Unit placement (and swarm) Feedback

Doh, forgot, second issue with unit placement...  in a later fight, there was a lake in the middle.  One of my units was on the left flank, one was on the right, and my defender was in the middle, again unable to get to either flank before the large bear and teh smal bear came up to one of my units and kicked it's butt. 

Honestly... I know it would slow down combat, but I think allowing us to place our own units is probably the only solution to this sort of thing.  Give us a small strip to work with, make it vary for each map, but... otherwise, i sense a lot of frustration with damaged units being put in stupid spots, then finished off before I can even react.  (or undamaged units, in the case of my Mage from the first post..)

I just saw something similar (not the placement, but the swarm).  I had an army with 2 heroes, and the starting spearmen and militia, rated Medium.  Went on a "weak" quest that had me up against 4 wolf units.  By the time the wolves finished attacking with their swarm, my entire front line was dead and my sovereign went next turn with my only action being 1 attack.

The difficulty indicators for quests have always been a bit off for some.

As for the OP, I think the placement is done purely on whether that unit is holding a melee weapon or a ranged weapon. Some staves are melee, some are ranged. The only real solution to this at the moment is to equip your mage with one of the ranged attack mage staves from the magic tech tree, or a bow.

I think the easiest solution to this problem would be a switch on the equipment screen where you can declare your unit as "Front Line" or "Back Line" regardless of its weapon type.

Wolves are scary now. A large pack of wolves are stronger than a Lich.

Yeah, I seriously think wolves need a bit of a nerf.  That's the point of the beta, give them feedback on this sort of stuff (and find technical glitches).  I REALLY like the front line/back line idea Ashnal.... just because my mage has a staff that doesn't do ranged attacks, doesn't mean I wanted her on the front line....

I dont think unit placement should remain as is.

Armies have to close with each other and undergo some lovely missile and spell fire. Not this random poof - I snuck up on you.

Yea with the new unit placement, I think that at least some spells should have their casting time reduced.

I would like to see maybe the placement based on hp and armour - units with higher hp+armour at the front, units with lower hp+armour at the middle or back.

This would help one protect damaged units, too - I hate being unable to keep a damaged unit out of a fight, even though everyone else can handle it just fine.

Some battlefields are much larger. 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=133304111

It took me about 6 rounds to get to the archer in the back row.

Having a small setup zone for unit placement is very good for avoiding death by wolves. It also makes fast melee glass cannons much weaker.

It should be rather easy to have a battle order grid that is the default for an army and this will avoid the silly squishy mage in the front dies horribly as heavily armored tanks watch from the back.

Making a hero track that expands the zone or allows more variation on placement is a good heroic ability. For example, having troops 1 tile closer or father on initial setup can make a big difference.

unit placement wise, they also need to move 'non-combat' units to the back.

I just had the old woman (escort mission) get eaten by wolves as the game decided that she should be on the front line, rather than any of my other melee units.

I'll assume that pioneers will share the same fate.

Severely wounded units are left on the front line as well. For example, I went into combat with my sovereign, starting spearman/militia and another hero. The militia who was down to less than 1/3rd life was put up front and killed before i could do any action.

I think there should be enough space on the battlefield to allow one round to organize your soldiers before contact. It almost feels like the units were placed closer together to compensate for an AI flaw in engaging.

I only played a couple turns last night, but I can say with assurance: watch out for wolves!  and everything else in this game.  Has anyone tried auto-resolve to see how it compares?

I throw my hat in with those that say that you should, in most circumstances, be able to organize your units before the battle starts.  Monsters/champions could have an attribute like "Ambush" or something that would prevent you from organizing if they attacked you, but in general, and especially if you're attacking, you should be able to place your units in a reasonable formation.

Early game, weak Mage.  Unit placed in the back.

Exactly. Let units like the Shadow Cat etc still be able to engage before you set up, but most of the time, we should have a chance to correct our formation.

I don't like the manual placement idea.  It gives a. Unfair advantage to the ai and consumes time.  It just needs some coding changes to define front line and back line units.  

I like this idea, a unit with low HP being placed a bit farther back would help.  So maybe have a front line, for those with high HP and armor, a middle line, for those low on HP (or with almost no armor, or both!), and the back line for ranged still.  Or just move people very low on HP back by the ranged, but depending on the size of the map, that could keep a strong (but wounded) fighter out of range for a while.  Hmmm.... game design is tricky!  Or at least, having the AI do it for us automatically, and not pissing us off when it's stupid, is tricky.... 

Screw auto placement, let the players take the reigns, and give us an "auto place" button for those that don't want to do it, or feel it would be "cheating" to do it better than the AI....

Dude, I'm glad the game didn't screw you on that fight, but it's obviously happening to the rest of us.  I wonder what the AI's algorithim/logic/whatever is for determining how it places stuff...

Agreed. Mages should be considered ranged units.

A VERY simple fix to this would be to make ALL staves ranged weapons. The game would then place mages on the BACK line along with archers. Give staves a bonus to spell casting power.....

example: A fire staff has the equivelant to 1 fire shard. Thus the user of this staff would be granted the global fire shard bonus PLUS this staffs fire shard bonus. In addition, it shoots a small ranged fire attack so that when/if you run out of spells to cast, you can always STAY ranged in your weak cloth armour and pew pew your staff at them.

It isn't that I think it's "cheating" but there isn't anything fancy to do with unit placement.  And if you are going to do it manually, the ai needs to be able to do it just as well.  I don't want to have to set up my units if the algorithm is good enough to do it for me, and I don't want the ai too incompetent to do it the same If I'm able to place mine.  Lastly, leaving it forced algorithm will cause players to complain about all the holes in the ai during beta.  I don't care if it is a toggle. As long as the AI is able to do it as well as a player.  

How about this?

The game places your units as it thinks is appropriate based on their weapon, HP, and armor stats and the player can swap any of them with each other before the battle starts.  That cuts down on the opportunities to game the system, but it lets you employ a little strategy in preparing for battle.

As an added bonus the developers don't need to spend much time worrying about edge cases.  Like the well armored battle wizard using a ranged buffing staff -- should he be in the front lines so he can use his 1-range spell abilities or should he be in the back to cast fireballs?  Or one-time-use spells -- if my ranged champion has a 1-range spell-of-doom he should be in the front line if I plan to use that spell at the start of the battle.

If they were really ambitious the game could learn from the changes the player made and try to emulate that in future battles.

I see what you are saying, but the problem with this logic is that you can use it for every aspect of the game.  A human player is always going to make smarter decisions and be more adaptable than the AI.  Why let us design units?  Why let us choose buildings?  Why let us equip our champions?  Why have a game at all?   Reductio ad absurdum

It IS the same for every aspect on everything. Before turning new stuff over to players, let the ai do it well.  Once no one has any complaints other than "let me do it " the ai is ready

While I agree that initial unit placement needs some adjustment, I absolutely DO NOT want to have to manually place my units before every battle. It would just add an extra (time consuming and cumbersome) step before every battle.  It would also probably be a LOT more work for SD then just making a few changes to the current system.  It's an unnecessary over reaction to the problem, the current system has a lot of merit to it, it just needs some tweaks.

As far as mages, it would probably be easiest for them to just flag staves as ranged (with or without a ranged component on them).  If nothing else I hope they at least do this.  Many times though I'll use daggers/swords with +initiative in early-mid game to help my mages act more often, as any staff that actually has a ranged attack comes with a hefty initiative penalty which is horrible. The best fix would be to somehow flag the Mage leveling path to be considered ranged no matter what type of weapon they are using, but I'm not sure if they can do that with the way the current system works.

I also agree strongly that units that are wounded need to be considered somehow.  The current system of placing the unit with 2 health in the front simply because it's melee is both frustrating and nonsensical.  Again though, I'm not sure if they would be able to change this based on the way the current system works, and thus it might take a significant amount of to change this.

Bottom line, a simple "Does the unit have a ranged weapon: Yes/No?" check for determining front line/back field placement isn't enough.  Maybe widen the gap between melee initial placement enough that we've got 1 turn to re-position troops if needed.  Maybe a "Front line/Back field" option we could toggle on the units/champions themselves? Maybe some extra variables (such as Armor, current HP, Mage leveling path, etc) that the game automatically takes into consideration?

Overall, the changes that were made to tactical combat are *amazing*, but they are being somewhat off-put right now by an aggravating beginning to many many battles because of unit placement issues.  Considering how big a part of the game tactical combat is, I think I (and the community, if I may be so bold) feel this is a pretty big issue that's worth some dev time to get sorted out.

Have any of you ever played an old xbox game called Gladius. If you haven't I suggest you do despite its age. I think that game has some of the best and funnest turn based tactical battles I have ever seen or played. I would really like to see FE's tactical battles become more like Gladius tactical battles.

As a matter of fact I challenge Derek and the rest of the devs to play five or six hours of Gladius. It will open your eyes to the potential of FE's tactical battles and just how inferior they currently are in comparison. Combining FE's strategic game play with better tactical battles, that are reminiscent of Gladius, would bring this game to a whole new level of gameplay and fun.

Note: If you do play Gladius I would strongly recommend that you play as Valens simply because you will gain access to a better set of recruits early on which you will be able to upgrade to your own preferences which matters a lot.

I strongly agree that one should have the option to manually place ones units, within limits, before the battle begins. Gladius did this well, among other things, and it made tactical battles much better.