DtCarrot, on 06 August 2012 - 10:17 PM, said:
Even worse, the opponent is a turtle(One who only defends) and prolong the game into a stale and boring game
Most realistic medieval rts generally fail to capture the real essence of a siege. Most pro RTS players do understand the importance of strategy over busting the front door.
Against a turtling opponent, the idea is to cut the chain of supply (Sun Tzu) which means cutting ressources and reinforcements. A player on "one base" can be cut from the outside world. A novice player will buildup an army and strike the coup the grace and will fail (this is how turtling wins: defeating overeager opponents) but a pro will capitalize on his mobility advantage to occupy more resources and control the map.
Medieval sieges weren't so much fighting as movies would like to depict as cutting the castle from supplies and wait for them to starve. Just because you don't get to see the bloodbath doesn't mean its not a strategic win.

Definitely, war usually revolves about supply issues. Enemies would always target the supply line to gain a long term advantage. It can also force the opponent to retaliate out of desperation. However, if players choose to starve, it would be wasting the other player time. Imagine waiting for 10++ minute for the opponent to starve and turning into a stale game though this scenario is unlikely. In my opinion, I will prefer games where you fight away from both your own and enemy bases. Instead, I prefer fighting in the open where military strategy and micro prevails like a standard RTS game. The victor will gain control over the resources. I'm not taking anything away from supply tactic. It can add a flavor to some crazy brain activities for 10min++ like on how to break out of the tight seige defense. For the attacking player, they will have to think on their minor flaws in their seige line and enhance them to prevent you enemy from exploiting your weaknesses. These two aspects combined with the political aspect will work hand in hand.

DtCarrot, on 06 August 2012 - 10:17 PM, said:
Hence, there needs to be a method which can simplify the task of destroying even the strongest defense line
I strongly disagree. I feel the trebuchet-like units are hosers for the turtling strategy which should not exist. In reality, the trebuchet fired twice an hour on average (unlike most depictions) and rarely hit critical structures aside from walls. Modern RTS assume that this is a precise tool used to detroy critical positions but it really isn't. If anything, I would recommend to make the turtling strategy more appealing and giving the aggro strategy means to achieve victory through other means:
This falls back to my earlier comments: by forcing players to go out and get resources you form the idea of a supply line and cutting that can be instrumental to victory. Turtling works so long as you can still defend your supply lines.

I agree that even though long range units can destroy fortified positions easily, this can easily backfire. The defender may use these long range units as well for a stronger position. The base may also become an impenetrable fortress where it is impossible for the attacker to advance.

Based on your feedback, I believe that archers and rams would be sufficient in preventing turtling. Archers from both teams would engage each other. If the archers from the defending team is outnumbered, rams can be deployed to destroy castle walls. If the attacking team loses, it will just be another failed attempt to seige the castle.

Together with that, regarding the political aspect. Kingdoms have to send informers to inform the political target of your wish to become allies. Enemies of that Kingdom could go a long way to prevent those informers from making it to another Kingdom preventing political ties from being made.

However, if players choose to starve, it would be wasting the other player time. Imagine waiting for 10++ minute for the opponent to starve and turning into a stale game though this scenario is unlikely

If battles are slow paced, and what you do while waiting has an impact, I don't see the harm. A 10 minutes wait really hurts in fast-paced RTS only. You could even have a mechanic where all units/structure start to decay exponently faster once in a state of starvation (that would hasten defeat).

Archers from both teams would engage each other.

Defenders will have both the advantage of height (speed, thus penetration, and range) and natural defenses (being close to walls, restricting their chances of being fired at). This gives a strong bonus both offensive and defensive to the defenders, so it would take more than an equal force of archers to really get through. One alternative during middle ages were the crossbows which were far more accurate and deadly but lacked the range. But once again, the defender can field crossbowmen to. I feel like ultimately, it will fall to rams being advanced, or towers being rolled in. Its interesting to note how cavalry sucks during sieges

Together with that, regarding the political aspect. Kingdoms have to send informers to inform the political target of your wish to become allies. Enemies of that Kingdom could go a long way to prevent those informers from making it to another Kingdom preventing political ties from being made.

...and we're brainstorming for a game which may not be DrMadolite's initial plan here ;)

I'd like to get some constructive criticism on the system and how it can be improved, in your opinion. Should some of these resources be renamed for accuracy, removed for redundancy or maybe there should be something in the game that I didn't think of (e.g. an additional resource and/or strategic focus).

For the sake of elegance (simplicity/necessity)
Lumber, Food, Stone, Iron, Gold, Mana and Fame...

I see three rock/metal-based resources (Gold, Iron, Stone). To me, one of the weaknesses of Age of Empires was precisely gold, which was mostly just a currency. I think you have to think of currency as an amount of time spent doing something. Doing one thing and selling this service for gold is essentially awarding you the right to have someone else working on something else at another time for you. Why not make it immediate, aka, trade stone into iron with a % loss for the exchange?
I see what leads you to introducing gold, but if I had to remove one of them to make it simpler and more efficient I'd go with Gold first.

Lumber is a definite yes, if you're going medieval of ancient.

Food has been abstracted into caps in some games rather than actual stockpiled resources (Warcraft for example) and it's always felt like a bad decision to me. Although simpler, it made playing with starvation inelegant. I'd definitely keep food as a resources that could impact on morale, health, etc.

Stone/Iron. I like how these are your two secondary resources. Like, say, all units cost wood, and then, tier 2 units cost wood + iron or wood + stone depending if they're defensive or offensive, and defensive structures cost more stone than wood, etc. I think you have something nice and easy to understand there.

Mana and Fame. If you're willing to go soft on the pedal of fantasy, I'd recommend to merge both. It's good to give players choice of harvesting which resources, but its also good to keep them interested in the choices they'll do once they have the resources. A Fame/Mana resource gives you technological advancement possibilites along with political possibilities. Both are interesting depending on your playstyle and position at any given point. In other words, this requires decisions, and you must capitalize on your strategy with a lot of risks and unknowns.

So my take:
Wood, Food, Stone, Iron, Reputation
Where:
- Wood is taken from forests, which are many and spread. - Forces movement of the players and global acquisition of territory
- Food is part of an evolving economy, starting with say, hunting (requiring to move about) and becoming sedentary as technology advances (farmlands) always densifying and restricting the capacity of your empire/kingdom's growth (player must either choose numbers, which takes more food, or quality, at the expanse of more iron/stone)
- Stone/Iron are concentrated at various key locations that the players will fight for. The regions you are left controlling determine partly the strategy that is naturally dominant. You thirst for certain regions an opponent might not care for if their strategy is different. This brings you naturally in conflict with some, but not others, and generates natural 'wars for resources' with factions that seek to employ similar strategies.
- Reputation is intangible and related to a different method of acquisition. You can employ knowledgeable mages to boast your prestige, or act on the political scenerary and earn just the same. You trade this resource for indirect advantages that support your strategy.

I'd need more on your game concept to elaborate any further really.

Food has been abstracted into caps in some games rather than actual stockpiled resources (Warcraft for example) and it's always felt like a bad decision to me. Although simpler, it made playing with starvation inelegant. I'd definitely keep food as a resources that could impact on morale, health, etc.

I agree with you on this part especially since food has much potential as a resource in RTS games. The troops will consume a certain amount of food depending on the size. If there is a food deficit, it will result in the morale of troops being lowered decreasing their effectiveness in battle. Even worse, if it becomes a large deficit, there would be disorders within the ranks. Also, researching and unit training rate can decrease.However, at the same time, the population can be unlimited. The population limit is only dictated by your food production, whether on not your food production is sufficient to meet the demands of food. Also, there could be granaries to store these resources. Enemies, can prioritize the attacking of granaries to deny them food supply which works as one of the supply war that was mentioned earlier.

The other 3 resources wood, stone and iron are essential for the production of infrastructures and combat units. Wood generally is abundant in supply and they are usually used for creating tier 1 units. Stone and iron however, are used to produce more advanced combat units such as machineries and powerful weapons. As a trade-off, stone and iron are more difficult to get than wood. This will result in highly contested areas as mentioned before. The riskier it is, the better the reward. This is how this theory may work in the game. The one who get seize control over these resource will definitely have a technological lead. However, they cannot be too complacent as enemies will not sit back. They will look for ways to regain control. Alternatively, if players are unwilling to contest for these areas, they can opt for the lower tech strategy such as massing tier 1 units. Despite tier 1 units being generally weak. When massed, they can prove to be a significant and threatening force even to the strongest units.


Fame will aid in strengthening friendship ties with other kingdoms, attracting heros and allow for better terms pertaining to trade.. Fame also, will reduce the chance in which soldiers rebel against you as they have more confidence in your rule. Fame will increase over time when you accomplish some criteria such as ensuring that there is minimal/no food deficit, success in battles. Hence, fame is more of an accumulation which can help in the future.

Sometimes, players may have excess of a certain resource. Hence, the market system which is present in games such as Age Of Empire can be used. It would still work so that the other party will benefit better. However, through fame as such, players will be able to sell or buy resources at a higher and lower rate respectively.

Got a cite for that? "A 1991 experiment conducted on a model made to ancient standards at the University of Toronto showed that a well-coordinated trebuchet crew could fire four rounds per minute." Although, later on the same article says the bigger, later versions were very slow... but hurled huge stones. There's a size / range / rate of fire tradeoff going on here.

This was a traction not a torsion trebuchet. This is an important difference between the two technologies. Also, it was much smaller and fires lighter objects which is also required to factor.

One of many refs:
Firing a trebuchet was not a safe job in battle, though. Because of the time required to load the sling and to raise the counterweight, a large trebuchet's rate of fire was very slow: often not more than a couple of shots an hour.

Also:

” The effectiveness of the trebuchet in a siege was formidable because of its capacity to hit the same target repeatedly with precision. In 1244 Bishop Durand of Albi designed a trebuchet for the siege of Montsegur that hurled a succession of missiles weighing 40 kilograms at the same point at the wall… at twenty-nine minute intervals
until in battered an opening."


Can be read here:
- Christopher Coreden, A Dictionary of Medieval Terms and Phrases (Cambridge, 2005) p279.
- Joseph and Frances Gies, Life in a Medieval Castle (New York, 1974) p192.

You have to take into account the fact that at least a third of that time was used to get the ammunitions to proximity, then, you have to take into account the amount of time it took the reload the trebuchet (specifically, by raising the counterweight and placing the ammunition into place). Also, this isn't a mindless firing contest. The idea was to fire repeatedly at the same target with great precision to pierce a hole in the wall, which took some time to aim as well.


Interestingly enough, counterweight trebuchet (late middle ages) : "The cycle rate could be noteworthy: at the siege of Lisbon (1147), two engines were capable of launching a stone every 15 seconds" which means one could fire every 30 seconds or so.
Unfortunately, the damage dealt, accuracy and range were not nearly as impressive.

I strongly recommend analysis readings on the Strategikon (the one falsely attributed to Emperor Maurice) as it contains an entire chapter on siege weaponry tactics. A number of scholars have performed in-depth analysis of this collection of articles...

Fame will aid in strengthening friendship ties with other kingdoms, attracting heros and allow for better terms pertaining to trade.. Fame also, will reduce the chance in which soldiers rebel against you as they have more confidence in your rule. Fame will increase over time when you accomplish some criteria such as ensuring that there is minimal/no food deficit, success in battles. Hence, fame is more of an accumulation which can help in the future.

I like the idea of a resource increasing when you avoid specific "bad situations". This means there is a finite maximum increase over time (which allows for balancing by the developer) and allow you to force external concepts into this abstract formula. For example, if you don't want the political scenerary because this is too complex, you can just temporarily lower the fame gain rate everytime they kill civilians for example. Wonderful abstraction!

DtCarrot, on 06 August 2012 - 10:17 PM, said:
Hence, there needs to be a method which can simplify the task of destroying even the strongest defense line. At the same time, not comprimising the viability of light defensive build where players choose to forgo the early game and prepare themselves for the mid/late game.

That's resolved by designing a rock-paper-scissors system to the game. The difference between successful RTS games and failed ones are usually whether the developers understand basic war theory, such as the war machine triangle (Defense > Attack > Production > Defense). Not to mention the psychology behind successful warfare (e.g. making the opponent weaker by means of deception and the fear of uncertainty).

But don't get too self-assured either. The reason why a person fails to beat a turtler could just be because he's bad at it, too. I.e. unrelated to the game design. In Starcraft 2, for instance, there's practically zero difference in viability between defensive, offensive and production strategies. They all cancel eachother out, not to mention the fact that the inferiority of a tactic can be eliminated by exploiting not only an opponent's weaknesses, but his strengths as well).

Be sure to confirm whether your issues with the game is a common trend or if it's just you.

Yeah I agree, people get overconfident occasionally and make mistakes which allow the turtling player to "rise from the dead". For example, throwing away units and humiliating the opponent and gradually closing up the unit gap.

There should not be tactics that are deemed as unbeatable. In many instances, you would hear complaints of OP(overpowered builds). IN SCII, this happens frequently and to reduce the viability of certain builds, Blizzard steps in and nerfs some unit such as the time taken to research warp gate. Builds indeed, have to cancel out each other. When you go for a resource powering build, if the opponent goes for a rush, you will lose. Every strategy has their pros and cons. For example, even though massing elephants will give you a significant advantage in firepower, the opponent can take advantage of it's con which is it's vulnerability to pike men.

How the opponent will react to the tactic is when they scout and how they perceive the situation. Hence, in relations to scouting, there needs to be a way to scout the enemy but at the same time, if the opponent is careful and do not leave any gaps, the scouts cannot probe into the base. Scouting is one of the minor aspects of an RTS game but it can determine the flow of the game, whether it may be a BO(Build order) loss or tricking the opponent. In SCII, you may be deemed as going aggressive if you build a barrack close to the enemy base, the opponent will pull all stops and may set up defensive measures. Instead, he may go for an expansion taking advantage of the lost resources spent in defense. Hence, there is also the psychological factor which can be used to influence the opponent's thinking.

With regards to strategy, you would need to anticipate possible strategies which could be op and thinking/devising a possible counter to that strategy. For example, is a certain race too powerful in the early game? Will it remove the late game most of the time? Will this strategy be a sure win against enemy of a certain race?

Some general strategy players can use include the supply cut-off tactic as mentioned earlier, flanking and surrounding the opponent to cut off their escape route and securing important positions such as high ground to have greater vision and a geographical advantage.

When attacking, players can divert the attention to another location by doing a multi-prone attack or a false attack weakening their defense. Also, forcing them to defend multiple locations by attacking in various directions with no fixed pattern.

When defending, how will players distribute their defense to ensure that there are no weak spots. Are there enough scouting to guess which position they are able to assault. How will players react to surprises. For example, instead of the pike men you have anticipated, the enemy goes for archers. Will players be overwhelmed by surprises or devise a last minute defense tactic to halt their invasion?

But don't get too self-assured either. The reason why a person fails to beat a turtler could just be because he's bad at it, too. I.e. unrelated to the game design. In Starcraft 2, for instance, there's practically zero difference in viability between defensive, offensive and production strategies. They all cancel eachother out, not to mention the fact that the inferiority of a tactic can be eliminated by exploiting not only an opponent's weaknesses, but his strengths as well).

I disagree here. In Starcraft 2, once you've put the opponent on one base and keep the siege, there is nothing they can do because resources run out too rapidly. Since a siege won't really happen in the first 2-5 minutes of gameplay (an attack yes, but a siege? not really) by the time the siege is well established, the attacker can expand to all areas he or she so wishes performing supremacy. If the siege is well established, it will take minutes before the advantage kicks in favor of the attacker, and there really isn't anything you can do as a turtle in SC2 to avoid that. This game strongly encourages movement and expansion (taking risks) over being careful. Its a good decision because their endgame was to make a fast-paced strategy game with split-second decisions. This wouldn't work with any component of turn-based strategy or slower-pace games.

But that could be said equally about the number of units you got or how you macro them. You need upgrades, but a bad microer can lose against someone with inferior tech if the other guys kill off his units 3-by-1. I remember a match where I had about 12 units and he had 18 or 20 or so, and I won the standoff with only 3 or 4 units lost. Not because I had better tech or in spite of his tech being better, but because of micro alone. Now give that player +1 or +2 in both weapons and armor and I'd still win the fight, although with maybe 6-8 units lost instead.

However, I'm not in Diamond league and I haven't played SC2 in ages, so you may be right about that game though. Balance is key.

Then it really depends on your audience. By default, I check at the competitive leagues only, where "flaws" inherent to the player are diminished (giving better insight into actual balancing issues). But you've never stated you wanted to make it a - balanced or b - competitive. What's your audience?

There's also the idea of top players swapping their strategies mid-game (e.g. from attacking aggressively to suddenly turtling over a bigger perimeter), which is a nightmare to manage but it can seriously upset the information the opponent is getting about you, if executed well.

Generally speaking, there is no reason to change strategy unless the current strategy is not working or the opponent has adjusted to it. Changing strategy for the sake of it is like saying "I have 100% chances of winning, but I'm changing strategy so that I have 25% chances of losing, 50% chances of winning and 25% chances of surprising the enemy!".
That said however, on a more realistic approach to medieval warfare, I would support your theory, but out of utter necessity. In the middle ages, there was a "season" for warfare, and there is a reason to this. Everytime that season stopped, most, if not all, conflicts paused until the next year.
Because the army lived on its stomach, and the logistics for food conservation were precarious, they had to live off the land. That makes sense if you strike during spring or summer as there should be a lot of food in each villages, but during winter? not so much.
So there is a price to actual expansion, and every now and then, you must stop advancing and stabilize something (economy, morale, food production, etc).

Kohan I and II had a pretty good idea about resupply lines for your armies which is worth looking into.
You'll also find much interest in Dune 2 (the original RTS). The game mechanics oftentimes forced you to bring your harvester much too close to your opponents. At first, you could just be offensive about it and place your units between the known enemy outpost and your harvester, but in later missions where you were faced with Sardaukar and the two houses that you weren't (Ordos and/or Atreidis and/or Harkonen) the enemy could come of any side and defending your supply line was more important.

Basically, you need to have game mechanics that force a shift in strategy. Unlike SC2, which is more like chess (strategies of the two players are directly responsible for the shift of strategy of the other player with no external element) you can build around game-changers. A Sandworm is one, a resupply line is too.

You're hitting the nail here, IMO. I do want a Trebuchet to my game, but it's highly limited by the factors you're mentioning here. In my concept, you cannot use the Trebuchet offensively (it's stationary and has an active ability that may or may not cost stone to fire and has a cooldown). You target an area and it hit's randomly within that field. The Trebuchet is strictly a late-game item and the counter to it is any fast units that are able to move away from the field in time. In some minor sense, it's the equivalent to Starcraft 2 nukes.

I'd also recommend giving an ability to your "walls" that have a high % to intercept the rocks. For example, your opponent really wants to fire at your critical command center (or whatever structure) but its entrenched in walls. If your walls have a static 70% chances of intercepting the block, that makes them more realistic that if its assumed the opponent can easily aim over them and still adequately hit their target.

Builds indeed, have to cancel out each other.

One of the main reasons why this is such a hard job in SC2 is because of their use of hard and soft counters. I applaud the idea, but its hard to make it all work out.
Blizzard did not specifically take the rock-paper-scissors approach. They did in some occurences (a unit doing more damage vs armored for example) but for the most part, they use soft counters, which basically means: if you use this unit in this way, it generally gives you an advantage against this unit if its used that way, under these conditions, in this type of environment and if the player reacts in that type of way rather than this type of way.
It is extremely complex as you can see.

An easy way to explain this would be the archer, cavalry and pikeman triangle.

If you make a rock-paper-scissor hard counter, you'll do this:
- Archer + 5 dmg vs pikeman
- Cavalry + 5 dmg vs archer
- Pikeman + 5 dmg vs Cavalry

It's not exciting, but it works. But if you really want to take advantage of a circumpstancial soft counter:
- Archer has a range of 10, no defense, (damage can pierce armor)
- Pikeman has a range of 2, slow to move, hard defense
- Cavalry has a range of 1, fast to move, low defense (can deal extra damage on initial charge).

Nothing here clearly says this unit is best against this other, but if you look deeper:
- An archer will get to fire a lot of times at a pikeman before it closes in, whereas it won't fire much at a cavalry. Based on the speed alone, one can assume the pikeman will take more damage despite his increased armor. The Archer is still a pikeman-hoser.
- The pikeman has a slightly longer range than the cavalry, which means it will fire first. Its improved defenses means that once in close combat, it would survive longer assuming similar damages and health points. The pikeman is still a cavalry-hoser.
- The cavalry is fast, which alone allows it to reduce damage taken from archers, and deal with them in a swift strike. It is still an archer-hoser.

Now the interesting part of soft counters is this:
- We've said the pikeman is a cavalry-hoser, but is it? What if pikemen are busy attacking other pikemen when the cavalry strikes? the dmg bonus from the charge would be devastating, and though the pikeman have the upper hand "theorically" it doesn't help if they're attacking something else, and though the cavalry is weaker in this encounter, if they can keep the focus on other units, they'll be the only ones doing damage. This can be done by kiting for example, given that they have the advantage of speed.
- But the pikeman are naturally born to handle this, and this is why they have that range of 2. They can't easily be kited, because they can always retaliate and hit first on every charge. Sure, the cavalry maximizes its special ability, but it does not compensate for the fact pikeman have armor and range.
- Thus, cavalry can be used to punish pikemen controllers if their eyes are someplace else, but they can't if pikemen are micro-ed appropriately.

I could go on, but I think you get my point.

Scouting is one of the minor aspects of an RTS game

You're being too modest. Scouting is a critical element of any decent RTS. It is generally impossible to win against a decent opponent without scouting (and scouting isn't just checking out their base at the start of the game to see what their build order is). You need to control the map, which means you need to know where units are concentrated at all times. The SC2 Protoss Observer is a very dedicated unit for that, but most games do with "secondary" scouts. In Age of Empires II, most civilizations start out with a weak cavalry whose speed makes it ideal for scouting. Players using it as an offensive or defensive weapon in the early game generally end up losing strategic advantage after its death. While it can harrass peasants and really be a nuisance to your opponent's tactics, its best used as a silent observer. Information has a value, and most player tend to forget this. It is oftentimes the major difference between a pro player and a good player. In SC2, a lot of Diamond player are highly skilled but not so efficient at getting sufficient information. In other words, they have conditionned their mind to analyze data and come up with the appropriate solution, but they just don't get enough data by lack of scouting.