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

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.)