Suggestion for Battlefields DLC

from Elemental Forums

A DLC focused on tactical battles would interest me.

Ideally this would include:

1. Wider assortment of battlefields that provide more tactical options. Example:

  • Map bisected by a bridge
  • Swamp map that limits the mobility of heavily encumbered and mounted units
  • Forest maze map that restricts ranged attacks to 5 tiles (since the code does not exist for Line of Sight limits)
  • Village Map
  • Larger city streets map where army must fight in narrow streets.

2. Terrain tile effects on battles - Heavily encumbered units can't enter swamp tiles or forest tiles, bonus for units atop a hill. Plate units knocked prone in river tiles drown.

2. Add new tactical combat traits and commands for units and heroes.

Perhaps having a Commander Hero with a specific training allows units with shields to select Shield Wall or fortify their tile. Hero commander can order all adjacent bow units to Swarm Attack the same target at the same time.

Example: Commander > Fortifications > All units start combat in fortified tiles if defending against an army lead by a lower level hero.

  • Commander Hero Tactical Path > Scouts > Ambush
  • Example: Commander > Scouts > Units in this commander's Army gain +4 bonus to initiative on first turn of combat & cancels opposing army ambush ability bonus (i.e. you can't ambush a commander with the Scouts Ability)
  • Example: Commander > Ambush > Attacking unit has option to begin combat 2 tiles closer (for melee unit advantage) or 2 tiles farther (for ranged unit advantage) from enemy units

3. New City improvements that affect the battlefield selected, if the city is attacked

  • Moat
  • Battlements - A line of fortified titles that provide a bonus to defense for units in them.
  • Infantry Militia Barracks - provides better defending militia, but it costs gold per season to maintain. No gold and the Militia barracks is disbanded.
  • Bowman militia Barracks - provides additional archer units for defense, but it costs gold to maintain. No gold and the barracks is automatically disbanded.

4. More spells that affect tactical combat:

Darkness: Limits ranged attacks and ranged spells to a range of 4 tiles. Enemy and friendly units 5 or more tiles distant from the active unit can't be seen. Affects attacker and defender.

6. More unit standard types such as horse archers for Tarth and mounted lancers.

7. Range effects on bow units - i.e. long bows have a longer range than short bows.

17,781 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I've suggested this before, and would fit well with your DLC suggestion I think...

Quoting tjashen, reply 44


Formation options

 

Formation picker

 

Quick clarification.  The first graphic mentions the 'formation picker' being placed below the ovals, but I decided that to the right of the ovals would be a better use of screen space.  Also, I decided after I made graphic # 1 that the Line Abreast formation wasn't practical, hence my not including it in the second graphic above.

 
Now that I have a better understanding of how map placement is determined (thanks to the map builder utility), essentially, you would designate 15 placement squares on the map, with each formation choosing 9 of those 15 squares for placement.  Example:

 1   2   3   4   5

 6   7   8   9  10

 11 12 13 14 15

These are all of the available placement squares. 

The Wedge places units 1-9 as follows: 13 - 8 - 12 - 14 - 7 - 9 - 3 - 11 - 15

Reverse Wedge places units 1-9 as follows:  13 - 8 - 7 - 9 - 3 - 2 - 4 - 1 - 5.

And so forth... any sides that exceed 9 starting units for whatever reason (i.e. cities) would fill out the remaining 6 squares, or perhaps designate different squares for the city defenders.

 

So map makers would choose the 15 starting squares for each side, and the formation picker would place the formations into the designated 9 (or less) squares.  Each map could have several variants with different starting locations, and perhaps a little disruption to the 'ideal placement locations' due to terrain, etc., so as to keep players on their toes a bit.


This way, each side/player does not manually place each individual unit onto the battlefield before combat (preplacement), something that Brad doesn't like.  Instead, this would happen in the background, based on your formation choice, with the game AI shoehorning your formation into your starting location as best it can.

This would be a significant change, hence it might be good for an expansion of some sort.

 

Even without the formation options, it'd still be nice to be able to manually shuffle units in your stack, to influence their placement on the map. My suggestion is that oval 1 should be towards the back/furthest from the enemy, and oval 9 towards the front/nearest the enemy of the available placement squares on any given map, although the opposite order might also work (1 closest/9 furthest).

 

End of tjashen's quote

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I really like these ideas.  

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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

LH appears to do a pretty good job in placing missile units to the rear and combat units to the front in tactical battles. Though I like the idea of player formations I am not sure what benefit it would offer over the current system at the current scale. (i.e. LH vs Total Rome). At greater encounter distances I could see a where each side has x turns to move their units into position before combat, of course if the enemy chooses a rush attack you may not have time to deploy your units in the desired formation.

From my readings of ancient battles in most battles; where one side did not have surprise, opposing generals would deploy their men in formations before engaging in battle. Where one side had surprise that side had a greater chance to deploy their men in an optimal formation for attack on an enemy that was in column formation or establishing a camp.

 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Emphatic +1 !!

I would definately sink my hard earned coin into a DLC that improved tactical battles.

 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I would really like an LH update to account for line of sight effects.

Now you can see and target enemy units behind a hill. I would really like the opportunity to be surprised by enemy units that come from behind a hill, a high stone wall or a building. I should not be able to directly target units that I can't see with bows or magic staves. I can see using a catapult to target tiles behind a hill; without knowing if a unit is located there.

 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Huge support for this thread.

Adding more depth would make the replayability of FE reach new heights.