Dogs of War Online

I was thinking about current HtH combat mechanic both as C3 adaptation and further faction differences potential - and I'm not shure if current HtH exchanges of 1 or 2 atacks aren't to simplified/short.

Whole HtH combat system In 3rd edition of Confrontation is (or was) about dice managment (mostly 2 or 3 but sometimes more) that can be placed in atack, defense or both. I fully understand that adaptation mechanic was simplified to make game much more faster and easier - and currently all dices are set to offence - its realy good feature that makes Dogs of War games much faster.

The point is why oryginal 2 and 3 dices was cut to 1 "dice" for humanoids and 2 "dice" for Wolfens (ok i knew - Born Killer skill working exacly as before) but still why base number of atacks was cut by -1?
In any case more atacks makes random tests much more predictible (less about luck more about statistics) and additionaly bonus atacks scaling is much more smooth.

So a short example:

Human Warrior 2 atacks - 1 counteratack
Undead Warrior 2 atacks - 1 counteratack
Wolfen with Born Killer skill - 3 atacks - 2 counteratacks

Human/Undead with pricy offensive skill - 3 atacks
Human/Undead with pricy defensive skill - 2 counteratacks
Wolfen with pricy offensive skill 4 atacks
Wolfen with pricy defensive skill 3 counteratacks

I understand that change would be quite big at current stage but to be honest adding that and lowering all units STR by -4/5 would work for more than half of all units and the other half still would be close to current balance.



No hard feling if Devs say - "no way - too much is already done in current way" - but im asking only for a short paper and pencil test by gameplay mechanic designer and maybe a sketch of all those skills/stances that would be possible with smoother atack numbers scale.

The proportion are respected as normal unit have 1 dice in attack and 1 in defend = 2 dice.
Wolfen have 2 dice in attack and 1 dice in defend = 3 dice.

The problem is that in N unit vs 1 unit combat is changed a lot.

For example in miniature game 3 unit vs 1 unit will result in :

Alone unit get 2 extra dice for a total of 4.
The 3 units will have a total of 6 dice on their side.

Now the proportion is :
Alone unit have 1 dice in attack and 3 dice in defence for a total of 4 dice.
The 3 units will have 3 dice each in defence, 2 OF THEM WASTED and 3 dice on attack for a total of 4(6) dice.

How this is handle from the devs? They adds surround bonus... 15% hit, parry for every extra unit.

The mechanics is ok imo, just need to fix AP cost etc...

The proportion are respected as normal unit have 1 dice in attack and 1 in defend = 2 dice.

This would be ok if a unit would counteratack once per turn only - currently its rather each activation counts as fray and sets all dices in atack (defend was about radomly rising Par value each enemy hit ) and is counted as separate fight - each fight


About old system of many Vs one fghts and the new one - i understand all but still im convinced that currently there is -1 atack (due to my interpretation of new 1v1 only frays) and this makes difference betwen 1 and 2 atacks far to big while diference between 2 and 3 would be smaller and whole tests would be less random, easier to balance and will make a place for many usefull abbilities.

Moreover currently high ACC stat is not equal for units with 1 and 2 atacks... a 1 dice unit with 80% hit chance have 80% for doing damage and 20% to do nothing - while 2 dice unit Have 64% for doing whole damage, 32% for half damage and only 4% for no damage - and that makes much more place for planning and using a skills that plain 80/20%

Currently there always be a big difference between any 1 dice fignter no matter his stats - and a 2 dice one - Grave Guardian>>>Knight>Crane shows this quite nice
And we must remember that wolfens would be only faction with born killer in base 9 - so fights between all other facions would be rather borring with 1vs1 dice most of time... More atacks make this game different from most of current tunr based games (heroes, kings bounty) and its nice - especialy while its more interesting and give mor options to choose/deal with.

Attack and defence stance give you some choice, but remember this is not a Confrontation 4.0 game, is a game based on Lore and some mechanics from the old miniature game.

Honesly the Confrontation 4.0 had soo many bug and unbalanced unit that i'm happy that now designer made something different because the old mechanics was very bad. (I played a lot of miniature game and C4 was one of the worst in game mechanics, while was the best about lore and miniature quality)

What is nice in a computer game is that you can just feedback and easily adjust with patch everything.

About speed of the game i would like a more slow and tactics game.

Attack and defence stance give you some choice, but remember this is not a Confrontation 4.0 game, is a game based on Lore and some mechanics from the old miniature game.
Honesly the Confrontation 4.0 had soo many bug and unbalanced unit that i'm happy that now designer made something different because the old mechanics was very bad. (I played a lot of miniature game and C4 was one of the worst in game mechanics, while was the best about lore and miniature quality)
What is nice in a computer game is that you can just feedback and easily adjust with patch everything.

About speed of the game i would like a more slow and tactics game.

It's a reason why i compare Dogs of War to Confrontations 2-3,5 - but C4 simply had bigger format and still was better than many games that i knew

Stances are nice but to make them a alternative to C3 Frays they should be unlimited or at least ussable each turn
but if you want slower and more tactical game than adding one atack for every unit would be a nice begining ;P

But even now games with You and Your Acheron take twice longer than other games

Hello and thanks for your feedback.

We read it with interest; though at this time, it is indeed hard and time-consuming to do what you suggest (as you said).

Although your proposition is viable per se, it misses some points that may be critical when we come to changes of this size.
I won't elaborate here - sorry! We have to keep some mysteries about how we run the whole thing.

Anyway, I can promise you we look into it seriously - we did some changes like that in the past, so it is not impossible that it would happen again.
But it is a very heavy modification, and if we do it someday, it will be in a relatively far future with many tests to make sure that we're heading the good way, and planting it with small touches instead of a great, whole wipe of what already works.

So I would not hold my breath for such a game-changing idea, but it is a good suggestion nonetheless.

Edit : As for the Stances, we did try (-a lot) with the "infinite stance" option. With that many tests, it turns out it is a VERY bad idea. You'll have to trust us on that
(though I guess you could imagine what it does when all your most powerful units switch stances at will every turn).
We are still open to this particular change though. Orders did see many changes as time went by; we are testing that kind of things regurlarly on our side too. Especially with limited use of Orders per turn.


Note: If others players went to lean in any particular way here, they are welcome to speak too!
We'd love to hear more from you on that matters

Jigoku wrote:
Edit : As for the Stances, we did try (-a lot) with the "infinite stance" option. With that many tests, it turns out it is a VERY bad idea. You'll have to trust us on that
(though I guess you could imagine what it does when all your most powerful units switch stances at will every turn).
We are still open to this particular change though. Orders did see many changes as time went by; we are testing that kind of things regurlarly on our side too. Especially with limited use of Orders per turn.

totally agree on that, i think 2 is the magic number for the stances. Especially with archers infinite offensive would be gamebreaking or even silly with wolven (that can attack) with defensive stance.

totally agree on that, i think 2 is the magic number for the stances. Especially with archers infinite offensive would be gamebreaking or even silly with wolven (that can attack) with defensive stance.

I was convinced that offensive stance works on archers only for some kind of test and switching that of would be obvious with unlimited stances ;P
Same as for current defensive stance with wolfens

make sure that we're heading the good way, and planting it with small touches instead of a great, whole wipe of what already works.

i can fully understand that but on the other hand current situation generate a problem that i have no idea how to solve and with one can be even more important in future: humanoid HtH elites - that currently are no match for wolfens and can be quite easy countered by feriocious - current units are simply to slow and while having 1 die only option for them would be rising their base stats (STR, PAR, TOU, DOD and some magic resist skill) to ridiculous values