Battle Observations

[ShuShu62]

Phases
The phases change based on slider bar progress.
The phases change the combat frequency and the defense bonus

Defense bonus
Visible bonus on slider bar: Impacts who pushes the bar each round
Visible bonus on slider bar * 10: Impacts who takes the shot for the round.
The defense bonus is halved in the probing attack phase

Shot probability
The paradigm has switched to momentum from alternation. If you took the last shot, the odds are better that you will take the next shot. This is opposed to the old paradigm where the odds decreased if you took the last shot.

Strategy
It is now quite possible to win the war without taking a shots
It can be worthwhile to sacrifice troops (stance) to push battle to next phase and thus reduce defensive bonus
Tower defense game bonuses can have major tide turning impacts.
Tower defense bonus is a way to hide true strength of army
It is to the advantage of the defender to preserve skirmish status of the battle for as long as possible to leverage the *10 bonus.
In close battles, protect large stacks and aggressively stance the smaller stacks to push the battle to the next phase.

Walkthrough
For no good reason other than experimentation. I dog piled a civilization that was declared on by another civilization. In the following walkthrough, The battle began at 6pm and ended sometime after 11pm.

I was the only army on the field for the first two hours. I was pushing the bar each round but losing more shots than I was taking. I had an advantage over the displayed value, but not the *10 value. I changed the stance of my troops to stop taking hits. I ceased taking hits completely within half an hour, despite progressive changing stance down to below 50/50 probability against the *10 value.

The opponents jumped in troops that were unbeatable when combined with the defense bonus. I was tapped out and only able to replace normal/fortified losses. Yet I still had three turning points in the battle.
1) I managed to jump my mini game defense to 75%
2) The mini game bonus boost pushed the battle into probing
3) The defender experimented with the old alternation paradigm… once, and lost all archers as a result.

Those three impacts enabled me to push the bar for half an hour in probing, until the defender jumped his mini game defense up 25%. At that point, it was no longer possible to win the shot totals. I managed to push the bar for another half hour by selectively placing protected stacks (e.g archers, since he had no archers, smaller infantry stacks since larger infantry stacks hit more often) on heroic and the primarily targeted stacks on normal, but the steady attrition and occasional hit on the protected heroic stacks meant that it was only a matter of time.

Once the battle was no longer winnable even if we erased the defense bonus by escalating the battle, I retreated the tattered remnants of the army. The defending civilization got their era about an hour later as they had to recover all the battle bar ground they lost plus over run our battle bar.

In the aftermath, I will admit that there are a lot more tactical options to sway a close battle than there used to be. I will also admit that it felt like I was fighting a typical civil war battle as inflicting losses and gaining ground were not tightly coupled. The battle also had ebbs and flows as battle changing events occurred and more than one battle changing event did occur.

Ultimately, I never want to commit myself to 5 hours of constant attention to a close battle again, there were numerous times when I thought about quitting, but didn’t because of obligation to teammates rather than out of feelings of ‘fun’.

[Hooshee]

Nice observation, thanks, this is more or less the same I saw on the field. However, no normal man can fight these battles along the way, unless have no life...

[romlock]

This info should help point out the better parts of the new battle system. To be fair, I think an engaged battle is more entertaining under the new system than the old one, as there are more options and control possibilities for the active player. The downside to which is that I spent 2 hours pretty actively navigating combat yesterday evening for a battle that started some eight hours earlier. Taking into account the feeling of leaving my Civ in the lurch had I left (the other active players all being Euro and on a different schedule), it felt like the battle had greater value.

I think moving the early battle bar even slower - maybe 10 minutes or longer between attacks in the early phase (which should last a set duration, say 6-8 hours), and closer during the latter stages, for instance back to the minute fifteen second attacks might be a nice change to balance things out. It gives a defending team far more time to log on and supply a true defense while making the end battle a really compelling experience imo

[AngleWyrm]

A problem that comes up in the current arrangement is that a player that can only field some troops, but not enough to defeat the attackers, is tempted to retreat their forces rather than stand alone and lose troops in the hope that teammates will join.

[KainS]

Are you saying that battles should be even Longer? O.o I'd much rather have the 20 hour countdown back, to a 20 - 24 hour battle that starts immediately.

[JaeRoler]

A problem that comes up in the current arrangement is that a player that can only field some troops, but not enough to defeat the attackers, is tempted to retreat their forces rather than stand alone and lose troops in the hope that teammates will join.

I agree with this. I have seen players with huge armies putting up a vote to invade a smaller civ, but the vote passes while they are offline and the entire battle is fought without a single troop from those huge stacks ever making the field. It makes invading other civs a very dicey affair in large civs.

Advantage goes to smaller, very close-knit civs who can coordinate when they can all come online to pass the vote and field their armies. If 5 players can field 500 Man-at-arms when the vote passes, I will hesitate to put in my 100 Phalanx even though I know other members of my pug civ can field another 500 Phalanx.

There is a high chance that they will come online and put in their troops. But in the mean-time, I'm taking the full brunt of the damage. An action that is beneficial to the civ, is stumped by the risk of losing all your troops if other members of your civ don't come online in time.

[tornado163]

These are my personal thoughts/experiences with the new battle system.

I'm a frequent/casual player. I'll try to get on in the morning before work, and maybe a couple of times after I get home from work, but I'm not on for hours at end. Occasionally I can sneak on at work.

Game 1, I'm in one of the larger civs that's leading the world in fame points. I go to bed and wake up to see this list of notifications: Your nation as entered a battle. Your nation has lost a battle. Your nation has entered a battle. A proposal has been made. Your nation has lost a battle. Overnight, we managed to lose 2 battles, and I had a decent number of troops that I could have contributed. Other times I'd be online when the battle was declared, but I'd be the only member of my civ. Together, we'd trounce the other civ, but alone I couldn't. So my options were to commit all my troops and hope reinforcements came (and risk losing them all) or do nothing and probably lose the battle.

Game 2, I decided on a totally new strategy. I'd be in a civ of 1-3 people, just to try out what it's like. And I'd be a warmonger. I know I'd be behind on tech, and probably not have many wonders, so there wouldn't be much to lose. And I was sort of succesful. Basically, if members of the civs I declared war on came online, they'd put up a good defense and I'd lose. My greatest victory was when I noticed 2 of the leading civs were at war with each other. I proposed war on the smaller, and being king, the vote passed immediately and war began. Because no one in that civ was online initially, I got a quick advantage. And when they were online, they couldn't spare troops for my battle, instead focusing on the major battle. While the major battle see-sawed quite a bit, I managed to win my battle first, grabbing 15 new technologies and 9 wonders. Nice haul. True to form, in the 3 hours between winning and when I got home from a shopping trip, 2 civs had declared war on us. 1 had already beaten us and gotten the wonders back, the other was leading us by 14,000 strength and the battle slider was 80% across. For better or worse, that sort of ganging up wouldn't really have been possible, nor would be losing the battle during my evening commute/grocery shopping.

I'm not casting any judgments about the new battle system, so don't jump on that. Just giving my own personal experiences about what is now a fundamentally different game.

[robin74]

In battles I watched, most of the times no units are actually attacked or destroyed. About half of the times the slider doesn't move one way or the other. Anybody noticed any pattern here?

[Phil Hall]

From the battle we fought this morning I draw the following conclusion. 3-4 people who can be online at the same time and have chosen to warmonger will win over any civ that can't place its entire army on the field at the same time. We finished the vote to invade at 9:30 am and promptly filled all our slots, made them heroic, two of three played the minigame running our total in the battle to 101K+. When the enemy defmin put troops in he was alone and barely managed to have 10% of our total. He immediately withdrew and after 5 hours we won the battle and took 2 wonders to win an era. We have the advantage of being a retired couple who can be online any time and our son plays and can likewise be online at odd hours because of his job. As far as strategy goes a civ needs to apportion work amongst its players. 2-3 warmongers, 2-3 scientists and some artists.

[Cazzius]

Phases
The phases change based on slider bar progress.
The phases change the combat frequency and the defense bonus

You mean the phases change based on the progress on the bar up/down?
I disagree it is the only factor at least, I've seen 4 phases, but its possible to win on the 2nd phase (Probing Attacks) if you have no enemy or little resistance. Allthough it could be a combination of time/bar movement also.

Some more info:
Phase 1: Initial Skirmish
Time: 5:20 per "hit" - Bar: Micro movement each "hit"
Phase 2: Probing Attacks starts after about 2 hours
Time: 2:40 per "hit" - Bar: Small movement each "hit"
Phase 3: Main battle starts after about 5 hours
Time: 1:20 per "hit" - Bar: Moderate movement each "hit"
Phase 4: Final Resolution starts after about 9-10 hours
Time: 1:20 per "hit" - Bar: Huge movement each "hit" (Went from mid bar to top in notime)

I have no confirmed time on when the phases change, but in one battle I got Main Battle after about 5 hours and Final Resolution in about 9-10, no double checks done.

Mini game: If you do the mini game to increase your battle % bonus, and you get lets say 75%, you will ofcourse lose that gradually over time (down to a min of 7% I belive). But if you at a later stage, enter the minigame, does not press "play again" and exit it again after a few seconds, you get full 75% bonus back. Only if you start a new minigame you cannot get your 75% back. Or if you reload your browser.

[robin74]

(down to a min of 7% I belive).

I've seen 4%.

[robin74]

And I just saw the battle end in the Initial Skirmish phase, so it's certainly not based on the slider progress.

[Nimbus]

can someone PLEASE explain how to know who is attacking next? And give more specifics on stances?

[robin74]

You can't know who will attack next. It's random. And it was also random under the new system.

[Cazzius]

can someone PLEASE explain how to know who is attacking next? And give more specifics on stances?

This is the marvel we all are pondering on I guess. As said before it has a good random factor, that really makes things hard to know exact. Nevertheless, I'll seen some things that I use as guidance.

First, in fortified, you lose very very little troops on each hit, but its hard to deal any damage with this stance. For maximum damage output you want the enemy to put on his heroic stance, and then you want your troops to hit them. But if you have heroic also, and this goes the other way, ofcourse you lose alot. So you could do the famous heroic/fortify switch;

After you have taken a hit, you put on full heroic, and gives your enemy a hit back, if you are close in power. They will often put on fortify then, to avoid losses. Every 2nd hit on each side is the easy part, and you will get this just about every round if you are close in power. Civs that just leave all troops in battle with heroic on and then goes offline, will certainly lose the battle (due to troop losses, or even wonder) if you do the every 2nd hit fortify/heroic. Even if you have lower power. However, at some point it stops beeing "you get one hit, you take one hit", and goes over to a 2 hits dealt: 1 hit recived. I've found this to be if you have more than twice the power, but at this point things starts to get less regular, and more random. I've even had a battle where I did 3 hits with heroic and took 1 hit with fortify for some time. But misshaps will happen here due to randomness. At some point you get 5-7 times more power with your heroic on, you can just leave it on (but monitor battle incase of changes). Then about all hits will go only one way, with an exceptional random hit other way from time to time, but all in all you lose less than you deal in damage, and the bar can go faster towards win. Thats at least my experience, I've done only battle games with friends that goes all out hammer prod (and 1 sci). Still after alot of those battles, the randomness has prevented me from comming up with 100% sure fixed numbers for this.

Normal stance I rarly use, and have little to no experience with it, its either all in, or all protect.
If you want to retreat you can stop the progress by selecting any other stance during retreating, this will abort the retreat of new units. Handy if you only need some units for an other battle in example. You can use ctrl + mouse click, to add back 1+1+1 units.

[KainS]

You mean the phases change based on the progress on the bar up/down?
I disagree it is the only factor at least, I've seen 4 phases, but its possible to win on the 2nd phase (Probing Attacks) if you have no enemy or little resistance. Allthough it could be a combination of time/bar movement also.

Some more info:
Phase 1: Initial Skirmish
Time: 5:20 per "hit" - Bar: Micro movement each "hit"
Phase 2: Probing Attacks starts after about 2 hours
Time: 2:40 per "hit" - Bar: Small movement each "hit"
Phase 3: Main battle starts after about 5 hours
Time: 1:20 per "hit" - Bar: Moderate movement each "hit"
Phase 4: Final Resolution starts after about 9-10 hours
Time: 1:20 per "hit" - Bar: Huge movement each "hit" (Went from mid bar to top in notime)

I have no confirmed time on when the phases change, but in one battle I got Main Battle after about 5 hours and Final Resolution in about 9-10, no double checks done.

Mini game: If you do the mini game to increase your battle % bonus, and you get lets say 75%, you will ofcourse lose that gradually over time (down to a min of 7% I belive). But if you at a later stage, enter the minigame, does not press "play again" and exit it again after a few seconds, you get full 75% bonus back. Only if you start a new minigame you cannot get your 75% back. Or if you reload your browser.

I wonder what determines when it goes from one phase to the next? Apparently, putting in defenders can change it from Initial Skirmish to Probing attacks... but I've never seen a battle in any phase except these two. Even battles 9 hours old were only in Probing attacks.

[Cazzius]

Indeed, could be a combination of time/power/bar movement, or a minimum of each to reach next, a bit puzzling. Maybe I reached those phases much at the same time cause of lots of simular battles with simular strenght. I've only reached the last phase once though. I recall they gave King also the option to manage troops of the civ so that the poor defence minister did not have to sit so long in battles, and that we were too dependant of him. Now they goes the other way again, before the def minister had a battle 1 hour or so, but was able to share this "burdon" with the King in one of the latest patches. Suddently both King/Def minister gets lots of time to put into each battle again. I find it weird they now want you to sit for insane amount of hours managing battles for your team mates. Most does it only to not let down their civ mates, there is no point in the long battles really. Its not a stamina test, but should be more dependant on the buildup over many days/weeks.

The new battle system is a bit interesting on the phases though, just an extremly big miss when they were setting the time for start, and totalt length.

[KainS]

Agreed, and this just makes it more difficult for their actual paying customers to enjoy the game, since military medals and such are SO much harder to get. Even folks like me who Could be on all day and night, well, it's not nearly as much fun. Though I suppose we'll just have to deal with it.

[ShuShu62]

I think I need to change the inertia claim. I recently had success flipping against a heroic foe.

[KainS]

Ended up having to put troops in to defend one of my friends civ against barbarians. Battle was less than an 45 minutes old and already in probing attacks, with the bar pushed about 2/3 of the way down. Makes me wonder, if barbarians attack and defeat a civ that doesn't put in any defenders, does everyone in that civ lose one population, or does it randomly pick a member of that civ that loses one population?

[robin74]

does everyone in that civ lose one population, or does it randomly pick a member of that civ that loses one population?

Everyone loses one population.