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But keep in mind that battle in BB was different. It was hugely advantegous to be the defending side, and more punishing to be the attacking side - often times, except against orcs and possibly a few other enemy types, we were required to attack. Always starting at a basic straight line, One battle line against the other. It helped to make the game the perfect balance of challenging when playing the highest difficulty.
In Wartales, the highest difficulty doesn't punish you at all... If you were to have freedom to deploy your mercs in a perfect formation before battle, then the combat becomes even more easy, and even less punishing.
The more united your troops are, the easier it becomes. In the scenario that you are asking for you can then even concentrate all your troops on one side of the battlefield, taking down only a few enemies at the time, while all the other enemies are spending many moves simply running towards you from the other side of the field, so that you isolate a few enemies at the time and avoid fighting with all of them at the same time. That's the problem - it becomes sooo easy. You and i are both smart enough to take advanatge of such a loophole. Most players are.
I understand your wish for more freedom in deployment, but at the same time, we must avoid making the game even easier than it already is.
What should have been a very easy fight against a pack of wolves went very badly. All of my tanks were really far away, in the mud. All of my archers were alone and outnumbered 4 to 1. Quit the battle, Quit the game. For a game whose core play mechanic is combat, I don't know how they could get it so wrong.
Again, fundamentally I do not disagree with you that deployment before battle is lacking, but what you describe, with pockets of your men isolated from each other, are the only fights which can actually potentially punish you at least a tiiiiiiiiny little bit, and make the battle a tiiiiiny bit more interesting. I've certainly had some extreme cases of this, where my mission has basically been to rescue my isolated companions. I've known from the start that I can waste no time rushing to their aid. This is why I am somewhat catious about giving the player better deployment before the combat difficulty and deadliness is increased. Those things need to increase first.
You seem very experienced with Wartales. Since we both agree that deployment is lacking, is there anything in particular you would change?
Since the game seems to deliberately want to split my squad up, it could at least let me define groups of 4-5 that would be together.
You asking what I would change specifically about the deployment or the ways to increase the difficulty I speak of ?
I'll paste some points from a thread I participated in a few days ago. Decide for yourself whether you like it or not, if want to add to it, or even if you have better solutions. If so, bring it on ;)
The thread was about incerasing difficulty :
1.
The most obvious solution is to remove the "dying" state. Our characters now have 3 lives. 12 willpower, "dying" (which also disengages, making escape easy), then the 3rd time they finally die. Three lives are way too much, making death nearly impossible, and too easy to escape.
2.
Another obvious option is to simply universally increase the damage of all enemies, although that may be too much of a simplified solution and wouldn't bring complexity.
3.
Smarter AI to make better decisions for itself.
4.
Enemies also using valour points to get extra moves in the same round could *maybe* be a possibility ? I can see some players being unhappy about that, as it would potentially make things slightly less predictable. How and when are they gonna spend those valour points ? In my opinion we shouldn't know, it shouldn't show in the initiative bar.
5.
To repeat the above points, increased lethality / death-rate is just necessary to make the game more challenging. A bonus is that it also gets more realistic, reflecting the dangers of the mercenary life. 15 mercs vs 15 brigands = 0 dead mercs and 15 dead brigands (as is the case now) simply doesn't make sense. The enemy must be able to bite back and hurt us. Our mercs shouldn't be portrayed as supermen.
6.
With increased casualty rate the cost of new recruits would actually have to be reduced to make it possible to replenish your numbers after setbacks / casualties and recover reasonably well. Right now the price in krowns and influence is too high to frequently replace dead mercenaries. But those new recruits should probably still be 2 levels lower maybe, to punish you a little. 'Batte Brothers', which is typically used in comparison to this game, did this very well. Casualties were high, but the balance of the economy always allowed you to recruit new men.
7.
With increased casualty rate the very slow progress made in profession xp could also potentially be a problem. If you lose f.ex. your experienced/journeyman tinkerer or blacksmith in battle that could set you back too much. It takes too long to level a new one from scratch. You'd go a long time being unable to craft stuff relevant to how far you've reached in the game. The game currently is balanced for little-to-no casualties, so this profession progression is also something that would need to be taken into account.
I'm okay with deployment forcing me to surround the enemy across the battlemap, so that all allies and enemies get engaged in battle quickly, I don't need the game to give me the super advantage of having all my mercenaries start in one corner of the battlemap as a collected unit. But as you and I agree, the deployment options when we attack should not be so limited as to force us to have 1-3 individuals isolated far from the rest of our troops, sandwiched behind and between enemy lines.
But if the enemy attacks us, especially if it's an ambush, then we should have far fewer options to deploy, and to a fairly large degree we should just have to live with the cards dealt to us.
Another possibility to explore is maybe simply having two straight battlelines faced against each other neutrally at the start of the battle - west vs east or north vs south. ...unless it's an ambush, of course, in which case deployment becomes much more of a thing.
Straight, neutral battlelines - good idea or bad idea you think ? I'm not sure. I'm just throwing it out as a possibility.
In regard to difficulty. I would get rid of health potions. Those injuries should take a while to heal. Medicine should at best shorten the duration by 20%. A simple check box on the character sheet could determine if I am sending them into combat or not. With the trading post update, serious injuries could be left there for a few weeks to heal up.
For positioning, I would be happy if they just increased the number of available squares by 50%. I have reduced my squad to 9 members, one for each job. About half the time I can find a place that I can fit them all in the same area. I would rather be outnumbered than go through the drama of having an isolated member in every battle.
I disagree on the medicine. I think the medicine healing wounds works very well, making your men ready and able to fight. Combat difficulty needs to be increased directly, *ON THE FIELD*, not off it. Nerfing medicine would be financial/simulation difficulty, which happens to be well-balanced as it is. Dragging along injured mercs and constantly finding yourself in situations where you travel the world map and can't engage in battle because you have too many wounded *all* the time would break the game... which in turn means you cannot take advantage of the day, so you'll have to stop and camp excessively *all* the time while waiting to heal, burning through your food and money reserves in the process. So removing medicine or making it only shorten recovery by 20 % is a bad idea.
Also, seriously injured mercs left in the trading post for weeks ?? 2 weeks, or even just 1 week, is a long time in this game. I don't think that would work well. Keeping a reasonable pace to the game and gameplay is important. So, again, let's keep the medicine and keep the men ready-and-able to fight. Let's not turn the game into a longwinded process of waiting, waiting and waiting for injuries to heal before you can finally do a quest/battle again.
I do like your suggestion to tick a box, deciding who to take with you into battle, and who not. F.ex. if you don't have enough medicine to heal some men, and they're just too crippled, then leave them on the sideline, with the carriage and ponies.
I didn't know that strategy table increases deploy slots by 20 %. Good to know.
It doesn't really matter if you have 9 mercs or 25. The enemy's numbers scale to yours. Generally speaking, with some exceptions, they will have roughly the same numbers as you.
You now having only 9 mercs with 9 professions tell me that you are the type who's not prepared to lose a single mercenary... The perfect minimalistic setup. But also fragile. A few players simply cannot stand the thought of losing a single companion, I know this, but this shouldn't be the kind of game where you have a few invincible men who can defeat the whole world singlehandedly without ever getting a scratch. Size and numbers should matter, and the enemy should be able to hurt you. To bite back. You can make all the adjustments and tweaks and fancy pancy changes to combat and pretend that the combat is sufficiently challenging and difficult, but if your enemy doesn't hurt you (as in killing you, as you are killing them), then by definition the combat is way too easy. Way too easy.
Nothing is at stake, you have nothing to lose, and the game/story fizzles out and becomes boredom.
A more sensible approach to a squad-based mercenary game like this is to be accepting from the start that casualties will/should happen frequently, so you cling on to a few favourite characters and try to build your party around them. The rest will be, to at least some degree, fringe members, expendables. Losing them will not be as frustrating to you, because you have not alllowed yourself to become as attached to them as you are to your favourite key characters.
If you pit your 9 mercs against 9 brigands in a neutral battle, then of course they should be able to take down some of your men, even if you win, because the odds are more or less even. If the battle is resolved with 0 dead mercs and 9 dead brigands, then the game is going waaay to easy on you. Lack of realism would also be problem, at least to me. Our mercs are flesh and blood, just like the brigands or whoever else we are fighting. They shouldn't be supermen. Battles should be deadly on both sides, it should be intense and put you on the edge of your seat, always excited and motivated to keep your men alive as best you can, despite knowing that death is the daily bread-and-butter of these mercenaries.
Anyway, difference of opinion is always okay. It's okay if we disagree ;)
9 for 2 reasons.
1) I don't like to be locked out of any content. Ideally for me, mercenaries could take 2 side jobs and I could run with only 4 or 5 mercs. The battles would be faster and more fun. I have been considering leaving some jobs like the smith and alchemist at the trading post because they are not needed outside of a town.
2) More that 9 and I have a hard time making any money. They all need to get paid and fed, healed and equipment repaired. I have found that when I have 12+, I can't keep up with the money.
You are correct that I hate losing people. The main issue for me is I have to replace the level 5 with a level 1-3. When I fight a group that is level 6, that person is useless.
For the war of attrition to be viable in this game, enemy groups would also have to contain low level recruits. Instead of all 15 of the enemy group being level 6, they should have a random distribution between 1 and 6, just like me.
However, with those changes, while I would be willing to lose men, it wouldn't change anything. I would still win all of the battles and rarely lose anyone because the AI just does not play very well.
Hence my point 7 above, that they'd have to find a clever way to make it possible to recover reasonably well from losing a merc with high xp in a profession. One or two relatively small steps backwards would be okay, but if you lost your experienced/journeyman blacksmith and now you'd have to level a new one all the way from scratch that would take too long, and you'd be unable to craft what you need for a long period. That's when you'd miss out on content.
Hence the desire and strong need to increase the difficulty of the enemy and making them more deadly, by far. It's the most important thing that needs fixing, which would turn this game from being a 9/10 to a 10/10.
I'd say the 6 player classes, with subclasses, are impressively well done and they complement each other so well. They are very close to perfect in terms of how they work. So, it's all about improving the enemy's strength and deadliness, and removing the "dying" state (3 lives are too forgiving). Give the enemy a few more skills and give them valour points to use them as the AI sees fit, just like we have. If the enemy always started with 10-15 valour points, possibly slightly more, as their points probably wouldn't be renewable, that could potentially be enough.
Current: My average level ~7. Enemy ALL level 7 or 8.
10 enemies all level 7? How does that happen?
Proposed New: 1 Enemy leader, my average level +2. This guy is a real threat and very likely to kill 1 or 2 of my guys unless I am very careful. The other 9 enemy have a range anywhere between 1 and my average level. Distributions would be dependent on the group. Mercs might trend towards the upper range. Enemy level should be hidden from their sheets. We shouldn't know how tough an opponent is before fighting them.