The Concluded RTS
Right, so for various dif. units, and groups different moves and tactics should be possible. For example, if I designate a group of cavalry, as cavalry, and then I should be able to order them to charge, through an opposing group, or to a point, and then either return or move on to the next position I want them.
The problem, for example with what happens right now, is that if you send your horse to charge, they’ll just charge through, and instead of mowing down some archers, for example, they’ll just run through them, being shot at from all angles.
That is one thing that needs to change, at least for the way most RTS use horse.
Another issue is something I’ve mentioned before, that pike men, when joined with archers do not adhere to the logical role they should play, that of protecting the archers, but they break formation very stupidly. Instead, it should at the very least be possible to designate a group of archers/pikemen, to fight together.
The other thing is artillery, while they aren’t as bad as usual, setting units to guard them is impossible, and they too, quite naturally break formation, when they aren’t supposed to. It can get on your nerves, very lieterally.
The guard feature needs therefore to be worked out for units too, not just buildins etc.
Actually, even if just this feature, and none of the others I’ve talked about is worked out, and we can then set aside troops to do something specific, in terms of strategy, we’ll have much more fun, though the unreality of having to deal with war/ peace simultaneously could also be removed.
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RTS: Garrison Warfare
Alright, now for the details of the garrison style fighting.
So basically what happens is, you either have one or multiple cities. Each of them will have a garrison. Now, the point of having a city and a garrison, is that you can use the city structure as a part of the war fare tactic. For example things like city walls, embattlements etc. can be brought into play. Multiple gates, and their positions, and other stuff….
Basically, you can design your city… or at least its defenses. So you can place cities against mountains, or near rivers, etc. and use the terrain tactically as well. You can design the city to provide for things like emergency get aways, and trap doors to attack beseiging armies etc.
In actual battle, you will have a slight advantage, in that you can set up various buildings like hospitals etc. which will be more efficeint than theif field equivalents, which is obvioulsy what the opponents will have to use. But you wont be able to call on reinforcements, or will have some other disadavantage.
In battle itself you will have many more options, that of hiding behind your walls, that of going out to meet the army. That of abandoning the city. Or of cutting losses, by leaving only a small force behind, and sending the others of to anotehr settlement, or the next best thing.
Battles itself willl be handles along similar lines to a regular field engagement, except you will have walls, and the rest of the city to work with…
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NEW RTS Military Strategy
Alright, so now to the actual fighting.
Now first of all, we must realise, than an army, or a standing army, does not really come into existence till pretty late in human history. So for civilizations, or players in the earlier stages of human development, a percent of the population itself would have to be the army, and be conscripted much like militia might be. So they’ll be for some time, no really specialized warriors, meaning that focused, and well trained sorts of companies will not exist, and in truth, aggressive warfare will be rather pointless.
Anyway, if the ‘quota’ of a player is limited to this level of under-development, then his army will consist of peasant, badly trained and weak.
But then there is a point when the army becomes a specialized group in society. Now these people are fun… the army will contain of trained soldiers, and research will allow you to increase the variety of units you have, and their abilities etc. pretty much like standard RTS armies today.
But the army will be divided into two sets of fighters, the first will be the garrison, a group of defensive warriors for your city. And the second will be the standing army. The garrison becomes important, because if you have multiple cities.
They are basically for defensive tactics… though they can be sent out with the standing army in time. But having a set of garrisoned soldiers and specific defensive tactics can be very interesting.
The second kind of army, will the field, or aggressive army, these will naturally work differently, with different units, and requiring much else. Plus when you choose to fight with the field army, you will have a very different battle scenario, and different tactics to follow.
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Military and the ideal RTS
Alright, so to get to what I was really trying to say about military strategy in a game.
The way I see it, a target, in terms of what Caesar 3 sets down should be given us, in the beginning of the game. Now either we can be given a fixed amount of time to achieve this target, or we should be racing both to fulfill our quotas. If we are racing each other to fill the quota, then it might be interesting to allow players to choose their own quotas.
The quota might be like a status in the game, like industrial age, 6 level military, 8 science… etc. and so much capital… or liquid assets for army building. This will make things interesting, because if a players set themselves different targets of civ, and compete with each other, when setting the target itself, players will have to think.
A player might set a really low quota for himself, in the hope of catching his opponent early, unaware, but if the other opponent plays faster, even if he does not complete his quota at the end of the session of resource collection, he might still have the advantage. And if one sets himself a really high quota, he might suddenly find himself having to fight, without really preparing for it.
The quota might also be a steady ‘income’ for the city or state, from what ever it does to collect resources. So then the quota would have to be three things… first would be the level of research, then the amount of resource collected, and then the ‘income.’
So anyway, once one of the players attains his quota, the next step is the battle. Now if you have the resources you’re supposed, it will mean that you can support a particular size and kind of army. Like if you haven’t done any maritime research, you cant have a navy. So then you set about choosing an army.
The ‘income’ has been included because an army when on campaign will still need some sort of an economic resource. Plundering of course counts. And also an army would treat economics very differently, it wouldn’t build ‘town centres’ to start with.
Anyway the army, and how it works will be dealt with later.
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RTS Military Strategy
I know, the last blog I wrote, would suggest a piece about how the ideal RTS would deal with battle, but instead, I’m going to digress, and talk about how RTSs deal with the issue right now.
There are basically three kinds of battles that RTSs engage in, one is in the open field, so to speak, the other happens at the city walls of the opponent, and the third at your own city walls.
The battles in open fields rarely ever happen, and if they do, rarely are deliberate engagements, but usually are the result of two marching armies meeting each other en route to the opposing city walls. Of course this is very unreal, considering that open battles are more fun, and provide better chances for strategy etc… anyway, in battles of this sort, the outcome is seems is decided by which sort of unit sees which sort of unit first… and the amount of strategy is very limited
Then come the battles outside city walls. These I find are even worse, in terms of fairness, or reality quotient, assuming that such a thing even exists. Battles around cities are fought by garrisons, and city defenses are sort of par to of the design of the very city. But in all the games that we play, the very option of building a city defenses is false… in fact many games that we play, don’t even give the option of a fortified city anymore.
And its sad, because epic, and desperate battles for a city are essential…
Actually this brings me back, to my initial point, that I made very unsubstantially in the beginning, simply that games need to deal with battle and building separately the two cannot be dealt with by the same enterprise.
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Returning to the Idea RTS
Returning to my earlier RTS bit.
Lets see, I begin to see why its not been done yet. Basically, the idea is to create the illusion of comprehensive control of the city, or state, or whatever it is.
Plus it becomes too easy, using any of the existing gaming systems to actually build a game in any way.
I will therefore make a suggestion, MARRY CAESAR 3 WITH CHESS. That would be a good RTS game. Caesar 3 itself has a mockery of battle for battle, I mean all it asks you to do is create a steady stream of soldiers, and in fact, even that is limited, and you have to depend on wall towers! but what the game has managed to do, and done very well, is set up a challenging urban development puzzle. The whole trade bit, where resource collection is based, very really, on collection of capital, be it from trade, or human capital, or infrastructure, and you are judged, or have to achieve certain amounts of all of the above, to get to the next level.
I’ve already suggest SIM CITY 4 in the past, and that too would fit the bill perfectly. So then, assuming you have a good city in place, what about the army? And defence and the rest of that?
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Can I Loose? Please!
So another thing about gaming, that is interesting, is the fact of the only choice you have, to play or not to play. Once you’ve made that choice, there’s really not much free will you have left, assuming of course that you want to win the game.
First I’d like to qualify my statement. Okay, now I know there are games that let you make some very significant choices. As an RTS fan, I cannot but acknowledge that, of course the choice between training horsemen, pikemen or bowmen is very important, as is the choice between collecting gold, wood or food, or gems, or whatever it is the game requires you to do.
Even FPS games give you a choice, you can either go through the front door, or the sewers or the back door… or I don’t know, the roof maybe. Sports games give you choice too, the team you want to play with, how you want to play with it. I mean you can make someone like yourself become the star of the NBA. The only thing that you cant choose, and this is common to all games…
Is to loose. There is no game, at least none that I know of where if you pursue a strategy with any goal other than winning in mind that you can be successful. I mean I know what I’m arguing for is kind of stupid… to say that you want to play a game to loose it, is not exactly intelligent…
What I’m complaining about is the simple, singlemindedness with which we are required to pursue this goal. There are no hasty beatings of the retreat… no changes in strategy… to use analogy from the economic world, as a gamer the only goal you are allowed to have is that of profit maximization… even in economics one can try risk minimization, or underselling etc.
So I’m not saying I want to loose… just that sometimes we should be allowed to choose what it means to win. In Racing games a third place should be acceptable… the insistence on a win before the game allows us to proceed is kind of irritating.
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The RTS
So then,
What about the ideal RTS. Well, like I said, it should have the elements of an actual battle, and we should get to be part of it, not some kind of removed chappy, with nothing to really do in the bloody overall plans of the world, with out any immediate agency.
That’s sad, imagine the immense amount of fun you could have, manipulating a character, Never Winter Nights Style, outfitting it before a battle, designing battle plans around it etc. and then choosing the mode of battle, setting out reinforcements and all that. And finally attacking.
I mean each unit has a definite strength in a game, and you use it for a definite reason. The whole period before, when you’re collecting resources and the like, WHY? It serves little or not purpose at all, in the sense that I don’t really enjoy it, it slows down things tremendously and really, really, provides no entertainment, nor is it particularly nerve racking. You’re in a particular surrounding, go collect as much of everything you can. What else is there to do?
I really hate the whole collecting bit… researching techs, well may be, but even that, I think should just be normal when you increase an age, you should get to choose how you want civilization to go, and what kind of researches you want to do, and then proceed.
In fact I think this is a worthy theme. An alternative to the stupidly stereotypical method of building up a stupid army, based on resource collection. There have to be other paradigms in which it can be achieved without the boring-ness of things.
And why should building armies be so slow too. You know that n number of units is the kind of army you want to have… why cant you just have it immediately, so that fighting involves a greater degree of actual in battle strategy so to speak, than just scrambling to have a steady stream of military units to fight?
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The Ideal RTS
The ideal RTS…
Well strategy is all fine good, but in all honesty the best gave ever in that genre is chess, with Chinese checkers coming a close second. So what is different with the idea of a computer game along the same lines.
The idea of resource collection is quite irritating and actually adds an element of unsurity and chance in the game. Plus it creates a definite, unchangeable structure to the game… this is how you must play it, to win, because resource collection or the amount of it, is basically decides who wins, with actual military stratagem playing a subordinate role. If you can afford the best unit, you will win. Pretty simple!
Well alright not really, because each unit can be used in various ways, and siege weaponry, and ranged weaponry are good versus various other kinds of units… so alright I take that last point back. But at the end of the day, there is a formula, which is all I’m trying to say.
So my idea of the idea RTS… well the Ideal RTS would allow me to play in the action. If we were allowed to become one of the heroes of war craft III or something like that how cool would that be?
I mean you know actually play the role of a general on the field, sword buckling action like that of LOTR, mixed with some basic strategy of say Rise of Nations. Meaning that we design an army… like create specific battle groups, cavalry, infantry archers etc. and then choose to be part of one such group, say an infantry man, and then command the field… like generals of the old school did.
Imagine being able to give the “Charge” cry and actually charge into battle, and in some limited way, single handedly change the tide of the battle etc. I don’t know, we’ll thrash out the heroics of it later.
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