Elemental Forums
So I get that the higher your initiative, the more often you go in combat. What is difficult for me to understand, though, is how much more often you get to go. As in, how far does +1 initiative get you? Is a 16-initiative unit as fast relative to a 15-initiative unit as a 26- is to a 25-? I would like to see math if possible.
Once upon the time, in April, I had it figured out precisely, but as bugs were fixed, things changed.
Here's the way to think about it.
1. In order to move, an unit needs to gather a certain amount of energy. At the beginning of the battle, everyone has 0 energy, baring traits (impulsive, for example)
2. Every tick (you can think of them as combat rounds) every unit generates energy corresponding to its initiative.
3. Every tick, the energy of units is checked, and those that have gathered enough, move.
4. Next tick. I.e. go to 2.
Once again, this is not necessarily how the game works. This is a model that worked in April.
A few things that you can conclude from my model:
1. An unit with half the initiative moves about half as often.
2. Because energy gathering 'overshoots', the order can change in unexpected ways.
3. When initiatives are close, it takes a long time for a faster unit to get one whole turn on another, slower one.
4. If initiatives and ticks fall just right, a slightly slower unit can move twice while a faster unit gets no turn.
There is a problematic thing with adding initiative and taking it away. Doing both is even more problematic to the model. For one thing, adding 50 Init for 4 turns means you get 3 extra turns. But after you lose that Init, you won't get another turn, until the 3 you just got would have happened. It's almost as if the system is dividing Init by number of turns over a round. But we have specific data, only observational evidence. Likewise, adding permanent Init allows several extra attacks. Removing permanent Init causes you to lose several turns until the scales have balanced.
isn't there some way to make a definite "end" to a turn so that cumulative bonuses and penalties don't spiral out of control? I know they seem to have hard coded a minum 3% initiative, but is that enough of a roadstop?
I like haveing regeneration in combat, but the current initiave model makes it broken.
How can you change it so that you have distinctive rounds occure, you have your multiple turns in a round, regeneration fires once, and then a new round starts,
rather than regeneration firing evey time your high initiave unit has a turn.
Because regeneration would tick every time the regenerating unit would act, rather than having its own "turn" to regenerate everyone with the ability. This meant that a high-init, high-move unit was essentially immortal against a single opponent, and could recover from any non-fatal injuries taken before the end of a battle, good as new.
Anyway, Sean and Tuidjy already answered your question pretty well, but I'll add this: barring other modifiers, 1 init is 1 extra action against a unit with 1 init. IE, 2 init gives you 2 attacks vs 1 init, while 20 gives you 20, and so on.
Yes, I noticed that if I cast Haste later during a tactical battle, its as though its retro-active from the beginning and gives the unit several turns in a row instantly to 'catch up' to how many turns it would have had, if it had them from the getgo.
i'm sorry, i know it doesn't activate in combat any more. I was asking about how to put it back into combat, but limit the the regenration firing once in one round of combat, with a unit getting x number of tunrs in a round based off of initiative. I want the retroactive effects to stop.
I want to calculate number of turns a unit gets based off of initieve. every body takes those turns. end of round 1, regen fires.
check for any change in unit initiative, everybody takes turns based off of initiative. end of round 2, regen fires.
instead of regen firing every time a unit gets a turn, that's the broken part.
You could divide the regen by the initiative unit stat. That would give a set amount of Hp regardless of combat speed.
err, wouldn't that have you regen less than 1 hit point ? or would it regen, say by example .5 a hp, so the 2nd time it kicks in your hp go up by 1 point.
uhg that will need testing, but otherwise, it's a very good idea to fiddle with.
I have 10 Init, regen is at 10. That would be 10/10 = 1 per turn. Then later I get 20 Init and my regen spell is still at 10. That would be +.5 per turn. So no matter how high your Init goes, you will get the same amount of health.
Regeneration in combat was really unfun because my fast hero with a horse would run around for 5 minutes regenerating to full then hit the enemy once, then repeat, and defeat much stronger yet slower foes in 20 minute or more battles.
I think the change makes the game more fun. You can still use this technique by waiting until your hero gets a double turn and spend one turn going in and attacking and one turn running away again. This is very unfun and could be fixed with zone of control. Where if you are adjacent to a foe and move you either get only one step or you take a free swing like Age of Wonders did.
Mike.
well the simple answer is to give all sorts of units a basic range attack of some sorts, like throwing bolders, throwing knives etc. debuff spells, all sorts of answers to this, but nm it's all good.
I really miss this. Although I don't usually do the hit and run, I sometimes move champs/troop through enemies to finish a wounded one.
A hit (that could be dodged) by each enemy that is in range (1 tile) when trying to move out (that happened in AoW but in MoM too I think) is a solution for the hit and run.
To expand on this:
In my last game i tried to collar an umberdroth. My Sovereign has 27 init, and so does the Umberdroth. Upon entering combat my sovereign gets to act, and to my surprise the Umberdroth then gets to act 2 times in a row and proceeds to bite my head off. Soooo unfair !
My guess is that you had Impulsive, which gives you a huge boost so you start first, but often other units get two (or maybe more) before you get your next move because your initiative has dropped off since your first move.
Impulsive is useless, I always have higher initiative than my enemies unless I am fighting a dragon.
The current that way initiative is calculated is stupid and broken.
My suggestion would be to make it a simple system where every turn you build up energy equal to your initiative. Then turns pass by (instantly) until a unit has 100 energy built up, then that unit gets a turn. It functions almost identically to the current system but gets rid of all the retroactive B.S.
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