your enemy with your starting units in two or three minutes?


I have to say I like this suggestion somehow. You would still have to find a good mathematical equation how many units survive such a battle but it's a good idea which should be further explored. But there would be still the weird inconsistency that I won an RTS battle with perhaps a huge remaining army (if I'm THAT good) but only one single trooper remains on the map and the enemy army got shattered over the neighboring countries.....

It's that weird transition between strategy map and RTS I have most problems with....they seem to be deeply connected but in fact, they can't be "really" connected. You could translate pure mathematical outcomes from an RTS battle to the state on the strategy map but it doesn't really fit. The units are still different. You lost your troopers early in the RTS map and in the end you won the match with a huge army of bombers? Well, on the strategy map there will still be only on single trooper after the battle.... It's like two things which can't be combined properly and which are nevertheless pressed together. But I don't see a proper solution o address that problem...

Ok, good to hear. I'm curious with what you'll come up tommorrow....

Four pages of fairly heated arguments and Swen comes in with "Oh yeah, that's bugged." You have to laugh.

(One of my Autoresolves today had 2 troopers [one from Entrenchment] take out a [Mercenary] Juggernaut, but I left it out of the discussions because technically there were two Troopers.)

Kind of a moot point, but... to an extent, it should be better to build a balanced force on the strategy map, at least in your capital or countries you want to defend. The map might get a little cluttered if you have to have a dozen different units in any country near your front lines, and it would be a little tedious expanding your territory if you took the current amount of drag and dropping required and multiplied that by at least 4 or 5.

Of course that also assumes the auto-resolve would be separate from the RTS mechanic, which would produce a separate system that needed to be balanced, but since the auto-resolve and RTS use the same units, any changes to one system could cause issues with the other. You would also have situations where the same starting conditions would have significantly different results depending on whether you engage in RTS or auto-resolve.

Well, at least Swen recognized that a central element of the game is bugged before the got the review copy to the press......wait, no... :P

If you want, we'll leave it like this

I actually thought this particular debate was quite interesting - you guys made a lot of good points and to be fair, only today did we find the time to look into it. At which point we realized that an old "convenience trick" is now causing quite a lot of misery. To my juggernauts in chapter 3 for instance, which I absolutely need if I want to have a chance of winning!. Frustration is necessary from time to time to create gameplay, but not at this level

Hm, let me go crazy for a minute....

Perhaps the system could be fairly improved by removing all the different unit types from the stategy maps and make a real "Risk-like" approach? So you only produce troopers or "single units X" instead of the units which are translated from the RTS battles to the strategy map.

In that case your "single units X" would only measure the strength of your army and would be a real abstraction from the units used in the RTS battles. It would cleary simplify the autoresolve issues and reduce the transtion problems between RTS and strategy map. According to the strength of your "single units X" in numbers on the strategy map you would get a mixed bag of units in the according RTS battle depending on the map you plan and the tech level you have.

I always thought it a bit strange to use the same units on the strategy map and the RTS map because they depend on different rules (former can only be built in the capital and in countries with war factories, latter can be built in every country in RTS battle). Without a really "hard-working-stone-paper-scissor" system on the strategy map these different units don't even make much sense. The "one trooper to rule them all" problem is only the most simple thing you notice that there is a flaw in the basic system...If your system is based on probabilities and some random element so many different units are just somehow pointless. They make sense in RTS when you control them directly and use their abilites to counter enemy units. But without that direct control they are just "an unnecessary complex system" on the strategy map....

Just some wild thinking but I begin to like the idea. But maybe it's just me....;)

He, yeah.

Somehow I was wondering if it would boil down to this.
Anyway, let's see how it turns out.

Especially how autoresolve then compares to RTS - luckily since the various advanced settings are working now I can balance/adjust the RTS part somewhat to my liking.

As long as it helps to make the game better...

Now, I am quite excited about what this "convenience trick" is which apparently causes so much misery^^

The RTS is like a big game abstracting a task in the manner of a minigame. The particulars of an RTS battle (rapid construction of temporary factories spewing forth an impromptu army of local recruits that will not stick around for coming battles, all done at no actual cost since recruits are a commodity only for the duration of each battle) are about as logical as the commander Shepard (Mass Effect) joining dots and matching colours to break locks and computers.

For purposes of immersion, I make myself assume that what the player experiences is not what happens in the game-world, much like I did my best not to think that Shepard was expertly matching three quasi-tech-images from a scrolling selection.

I'm not entirely satisfied with that solution, but many wish for the RTS to function largely as it does today. Besides, I think a Larian rep said it wouldn't change. No wonder, if so; release is just around the corner, and the gameplay works, even if it doesn't tie in seamlessly with the rest of the game.

The strategy map works (although the AI might be too weak, not taking advantage of near-complete knowledge of what actions I might take on my turn, heavily defending countries I couldn't hope to attack).

The connection between roleplaying parts and strategy parts probably works. What I've seen looks good.

The idea that the main force in actual battles is not the standing army, but a spontaneously constructed one, does not work. In RTS it could pass, if one considers RTS a resolution mechanism rather than a simulation.

I'd let the autoresolve determine which strategy units fire upon whom, and what units are lost. Essentially, it wouldn't be "autoresolve", but "strategy processing". I'd let the RTS override two factors of the autoresolve: How long the battle is (how many attacks each side/active unit gets to make) and who wins. When the battle ends, the losing side retreats. If the side that won RTS runs out of units in autoresolve, it still wins the battle. Credit goes to the dragon, since the RTS battles are led by the dragon in person. (Strategy processing based on an RTS battle could actually bring up the dragon from the fourth volley or so.)

<RTS> Winning early or retreating early would aid in limiting casualties (on both sides).

<Strategy processing/Autoresolve> Having multiple units active simultaneously in strategy processing gives the larger army a real advantage, and actually processing the strategic units in a few steps makes the flow of the battle a real thing (losing units along the way isn't tailored to an initial roll from 1 to 100; every volley is fired under updated circumstances, by remaining units).

What I put here is probably not what Larian has envisioned, or what they have programmed, and it is probably not how they are going to approach the problems we have. Probably. But it is an idea, and I think it has potential to make the game more believable. I also think it could make the gameplay better, but that's far less clear, and mostly a personal preference. Also, sharing many aspects of resolution between autoresolve and RTS would hopefully eliminate some of the "which game gives me better odds" gameplay we have today. There would instead be a "With 16% presence my army will be wiped out (or survive against realistically astronomical odds), but my dragon might help them hold the ground". (They might still be wiped out, but your dragon could drive the other force away.)

All right, Elwyn. It's not conclusive, because I haven't played nearly as many RTS rounds in this latest session as I did autoresolve ones, I didn't reach the stage where I was sending lone troopers into other territories. But I did try some battles against lone troopers with larger forces. I did typically end up losing some units, but this is the important part: The units I lost were Troopers and Shamans. That's fine. Losing a Trooper and Shaman to another Trooper is well within the bounds of reason.

It's not really possible to do this test with the exact conditions of an autoresolve, because the RTS battles are now all 4 players, and autoresolves are not.

I also watched some autoresolves for other units. An Armour entered a country and was pretty over-matched, a 10% chance to win. It took out a Trooper and another Armour before dying. Again, completely within expected parameters.

As a programmer myself (not in the game industry though) I am curious about that as well.

Could be an interesting blog post...

That's similar to my favourite solution to this issue Sinister, albeit better explained and thought through. I don't realistically think it's possible at this juncture to introduce a whole new system like that, the game is releasing in a few days and it's not the kind of thing I'd expect from a post-release patch. Maybe if we got a Dragon Knight Saga style update but it still seems like a long shot.

Hopefully adding some sanity to the auto-resolution will be sufficient. If the option to join the battle yourself is limited (which it seems it is and it isn't depending on mode) then it doesn't need to mirror the RTS results that closely and some kind of balance can be maintained. At this juncture the game feels like it's approaching real greatness and every quibble seems important.