Battle Mechanics Update

barbosaadmin · #1 09-25-2012, 11:39 PM

Battle Mechanics

There is now a true rock, paper, scissors rule that exists between units.
Instead of units fighting individually against each other Category Types of units are now grouped together during an attack and they fight against other groups of Category Types. Ie. all Cavalry would be grouped together to form one collective blow to a group of defender's units grouped together, ie. Archers.
The collective strength of a unit Category Type Group ie. all of your Swordsmen is calculated against the defense of a unit Category type of your defender's ie. their Archers. The calculation of who wins that round happens in one fell swoop. Rank of the specific units will help increase the attack strength or defense for that unit then making the overall numbers of the entire Category Type Group higher. This means it's still wise to gain experience and rank your units so they become stronger so you can build stronger armies.
When a round is decided the experience gained is then distributed equally among the units in that Category Type Group.
The side with the weakest overall strength will attack first. This was implemented so that weaker armies can do damage on their attacker before they are killed.
Heirs only fight if they are the last unit in battle and can only be killed if they are the last unit in battle. It still makes sense to retreat your army if it looks like the heirs will be killed.
When you launch an attack Category Types attack in the following order: Siege, Spearmen, Swordsmen, Archer, Cavalry and then Heir. This means if you have an army with Spearmen, Archers and Cavalry the Spearmen units would attack first as a group. Once it is your turn again the Archers would then attack. And then once it is your turn again the Cavalry would attack. If you didn't have archers your turn would be skipped. With that said it is a good strategy to make sure your armies are mixed with the different types of units.
When a Category Type Group attacks, they first look to attack the unit they have the upperhand against, if their upper hand target does not exist in their opponents army they will distribute the attack strength equally between the available remaining Category Type Groups.
To beat the opponent the total strength of a Category Type Group needs to be larger than the defense of the Category Type Group of the defender while avoiding any reductions that would make this untrue.
Reductions: Unit types do the most damage to units types they have the upper hand against, then a decent amount of damage to units of their same type, and then mediocre damage to all other units. Lastly, you will do the absolute least amount of damage to a unit type that has the upper hand against you. For example, if you are an Archer and you attack a Cavalry even though your Archers may have a decent sized strength comparatively to the Cavalry's defense because the Cavalry has the upper hand against you the amount of damage you can do gets reduced. You may only end up doing 25% of the maximum damage you could have done if the unit type you were attacking were Swordsmen. If the unit type was Swordsmen you would be capable of doing 100% of available damage to them. Don't send Paper in to beat Scissors. Don't send Rock in to beat Paper.

The battle system will use a true rock paper scissors format to dictate what percentage of damage you can do:

Archers have the upper hand against Swordsmen
Cavalry have the upper hand against Archers
Pikemen have the upper hand against Cavalry
Swordsmen have the upper hand against Pikemen

What does this mean?

A unit type that has an upper hand over another unit type will do 100% of capable damage during an attack. If your oponent has Swordmen it would be wise to send Archers. It would be unwise to send Pikemen since Swordsmen have the upperhand against Pikemen, and they will have the most damage inflicted upon them and then when they attack only be able to inflict menial damage themselves (around 25% of capable damage).

Morale

We have removed morale from the game. Consequently, the Bishop premium feature will let your Loyalty increase at an additional 40% per city where it had used to be an increase of 20% of your Morale.

Loyalty

Kingdoms now have a factor called "Loyalty". Each Kingdom starts out with a Loyalty of 100%. To take over a Kindom you must now get that Kindom's Loyalty down to 0%, kill all of the units of that Kingdom while having an heir in your army. To reduce the Loyalty of a kingdom you must successfully attack a Kingdom and the army must have an heir in it. The Loyalty of a Kingdom is now available in the tooltips when you hover Kingdoms. In addition, Battle Reports will list the current Loyalty of the defending Kingdom along with the Loyalty deductions that have taken place during battle. The Loyalty of a Kingdom will rebuild at a rate 1% x the level of your castle.

Heirs

The function of heirs has changed. You no longer need to rank or "crown" your heirs. The sole purpose of the heir is to act as a diplomat when you send your army into battle to a. reduce Loyalty of the Kingdom and b. to be able to take that Kingdom once the requirements have been met. When you include the heir in your army during battle he will work to reduce the loyalty of the kingdom you are attacking. He can reduce the loyalty 20% upon each successful attack.

Battle Points in Reports

We are now showing Battle Points earned per unit in the reports.