I'm making a multiplayer turn based strategy. I will be using turn-based simultaneous execution for moves and such for all the reasons stated at this site: http://www.rjcyberware.com/md/intro-tbse.html.

The map is divided up into provinces like in the board game Risk. Each army has an 'initiative' rating that determines when they move. After all players give their orders the server checks for the highest initiative army and moves them, checking for combat at their destination.

This still leaves a major problem that I will illustrate below:

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/4125/attack2x.jpg

In this example we have two sides. We'll assume that each one of the regions in the picture contains one army.

Two of green's armies are attacking a single one of blue's. Because everything is executed simultaneously blue cannot reactively move any of his armies from an adjacent province there to help out. His other two armies stand dumbfounded doing nothing.

Some people will say that this is a good way of giving attackers an advantage and encouragement to attack. However, what ends up occurring is that because a defender can't predict which of the many provinces an attacker will choose to attack the attackers concentrated army goes province to random province while the defender either spreads out (and gets crushed due to being less concentrated), or ends up on a wild goose chase following the attacker.

I have two potential solutions for this:

1. Impose penalties for large amounts of units attacking a single province so that the strategy of punching through a defensive line would be harder. The defender would still have a problem with chasing down any armies that did get through though since you still won't know where an enemy is moving before he moves.

2. Implement a system of support attacks/defence like the Hearts of Iron series.

Here's how it works. Any defending army can choose to support defend another province. If said army is attacked it defends as normal. If the province it is support defending is attacked the army helps the defenders repel the invaders (with a slight penalty in combat to compensate for it almost being at two places at once). The army that is support defending will never actually leave it's own region.

Similarly, troops can be placed in reserve. Support defending a region means you have to select a target region to help defend. Which province would we pick then if there were many equally viable options? Let's look at that picture again.

Looking at region 7, the on in the back of blue's territory, we see that it could support defend any of the other blue regions. Since it would just be guessing to support defend any one of them it would be better to put it into reserve.

Armies in reserve will automatically help defend ONE adjacent region that is under attack by the largest combined force. To compensate for this flexibility troops in reserve are given an even larger combat penalty than what is given to support defenders.


Thoughts? Suggestions?

The penalty is not a bad idea. Coordinating a large army into attack positions (versus a smaller one) is more time-consuming. You could restrict this by putting a limit on the amound of forces movable from one region to another in a single turn. Also, the map/world could be designed with more choke points, and allow defenders to focus in those areas for some predictability. A good map design could probably fix a lot of these issues.

The project sounds interesting. I loved Risk!

You could try something like transport or planning costs. Essentially when attacking the units you are attacking with are "held" in transport for one turn, meaning that after declaring an attack it happens the turn after next. However to move armies within terrain you control it happens the next turn, meaning that defenders can respond.

Another option could be after attack penalties. After invading a territory you are locked there for one turn, giving the other player time for a counter attack.

You also have to remember this: If one side masses units for an attack, it means they have less defending their lines and risk a Pyrrhic Victory as the other player ignores the massed army, and sends his smaller armies to punch through weakened holes to leave the large force in their dust.

Your "Problem" is NOT a problem. It is how every strategy game of this nature I have ever played works. Risk, Axis+Allies, DiceWars, even Chess, (sort of) has this problem. Even the real world, that is how it works. Defenders are incentivized to minimize the amount of territory they have to defend along their front line, because they cannot predict where and how the aggressor will attack. The aspect of surprise is the primary advantage given to the agressor in any battle.

Even if you feel like you want your game to be different, I would HIGHLY recommend against changing it, because it is not only unrealistic and unfair to the attacker, but (most importantly) it COMPLETELY violates player expectations about how the game works, and violating player expectations will lead to people not wanting to play your game. Even if they are open-minded enough to try to strategize around it (I wouldn't be), you will find that players will realize that attacking isn't worth it unless you have nearly perfect map design and/or a massive boost to attackers to balance the crippling blow you would be giving them.

Seriously. Before you implement any major change like this, play a game of risk (the board game) with your friends using the proposed rule change and see how it actually plays. I understand that you don't want your game to be exactly like risk in every way, and thats fine, but fixing this "Problem" would probably make me not want to play after the first 2 turns.

This seems to be along the lines of what you're suggesting, but maybe a bit simpler for both the player and programmer because it's just an automatic effect of attacking/defending and not something that needs to be specified/managed...

You could make the default setting for units in an area as "Defend". So if a territory isn't being used in an offensive maneuver, then it is in Defend mode for that round. When units are in defend mode, if there is no attack against their own territory, but there is an attack on an adjacent territory, then some percentage could defend the adjacent territory (maybe 50%). Obviously they can only defend once so if multiple adjacent territories are being attacked, then they have to pick only one.

I agree with Steve132, its not like the defender doesnt know that could be attacked from 2 fronts at once

Pretty much any mechanic that prevents most battles from being over in a single turn will help. As soon as the defenders survive the initial turn, they have an opportunity to be reinforced. Whether they are depends on whether the defender can spare the armies from other positions, so it doesn't necessarily make attacks impractical.

I kind of like Talroth's idea of an attacker being "locked in battle" across a frontier, though I'm not sure we think of it the same way; I think I would make it optional for the attacker. It should be given some advantage over just retreating and attacking every turn (if that's possible, like in Risk), but also signals intent to the defender, who can allocate resources to defend their territory.

PS: Cool link about simultaneous turn-based-ness. I'm curious about one thing, though. It speaks of "mailing" levels and stuff; is it actually talking about email-based games, or is it just a translation thing, meant to mean "send" in the generic sense?

Quote:

Original post by Steve132 Your "Problem" is NOT a problem. It is how every strategy game of this nature I have ever played works. Risk, Axis+Allies, DiceWars, even Chess, (sort of) has this problem. Even the real world, that is how it works. Defenders are incentivized to minimize the amount of territory they have to defend along their front line, because they cannot predict where and how the aggressor will attack. The aspect of surprise is the primary advantage given to the agressor in any battle.

Well said. To put this attacker's advantage into perspective, consider that the poor "defender" is expected to be the attacker in some other place, often against the same player that's attacking him.
A good player trades easily conquered bad territories for easily conquered good territories, in a sequence of well-planned activity: making attacks harder is simply a form of attrition that makes turns less eventful and games longer.

I am actually working on a game with the same scheme for simultaneous execution of orders, inspired primarily by the game Diplomacy. I agree with the other posters that what you describe as a problem isn't really a problem... at least not until playtesting shows that it is a problem.

I think one of the main reasons this sort of system is fun is that there are only a small number of possible orders each unit can be given, and that means that it becomes possible to guess what orders your opponent is giving to his units. And if you are able to guess correctly, you will be able to select orders for your units which effectively counter the enemy. Outsmarting your opponent is fun.

In Diplomacy, the possible orders are hold, move, support and convoy. In my game, I refer to the possible orders as incursions (attacks to take and hold territory) and skirmishes (attacks to cause attrition), and draw the given orders on the map as red arrows, with incursions being stippled and longer than skirmishes.