strategus battles as rounds instead of respawn

[Torben]

damn i voted no, but i meant yes.
altough for sieges this seems quiet stupid to me, look at how hard it is to get up a ladder before it gets destroyed, if you do this round per round the ladders will never get up.
for battle this could be epic, more teamplay etc.
but what if you want to build stuff?

... to have strategus battles (not sieges)  work like the crpg battles...[/youtube]

build stuff?   defenders would have prep phase,  attackers would have a hard time  : )

[Haboe]

No, battles would have less strategic play this way. Now you have to capture key-points like hills to have an advantage, build forward spawns, and if yo uwant to do crazy you can build a siege tower for your archers. At the same time you also have to keep your formations so that your spawn will not be taken. (prep fase each round for defenders will make everyone rage about boring battles)

If you make it like normal battles you simply have to fight and kill. No one would care about spawn defending, so most strategy would be taken out of strat battles.

Which is in my point a pretty important aspect in strategus.

[Torben]

No, battles would have less strategic play this way. Now you have to capture key-points like hills to have an advantage, build forward spawns, and if yo uwant to do crazy you can build a siege tower for your archers. At the same time you also have to keep your formations so that your spawn will not be taken. (prep fase each round for defenders will make everyone rage about boring battles)

If you make it like normal battles you simply have to fight and kill. No one would care about spawn defending, so most strategy would be taken out of strat battles.

Which is in my point a pretty important aspect in strategus.

maybe linking the different battle phases to achieved goals?  kind of a conquest/battle strat hybrid..

[Haboe]

Or make it stronghold mod Gold = resources.

[Teeth]

No, battles would have less strategic play this way. Now you have to capture key-points like hills to have an advantage, build forward spawns, and if yo uwant to do crazy you can build a siege tower for your archers. At the same time you also have to keep your formations so that your spawn will not be taken. (prep fase each round for defenders will make everyone rage about boring battles)

If you make it like normal battles you simply have to fight and kill. No one would care about spawn defending, so most strategy would be taken out of strat battles.

Which is in my point a pretty important aspect in strategus.

In the current Strategus strategy as the depth of a puddle, compared to what battle would have if everyone was on teamspeak. Really? Building forward spawns, camping hills and building siege towers for archers is what you see as deep strategy?

In the case of no respawns tactics get a whole new level. If the enemy fails to protect their ranged and you manage to kill them with a well timed cav charge, their ranged is gone for good instead of respawning 5 seconds later. If you manage to divide the enemy's force and overwhelm half of it, they will not respawn to full strength in a matter of seconds, you might very well have secured victory. Every action matters when there are no respawns. You manage to headshot their top player at the start and he is out for good. You have to take extreme care and think about every action. Just like real field battles of old.

It is not simply killing the enemy, it is trying to get an advantage by exploiting weaknesses of the enemy, using proper formations, fighting as a team, properly coordinating all 3 classes with that advantage actually having an effect on the outcome of the battle. Winning a battle in current Strategus really comes down to gear, tickets and who gets spawned at the better side of the map. Every smart tactical ploy you do now, has no effect cause they respawn.

[chadz]

I really see your point Teeth, and I really agree with your statements, but the problem is that you will gather 100 players on a server to play for, probably, 3 to 5 minutes then, after waiting 3 to 5 minutes until the battle starts.

Sounds too much like premature ejaculation to me.

But maybe we can come up with a solution for that.

[Zlisch_The_Butcher]

How about making it somewhat more wave based? It'd need some sorta unconscious system like in native singleplayer to make it work though...
Let's say wave one, both teams spawn with all their players, team A kills all of team B, team A then gets to resurrect a small percentage of their dead after the battle or after an amount of minutes. It'd make winning the waves matter a lot as they'd save a percentage of their troops, get the loot for said wave, and perhaps give them the "defender" status for the next wave.

A wave system would also allow for battles with more troops in total as you could for example have the first "part" of the battle be one or two hours, then 24 hours later have the battle continuing until someone wins. This way having 3000+ troops won't make you an army unbeatable in one attack on you.

[Teeth]

I really see your point Teeth, and I really agree with your statements, but the problem is that you will gather 100 players on a server to play for, probably, 3 to 5 minutes then, after waiting 3 to 5 minutes until the battle starts.

Sounds too much like premature ejaculation to me.

But maybe we can come up with a solution for that.

That is just one problem. One might ask though if 1-2 hour battles are really all that more desirable compared to 3-10 minutes.

There is some other major problems with Strategus without respawns. I don't see how castle sieges would ever be won by the attackers like this and I expect endless hillcamping to reign supreme. Frankly I don't think no respawns is a viable idea until we are able to actually do 2000 vs 2000 battles. Glad that you are willing to consider it though, instead of rejecting it at the first sign of trouble.

Best closest thing would probably be a system similar to the way big battles are handled in singleplayer. A reinforcement wave that spawns as soon as there is a certain number of soldiers alive, alternatively a set time interval could be used. This adds natural attack waves and also adds some tactical depth by requiring you to properly deal with waiting on your reinforcements or withstanding the arrival of theirs.

Another alternative is multiple rounds without respawns. Anything that breaks the meatgrinding deathmatch.

[Thomek]

Yeah multiple rounds is good idea. (With a maximum of 8?)

Then the commanders would be learning for each round, and adapt to the terrain and their actions, troop combos etc.. Would be very interesting. Idea sounds repetitive, but it is not. I imagine most rounds would be different from the last as commanders try new strategies to win.

As a sidenote, it would also be interesting to put a much higher amount of tickets on the commanders head. So protecting (and killing) him becomes an important part of the battle. (20% of tickets? More?)

[Torben]

much higher amount of tickets on the commanders head. So protecting (and killing) him becomes an important part of the battle. (20% of tickets? More?)

nice

[chadz]

I actually like Zlisch's idea (I am surprised myself).

Every time you die in strat, you have a random chance to either be knocked out (=respawn) or be killed (=gone for the battle). The random chance is defined by the size of your army (so a big army has a higher chance of respawning). The chance increases every time you get knocked out.

Eg battle 1000 vs 1000.
1. Death: 95% KO Chance
2. Death -90% KO Chance -5%
3. Death -85% KO Chance -5%
4. Death -80% KO Chance -5%
5. Death -75% KO Chance -5%
6. Death -70% KO Chance -5%
7. Death -65% KO Chance -5%
etc

This means that getting killed means something, every single time, because there is always a chance you'll end up dead.

At the same time, remove the increasing respawn timer per death and make respawns take a tad longer for the KOd (30 seconds). Also, spawn in waves when 40% or so of your group are KOd.

[Zlisch_The_Butcher]

I actually like Zlisch's idea (I am surprised myself).

Every time you die in strat, you have a random chance to either be knocked out (=respawn) or be killed (=gone for the battle). The random chance is defined by the size of your army (so a big army has a higher chance of respawning). The chance increases every time you get knocked out.

Eg battle 1000 vs 1000.
1. Death: 95% KO Chance
2. Death -90% KO Chance -5%
3. Death -85% KO Chance -5%
4. Death -80% KO Chance -5%
5. Death -75% KO Chance -5%
6. Death -70% KO Chance -5%
7. Death -65% KO Chance -5%
etc

This means that getting killed means something, every single time, because there is always a chance you'll end up dead.

At the same time, remove the increasing respawn timer per death and make respawns take a tad longer for the KOd (30 seconds). Also, spawn in waves when 40% or so of your group are KOd.

I'm wondering if you misunderstood me (I realize I worded a part of it quite poorly), or just proposed something vastly different... but no mater, your idea is quite good but I do see a few glaring holes in it.

It'll occasionally make people refuse to follow important instructions and going to that important place to die that important death due to missing out on a load of exp.
It'll still keep a "troop limit", as having more than x troops would be useless when all your players would be gone (while such a limit is already there, and this is vastly better than the current one as it doesn't just affect defenders then it's still a limit).
Balancing something off chance for a skillbased game is always somewhat bad, as team 1 could potentially all get kicked on their first death while team 2's players survive 9 deaths.
This would make some sort of retreating system even more needed than it is now.

Besides those things it's a great idea though.

[Thomek]

I'm against respawns.. Even in waves as this could quickly result in spawnrapes, or chaos at spawn. (Which is not that interesting)

(Again, look at singleplayer where this happens all the time. Kill off first wave, then set up xbowmen/archers in crossfire right outside their spawn)

Also the respawn system creates this constant stream of fresh troops that nullifies encirclement etc.. It basically takes out most of the tactics, no matter how you look at it.

Better then to have series of battles on the same map. It opens up for so many choices. Commander could tell part of the army to become hoplites next round, then maulers the next etc.. Both tactics and troop composition would be dynamic. A good team of players could loose to a commander who got his troop composition right i.ex, or had simply a better mix prepared, compared to a commander with more money, but a more rigid composition.

But most importantly.. solve the lag issues! I cannot fathom why it still exists. If one could fix that, then I see us having 200 player battles in series.

Take the stupidity out of strat battles.. We all crave it

[chadz]

Yeah, yours was different, I dropped those parts out of my suggestions that I didn't like

I was referring to the knocking out part actually.

However, I already received a lot of backlash for my suggestion, because too random, and a heavy penalty for randomness on top, so I'd probably retract my idea as too radical

[Thomek]

btw chadz.. Could you elaborate on the problem of lag in strat battles and why it happens?

It has been a mystery to me..