Xerxes84
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Jul 30, 2017 12:26 am

How Does War Work? And a Suggestion...

Tue Oct 24, 2017 2:53 pm

I'm on my 3rd game, and pretty fun so far. But I'm wondering how the battle outcomes are calculated. (sorry lots of questions, answer them whenever you can, no rush!)

Question 1: Strength Calculation
Is it simply a sum up of all the offensive and defensive strength plus the bonuses?

For example, if the attacker had an army of:
10 Soldiers = 10 x 1 = 10 attack
5 Pikemen = 5 x 3 = 15
1 Archer = 1 x 3 = 5
2 Cavalery 2 x 3 = 10
2 Catapult 2 x 6 = 12
1 Ballista 1 x 3 = 3
Total attack points = 55 (without pikeman/archer/cavalry bonuses)

And defending army is:
10 Soldiers = 10 x 1 = 10 defense
1 Pikemen = 1 x 3 = 3
0 Archers = 0 x 3 = 0
10 Cavalery 10 x 3 = 30
1 Catapult 1 x 3 = 3
2 Ballista 2 x 6 = 12
Total defense points = 58 (without pikeman/archer/cavalry bonuses)

How does the bonuses work (aside from catapul and ballista that are simple)? In this example, do the 5 attacking pikemen get double strength because of the more than 5 cavalry in the defending army? Or only 4 of them get the bonus because defenders have 1 pikeman? What about the 1 pikeman in defense? Does he get a bonus against 1 of the attacking cavalry? or is he neutralized by the 1 attacking archer? or do bonuses get calculated separately?

Question 2: Deaths
After calculating the attacking and defending strengths, how does the deaths get calculated? (like how is it decided which troops get targeted and by who, or is it a total attack vs total defense, and randomly some troops get targeted and die based on the difference in attacking and defending strength?

Question 3: Timing
It seems that the battle is done in stages, each taking about 45min to an hour (how long is each stage actually?). The first stage is done almost immediately. Does the strength calculation in the first question happen at the beginning of each stage based on remaining troops or just once at the beginning of the battle, and the timed stages are just there to lengthen the battle based on total troops involved?

Question 4: Randomness
There seems to be a random element in calculating the outcomes... how random is this? Would be great to know what the formula is.

Question 5: City/Territory Defending Bonus
Is there any? And how many defensive points per territory or city? Does it depend on how developed the territory or city is?

Question 6: Supporting Armies
It seems there can only be 1 supporting army for each side. Is this correct? Does it not make sense to let more supporting armies join in? Also, if a supporting army joins a defensive battle, is he counted as a defender (so ballistas get bonus) and no the attacker since he's attacking the battle (so catapults get bonus)?

Suggestion 1
After my numerous battles over the past few games, I've realized that most people just produce an equal amount of each pikeman, archer, and cavalry, and don't try to focus on one over the other, and instead the main focus is to produce lots of catapults and ballistas (probably because the attacking/defending bonuses are simple and clear how they'll be used: ballistas in defense, catapults in offense).

My idea is to find a way to add some tactical element to each battle. Instead of having all troops fight each other at the same time, the battle would happen in turns between 2 groups of soldiers. Each army would be able to have his army fight in a particular order (for example, soldiers go first, then cavalry, then catapult, then pikemen, and back to soldiers, like a baseball batting rotation, every group has to go once and the cycle continues until end of battle). This would add an element of trying to guess what your opponent's strategy is, and try to match the right order (for example, if you think the other has cavalry coming first, you select your pikemen to go first to get the bonus).

Suggestion 2
When 2 armies from warring factions cross path with each other, they should get into a battle instead of walking past each other. It's quite annoying trying to catch an army that just hops back and forth between two territories until his reinforcement arrives. It's ok if he keeps running away, but should get caught if his path is crossed by an enemy army.

Also, would be good to be able to set auto attack for an army as soon as it arrives at a territory... again this can be used to evade an army if you've timed your log ins vs your opponent. Both armies are sitting at the territory and whoever logs in first gets to attack or run away.



Thanks and keep up the good work!

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Gabriel
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Re: How Does War Work? And a Suggestion...

Tue Nov 14, 2017 3:12 pm

Hey there! Thanks for the awesome feedback! I'll do my best to anwser. :D

Question 1: Strength Calculation
Is it simply a sum up of all the offensive and defensive strength plus the bonuses?

For example, if the attacker had an army of:
10 Soldiers = 10 x 1 = 10 attack
5 Pikemen = 5 x 3 = 15
1 Archer = 1 x 3 = 5
2 Cavalery 2 x 3 = 10
2 Catapult 2 x 6 = 12
1 Ballista 1 x 3 = 3
Total attack points = 55 (without pikeman/archer/cavalry bonuses)

And defending army is:
10 Soldiers = 10 x 1 = 10 defense
1 Pikemen = 1 x 3 = 3
0 Archers = 0 x 3 = 0
10 Cavalery 10 x 3 = 30
1 Catapult 1 x 3 = 3
2 Ballista 2 x 6 = 12
Total defense points = 58 (without pikeman/archer/cavalry bonuses)

How does the bonuses work (aside from catapul and ballista that are simple)? In this example, do the 5 attacking pikemen get double strength because of the more than 5 cavalry in the defending army? Or only 4 of them get the bonus because defenders have 1 pikeman? What about the 1 pikeman in defense? Does he get a bonus against 1 of the attacking cavalry? or is he neutralized by the 1 attacking archer? or do bonuses get calculated separately?


First, I'll say the algorithm is subject to be changed and/or massively tweaked.

The way it works at this moment is that the proportion of weak units to a unit type is affecting the value of the added bonus.
If 100 Pikemen are fighting 50 Pikemen+50 Cavaliers, the Pikemen bonus is going to be halved.

Once the sum of the attacking power on both sides has been done, it's brought down to 10 units. In this case both side's attack power would be divided by 100 (to get the average attack power per unit) and multiplied by 10. The armies that have fewer than 10 units are thus prone to be destroyed, but over 10 the fight is on an even ground, whether one of the armies is far larger than the other or not.

Of course, this calculation is redone done every round.

Question 2: Deaths
After calculating the attacking and defending strengths, how does the deaths get calculated? (like how is it decided which troops get targeted and by who, or is it a total attack vs total defense, and randomly some troops get targeted and die based on the difference in attacking and defending strength?


A target unit is selected for each participating army. Damage is added until the targeted unit is dead. A new one is picked randomly.

At this moment, damage is split between the armies of the same side proportionally to their number of troops in combat. That mean if you join a 1000 vs 1000 fight with a 1 Pikemen army, your only pikemen is likely to keep fighting until the combat is done. I'm not sure I like this behaviour, however.

Question 3: Timing
It seems that the battle is done in stages, each taking about 45min to an hour (how long is each stage actually?). The first stage is done almost immediately. Does the strength calculation in the first question happen at the beginning of each stage based on remaining troops or just once at the beginning of the battle, and the timed stages are just there to lengthen the battle based on total troops involved?


When a combat is initiated, a round occurs immediately. Afterwards, the round occurs every hour, at the same time resources are generated.
That means that it is technically possible to have your second round 1 second after the first. After that it occurs every hour. This behaviour as well is subject to be changed.

Question 4: Randomness
There seems to be a random element in calculating the outcomes... how random is this? Would be great to know what the formula is.


Only the currently attacked unit in every army is randomly picked.

Question 5: City/Territory Defending Bonus
Is there any? And how many defensive points per territory or city? Does it depend on how developed the territory or city is?


At this moment there is none. But it is something I'm tinkering about.

Question 6: Supporting Armies
It seems there can only be 1 supporting army for each side. Is this correct? Does it not make sense to let more supporting armies join in? Also, if a supporting army joins a defensive battle, is he counted as a defender (so ballistas get bonus) and no the attacker since he's attacking the battle (so catapults get bonus)?


There is no limit to the number of supporting armies. However, for some time in the last version of the game, there was a bug preventing some armies to join.

You are always on a side, either you are defending the territory/city, or you are attacking it. A supporting army's siege engine will behave accordingly.

Suggestion 1
After my numerous battles over the past few games, I've realized that most people just produce an equal amount of each pikeman, archer, and cavalry, and don't try to focus on one over the other, and instead the main focus is to produce lots of catapults and ballistas (probably because the attacking/defending bonuses are simple and clear how they'll be used: ballistas in defense, catapults in offense).

My idea is to find a way to add some tactical element to each battle. Instead of having all troops fight each other at the same time, the battle would happen in turns between 2 groups of soldiers. Each army would be able to have his army fight in a particular order (for example, soldiers go first, then cavalry, then catapult, then pikemen, and back to soldiers, like a baseball batting rotation, every group has to go once and the cycle continues until end of battle). This would add an element of trying to guess what your opponent's strategy is, and try to match the right order (for example, if you think the other has cavalry coming first, you select your pikemen to go first to get the bonus).


This is a very good suggestion. I've been thinking about adding some level of tactical decision myself. However, this will have to wait for a while as there are so many things that remains to be done!

Suggestion 2
When 2 armies from warring factions cross path with each other, they should get into a battle instead of walking past each other. It's quite annoying trying to catch an army that just hops back and forth between two territories until his reinforcement arrives. It's ok if he keeps running away, but should get caught if his path is crossed by an enemy army.

Also, would be good to be able to set auto attack for an army as soon as it arrives at a territory... again this can be used to evade an army if you've timed your log ins vs your opponent. Both armies are sitting at the territory and whoever logs in first gets to attack or run away.


There is no plan to add combat on the roads at this point. There would be quite a few design and technical problems in doing so. One of them would be to determine which one is attacking and which one is defending in such an encounter.

If you are at war with someone, your armies should attack upon arriving at an enemy holding. If it is not working that way for you, than that would be a bug!

Thanks and keep up the good work!


Thanks a lot for helping me create this game!

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