War casualties

Losing units in 4x games

I would like to propose that in most 4X strategy games, war is too aseptic. You can build a super stack or four and sometimes they never lose a unit for the life of the stack. In my opinion, battles should be more down and dirty with both sides taking loses.

In part this is designed into a game with the damage model. I'm not advocating that the combat model should allow lowly spearmen to take out battleships... er dragons in one shot. I'm suggesting that all attacks should have some 'ooomph'. When battles are started, both sides should expect that when the other side launches a volley of arrows, a fireball, or dragon flame... that that HURTS and some casualties will be taken even if you expect to win at the end.

I'm not just advocating this for flavor. I think there are some game benefits:

1. Less emphasis on superstacks walking over everything

2. More variety of units entering into a game since fewer units will 'live' throughout the game

3. Make units that do survive more noteworthy

4. More interesting unit mix - Example from XCom -> If you put all your Colonels and cammanders in the same squad (until you got power armor), it was unexceptably costly since you were bound to lose some of your most experienced troops. So I always used a mix of experienced and less experienced troops.

5. Makes weaker units more relevant.

6. Need to coordinate and support defense more. In other 4x games, park a defensive unit behind a wall and you can almost forget about it.

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I'm not sure about the "superstack" as there are many ways to deal with that, But, this game will without a doubt have a ranking system at some point to promote those units that have seen many battles.

This game promises to have dragons as powerful as 100s of little normal dudes. I'm not sure what that means in terms of weaker units more relevant, since you didn't actually set any kind of standard... but its on the same topic. They certainly shouldn't be less relevant than things like the Swamp Lord or a Dragon. Weaker units are usually relevant in games that don't obsolete them at some point (i.e. civilization). Like Heroes of Might and Magic, for example, the "weak' units can get such insane stacks over a couple of months that their attacks will outright kill stronger units. They become a trick unit, that you have to play right and hope the other player doesn't target.

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In medieval and ancient battles, most victors didn't suffer many losses. People died en masse when they started routing.

Some units like the hyspapists of Phlip II of Macedon lived very old and took hardly any loss over all of Philip, Alexander and the diadochi wars. In the battle of Gabiene they took no casualty, but surrendered/betrayed Eumenes because their wives and children had been captured. If battles were deadly as the OP would like, I doubt we would see such 60-year old veterans who were able to rout just about anything.

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I think a ranking system with experience is a good thing but better if that unit with all the experience tends to 'earn' it. From my games, in many cases that 'experience' comes from moping up numerous weak enemies (eg Civ, GC2, Sins). Going back to XCom, most combat was deadly enough that a you would lose or have wounded a few troops at least. Your experienced troops earned their increased accuracy and more action points by living through many battles that they actually had a calculable risk of dying (again, until power armor).

In the case of dragons vs normal dudes, I'll give you that, at extremes, there are going to be mop ups. I'm talking about game concept before labeling the units. Take a game as a whole - how many battles take place? Are there losses on both sides for the battles? How often are powerful stacks romping around the map? Is that routine for many games in a row? Is experience being distributed mainly for lopsided battles? Are heroes too important? Is it more rewarding/dramatic/fun/exciting to the player if battles are costly? (thinking XCom as a model again)

In most fantasy battles, obviously in books , most great battles have loss on both sides. Elves, men and dwarves vs orcs and wargs (LOTR).... Midkemian vs Tsurani (Riftwar Saga)... Sons of Don vs Forces of Arawn (Chronicles of Prydain - if anyone remembers that). There are greivious losses on both sides. No small number are counted among the dead - both among the great and the nameless. The exact toll remains unknown.

In regards to the 60 year old veterans, those are the guys that survive!

I'm not particularly blood thirsty. One of my favorite games of all time is the board game Diplomacy where each country (with a supply center) got ONE unit - an army or a navy. I like to discuss game mechanics.

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Pyrrhic victories exist, but the question si one of balance. A fight between units of equal strength could result in a lot of casualties for the winner, but it really depends on whether routing is in the game or not.

If some of the defeated troops can flee, then the winner should not suffer many casualties in order for him to be able to do some mop-up. I'm not really in favor of fleeing units from a gameplay perspective given the kind of map we have.

If defeated troops all die, then the victor can suffer some losses, but probably less than a half.

In a fight 200 strength vs 100 strength, how many losses do you expect from the victor? I would say at most 50 (they deal twice as much damage to their target as what they suffer). However, how do these abstract numbers translate in terms of actual units? Since the combat model will be unit vs. unit on a battlefield, it's quite hard to predict behaviors until we know what the model looks like. Is the battlefield wide enough that a bigger army can consistently outflank an opponent, or is there a grid that restrains the width of an army and two big armies will end up unable to flank each other? Will there be a stack size limit of some kind?

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"Attrition" by T.N. Dupuy gives 20% for the winner and 40% for the loser as average battle causualties in the pre-gunpowder era. I'm pretty sure the sample did include Cannae and, remember, causualties includes wounded, who may recover in a few days, as well as killed, who won't -- except in fantasy.

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well, sometimes even if you are losing ... say if you are the 100 vs the 200, you can use good tactics to take out at least the number of your own. However, this is usually a "fight to the last" strategy, where your entire unit gets wiped out, and they suffer heavy losses, destroying all but the luckiest (or most protected) of the enemy force

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