While I applaud the reversion back to the old combat system, it still makes me wonder about the imbalance of the current combat system. To perhaps better balance this out, my suggestions are below. I have made an attempt to flesh this out with an example in hopes that it makes a little more sense, but combat is always a complex thing to balance out properly. While this may not entirely do the trick I believe these are a few changes that might start moving in that general direction.
1) A "general orders" option should be added to each side of the combat arena to allow players the option to command troops as to whether they should take an offensive or defensive stand in the combat for purposes of calculating overall battle scores. Attackers would have "Attack" and "Blockade" while defenders would have "Defend" and "Counter".
2) Fortified units should enjoy a bonus to the defensive rating, penalty to the offensive rating and a "inflicts 1/2 damage when attacking" penalty. This represents a clear combat advantage for a fortified or entrenched unit.
3) Heroic units should suffer a penalty to the defensive rating and penalty to the defensive rating. This represents a clear combat penalty for an aggressive unit.
4) Both unit stacks engaged in a combat action should suffer losses during a combat action. This represents the clear and real expectation of war and provides a more balanced combat action. This also more accurately depicts how an overpowering attacker may get more assaults on a defender and limit "counter-attacks" simply because of sheer size. It also represents how a smaller defender can slowly chip away at a larger defender.
5) Regardless of "attacker" or "defender", any attacking action should use the offensive rating and and defensive action should use the defensive rating. If a defender is "counter-attacking" during combat, the offensive rating of the unit should be used rather than the defensive rating and vice-versa for the attacker.
A few examples to demonstrate the benefits to this combat method.
Example 1: Ancient Era Combat Scenario
Attacker 5 Swordsmen, 5 Horsemen, 5 Natives, 5 Galleys
Base Attack Score: 25
Base Defense Score: 20
Defender 5 Militia, 3 Horsemen, 7 Natives, 4 Galleys
Base Attack Score: 14
Base Defense Score: 19
Under the current rules, the defender is less likely to be able to counter-attack and thus should lose this battle if all troops are set to "normal".
Under the proposed rules, a defender would set general orders to "Defense" (default for defending armies). This would indicate that the defender would prefer to let the invading army attack them and use the defense rating on all troops be used for the calculation of the battle score. In addition, the attacker would set general orders to "Attack" (default for invading armies). This would indicate that the attacker really wants to invade and use the offensive rating of troops to calculate their battle score.
As a defender, setting the defensive troops to "Fortified" should result in an increase to the defense score, thus giving them an advantage against a similarly sized invader. The new scores would be Attacker 25, Defender 38. This represents the clear nature of the defensive fortifications such as walls, natural terrain, etc... that the defender will be more familiar with and can use to their own advantage.
However, a "mongol horde" style of attack with "heroic" attackers changes the outcome once again. Now the scores would be Attacker 50, Defender 38 - a clear advantage once again to the attacker.
The downside to the "heroic" style of combat is, of course, heavier losses. Under the current system, this is generally not taken into consideration when combat occurs and the advantage is clearly in the attackers favor. Because the attacker strikes much more frequently than the defender (and currently the defender switching to fortified is a penalty), the attacker will inflict massive losses on the defender with no change for the defender to inflict damage on the attacker. Under the suggested rules, however, an attacker would suffer losses on each attack weighted against the defender's score.
Using the armies provided above, 5 Swordsmen would attack 5 Militia. The Swordsmen in this case have 20 attack points (base 10 x2 for heroic) while the Militia have 10 defense (base 5 x2 for fortified). However, the militia suffer 1/2 losses while the Swordsmen suffer 3x losses. Under this circumstance, the militia have a real and reasonable chance to defend themselves from an army of equal and proportionate size, even if the attacker has a more skilled army. With each attack, the Swordsmen should be able to inflict damage enough to wipe out 2-3 militia units. The fortified stance reduces this to 1-2 militia lost. The "reciprocal" damage that the swordsmen suffer because of their attack may only be .5-1 unit, but the heroic penalty grows that to a 1-3 swordsmen lost.
With each combat action, the swordsmen are weakened for throwing themselves against a fortified army. As the overall combat scores start to fluctuate, the militia are more likely to counter-attack. As Militia have no offensive rating, this is a poor example - but the Natives for the defender certainly could counter-attack. The defenders 7 Natives (.5 attack, 2 defense) would engage the attacker's natives (2 attack, .5 defense). The only differences in this attack is that the defender has more units and thus an advantage. However, because a fortified defender would only inflict 1/2 damage on the attacker, the penalty for "heroism" is somewhat countered. 1-2 units of the attacker's side may be lost, but 1-2 units for the defender would be lost as well. Overall, this action would be relatively equal for both sides in terms of losses.
As armies become overwhelmingly large and combats are no longer balanced simply because of sheer size, the defender is still likely to lose. However being an aggressor in combat should never be without some form of penalty in terms of troop loss. The decision to invade any nation should always have consequences. In this case, making your own nation that much more susceptible to being invaded by another, bigger fish.
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Originally Posted by Kalistes
