Combat unbalanced by design

[Chris]

There are 20 provinces (shared between players, think of it as a game board, players can move troops across the provinces and partially control a province). Each player can have 5 armies, each army can consist of any number of troops from limited player's troop pool distributed by player's whim (you can also think of it as "player can divide troops between no more than 5 provinces" since it's very similar). In each province you control a certain amount of land (which provide income), the ability to defend/conquer land depends on the amount of troops stationed in that province.

Now the problem, a player can create one big army and use it to travel across the provinces conquering land of overall equally powerful opponents but locally much weaker (because they spreads their troops evenly across several provinces). Sure, the player with one big army will be in strategical disadvantage (since it is a suicide run because after leaving province all previously conquered land will be lost since 0 troops left to defend), but still it can be used to wreak havoc among "normal" players.

Normally, I would just make land limit (the more you have the more difficult is to get from people who have less than you) but I hesitate since it is best as protection for overall weaker player (while the targeted player could have much less land and local garrison but much superior forces globally due to the way the forces are distributed).

Also armies are mobile, so you could dump one province and move to a new province with a giant army and start with 0 land controlled on that province (meaning you could steal land without any negative bonuses from a relatively weaker opponent). What worse then you could leave the province and come back starting with 0 land again and being able to continue crushing your selected enemy (sure, suicide run, but still some players love to do it, not to mention it is a perfect environment for multiaccounts).

Any ideas?

[dsheroh]

Many, many years ago, I seem to recall reading in the design docs for an Avalon Hill game[1] that it was axiomatic that, to achieve victory, an attacking force must have a 3:1 superiority over a defender.  Or at least over a prepared defending force; I don't recall whether that was specified or not.  The pen-and-paper RPG Champions/Hero System also recognizes this; as a general rule, any offensive power in Champions costs about three times as many points as a defensive power sufficient to counter it.  (Or so I've read.  I haven't played Champions in many years, so I don't recall enough of the numbers to confirm that.)

In any case, I find that many online games fail to provide any bonuses to defenders at all, or even give a bonus to the attacker, allowing them to easily overwhelm a theoretically-equal defending force, and it results in just the sort of problems you describe:  Defense is totally ineffective because the attacker can choose the time of the battle, choose the place of the battle, and concentrate all his forces there, while the defender will be spread out in an attempt to feebly resist potential attacks which could come at any time or place.

Take the 3:1 rule into account, though, and that changes substantially.  Yes, an attacker can still mass his entire force to get a 5:1 local superiority, but tripling the effectiveness of the defenders means that it's effectively 5:3, so the defender should at least have some chance of repelling the assault.  It also means that, even if the attacker wins, he'll be taking substantially heavier losses than the defender, so a "one army rampaging across the countryside" strategy will run out of steam rather quickly due to attrition.

Now, I am aware of the counter-argument that offense should be advantaged because "attacking is fun, defending is boring", but that just forces you into the problem you originally described by making defense worthless and leaving attack, attack, attack with all your forces in a single mass as the only viable option[2].  You may not want to provide a full 3:1 advantage for defending - you probably don't want to end up simulating World War 1 - but defense needs to have some bonus to offset the attacker's ability to mass troops at a chosen time and place against a largely-static defensive deployment.


[1] This was back in the days when "Avalon Hill" was synonymous with "hex grids, cardboard counters, and combat resolution tables", not the beer & pretzels wargames they specialize in today.

[2] Basically where RTS games tend to end up, with rushing as the supreme "strategy", specifically because they're designed on the assumption that it's only fun if you're killing something.

[Chris]

The desired deployment of armies is 1,1,1,1,1 (5 armies in 5 provinces) So, if you make that defense is 3 times better the "normal" player would never even try attacking because he could never amass even 1:1 ratio or armies (he could maybe move 2 armies from provinces (sacrificing these provinces), so the ratio would be 2:3 against another "normal" player). In such system we could basicly throw out the whole combat system since no one (except for suicide run players) would have even a slight chance of victory in an attack...

The solution could be if player was forced to allocate certain amount of troops as offensive and some as defensive. But... wouldn't then everyone have exactly the same army composition?

In general, designer wants players to attack since it is fun. And attacking has to be successful more frequently than defence. That's how games work
To offset it, attack uses certain "turns" or "actions" so you can attack only limited number of times, but still you want to attack all you can within the limits imposed.


You mentioned Avalon Hill, they make so called American games, I'm thinking more about Euro game style. Less realistic but more playable (especially in terms of kingmaker, runawayleader, snowball effect, etc). I know such system can never work under traditional America game style rules, only Eurogame style twisted an unintuitional rules can provide a solution here...

[dsheroh]

I'm not sure that any of that negates my primary point which was that, if you design a game where the deck is stacked in an attacker's favor to the extent that attempting to defend is futile, then you have to expect players to mass their armies, crush all who stand before them, and not bother with trying to defend.

If you don't want players to behave in that fashion, then you have to make defense a viable option.  Defending doesn't need to be overwhelmingly advantageous, but there has to be some chance of repelling an attack (or at least making the attack cost the attacking force more than it costs your defense) or else players will focus solely on attacking, since that's the only effective course of action.  This is fine if you're trying to build an ogame-style cat-and-mouse "can I catch your army and stomp on it before you catch mine?" game, but my impression is that you're trying to get players to make an effort to control territory, which requires a reasonable chance of successfully defending that territory.

The desired deployment of armies is 1,1,1,1,1 (5 armies in 5 provinces) So, if you make that defense is 3 times better the "normal" player would never even try attacking because he could never amass even 1:1 ratio or armies (he could maybe move 2 armies from provinces (sacrificing these provinces), so the ratio would be 2:3 against another "normal" player). In such system we could basicly throw out the whole combat system since no one (except for suicide run players) would have even a slight chance of victory in an attack...
...
In general, designer wants players to attack since it is fun. And attacking has to be successful more frequently than defence. That's how games work
To offset it, attack uses certain "turns" or "actions" so you can attack only limited number of times, but still you want to attack all you can within the limits imposed.

These are not mutually exclusive.  Spend some turns to bring 4 armies together, spend turns to attack, and, finally, spend turns to spread them back out for defense.  It allows for successful strategies based on attack, defense, or a mix of the two, while still allowing attacks to succeed more often than not.  More importantly, it opens up a range of interesting choices for how to distribute both your turns and your forces by making you balance the need to keep your armies together so that you can spend more turns on attacking (instead of spending them on non-attack movement) against the need to spread them out so they can control/defend more territory while other players take their turns.

Although, as I'm sure the AH reference made immediately clear, I like games with substantial strategic depth.  That may not be what you're going for, so an advantaged-attacker, one-turn-equals-one-attack model may be more appropriate for you, but I really don't see a way to enable territorial control or viable strategies other than pure-offense in such a model short of placing restrictions on players, such as "you may not have more than one army in a single province".

Well, OK, I did just come up with one possible way:  If you aren't already doing so, make the cost of an attack dependent on the number of armies participating.  i.e., It's not "one turn to attack", but "one turn per army to attack", so attacking with 3 armies costs 3 turns.  Massing your forces lets you improve your odds of victory, but reduces the number of attacks you can make.  Depending on the details of your resolution system (and on your players...), you may need to make it increase at a more-than-linear rate (e.g., 1 turn to attack with 1 army, 3 turns with 2 armies, 6 turns with 3 armies, etc.) - if needed, this can be justified as the overhead of coordinating the separate armies' command structures. 

[stpinker]

Plus people are crazy in games ... They always find a way to kill others when given even a slight chance. They will go on organized suicide rampage if thats the only way to kill someone.

I think the 3:1 Ratio is probably best found. it is not too much so attacking is possible, is it not to less so that defending is impossible.

[Chris]

Defending doesn't need to be overwhelmingly advantageous, but there has to be some chance of repelling an attack (or at least making the attack cost the attacking force more than it costs your defense) or else players will focus solely on attacking, since that's the only effective course of action.

Attacking has to be successful in most cases. Defence has to be successful in most cases as well. That's gameplay imperative, otherwise the game will turn into WWI trenches or chaotic attack fest. And it is mutually exclusive using "standard logic"

I was thinking: when you attack and win you get land. When you defend and lose you DO NOT lose any land, unless your forces are 3 times worse.
In  short it is not attack/defence game but there are just some features that seem like true attack/defence but work completely different way.

If you aren't already doing so, make the cost of an attack dependent on the number of armies participating.

I think there would be no reason for a player to have more than 1 offensive army (he could just amass more troops in that one army)...
Unles some additional rules are established to make it undiserable.

Plus people are crazy in games ... They always find a way to kill others when given even a slight chance. They will go on organized suicide rampage if thats the only way to kill someone.

Yep, relying on players common sense and logic and willingness to win is futile. It is best to pretend they all are escapees from asylum

[dsheroh]

If you aren't already doing so, make the cost of an attack dependent on the number of armies participating.

I think there would be no reason for a player to have more than 1 offensive army (he could just amass more troops in that one army)...
Unles some additional rules are established to make it undiserable.

I wasn't quite sure whether you were planning to make an army just "an army" (i.e., all armies are treated as if identical) or not.  The same principle can still be applied with variable-size armies by making the cost of an attack dependent on the army's size (possibly with a small exponent if linear scaling doesn't quite work out for you).  So, instead of giving players 10 turns per day (enough to attack twice with each army), give them 100 turns, but it costs 10 turns for an average-sized army to attack.  The end result is the same, but it also gives you the option of charging more turns for attacking with a mega-army, putting players into the position of wanting to attack with only just enough forces to do the job, so as to conserve their turns.

You could even call your turns "fuel" (assuming, for the moment, a WW2 or later setting) and it will be immediately obvious to players that, if you roll out with twice as many tanks, then of course it's going to burn twice as much gas.