Working backwards on a Combat Mechanic

Violating the letter but not the perhaps not the spirit of your requirements...how about something like 'Warlord'?

The attacker secretly sets a die to indicate how many troops he's attacking with, and the defender tries to guess this number and sets his own die to show this. If the defender guesses correctly, the attacker loses as many units as they attacked with. Otherwise, the defender loses one army. If no defenders remain, the number of 'comitted' attackers enter the territory. Note that the system also had a mechanic for discouraging over-concentration of forces, and various twists to this general rule depending on the terrain of the attacker/defender.

You could go with the diceless mutual anihilation. Attacker removes a defender, defender removes an attacker, until one side is eliminated. (or defender first if you want to make defense better) This is kind of boring.

You could go with everyone rolls 1d6 per unit, only 1's are misses. This is a bit higher than your .1 variance. Roll d10s and 1's miss puts you almost dead on. This could result in mutual anihilation though if both forces are equal in size there is a good chance of it.

This all sounds incredibly lethal to me

I have a question about the average 1:1 loss ratio. Do you mean that the most common cases in any individual battle should be losses in a 1:1 ratio or that after many battles, the most common result should be a nearly 1:1 loss? Here's my problem. Suppose many, many battles involving exactly one unit on each side were fought. Either no one dies or exactly one unit dies, to avoid leaving the territory empty. What do you want to happen in that case? If it's 50/50 who dies, it seems problematic to extend that to a larger battle in a non-fiddly way without violating your other constraints... which is, I guess, why you posted. : )

By the way, what happens in Warlord during 1 on 1 battles? Shouldn't the attacker always set his die to 0? Or if that's not allowed, shouldn't the defender always set his die to 1? Or maybe it just discourages 1 on 1 battles...

I've been really impressed with the combat system from Blood Feud in New York. It's a pretty simple system, you roll 1d10 per unit. Better units have lower 'to hit' numbers. First the attacker rolls for ALL his units - wounding one unit per hit. Then, the defender rolls for ALL of his units as well, even the wounded units. After a wounded unit shoots, it dies.

You go back and forth, with this wounded unit getting a parting shot until everyone's dead (or everyone on one side anyway). This gives a bit of an advantage to the attacker because you get an extra roll relative to the defender. Some buildings you can buy give the defender a bonus (makes it harder to hit for each unit type).

- Seth

Sorry for the vagueness of my post.

What I meant was that you could use any kind of dice as long as both combatants get the same die.

Say that you let each party roll a D6 and let them reroll throws that are equal. Whomever gets a higher roll wins. That way you could get a 1:1 ratio. But once an army has won two rolls it will get killed by the third opponent no matter what - without a roll.

Or you could use D10:s and say that on an equal the defender wins (or the better army wins for example), giving the defender a 10% bonus.

Not sure if this helps...but, I've tinkered with a combat mechanism that fits some of the requirements you're looking for. There was an original post:http://www.bgdf.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=3882.

I've since refined the system a bit:

1) each side rolls dice equal to force, up to 4 dice
2) matching combat dice cancel each other
3) un-matched 5 or 6 kill
4) un-matched 1 is a NO EFFECT
5) un-matched 2,3,4 disengages or retreats an enemy (attacking space, friendly space - choice is yours)
6) Single round of combat.

(This is geared toward a single unit type approach). The link above talks about ideas for including differing unit types, bonuses, etc.

I've playtested this combat mechanism and there is some tension with it. Although a few comments said this was "too deterministic" and "boring" - I disagreed with them. Sure, there is an advantage to the larger force. Why not? But, when faced with huge odds, the best a defender can do is fight for a stalemate (holding or delaying tactic, right?). In this model, if the defender scores hits - unless the attacker outright misses - the defender is going to get hit. Mutual destruction.

You will find that some spaces will end up with co-mingling pieces, which depending on the design requirements may make sense (a forced combat phase, etc.).

Anyway, thought I would share these thoughts with you - good luck.

Here's an idea that I've come up with that could be more broadly applicable than just this game.

Springboarding off of Zomulgustar's idea, each player, at the start of the battle, secretly indicates how many troops, between 1-6, he'll commit to his initial attack on the "front line". These are revealed, and the players roll one die per troop in their attack. Troops hit on a 6, and casualties are removed immediately but only from the troops currently on the front line.

Then, the players use a die again to indicate how many troops from their reinforcements will join the battle now. They reveal, and only those troops attack. This time, the troops hit on 5-6, and remove casualties only from the initial attack (or perhaps, only from the initial attack AND the first wave of reinforcements). Survivors from the 2nd wave are now considered to be part of the front line, and can be selected as casualties in the next waves.

The process continues, with players adding a third wave of reinforcements that hit on 4-6, and so on with a 4th, 5th, and 6th wave if appropriate.

After all troops have fired, the battle either ends or the process repeats from scratch? If at any time all of a player's troops in his front line are defeated, [he loses the battle immediately] or [his foe gains one combat point and the winner of the battle is the one with the most combat points at the battle's end]...there are a few different directions this could go.

I think there are some strengths to this system. First, it's sort of thematic for how battles used to be run, with both sides lining up and duking it out but with some troops held back in reserve. Second, it gives some nice potential for quick but potentially tough decisions; do I hold my troops in reserve, where they'll be more effective, or commit them to the battle initially, hoping that they'll take some quick casualties and maybe win the battle outright? Third, it really helps reduce the chances of a single unit taking down a huge army. Because that unit would only get to attack in the intial wave, the other side is going to get a whole lot of unopposed shots at him, so the chances of him surviving should be negligible. That's the key difference between this and Risk; the number of die rolls reflects the number of troops in your army, but the advantage is that because of the rules about the front line and about the improving effectiveness of reinforcements, it's more interesting than just "roll a die for each unit and count up the hits".

Note that it would really work best in a game where the typical armies have a decent size; maybe at least 7 or 8 troops.

This might work well in my 30 Years War game, although I'll have to think through how it would need to be modified in a scheme with more than one unit type.

-Jeff

Thanks for giving it a test drive! I suspect that modifications would be needed to be made to make it run smoothly, and those could include adjustments based on the number of units in a "typical" battle in a game, or tweaks to the to-hit rolls of the front line vs the reserves, rules about where casualties can be taken from, etc, as well as defining what happens at the end of a round (your solution seems fine). But I think the core idea is a nice start that strikes a good balance between simplicity and decisions (and does so with no additional infrastructure such as "combat cards" or the like!). It even has some similar decision making as an RPS mechanic (I think that he thinks that I think...), but again, doesn't require the extra rules that such a mechanic might need.

It might be interesting to just try it out as a Risk variant. The problem there might be that it's probably only a sensible mechanic for big battles; it might be overkill for skirmishes between small numbers of units.

-Jeff

MusedFable,

You say that you would prefer to keep a mechanic more similar to Risk - so why not try something very simple?

The "invincible defender"-problem in Risk is the result of 2 things:
1) Defender always wins on a "6"
2) Attacker can only roll a maximum of 3 dice, regardless of the number of armies he is attacking with.

Both of these can be easily altered, e.g. by allowing the attacker to roll more dice (maybe maximum of 5?) or by allowing a "6" by the defender to be beaten by e.g. a pair of "6"s from the attacker. This way you can reduce the odds for the defender's victory against large forces to you liking, by altering the number of allowed attack dice.

An alternative way to solve the problem could be to allow an attacker to choose a certain victory by sacrificing 2x the number of defenders - thus, the attacker can try to beat the defender at little or no loss (with the risk of losing a lot), or pay to have a certain (but relatively expensive) outcome.

That's actually a good point. People will buy pretty much any old piece of garbage that comes out as long as it has a lot of plastic. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's something to aspire to!

My point is simply this. You are all set to publish a game that you haven't even designed yet, and seem to be looking to set things in stone as quickly as possible, and I'm just asking, why the rush? Just take your time. That doesn't mean you need you need to spend a month working on a mechanic, but it does mean that you should maintain a willingness to modify systems that are shown by inspection or by playtesting to need modification. It would be silly to see a flaw but say "well, I just have to live with it or I'll never finish this thing!"

And keep in mind that when I use words like "should" and "ought" I'm merely making suggestions from my experience as a designer, and not at all saying it's the only way to do things. But I do think the principles I'm encouraging -- of patience, of flexibility -- are commonly evidenced by many of the designers here, who will often labor over their games for months or years. The before and after clearly validate the soundness of such an approach.

Well, there are flaws and there are flaws. Is the Risk mechanic "flawed"? It's sort of a matter of perception. Part of this is shaped by what the game is trying to be. Risk by its very name presupposes a large role of luck in the game, and so "lucky" or "unlucky" occurences are easier to tolerate in a game of its scope than a more serious game like Chess.

Then there are playability flaws. A mechanic may not be flawed in the sense of being unfair, but if it's difficult in practice for the players to carry out, it can still be considered to have a flaw. (commonly referred to as "fiddly"-ness). If it's a big enough pain, the game won't be as fun to play, and people won't want to play it as much.

I guess, but I think "roll one die for each unit and count all the sixes" would be easier to absorb than "you get a bonus of 1, 2, or 3 dice if you have double, triple, or quadruple the opponent's # of pieces". Obviously, the best thing to do is to just try it out and see how it plays and what players think about it.

On time for what?

-Jeff

I haven't read much about the period (and I'm not sure if this is the period you're after), but my understanding is that casualties in ancient battles were very lopsided. What would happen is the two sides would bang away at each other, with neither side taking many casualties, until one side broke. That side would then get slaughtered as they were running away.

This suggests a system like the following: roll 1 die for each unit. The side with the most 6's wins the battle. Loser takes two hits for each unit on the winner's side, and any surviving units must retreat. Thus, it's possible for a small force (even a tiny force) to repulse a large one, but they won't do more than a few units damage.

If you want the battle to be more of an event, and/or you want a "continue or retreat" decision in each round, use a track for the banging-away-at-each-other stage. One end of the track would belong to the defender, the other end would belong to the attacker. At the beginning of the battle, place a marker in the center of the track. In each round, each player rolls one die for each unit, and moves the marker one space toward the other guy's end for each 6 they roll. At the end of each round, players can choose whether to run away. If a side decides to run, its casualties will be either 0, 1, 1.5, or 2 times the number of opposing units, depending on how close the marker got to their side of the track before they fled (just put 1's, 1.5's, and 2's in the boxes on the track to indicate this). If the marker goes off one end of the track, that player must flee, taking maximum losses (maybe this could be more than 2x, just to make it more undesirable).

You could put other bells and whistles into this track-based system without much effort. For example, some boxes on the track, in addition to indicating the casualties that'll be taken if you flee, could indicate that you take 1 or 2 casualties right now (i.e. at the end of the round), just to increase the pressure. Another thought might be to smooth out the casualty ramp by, in addition to the 1x, 1.5x, 2x level, saying that some units will escape for free (so a box might say "1.5x-2" meaning that at least two of the retreating units will survive, even if the whole retreating force is less than 1.5 times their enemy forces). You could also make terrain influence combat by just changing the starting point of the marker (e.g. in an attack on a castle, the marker starts in the space that's beside a picture of a castle, much closer to the attacker's end of the track).

Might be fun.

-- Matt