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Commanders


Sarik
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Of Cource There Is This For Every Civ At Least A Few Of Each

Melee Combat

Inderect Combat

Combat Support

Support

Light Calvary

Heavy Calvary

Support Calvary

Naval Ships

Transports

Super Class Unit

Hero

But There Has never Been Commanding Units In RTS Ever, Something So very Much Part Of Strategy.

One Thing I Hate So Much In RTS Is Having To Rush From One Place To onther Trying To Defend,Attack,Plan,Build,Gather,Think,Move,Explore, And Scout All At the Same Time Its Impossible.So What Iam Thinking Is Having Commanding Officers And Assighn Them Units Like A Squad Or Comapany And Given A Script To Carry Out A Certain Behavoir Like Defend Or Attack (Attacking With Skill Instead Of Simply Turining Your Men Into Fodder).This Way You Feel Your Control Of An Army Instead Of A Large Band Under Your Supreme Control.Officers Could Be Trained Or Be Promoted From Reg Units.Like lets Say Your Officer Is Promoted From A Calvary He Will Have An Outstanding Calvary Tactic Script But Poor Infantry Command.Or A Spearmen (Hipolite) Who Is Promoted Up Through The Ranks Until He Is A officer And With This Will Have An Excelent Defencive Script Command, Able To Move His Units To The Best Defencive Spots That Way He Will Be Able To Hold Or Hold And Retreat Or Hold While Falling Back To Buy SomeTime Whatever Order You Give Him.This Would Be Something Completly New And 0Ad Will Have It First And Whont Be Just Onther RTS.

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The game Nemesis of the Roman Empire allows players to assign up to 50 units to a Hero or Commander. This allows the units to move in formations, gives unit bonuses (attack, hp, ect.), and can be set to do some minimal automatic fighting. Also, when the commander is selected all the units under his command are selected.

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In my sordid dim and distant past I spent happy afternoons playing tabletop Napoloenic wargames, with dice, lead soldiers and sad little plastic trees and hills.....

Anyway, the rules system said that regiments would follow written orders, for example advance in column formation to hill x, before deploying to line on the ridge, but retreat if threatened with overwhelming forces.

Orders could only be changed if the overall commander despatched an ADC (aide de camp) with new written orders.

Not sure how practical it would be to recreate, but by giving a commander a personality as well you could have some interesting battles.

Imagine your forces are stationed on a hill and your left flank decides to attack without orders because the commander of that section "liked to good scrap"......

Local commanders who look after their forces and provide local orders could be a real good feature, but probably one you would want the option of turning off.

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Hmm, your mention of personalities for commanders gave me an idea.

What if units can be assigned to a certain commander and get bonuses based on his "personality"?

A type of automatic fighting could be interesting, as long as the player can turn it off. For example, units under the command of a hero unit can be put on some sort of auto-command, where the hero will make basic decisions (attack, stand ground; formations; ect.), but not enough to take away from the players role in the game (so a lazy player cant put all his units under auto-command and sit back).

One other thing- would it be at all possible if the pc attacks with their full strength and uses formations and tactics? I hate it in AoK when the pc attacks in small numbers (like 5 or 6 units at a time, or less) without any kind of tactics or formations, and usualy end up getting cut down by my towers and forts before they have a chance to attack.

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Being able to turn off auto-command is a must.

I can see it being very useful for holding a fortified position or stronghold, leaving you to get on with the more interesting action elsewhere.

Personalities giving a bonus to troops is a good, especially in morale issues such as recovering from a rout.

Speaking of which, how is moral dealt with in 0AD? (I'm a lazy newbee who hasn't read through all the areas yet). It seems in many (perhaps most) ancient wars that morale was the deciding factor. Still is today I guess.

A respected commander or hero would be able to keep the unit together, an unknown wouldn't.

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Whether or not and to what extent morale will be implemented in the initial game is still up for question, but it looks like it's being put on hold for now.

On commanders: we will have "hero" units, as well as formations. Both of these will allow a degree of the ideas listed here. Heroes will affect statistics of units around them, and formations will give a basic stance for the units therein.

However, while the idea of autonomous "commanders" may sound cool, it is my -personal- opinion that we'll never be able to make them smart enough for an average player to trust his/her units with. When one of our auxiliary armies is crushed, we'll yell at the computer for some boneheaded move or decision. And players always find ways to exploit the AI's tactics, which is why multiplayer is so much fun. Giving an AI to your units takes out half the fun of it.

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My suggestion for automatic command is not meant to be a way for the player to give total command of their army over, but is meant to be a way for players to focus on one group of units in battle and not be afraid to leave the rest for a minute. Here are some ideas-

- Units placed on auto-command are on a defensive stance where the main purpose of auto-command AI is to defend the units (and buildings if required) while the player is focusing on another group of units.

- This defense can include auto-command going into defensive formations, changing stances to better defend their position, partoling units in the immediate vacinity, and moving units to another position (close by) to be better defended, or to defend.

- Auto-command can be placed on units and buildings by selecting an area on the map for the auto-command option. The size of the area selected could be limited and/or the number of areas under auto-command can be limited.

- Auto-command cannot move units out of the auto-command area.

- Auto-command options would allow player to focus on commanding a group of units without fear of returning to an area to find thier other units slaughtered and their buildings captured (ie. a player leaves a small group of units to defend a village while he/she engages in battle).

Edited by Caesar
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How about approaching the automatic control idea from a more "piecemeal" direction.

Allow certain individuals to have a specific autonomy.

The example I have thought of is a scout. Every army employs individuals to carry out reconaissance (sp?) ahead of the main force, offering commanders on the ground some much needed intelligence.

This only works if a fog-of-war system is in place, preventing you observing enemy troop dispositions from a "god" perspective.

Create a scout class individual and set him an area to move into and explore. He will move forward fairly slowly, moving from cover to cover, scouting for the enemy. He will not be a combat unit, and will run if spotted or engaged by any enemy forces.

The information he sends back could be real time, but perhaps more interestingly could be block based (that is the terrain and troop information comes as the result of 5 minutes scouting and arrives as a single block) as if he had sent back a carrier pigeon. Troop positions recorded could be more of a "satellite" photo, showing what was there, not necessarily what is there. Knowing what you face and where it was is still valuable information.

Other specialist units could offer their own autonomous functions, ones that you dont want to spend time on, but would benefit from.

As an example your scout identifies a small infantry force moving with siege weapons towards you base. As a response to the threat a couple of squadrons of cavalry are sent out to carry out a "hit and fade" attack against the siege weapons and it's crew. The cavalry do not need to know the exact position of the target, a basic direction and an overview of the enemy a few minutes ago would be sufficient. They will adjust their course as they approach the target.

It may add a level or realism that previous games have only tried to do with fast moving scout units.

Caesar's previous post provides a good basis for "command" type self control ;) .

Ideas are easy, it's turning them into code that takes the skill. :shrug:

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