Why can't we choose what stacks enter battle?

[Estellese]

So came across a niche problem. An enemy was attacking my ally, so I came to their defense via a teleporter. So on my turn I moved down and prepared to attack the invader, but I ran into a problem.

I could only bring one of my stacks to battle, because it was automatically including my ally's nearby stacks. Which normally that would be great, but at this stage of the game, one of my stacks was worth like, six of his. So naturally I didn't want or need his assistance. If anything, my ally assisting just made the fight harder because his army would fold and I would only have one stack to work with.

But my ally's armies had a higher power ranking, or whatever that number on their army is. It was weaker than mine. MUCH weaker. But it had a bigger number, and thus, no matter what I did the game would not allow me to swap his units out for my own nearby stacks.

I understand limiting it to three stacks in the fight. But when more are present, and you are attacking, not being attacked, why can't we pick which ones join?

[Orion Invictus]

You can. Before you enter combat, look at the bottom left corner. You can tick the armies you want to include (and untick the armies you want to exclude).

[Estellese]

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

You can. Before you enter combat, look at the bottom left corner. You can tick the armies you want to include (and untick the armies you want to exclude).

Yeah, but it only lets you tick or untick the three strongest armies. So my two extra were not there to be ticked in.

[SQW]

Blame the devs for lazy game design. They assumed bigger army number is always better. Every other AoW game in the series gave you control over who enters the battle but nope, gotta reinvent the wheel with this one.

[Terrkas]

Originally posted by SQW:

Blame the devs for lazy game design. They assumed bigger army number is always better. Every other AoW game in the series gave you control over who enters the battle but nope, gotta reinvent the wheel with this one.

You got the same control as in the other games. Move the armies away, you dont want in the battle or splitt the stack for lower Power.

[SQW]

Originally posted by Terrkas:

Originally posted by SQW:

Blame the devs for lazy game design. They assumed bigger army number is always better. Every other AoW game in the series gave you control over who enters the battle but nope, gotta reinvent the wheel with this one.

You got the same control as in the other games. Move the armies away, you dont want in the battle or splitt the stack for lower Power.

Read the OP. He can't move the AI army out of the reinforcement range. All previous games needed adjacency so you had far better control.

The new reinforcement mechanic and 3 v 3 stacks limit is obviously chosen so there's less coding needed to teach AI how to best position its armies. Previous AoW AIs always move in diamond formation but a good player can still find gaps sometimes and attack AI's three stacks with your four. This half-arsed band-aid mentality can be seen with the beacon victories - instead of teaching the AI to respond to player's win condition, the game magically teleports roaming armies to the beacon to create an artificial threat.

[Terrkas]

Originally posted by SQW:

Originally posted by Terrkas:

You got the same control as in the other games. Move the armies away, you dont want in the battle or splitt the stack for lower Power.

Read the OP. He can't move the AI army out of the reinforcement range. All previous games needed adjacency so you had far better control.

The new reinforcement mechanic and 3 v 3 stacks limit is obviously chosen so there's less coding needed to teach AI how to best position its armies. Previous AoW AIs always move in diamond formation but a good player can still find gaps sometimes and attack AI's three stacks with your four. This half-arsed band-aid mentality can be seen with the beacon victories - instead of teaching the AI to respond to player's win condition, the game magically teleports roaming armies to the beacon to create an artificial threat.

And if op did the same in aow3 with his ally blocking 2 hexes next to the enemy, the same issue would arise.

[SQW]

Originally posted by Terrkas:

Originally posted by SQW:

Read the OP. He can't move the AI army out of the reinforcement range. All previous games needed adjacency so you had far better control.

The new reinforcement mechanic and 3 v 3 stacks limit is obviously chosen so there's less coding needed to teach AI how to best position its armies. Previous AoW AIs always move in diamond formation but a good player can still find gaps sometimes and attack AI's three stacks with your four. This half-arsed band-aid mentality can be seen with the beacon victories - instead of teaching the AI to respond to player's win condition, the game magically teleports roaming armies to the beacon to create an artificial threat.

And if op did the same in aow3 with his ally blocking 2 hexes next to the enemy, the same issue would arise.

OMG how much of a white knight can you be? AoW3's system lets you have complete control of who enters the battle. AoW4 decided to have a reinforcement area but chose not to let player select which armies get to fight if there are more than 4 in the zone. If you can only fight with 3 armies and the game mechanics can encompass more than that number then it's common sense to allow the player to pick. Why should the players shuffle their armies composition by some arbitrary point system instead of unit synergy?

[TriumphJordi]

Originally posted by SQW:

The new reinforcement mechanic and 3 v 3 stacks limit is obviously chosen so there's less coding needed to teach AI how to best position its armies. Previous AoW AIs always move in diamond formation but a good player can still find gaps sometimes and attack AI's three stacks with your four. This half-arsed band-aid mentality can be seen with the beacon victories - instead of teaching the AI to respond to player's win condition, the game magically teleports roaming armies to the beacon to create an artificial threat.

The Reinforcement Range was developed as we felt that the Adjacent Hex Rule created too much micromanagement for players that did know about it, while not being clear enough for newer players. It was also commonly highlight as one of the elements in Age of Wonders games that was showing its age.

Obviously when we extended the range/zone we couldn't include all stacks, so we decided to streamline the picking to the strongest stacks in the range. Based on our experience from the previous titles, there were concerns surrounding larger battles. Typically players would Auto Combat them due to the Duration & Mental Load required. Eventually we decided to limit the amount of stacks in a Combat to 3v3. This still provides a large enough battle to feel impactfull without being too draining for the player.

For the Victory Conditions, the AI is just as capable of targeting them as in previous entries. Depending on how the player approaches the game though, the external pressure that comes from PvP might not be sufficient. To address this we implemented the spawning stacks to provide pressure from the PvE systems in case the Player would not receive enough pressure from the PvP Systems.

[Terrkas]

Originally posted by SQW:

Originally posted by Terrkas:

And if op did the same in aow3 with his ally blocking 2 hexes next to the enemy, the same issue would arise.

OMG how much of a white knight can you be? AoW3's system lets you have complete control of who enters the battle. AoW4 decided to have a reinforcement area but chose not to let player select which armies get to fight if there are more than 4 in the zone. If you can only fight with 3 armies and the game mechanics can encompass more than that number then it's common sense to allow the player to pick. Why should the players shuffle their armies composition by some arbitrary point system instead of unit synergy?

Why make stacks that dont synergize?

I wouldn't mind if you could pick who enters the battle. But you pretend that old army selection was the holy grail when it had its own set of flaws.

Attacker could usually send 4 vs 3 armies. Defender never got to choose either. And attacker could choose to attack the weakest part in a formation.

Ai moving in diamondshape also isnt correct for earlier games. I played vs emperors shortly before 4s release. There were quite a lot of stacks from the emperor dreadnaught and theocrat i could easily dispose of, because they were alone.

Edit: to be honest. Your comments here arent even related to OPs topic, but instead poorly disguised "aow4 bad, old aows better" rants.

[rane]

Ah yes, the old deflection method. Blame and gaslight the OP so we can pretend there is no issues after all.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Estellese:

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

You can. Before you enter combat, look at the bottom left corner. You can tick the armies you want to include (and untick the armies you want to exclude).

Yeah, but it only lets you tick or untick the three strongest armies. So my two extra were not there to be ticked in.

I swear I used to have multiple armies on the list when I had more than three that could join the battle. Was that changed recently?

[Estellese]

Originally posted by Terrkas:

Originally posted by SQW:

Read the OP. He can't move the AI army out of the reinforcement range. All previous games needed adjacency so you had far better control.

The new reinforcement mechanic and 3 v 3 stacks limit is obviously chosen so there's less coding needed to teach AI how to best position its armies. Previous AoW AIs always move in diamond formation but a good player can still find gaps sometimes and attack AI's three stacks with your four. This half-arsed band-aid mentality can be seen with the beacon victories - instead of teaching the AI to respond to player's win condition, the game magically teleports roaming armies to the beacon to create an artificial threat.

And if op did the same in aow3 with his ally blocking 2 hexes next to the enemy, the same issue would arise.

No.

Because in AOW3, I could have just added two of my stacks to my ally's 2 and gone in 4v3.

Or I could have put my three stacks around a different enemy unit and done the fight that way, without my ally. Since they wouldn't have been in reinforcement range for that stack.

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

Originally posted by Estellese:

Yeah, but it only lets you tick or untick the three strongest armies. So my two extra were not there to be ticked in.

I swear I used to have multiple armies on the list when I had more than three that could join the battle. Was that changed recently?

It has always been a maximum of three armies per side.

I don't know if you had the option to select from more than three before or not, as this was the first time I was in a situation where it was needed. But I would assume it was not there before because they don't have a reason to remove it.

Originally posted by rane:

Ah yes, the old deflection method. Blame and gaslight the OP so we can pretend there is no issues after all.

Eh, I'm an old lady that's been into online gaming since halo2. Kinda used to dudes gaslighting their way out of arguments, but I don't think that happened here.

I think the guy just didn't read my post fully, or didn't stop and think about why his statement made no sense. I don't think it was meant as gaslighting.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Estellese:

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

I swear I used to have multiple armies on the list when I had more than three that could join the battle. Was that changed recently?

It has always been a maximum of three armies per side.

I don't know if you had the option to select from more than three before or not, as this was the first time I was in a situation where it was needed. But I would assume it was not there before because they don't have a reason to remove it./quote]
Yes, maximum of 3, but I could've sworn that when you had more than 3, they would all show up with check marks next to them. I'll need to double-check.

[Estellese]

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

Originally posted by Estellese:

It has always been a maximum of three armies per side.

I don't know if you had the option to select from more than three before or not, as this was the first time I was in a situation where it was needed. But I would assume it was not there before because they don't have a reason to remove it.

Yes, maximum of 3, but I could've sworn that when you had more than 3, they would all show up with check marks next to them. I'll need to double-check.

Did a quick, crude test of it. The option is not there.

https://i.imgur.com/CO05Ocu.jpg

I just tested it turn 1 on a new map. But pretending all four of those stacks are actually useful, it is impossible to exchange one of the three currently selected stacks for the stack with one unit that is being left out. (And yeah, I get that in this picture you wouldn't want to do that. But in the actual situation the stack that the single unit represents was second strongest, aside from leader stack, despite not having a bigger number.

[Morning Glory]

OP has a legitimate complaint.

I don't even know why people are trying to defend this issue. This mechanic removes control from the player and punishes them. If there was a way to select which stacks you want to use as an attacker, it would just make life easier.

I've been completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ by this before.