Preventing stagnation in turn based tactics games

[Margalis]

So, I am creating a turn-based game. The basic idea is you line up two armies and they go at it. One thing I have been thinking about is how to keep the action moving. For example, I originally made it so that moving and attacking in a turn made your next turn come longer than if you had just moved or just attacked. That works well for a single player game, but I'm concerned that since this is supposed to be multi-player that will encourage players to sit back on defense. So I've been trying to think about ways to force the action. Also a lot of this plays into end goals - how does one side win exactly? Wiping out enemy doesn't seem good. The thing I really want to avoid is both sides sit once space out of the other side's attack range, waiting for someone to wander into that buffer territory so they can gangbang them. Something I should point out here is that in my game the turns are interspersed between the sides, it's not one side moves every piece then the other side does, which is where these problems are usually at their worst.

So I'm going to put down a small list of what I have thought about, then other people can add their own idea, which I will shamelessly steal.

1: Different armies fight well at different ranges. This idea comes mostly from Street Fighter 2, actually. In most SF2 matches at least one character has a projectile or otherwise fights better at a certain range than another character. So one character tries to stay far away and do damage, while one tries to get close. This translates to my game as follows: One side has a bunch of archers and one doesn't. The side with archers can stand back and rain arrows on the other side forever. The only chance the other army has is to press the attack. Let's call this asymetrical effective ranges.

2: Expansion incentives. This comes from a game like Starcraft. If you just hole up in your base your opponent will create secondary bases and have a huge resource advantage. I'm not quite sure how this could translate into my game.

3: Map construction. For example, assuming that having the high ground is good (or, in the words of Obi-Wan "I have the high ground - lol pwned!") I could make maps where the starting locations for the armies were in basins or otherwise poor, hard to defend positions. The problem here is if I want any sort of map variety this would constrain it greatly.

4: Some sort of end condition that encourages offense? Although the problem isn't really offense, it's just who makes the first move.


One thing I want to avoid is having to add an entirely new element to the game. I like #1 because it fits in well with the game as it is. #2 is trickier because off the top of my head I can't think of a lot of incentives to not just sit in your base without introducing something wacky like harvestable resources, magic squares that buff you, etc.

Anyone else have any other ideas?

[Flashman]

4: Some sort of end condition that encourages offense? Although the problem isn't really offense, it's just who makes the first move.

Just something off the top of my head.

You could use a victory points method used by wargames. Most VPs after X number of turns wins. You get VPs based not only on the units your destroy but also based on capturing and holding terrain features. The advantage to going out of your inital defensive mode and capturing terrain VPs is that they would be better for you on the defense. An army capturing the town worth VPs would be able to fortify in it, the ridge worth VPs gives you the high ground. I guess that would make both players race to these points..the one who got there would defend and the other would have to attack or he'd lose.


The thing about ranges you wrote made me think about playing Sid Meyer's Gettysburg over MPlayer way back when. It actually had a lot of the problems you are talking about. I remember most of the times, the sides were pretty much even, so each player would basically set up a good defense...double rows of infanty flanked by cavalry with artilllery in the middle. About half the time...nothing would happen. 
   

[Pococurante]

Why is it necessary for you to force the game along?  Isn't that the player's call?  WW1 is a good set piece example - the fixed positions only fell to diplomacy.  In my case I'd consider my position a screen and move units in elsewhere.  Perhaps that what you meant with the Map idea?

[Hoax]

Your thinking like a real dev there Poco.

"I dont need to make the game inherently fun, if the players do retarded things and make it less fun well its not my fault!"

I'm with Flashman, ripping off WH40k's victory conditions is not a bad idea.  Your idea about the team ranges is solid too.  Another possibility is to strengthen melee combat actions (again stolen from WH40k) allowing a short follow-up attack if you wipe out your opponent after attacking in melee.  This kind of breaks up the wall of ranged units.

For Expansion incentive a possible answer would be artillery.  If you make some artillery-like units but then create a mechanic where they can't use their ridiculous range unless there is a friendly unit (and possibly a turn expended?) within X spaces from the targeted enemy.

[Typhon]

first idea that pops into my head is that you combine 2 & 3 by creating an engineer unit that can create fortifications that give altitude (range), defensive and movement benefits to the faction that holds the fortification (possibly expending the engineer).  Which should be superior to the ridge, which has a movement penalty.

possibly the engineer can create roads to improve movement between forts.

next thought is that units and terrain has a visibility index as well as a defensive index, so while roads are good for moving, they are bad for hiding.  Ideally the faction that has shorter range/melee has a lower inherit visibility index.  Rebels and empire, if you will.  Rebels are good in-close, and good at getting in-close (ambusing).  Empire is good at range, but only if they can aquire a target (which seems to require some sort of expendible shock troops which are used for spotting).

[Xilren's Twin]

So, I am creating a turn-based game. The basic idea is you line up two armies and they go at it. One thing I have been thinking about is how to keep the action moving. For example, I originally made it so that moving and attacking in a turn made your next turn come longer than if you had just moved or just attacked. That works well for a single player game, but I'm concerned that since this is supposed to be multi-player that will encourage players to sit back on defense. So I've been trying to think about ways to force the action. Also a lot of this plays into end goals - how does one side win exactly? Wiping out enemy doesn't seem good. The thing I really want to avoid is both sides sit once space out of the other side's attack range, waiting for someone to wander into that buffer territory so they can gangbang them. Something I should point out here is that in my game the turns are interspersed between the sides, it's not one side moves every piece then the other side does, which is where these problems are usually at their worst.

More info please; when you say turn based, but split, what does that translate to?  Does each unit have a turn in a large queue, or the players turn allows them to move all units, some, etc etc?

Could you describe how a set of turns would go with two small armies of say 5 untis a piece?

Xilren
PS Like a lot of the points to ecourage non-turtling, but having some sort of time/turn limit is the easiest.  You must achieve victory condition X in 20 turns or you lose.

[tazelbain]

As a unit travel over the ground, the ground becomes controled by that team.  If the amount territory is 20% more than the other team, then that team's units receives a sizable bonus.  It could be lump sum or scale as the team gets more territory.  Of course the other team can capture territory back and remove the bonus and get it for themselves.  Maybe introduce units whos main purpose is to capture territory quickly.

I don't like time or turn limits.

[brian]

Or, if you want to be really wicked and encourage brutal fights, put the biggest victory points in locations that give you a defensive penalty.  That will discourage claiming them until the last minute.  So your game will have a period of maneuver where speed is vital and each side tries to block off or slow down the enemy, then a brutal slug fest where units with heavy hitting power and durability really shine.

(For added nuance, you might say the unit on the victory point terrain has a defensive penalty, but your army gains another benefit.  For instance, capturing the warlock’s tower allows you to call burning hailstones from the sky on your opponent’s heads or some such.  Each side then has to weigh the benefits against the penalties in their strategy.  Yeah, I know, you said you didn't want to add something like that, but I thought I'd throw that out there just in case it sparked a better idea.)

Another idea is variable attack strength based upon a unit’s movement.  The more turns a unit spends moving, the stronger its attack.  This would be something like a light cavalry that is vicious when charging, but fragile when caught flat-footed.

Hope there's something useful in that for you.

- Brian

[Hoax]

Some additional ideas, this time mostly taken from Mechwarrior DarkAge (fuck you Wizkids!).

To add to my artillery idea, you can make their position action speed or whatever determines turn order very slow and make it so their firing does not resolve (do damage) until the beginning of the unit's turn after the fire order was given.  With that system in place you might not even need to do the spotter thing.

Also units that can move and fire, will prevent turtling as they can move in range, fire, then move out.  But this is a very difficult thing to balance (wizkids could not and some VTOL units became gamebreakingly good).

Allowing a team to deep strike certain units, or for flyers to go off the gameboard then swoop down can help prevent turtling.  Also if you allow units to come in as reserves from different table edges (at a random turn or something) it can help prevent someone from setting up an unbeatable turtle.

Finally if you provide enough bonus' for being the agressor then your less likely to have turtling but the fact is tactically its usually best to have the high ground and be in defensive positions.  Scenarios and victory conditions that prevent this type of play may be your best and easiest to execute bet.

[Typhon]

As a unit travel over the ground, the ground becomes controlled by that team.  If the amount territory is 20% more than the other team, then that team's units receives a sizable bonus.  It could be lump sum or scale as the team gets more territory.  Of course the other team can capture territory back and remove the bonus and get it for themselves.  Maybe introduce units who's main purpose is to capture territory quickly.

This is an interesting idea, although I think tying it explicitly to travel ends up favoring factions with quicker units (although this could be prevented by having mirror-factions).  Suggest making it about how long a piece of land is held... extrapolating on this a bit, have land be the resource, holding a defensive position (either by setting units into a defensive posture, or by building/housing fortifications) be the way to extract value from the resource and roads be the supply lines that are built to connect up zones of control.  Value extracted is used in unit production.  Zone of control (and thus value extracted) starts small, and grows over time as that area is held.

Valuable land should be more difficult to defend, and vice versa.  Value from a zone should only be obtained for those zones that are connected to the capital (or resource transports could be used if more complexity is desired).

I don't like time or turn limits.

me neither

[Margalis]

Some good ideas so far, I will respond in more detail later, I just want to clarify some things.

My game is primarily meant to be played over the internet. So I am following my own golden rule - question number 1 is "how are people going to abuse this."

If someone can sit back in their base and force a boring game and eventual draw, or simply have the advantage by turtling up, I have to assume they are going to do so. If someone can take forever until their opponent quits in frustration, I have to assume that they will do that. So I have to have things like time limits, and I can't let turtling in your base be the best strategy.

The turns work as follows: every unit exists in the queue, and they take turns one at a time. How quickly a turn comes depends on a bunch of things - any status effects, what they did last turn, what type of unit they are, etc.

To make an example, let's say I have 1A, 1B and 1C for player 1 and 2A, 2B, 2C for player two. The turns might go like this:

1A moves and attacks.
2B ends turn immediately.
2C moves and attacks
1B ends turn immediately
1C just moves
2A moves and attacks

2B gets another turn (because last turn they didn't do much)
1B gets another turn (same reason)
1C gets another turn
2C gets another turn because it is quicker than 1A
1A gets another turn
2A gets another turn

Something like that is the idea. It's similar to Shining Force or Tactics Ogre if you have played either of those.

Edit: About time limits. I think the best idea is probably to do what MTGO does and just give people a total time limit for the entire game. Rather than say each move must take 20 seconds, it is "all your moves for the entire game can't take more than 20 minutes" or something like that. It works well in MTGO and Chess. (It's basically a chess clock) It's a lot less intrusive than having a time limit on each move while still getting the job done.

[Xilren's Twin]

The turns work as follows: every unit exists in the queue, and they take turns one at a time. How quickly a turn comes depends on a bunch of things - any status effects, what they did last turn, what type of unit they are, etc.

To make an example, let's say I have 1A, 1B and 1C for player 1 and 2A, 2B, 2C for player two. The turns might go like this:

1A moves and attacks.
2B ends turn immediately.
2C moves and attacks
1B ends turn immediately
1C just moves
2A moves and attacks

2B gets another turn (because last turn they didn't do much)
1B gets another turn (same reason)
1C gets another turn
2C gets another turn because it is quicker than 1A
1A gets another turn
2A gets another turn

Ok, that's helpful.  So basically every unit is arranged in a bug queue to comprise an overall Turn with the specific determined by a whole host of factors.

Question, are you going to have any "reactive" choices, so instead of move and attack, I could choose, "attack next enemy unit the moves adjascent to me"?  If you are trying to eliminate defensive standoffs, I wouldn't add many of these at all.

But even without reactive counterattacks, as it stands now, not moving puts you higher in the turn list next turn, which is a defensive advantage IF you can attack and eliminate an enemy unit that came into range last turn before they can attack again (which begs the question, is unit death carried out immediately or would the dying unit still get their action and is removed at the end of the game turn?).

Perhaps you could flip that and give higher next turn priority to units that moved and attacked next turn; call in "momentum of the charge" or something.  Basically an intiative bonus conferred by staying aggresive.

Xilren

[Margalis]

Yeah, like I mentioned in my first post, giving units turns faster because they did less is nice in a single player game but will probably have a negative effect in multiplayer. I will still have a system where units take turns at different speeds, but that probably won't be factored in. (it may just be innate unit speed + any status effects) Tactics Ogre worked that way but it was single player and a lot of times the good strategy was to grab some key positions then wait for the enemy, which was more powerful and more numerous, to walk into your death-trap.

Good point on opportunity fire. Again I think that is great in a single player game, but as a multiplayer game it encourages you to sit back and do nothing.

If I take some of the ideas from here like somehow gaining power as you control the map it may not be an issue and I could still include those types of concepts, I just have to sort out the ideas here and figure out an initial stab. In general they are dangerous though.

[Pococurante]

Your thinking like a real dev there Poco.

"I dont need to make the game inherently fun, if the players do retarded things and make it less fun well its not my fault!"

Hehe well for all the bitching about "Games On Rails" I guess I'll just duck as its evil brother "Gimme My Deus Ex Machina Beyotch!" throws a rock my way.  Seriously I like some of the suggestions.  Just my nature to step back a bit and question unspoken assumptions.  Carry on. :P

[Krakrok]

A few games I want to reference for victory conditions and forced battle mechanics. One of them being OGRE, the second being some old Spanish American War DOS game, a third being LoTR: Risk, and lastly Axis & Allies.

This applies to your #4:
In OGRE you had a defensive side and an offensive side. The victory conditions were something like if you are the offence and you blow up the command post and exit the map you win. If you blow up the command post and all offence dies you lose. If you exit the map but don't blow the command post you lose. If all defence are destroyed you win. Each side had something like 16 units to place but the offence could trade in 15 units for one huge tank (the OGRE). And I think the big tank couldn't move backwards or something like that. The main gist being having the "blow up command post" goal and the goal of exiting the map forces the battle.

This applies to your #1:
I can't find the old Spanish American War game on an abandonware site right now but the gist of it was you have infantry, cavalry, and cannon (which with relative movement and damage potential). You could move and fire, move fire move, or fire and then move. Turning may have also cost movement points. The game play boiled down to run your infantry in to distract the enemy cannon while you move your cannon up and blast them or overrun their cannon with cavalry and keep from getting flanked depending on your army loadout. All the while they are doing the same back to you. Cannon may have given splash damage. Infantry may have had "shoot through damage". Cavaltry could ride down infantry from the back but not the front. Enough damage would cause an army to run. Nothing really revolutionary regarding victory conditions here.

This applies to your #4:
LoTR Risk is basically risk except that the One Ring moves every turn. You can roll to delay the ring from moving if you want at the end of your turn. Once the ring gets to Mordor or whatever game over. You get points for owning territories, more points for owning all territories in a "region" plus special interest places, and points for each of your armies at the end.

This probably applies to #3 and #4:
In Axis & Allies, one side (Axis) starts out with more units but gains less units per turn. The Allies start with less units but gain more units per turn. So the Axis nations want to start taking territory right off the bat so it can gain more unit generation and the Allied nations want to protect their unit generation territories. I don't think I've ever finished a board version of Axis & Allies though. It usually boils down to playing 8 hours and then one side surrendering. In a computer version of it the victory conditions are something like control 4 out of 5 country capitals.

[Hoax]

Why is it necessary for you to force the game along?  Isn't that the player's call?  WW1 is a good set piece example - the fixed positions only fell to diplomacy.  In my case I'd consider my position a screen and move units in elsewhere.  Perhaps that what you meant with the Map idea?

Hehe well for all the bitching about "Games On Rails" I guess I'll just duck as its evil brother "Gimme My Deus Ex Machina Beyotch!" throws a rock my way.

I guess I was more under the immpression that this was a one-off point cost battle ala WH40K.  Do you have plans for some kind of worldmap and on-going campaign Margalis?  I was not aware of that at all.  

[Margalis]

No plans for a worldmap or anything like that.

I remember reading about OGRE in some old computer game magazines...never played it though.

[Pococurante]

Ah ok - I have a better view of the gamescape now.  I admit card-queue game design is a stretch for me. Bowing out now...

[DevilsAdvocate]

Also a lot of this plays into end goals - how does one side win exactly? Wiping out enemy doesn't seem good. The thing I really want to avoid is both sides sit once space out of the other side's attack range, waiting for someone to wander into that buffer territory so they can gangbang them. Something I should point out here is that in my game the turns are interspersed between the sides, it's not one side moves every piece then the other side does, which is where these problems are usually at their worst.

To answer the question, "how does one side win exactly?" seems pretty important to me. You have provided the tools but now you need the conditions and the objectives.

A good way to approach this is to look at the reason why the armies are fighting. Are they defending a castle from siege? Attempting to stop an invading force from crossing the border? Fighting over a resource that both armies seek to control? As the designer, you should set the objectives that the players will be fighting over, whether it be CTF or Siege or Fighting for the same diamond mine, come up with multiple scenarios and allow the players to pick the one they want to play.

Using blobs:

CTF - if you occupy my blob square at the end of the game, you win if I don't occupy yours. If we both have captured the others blob, it's a draw and we both lose.
Siege - One blob, I defend it, you try to take it. Same victory conditions as above, but no draw.
Diamond mine - One blob, we both try to get it, whomever occupies it at the end, wins.
Uber Artifacts - 5 blobs randomly scattered on the map, whomever controls the most at the end wins.
Bloodbath - Same size armies, whichever army is smallest at the end loses. In this scenario, the only way to win (not "draw") is to attack.
Border Crossing - If more than x number of units end the game across a line on the map, you lose.

Edit: About time limits. I think the best idea is probably to do what MTGO does and just give people a total time limit for the entire game. Rather than say each move must take 20 seconds, it is "all your moves for the entire game can't take more than 20 minutes" or something like that. It works well in MTGO and Chess. (It's basically a chess clock) It's a lot less intrusive than having a time limit on each move while still getting the job done.

I was going to say that I don't like the time limits either, but now that I think about it, its probably a good idea. If you use the Civ system of years a certain number of turns is a year, after a certain number of years, the game ends. The key to me is that I don't foresee either side just turtling up and not attacking if they have objectives to attain.

I mentioned "draws" above. If you want to get pyschological on the player, only allow wins or losses. A tie is a loss for both players. Players hate to lose so never let them accept a "draw", just a win or a loss.

[Furiously]

I like the idea of different victory conditions for both sides. Especially if they are only given limited intel on what those conditions are.

[Hoax]

That is an awesome idea for a gametype at a minimum, both sides get an objective but neither knows what the other side is after, or perhaps does not know for a variable amount of turns.

Make it so!

[Arnold]

Have you ever played Diplomacy?  It's very difficult (actually, impossible) for a player to regularly beaet an enemy without the help of another player.  Someone ends up getting screwed every turn.

[AOFanboi]

Have you ever played Diplomacy?  It's very difficult (actually, impossible) for a player to regularly beaet an enemy without the help of another player.  Someone ends up getting screwed every turn.

Yes; this is why the Gunboat variant (no negotiations) is a completely different game that regular Diplomacy. Diplomacy also has a great system for simultaneous-turn "combat" would-be game designers should look at.