Assembling Troops in Battle Formation

[DeletedUser]

Proposal

My idea is to allow you to assemble your troops into a "battle formation." This will help make the gameplay more fair. Grepolis is stacked greatly in favor of the defender, and adding this idea would give attackers more power if they can come up with a clever strategy

Reason

The reason to include this would be to improve the system of war in this game. At present, it is a "big eats little" world. This way, the larger players can bully the smaller players to death without a dent forming in the larger one. This is probably the reason that half of the new players quit before reaching 1,000 points.

Another reason would be in a war between alliances. If you want to fight an alliance, you should assemble your troops/ships in a clever fashion before attacking. Strategy on the battlefield has been really important in history. For example, when Carthage defeated Rome, they tricked the Romans into being surrounded despite having far fewer soldiers.

To wrap up my reasons, war should be much more realistic in a war game.

Current Workaround

None at all, this is a newly introduced concept.

Details

When you choose to attack someone, you will see the Battle Resolution. In the Battle Resolution, you can choose how to attack(Conventional, Breakthrough, Conquest.) When you choose one, you will be either able to:

1. Skip the assembling process(good for everyday farming and attacking.)
2. Assemble your solders(for attacking another alliance.)

When you choose to assemble your soldiers in battle formation, there will basically be two types of units, short and distance. Your distance units can attack at long range, but yours short weapons can only attack the unit directly near them.

You can place any type of soldier or mythical unit on any space in the Unit Assembler. This will be easy, as you can just click and drag the unit to the selected space. For larger players with many units, you can incorporate the units into larger groups to make assembling troops less tedious.

Once you have initially assembled your troops, you will click on a button which will take you into the 1st battle scene. You can move units, or you can right-click on them to attack. There will be 5 sections(in which each unit can move or attack once) in each battle scene, but you can have as many battle scenes as you wish.

A similar system would apply for ships on the sea. The whole attack would be subdivided into two parts, a land and a sea portion. These would further be divided into battle scenes and sections.

Battle formations can be saved and reused upon demand. There is no limit to the number you can save.

Visual Aids

Spoiler: Old Visual Aid

TTO1 has made a great visual aid:

New Visual Aid Link:
Battle Formations Image(the devs can give it a Grepo theme later, but this has all of the functional parts.)


Balance

This system would, in fact, help balance out the smart player with the turtles. You could win with 200 troops and a clever strategy against a 1000 soldier turtle.

However, numbers will not be entirely neglected. If you have too few troops, it will be hard to create a good strategy. A Sim-city player will not be able to make a good troop arrangement with a 60 soldier force of swordsmen and slingers.

As always, strategies may fail, and this will be represented by luck(though it should not be as severe)

Abuse Prevention

I don't see how this opens up pathways for cheating. If I am wrong please post so.

Summary

This is a good idea which I think will improve the game. However, a strategy can and should be able to fail to balance the game out. If you feel that any issues need to be addressed, please post that in the thread.

 

[DeletedUser]

i agree with you. was thinking the other day about something like this too. making strategies can save some troops and you can ambush your defender or attacker, things like that would not only save some troops, but it would also make the game much more interesting and like you said its "big eats little" so with this you could save your self from attackers.

The only thing i would add is maybe on an attack that you've sent your self you can retreat if you lose too many troops. like you could set it before that if you lose for example 75% of your troops then you retreat. this way you wont lose all your troops. but maybe have a penalty if you retreat. maybe if you retreat you will have a low luck percent in the next attack or your troops morale is lowered. this is just an idea i made up on the spot, as you can see theres not too much thought into it.

 

[DeletedUser2795]

too complex, radical change in entire game, in other words,
NO

 

[DeletedUser441]

Yes!!!!!!!!
Add a new elements to the game

 

[DeletedUser]

Anyone else completely and utterly confused by this idea?
I simply don't get it, seems very complex for a browser game and to be honest sounds like it would change too much. It suddenyl won't be about what troops you sned, it will be about how you position them or whatever

 

[DeletedUser]

The only way this would work if there was three options for attackers and defenders and you picked one and it was like rock paper scissors. Otherwise how are you going to personally arrange your troops :s it can't be like age of empires.

 

[DeletedUser]

Sounds like you have to be online for the attack, you said something about choosing each move. Plus the wall would need to be incorporated into the system. Then defender could just place ranged units on wall and some in front, boom no way for attacker to win unless they have a lot of cattys. Also too much would be needed to add to the game, simulations, boosts for being in certain positions, etc. Would be an entirely different game.

Still an interesting idea. If your talking about making the moves before the actual attack and trying to predict what the opponent will do, that would be pretty cool.

 

[DeletedUser]

Simple Answer...Yes!!!

If you're saying no, well then i'll bring up the fact of how much i hate the academy. too complex, too stupid. This idea should really be incorporated.

 

[DeletedUser2795]

uh, yay? you hate the academy, whoop-de-doo, how is that related to this conversation?

 

[DeletedUser]

If you're saying no, well then i'll bring up the fact of how much i hate the academy. too complex, too stupid. This idea should really be incorporated.

How on earth is the academy complicated?
It's simple, get the resources you want for that research, and research it. Then you get the desired results.

This however. . .
"Well I'll put those 50 hoplites in triangular-based prism form and those 250 horses flying through the air in Red Arrows formation. The 400 slingers will burrow underground and pop there heads up like whack a mole, throwing stones each time."

 

[DeletedUser]

So im presuming it would work like this:-

Traingle beats square
square beats circle
and circle beats triangle

or something along those lines.

 

[DeletedUser]

Thats what I thought the general idea would be. Although i thought that there would be an auto option which has no advantages or disadvantages.

i.e
Triangle beats square
square beats circle
and circle beats triangle

Line beats square circle and triangle but also loses to them.

This could be used if triangle helped sharp at the expense of ranged and blunt
square helps blunt at the expense of ranged and sharp
circle helps ranged at the expense of blunt and sharp.
Line doesn't help anything at all.

This would allow players to make less balanced armies in the hope that they could use one of these stratagems.

 

[DeletedUser441]

so a bit like rock paper scissors?

 

[DeletedUser]

ye kinda like how runescape works.
mage>warrior
warrior>ranger
ranger>mage

I disagree with the concept but this is how i think it would probably work. It owuld be hard for the defender to choose a constant formation.

 

[DeletedUser]

Yep but with a line :s I said rock paper scissors before but apparently circles are better.

This is the only way I believe that this could be implemented, otherwise it would be like AoE. Most people would probably leave it as the normal but some might use the extra offensive power of e.g. blunt. And the defender use the advantage of ranged etc.

 

[DeletedUser]

So digressions about rock/paper/scissors and AoE aside, This is not a bad idea IMHO. As anyone who has gamed on the internet for awhile knows, it is not a new idea in the ancient greek arena of PBBMs (no name dropping please). And as you made clear in the original post, it is completely optional.

So unless, it is exploitable, I don't see any problems with it. And I haven't seen anyone claim that it is exploitable.

I am fairly new to Grepolis, but so far my battles all seem to be jam the max troops I can get into the attack formation, salute and send them on their way. This idea seems to add a little fun for us strategy gamers.

(waiting to see if this thread gets deleted right away, like last time I posted) lol

 

[DeletedUser]

if you want circle beats square and so on..you should be playing rock paper sissors. personaly what i would like to see is that you could send you swords and hoptiles in front of you archers and slingers for melee attack with distance attack from a far distance. then it would be real war not just click this many units and click the send button and hope you win. if you can arrange your units into lines and things where you have units attacking from different locations it would be good. because now when you think about it, you could have an archer vs a hoptile in close contact is that very likely to happen in war? No it isnt, you have infantry in front and distance attackers in behind them. it brings realistic war into the game. but of course you would have the choice before the attack, to something you would prefer.

 

[DeletedUser]

or the formations possible depend on the units involved? a phalanx with hops, with a loose screen of slings and horses guarding your flanks? or a hollow square of swords with archers in the middle, protecting your catapults? or a straight up heavy charge, with gleaming lances, the thunder of hoofs, the creak of chariots, the popping of double bubble? etc, etc, ad naus.

 

[DeletedUser]

Sorry seems far to complicated and unfair due to some players not understanding strategy and both players would have to be on at the same time and that could take years because the other person simply wouldn't go on

 

[DeletedUser]

The proposal as written does not require both players to be on at the same time, I hope.

What could be more fair than allowing a 'general' with better strategic and tactical understanding of warfare, to leverage his talents into victory over someone who doesn't get it? All is as it should be here..

The real issue is, arent' most battles targeted at cities? I'm fairly new to Grepolis, but that is what I am seeing in my own military campaigns. There just isn't anyway to get field battles, unless you assume that the defenders bring their army out of the city to meet the attackers on the battlefield.

A field army attacking a city with a defended wall, is really siege warfare and quite different than field battles. That would likely come down to the attacking force concentrating most of its foot soldiers on trying to batter down the wall with siege equipment. If the attacking army doesn't have siege equipment, then plan B is to starve the defenders out, taking weeks or months.

Meanwhile the defenders will use their ranged weapons against the attackers and the attackers will counter with their own ranged weapon forces against the defenders on the wall. Even if a breach of the wall is achieved it is not likely that any kind of clever attack formation could be used at the point of breakthrough.

If the target city does not have a wall, then an open field battle might be possible, but is that likely against stronger opponents?

Perhaps battle formations could become more prevalent if the defenders can choose to meet an attacking force on the battlefield, rather than trying to hold their city wall. I wonder what incentive could be given to the defender to make them want to do that? Triple battle points to the defender that comes out of their city?

I need to see more of the game, I think.