Hi!

Im making a turnbased strategy game were players move around armies on a map. How would this work with (preferably) simultaneous turns?

Do players move there armies at the same time, and (since there is battles when armies meet) it's first come first serve? Meaning when a new turn starts, all armies refills their movement and the player who moves first simply moves first (actions are resolved directly). 

Or would all players assign orders, and when complete, all actions resolves in a seperate "mid-turn phase" where no players have the ability to interact further?

The second one seems more fair but also makes the game slower.

Both valid options. Depends what you want to make, more competitive like starcraft or more leizure paced like civ? I like the real time better, but not necessarily to compete. Turn based online is just too slow for me, I tried it before and I always do efforts to not make the others wait too long, but when the opposite is not true, I lose patience.

This is not about realtime VS turn-based gameplay.

The gameplay is turn-based. Im asking about how to make SIMULTANEOUS TURNS should work.

I don't like games where I give orders and then have to wait for them to be carried out.  It's "realistic" - in real life, the all units are going to move at the same time instead of sitting around waiting for other units to move - but it just doesn't feel very satisfying.

You know how in action games, the controls feel sluggish when there is a noticeable delay between pressing the attack button and the attack actually happening?  Strategy games where you give orders that aren't carried out immediately are like that, only on a much larger scale.

I don't understand your first example approach. If turns are simultaneous, there shouldn't be a "first to move" player. If you mean that units move immediately as players move them, without waiting for the turn to end, then it's no longer turn based, it's just real time with extra steps. It would also be imbalanced towards the player that moves early, or late, depending on the rest of the game.

Simultaneous turn based games that I have seen so far would have both players plan their entire turns, and then everything would resolve at once.

2 hours ago, 1024 said:

I don't understand your first example approach. If turns are simultaneous, there shouldn't be a "first to move" player. If you mean that units move immediately as players move them, without waiting for the turn to end, then it's no longer turn based, it's just real time with extra steps. It would also be imbalanced towards the player that moves early, or late, depending on the rest of the game.

This is how multiplayer in civilization works (in simultaneous mode), and some other games. This is also how singleplayer works in most turn-based games (you select any unit and move them, you dont need to wait for the turn to end for units to move/resolve action).

End-turn normally just gives you income, random events and moves units that have "go-to" (multi-turn) orders.

It DOES have the problem of (possibly) be a benefit of moving early in a turn. But since it's the same for everybody, this might be ok. The other option (everybody gives only orders, then everything moves/resolves "at the same time") also has alot of problems (mainly you dont get direct feedback on your actions, exploring gets wierd as you have to give order before you know what you will discover etc).

You just need to find consistent and intuitive rules that fit your needs.

For example, if you have a game similar to Master of Magic or Civilization, with complex armies of specific units that roam a mostly unoccupied map they can simply walk around simultaneously (turns processed after players give an order to each available unit), switching to a separate tactical scale "battle mode" when armies they meet.
In this case you have to ensure that separate battles, should they occur on the same strategic scale turn, have no influence on each other and can be resolved in any order and provide interesting rules at the tactical level.

On the other hand in a game about large and small stacks of abstract military force, like Risk, you can exploit the simultaneous resolution of multiple battles to introduce influences between adjacent locations in a graph (e.g. friendly units behind the frontline support the fighting ones) and perform heavy computations (e.g. ensembles of Markov chains)

Age of Wonders 3 has simultaneous turns with immediate feedback.  (Well, not always immediate feedback, but close enough.  I think actions go into a queue when commands are given while another action is being executed, so sometimes you have a wait a few seconds for your action to complete.)  When I first saw this, it offended by sense of purity, but when I actually played it, I realized that I care a lot more about having near-immediate feedback without waiting for my opponents to move than I care about purity.  It does introduce a realtime element where the first player to move sometimes has an advantage, but this doesn't really bother me.

On 10/1/2019 at 9:19 AM, suliman said:

(you select any unit and move them, you dont need to wait for the turn to end for units to move/resolve action).

That's not turn-based.

A turn is literally that.  You do however many actions you can in a turn and then "pass" on that turn.

I think you're confused.

@Talvysh

Aaaand I think you are not being helpful. I see you have replied in several threads just complaining and not adding much.

About your comment: So "civilization" is not turn-based? It's probably the most well known turn-based game in the world. Also games like xcom (the combat part), you move and resolve one unit at a time and it's resolved DIRECTLY. That's still turn-based.

Also, why argue the semastics instead of adding to the actual question? (how to implement / pros&cons of different styles of simultanous turns in multiplayer-games). Also, the wording has already been discussed in the thread.