Having decided it will be a 1day/turn game, with armies moving around in a hexagonal or square map and fighting when they are one over the other or close. Should I auto-resolve battles? Or do you have any suggestion for a way of playing them. The problem with auto resolution is that army stats have much less meaning. They can't have complex skills, or attack types, as they end up being numbers in an algorithm. However, as the game is web-based and slow, players can be from distant parts. So, even if there are no problems of lag (turn based), they would have to log in at the same time. I don't think there's a solution for this. I'll have to use auto-resolution and forget about interesting unit skills.

You can think about making a battle last for several turns. Then each player can give orders to the troops while the battle lasts to influence the outcome (maybe one order every hour or such). Also provide an AI that can take the role of the commander in case he wants autoresolution.

Autoresolve doesn't need to be "numbers in an algorithm". For example, you can simulate battles by using AI to control all units. That way units could have different skills and attack types, and players could give them some orders they would try to accomplish during battles. Orders could be:

Stay away from enemy
Use ranged attacks
Try to flank enemy
Charge
etc.

If you want, you could show players the recording of the battle when they log in next time. Or maybe just the result. You migh also want to implement battle simulator for clients, so players could simulate whatever battles they want, so they would know how AI implements different orders.

Of course, balancing this type of battles would be much more difficult than numeric algorithm.

The problem with "action" played battle by AI generals with or without instructions is making the AI.

I've experienced enough awful battle AIs (total war) in amazing games to understand it's beyond my capabilities.
I think watching the replay would only anger the losing player as he sees the AI lose a battle he could have won.

The other option is simplifying the battles enough to make the AIs play well or even perfect; however, that would result in little more than autoresolve for much more work.

Quote:Original post by nmi
You can think about making a battle last for several turns. Then each player can give orders to the troops while the battle lasts to influence the outcome (maybe one order every hour or such).

If players could be logged once every hour I'd make the battle minigame to solve it as fast as possible, but I'm talking about players who are sleeping when the opponent is awake.