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Regeurk -> RE: Battle System (7/13/2006 4:20:00 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: veterano
It was a beatiful, but complex system, basically you used the number of your troops to see the damage that you give to the enemy but the battles were usually won on moral, so a much smaller side with higher moral could defeat a much bigger army and the reatreat give a huge amount of loses to the defeated army.
The thing that attracted me to EiA's battle system when I first encountered it a couple decades ago was, as veterano says above, that losses are taken based on the size of the opposing army. I had played countless Avalon Hill games where the combat system relied on a gross ratio of opposing forces -- 1-1, 3-2, 2-1, 3-1, etc. -- and a player would be looking for that one extra factor that might take a 1-1 battle to the 3-2 category, or something like that (for instance, if I had 29 factors, and you 20, it would be classed as a 1-1 batte; but if I could find just one more factor, and have 30, then the face of the entire battle changes when I jump up to 3-2 odds with the addition of a strength factor that amounts to only 2% of the total factors involved). And then losses sometimes bore no resemblance to the reality of the situation.
There are no "odds" in EiA -- in effect, every factor counts when losses against your opponent are figured. And, because of the morale component, as veteranoalso said, a smaller force with high morale can easily (and usually does) beat a much larger one with lower morale. However, the losses inflicted on the smaller force before the larger force breaks (due to the fact, as stated above, that losses to one force are taken as a percentage of the other), might be so large as to turn it into a pyrrhic victory, which often happens. What also happens frequently, which I find very historically satisfying, is that indecisive battles are quite possible, forcing a player to take a more strategic approach to a series of battles, or indeed a war, than in other games. When I discovered EiA, it immediately made those 1-1, 2-1 "ratio" games unacceptable to me, and games which I had previusly loved (War and Peace, 1776, Soldier King) were henceforth almost unplayable for me.
I find it a very balanced battle system -- where decisive battles are uncommon, if not rare (see the "favorite battles" thread nearby), but always possible; and players must be stratetigically wise to win the game. The winner may very well not be the person who won a majority of battles, but the one who maneuvered himself diplomatically and strategically with the greatest finesse. That's what I love about EiA; and as long as Matrix's computer version faithfully reproduces this, I will be happy.
Regeurk
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