Effective army control

[causative]

Here are some tips for managing your army effectively.  These mostly assume you have an army of infantry champions.

• Use ctrl+q+click to make your army attack units only and ignore buildings.  Almost always, you want to kill units before buildings.  If you go straight for the buildings while enemy champs are around, your champs will get slaughtered while they are attacking the building.  If there are enemy civilian-soldiers around, they can repair the building, or garrison in buildings, or just attack your units.  So kill the units first.
  • Another way to look at this is how much economic damage your army can do per second.  Buildings are extremely durable and don't cost that much per hit point.  Units, especially workers, are very fragile compared to buildings and cost a lot more resources per hit point.  So it hurts the enemy more per second to be killing workers instead of damaging buildings.
• Your army has a tendency to narrow into a single file line when walking long distances.  Don't send your army into a tough battle in a single file line, because the front part of the line will be badly outnumbered.  There are several techniques for avoiding this.
  • When your line almost reaches the enemy, select some troops from the front part of the line, and tell them to move backwards and a bit sideways while the rest of the line keeps moving forwards. Do this repeatedly until the line looks more like a loose clump.  (If units have moved too far backwards, tell them to move forwards again to stay in the clump).  Then select your whole clumped-up army and tell them to attack (ctrl+q+click).
  • Another way to get your army to arrive at the enemy at once instead of single-file is to tell your army to walk far to the side of the enemy.  Then when your whole single-file line is halfway past the enemy, have them all change direction 90 degrees and walk at the enemy.  This way they will all arrive at once.  This works if the enemy is stationary and your army isn't too big.
  • Some expert players, such as The_Company aka nobody___, use box formations to get their units clumped up.  I personally don't do this since formations sometimes make it hard to disengage from a fight.
• When in combat, always use ctrl-q-click again every few seconds.  This will make your army select new targets.  If you don't do this, some of your units will just be walking around aimlessly trying to reach specific enemy units that are blocked by other units.  Doing this makes those aimless units stop walking and just hit the closest enemy.  This makes a big difference.
• Don't garrison champions or women if a fight is happening!  Garrison citizen-soldiers.  Champions do a lot more damage ungarrisoned.  A common mistake is for the enemy to capture a CC or fortress with 40 champions, and then immediately garrison 20 champions in the fortress even though enemy forces are around.  Don't do this!  If you do, the 20 champions outside the fortress may now be outnumbered by the enemy forces and can be killed.  The reason not to garrison women is just that they don't shoot arrows.  If there is more than enough garrison space for your citizen-soldiers, it's OK to garrison the women.
  • Sometimes an exception to this is garrisoning a damaged champ army in temples.  Only garrison in temples during a fight if you can garrison your whole army without leaving any outside to be slaughtered.  This forces the enemy to capture the temples, and then you can ungarrison your whole army - now partially healed - to keep fighting.
• Never take a straight-up fight that you think you're going to lose, if you can avoid it.  If you have 20 champions and the enemy has 40, your 20 units will be killed while only killing 5 or 10 of the enemy.  It's not cost-effective.  Only take an engagement that you think you are going to win, unless there's no other choice (e.g. you can't run).
  • In the middle of a fight, you might notice a few of your units that are isolated and outnumbered by more of the enemy, even if you outnumber the enemy in general.  In this case, you can select the isolated units and just have them walk around.  If the enemy isn't paying attention, his units will spend the fight just chasing the isolated units instead of dealing damage.
• If your heroes buff your troops, make sure they don't get damaged.  Keep them away from the main fight.  If the enemy targets them, have your hero just run around near the fight so they can keep giving the buff and the enemy has to chase them.
• Targeting the enemy hero specifically can be effective if they are strong like Boudicca or Philip of Macedon, and it's a large battle.  But don't chase the hero too far if they retreat.
• If the enemy is sending in a superior force to destroy your base, there are things you can do to make it a lot harder for him.
  • Immediately garrison towers and your CC/fortress with citizen-soldiers.  You should have several towers surrounding your CC, and you want to garrison all of them.  If you do this, then when the enemy takes your CC he won't take your base!  Your garrisoned towers will hold the territory and the enemy won't be able to delete your other buildings or convert them to Gaia until he takes the towers too.  Also, of course, garrisoning towers/CC increases arrow count and makes them more difficult to capture.
  • You want to avoid engaging his army with your champions for as long as you can (because we're assuming he has more champs so you would lose any straight-up fight).  Jockey for position - if a small part of his army is in reach of yours, you can attack and outnumber just that part.  If he sends more of his army into that fight, back away.  The longer he spends in your base jockeying for position, the more he's being shot by arrows.
  • If he is attacking or capturing buildings while you still have champions near, attack him.  He's made a big mistake and these are basically free kills.  Back away if he stops attacking the building - don't take a fight where you're outnumbered.
  • Keep women away from the enemy champs, but if he starts to attack your CC (or fortress) you want the women to repair it.  Try to put the women on the opposite side of the building from the enemy.
  • It's better to garrison citizen-soldiers than use them to fight, but if you do have more cit-soldiers than garrison space, use them to fight.  Don't let the enemy champs touch them though, unless the cit-soldiers are melee units!
• When attacking an enemy CC or fortress, you want to let your units walk without attacking around to the other side of the CC/fort.  (This assumes there are no enemy units nearby except women, perhaps because you killed them).  Your single-file line of units will encircle the CC/fort, and then you can have them all start attacking at once.  (Ctrl-click to damage below 50%, then regular click to capture).  This is usually faster than just telling them all to attack the front of the CC/fort, because it reduces the amount of time your units spend milling about trying to find an open spot on the CC to attack.  If women or cit-soldiers start repairing, use only a few of your nearest champs to kill them while the rest keep attacking the CC.  If enemy champs arrive, you have to fight the champs with your whole army or run away, unless the CC is already almost captured.
• Romans and Spartans both have strong swordsmen cit-soldiers and pike champions.  This is a good combination, particularly for Spartans.  Send in the swordsmen first with the pikes right behind them.  The swordsmen will make up the front row and deal damage and take hits.  (Romans should have their hero around to give the swordsmen +5 attack).  The champs will make up the back row and deal damage.  So you have 2 rows of attacking units, and your champs aren't getting damaged.  It's cheaper to let the enemy damage your Skiritai or Roman swordsmen than your champs.
• Build temples on the side of your territory nearest the enemy base, or close to where the combat is happening.  At least 2 temples is good for any given combat area, ideally protected by towers/fortress/CC.  If you're getting damaged or starting to lose a fight, and retreat is an option, then retreat and garrison in the temples.  Healing your champions helps you maintain a high kill/death ratio.

[Lion.Kanzen]

1-I spoke many times that little issue, nobody even had an answer for me, even many  devs ignore @wowgetoffyourcellphone And me or other users.

2- the pathfinder  need be complete efficient and then the army control have a planned redesign.

3- Agis is even more powerful ( defense and hp) 

[FeXoR]

- Target priority is quite an issue in many RTS games and I don't think there's an easy way to handle it. IMO the default behavior should be good in most situations but maybe not always the best (I wrote a priority order that would IMO work quite well but I can't find it ATM). In the situation with buildings and units that are attacking your units it is not so easy to determine what's best to do (e.g. chasing faster units with longer range with an unit AI withdrawing those units - or the units attacking your units are behind an obstruction like a wall - ignoring buildings will make your units do no damage at all instead of not that much damage to enemy buildings - which is still better) is not really to ignore buildings but only attack those if no enemy - unit or building - is in range to attack that unit of yours.

- AFAIK sanderd17 is about to rewrite/work on formations. That may take a while and involve some work on the pathfinder as well. I don't like that army movement colums as well. For me it is an absolutely fundamental necessity that units can be given an order, all at once but as given to each unit seperately - somehow a non-formation formation (Both for testing the pathfinder as well as testing if the usage of formations is actually of any use at all - gameplay wise - which I doubt to be honest).

- Every now and then units should check for better targets. Actually they could do that every time they are about to attack. Distance to the target is only one point in priority that could be used to chose the "best" target.

- Maybe all units should add to the attack of a building independent of the unit type. That would at least fix the strange thing not to garrison females.

Otherwise: Yea, basically common RTS sense (mass matters - more than linear).

[av93]

17 hours ago, causative said:

• Romans and Spartans both have strong swordsmen cit-soldiers and pike champions.  This is a good combination, particularly for Spartans.  Send in the swordsmen first with the pikes right behind them.  The swordsmen will make up the front row and deal damage and take hits.  (Romans should have their hero around to give the swordsmen +5 attack).  The champs will make up the back row and deal damage.  So you have 2 rows of attacking units, and your champs aren't getting damaged.  It's cheaper to let the enemy damage your Skiritai or Roman swordsmen than your champs.

Well,  IRC, technically only Seleucids have pikeman champs. The entity template of carth Sacred Band it's showed as pikeman (should be renamed to spear?) and Sparta have pikeman champs that can't be trained right now.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 6/10/2016 at 6:12 PM, FeXoR said:

as well as testing if the usage of formations is actually of any use at all - gameplay wise - which I doubt to be honest

If you guy s do not make the formations fundamental to the combat, then yes guys, you are doomed to failure. If there is not believe in the concept then why spend the effort to try to implement it? Srs questions. I have never seen 1 team member with strong voice say they like the concept. Are you implement it for mods? If that's true it is much appreciated, but in the end, for Vanilla game, you have to have a strong unified vision for the game's combat. Either you go all in with the formations and make them the core of the combat, or you just give soldiers a simple boxy/line formation (so they don't look completely unorganized) that they break out of all the time and be done with it.

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

I have to second wow's opinion; formations carrying an integral role to combat has been core to 0 A.D.'s vision for a long time, and denying those mechanics to combat would be a major turn from the game's original ideal.

[feneur]

I can't remember anyone but FeXoR saying that they are against the idea, I can remember a lot of programmers (who are the ones who are implementing things) saying they think it might be too difficult to do well. We haven't given up on it, but it's certainly something we are worried about not being able to do. At least not well.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

36 minutes ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

I have to second wow's opinion; formations carrying an integral role to combat has been core to 0 A.D.'s vision for a long time, and denying those mechanics to combat would be a major turn from the game's original ideal.

This is true. But if the current team have different opinion, that is fine too. The current team does not have to do what the team back in 2005 wanted to be done for example. But if the cureent team does not believe in a hard formation concept, then the vision should be modified. If some want it and some don't want it, then it would be cool to have in the engine and then some mods can have them and the vanilla game can have soft formations. If vanilla game just go with soft formation, then just get rid of wedges and flank formations and all that. Just have the simple boxy/line like in Age of Mythology. If the soldier do not stay in formation and fight and die in formation, then there is no use for wedges and phalanxes and all that. Just get rid of all that and simplify.

 

But if you do want formation to be integral to combat, then don't go halfway. That's all I am say.

A note about hard formation and what I mean by not going halfway:

Spoiler

Soft formations are formations that are cosmetic and the soldiers break out of them almost immediately. This is what a game like Age of Mythology or Age of Kings have. Age of Kings had some formations, but they were mostly not used because they were generally useless and mostly cosmetic. If you have soft formations, Age of Mythology should be your standard.

Hard formations are ones where the soldiers live and die and fight in these formations, I call them battalions. The prototype for this kind of combat is Battle for Middle Earth 2. With this system, 0 A.D. can have hundreds of soldiers fighting, but the control is easier. The management shift from soldier vs soldier, to battalion vs battalion. You can choose to make the battalions use different formations and they work better here, because you are managing dozens of battalions instead of hundreds of soldiers.

 

As you can see, in either example: Age of Mythology or Battle for Middle Earth 2, there are maybe 40-60 entities the player controls in the middle of a fight. I love the game Age of Mythology, but in that game a "typical" army consist of 60 soldiers, a "huge" army was 80 soldiers. IMHO, this is not the direction 0 A.D.'s combat should go, nor is it the direction it currently is. 0 A.D. players want armies in the hundreds. If you want epic combat and battles, then hard formations, or battalions gives the player the same number of entities to control as a game like Age of Mythology, but can allow for hundreds of soldiers. In this case, we can now do cool things like make shield walls, flanking attacks, battalion upgrades, etc. that we could not before or was difficult before.

 

So, what do I mean by going "halfway"? Well, it seem like people like the BfME2 direction, but they just cannot let go of the old ways with individual soldiers. They want cake and eat it too, and this is a mistake, IMHO. Because now you have to balance the game for both style of play and add all kinds of complications to both gameplay and to development that muddy the direction you're trying to take.

That's why I say if you're going to make formations have impact, then go all the way (like Battle for Middle Earth 2). If you're not willing to go all the way, find some happy place with soft formations (I suggest Age of Mythology) and forget about phalanxes and wedges and stuff, because you don't want useless feature in your flagship video game. And by the way, adjust your number of soldiers expectations along the way.

 

Edited June 12, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Lion.Kanzen]

Ok, he said, actual formations. And yes aren't any good even if have little bonus.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Ok, he said, actual formations. And yes aren't any good even if have little bonus.

Formations are no use if the soldiers don't stay in them and start running around like chicken.

[Imarok]

I think formations are difficult to implement and there are other things more important and easier to implement atm. So they have to wait.

( There a some(maybe just one) people trying to improve formations atm )

[FeXoR]

I can't see why "going half way" is bad.

 

Yes, the total numbers of entities per player possible somehow depends on e.g. if formations/battalions are used - for e.g. pathfinder performance reasons.

But having a non-formation behavior optionally doesn't mean that the entire games breaks or something...

 

Yes, only having "cosmetic" formations would mean (if formations are optional) that formations would have no use. That's why I am against formations only for cosmetic reasons.

Giving units in formations that makes sense and doesn't make single units basically useless could still make formations usefull - at least in some cases. And IMO that's not bad but adds to the possibilities the game offers. However, those bonuses should not feel arbitrary but beleavable.

 

There are many concepts that would allow to make formations usefull and strong like stamina/moral (and cycle e.g. exausted units - that could e.g. deal less damage - at the edge of the formation with new ones). Shielded units could also make ranged units safer within a formation adding armor bonus.

 

AFAIK there is a strong opinion in the team for formations. I, personally dont like some concepts of formations. And I don't like enforcing them on the player.

However, if the team decides otherwise I will accept that of cause!

 

I'm not sure where formations will go in the long run and on the way we might come by cosmetic formations. Untill we have that working well it will be hard to add more complex formation systems anyways. However, I can't see any good reason why also having a "non-formation" formation would not be a good thing: It's good for testing, good to see how bad just cosmetic formations perform compared to seperate units and allows the players to use what they like.

 

So That is all I ask for: Untill we have well working formation system with beleavable boni also keep a non-formation formation as an option.