ATLANTISv2 atl-design-digest #63 From: csd@microplex.com (Christian Daudt) Date: Sat, 02 Dec 1995 00:00:00 +0000 Errors to csd@microplex.com Now there should be a digest whenever (a) there are 10 emails or (b) whenever there is an email waiting for more than 48 hours for a digest to be completed. So don't get worried if the digest has only 1 or 2 emails, that just means the list has been slow. (I hope it works) If you want previous versions, they are available via WWW at http://www.microplex.com/~csd/atlantisv2/ ---------------------------------------------------------- From: Michael Omotayo Akinde <strategy@iesd.auc.dk> Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1995 17:39:42 +0100 Subject: Atlantis Design - Swords, Chain mail, and the like. (Long) Even though I'm not all that interested in playing Atlantis 3.0, game design is one of those things I AM very interested in. Being a very keen wargames player, I'm of course mostly focused on strategy and tactics. WEAPONRY ---------- IMO, the interplay of armour and weapons in Atlantis doesn't work at all well. Simply because chain armour isn't worth building in large amounts, (considering that you can get a sword for the same price) and platemails are far too costly to arm many troops with - you hardly ever see any armoured troops in Atlantis. The weakness is that chain armour only gives a percentage probability of surviving a blow - while a sword both increases your ability to kill - it also decreases your chance of getting hit. Also, armour is negated by the crossbow. Throughout this game, during which I have had, and still have huge amounts of troops, and have produced large amounts of weaponry - it has never crossed my mind to even think of building armour. (Except for VERY special units.) My suggestion: Items Advantages Sword Bestows a +2 Attack Skill in combat. Chain armour Bestows a +2 Defense skill in combat. Plate mail Bestows a +4 Defense skill in combat. Of course this leaves the question of what effect Crossbows and Longbows have. IMO, crossbows should be left as they are. They'd still be lethal against armour - but now it would also be necesarry for them to be so. Longbows would naturally suffer from this - but this would not be that much of a problem if Longbows were to shoot at an enemy skill level of 1, rather than the present 2. The Longbows would be devastating against rabble - which is also quite realistic. TACTICS --------- I find myself agreeing with the guy in the times who complained about the use of tactics. It is rather silly that there should be as much difference between a Tac 4 and 5 leader, as there is between a Tac 1 and 5. I think it would be more reasonable if say - (staying with the free attack thing, as it is so simple) the chance of each man getting a free attack is dependent on the tactics difference between the two leaders. I.e. A Level 5 leader who attacks a Level 4 leader would only have 1/5 of his force getting a free attack, while A level 5 leader attacking a Level 1 leader would have 4/5ths of his force getting a free attack. Easy to implement, and IMO much more relaistic. MAGIC ---------- One of the things which sorely dissappoint me with this game is that there is a very big lack of defensive spells. Yes, we do have fireflash and cause fear, but they are, ultimately, still offensive in use. Why is there no way to counter magic with other magicians? This is possibly in all standard fantasy systems I've played, but I've yet to see anything it's like in this game. Also the prodigious offensive power of mages is one of the things which unbalance the game - in that you might just as well have 1 war, 1 trade and infinite mage factions. If I was restarting in Atlantis 3.0, I'd definitely know what I'd insist on. Mages are nothing in this game - apart from being yet another weapon for the War factions to use. This is a shame. ---------- I've tried to come with constructive criticism, make of it what you will. I'll comment further after I have read the ATl 3.0 rules. :-) Regards, The Legate. ---------------------------------------------------------- From: "Jeff Schmidt" <hent0020@gold.tc.umn.edu> Subject: Atlantis : Combat and Tactics issues (long) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 95 18:10:40 -0600 Several interesting points have been raised recently about weaponry and armor in Atlantis; I have several points I would like to raise about COM and TAC skill. * Terrain has little impact in the game Basically all terrain does in Atl2.0 is affect movement, production types, and I assume skew native population type (with climate). Why not have terrain affect combat and tactics? Door-to-door melee in a city is a far sight different than open skirmishes in a plain! * How this could affect COM The last month of COM study could determine the unit's preferred terrain. Training in a city would flag the unit as city-trained, then training in a forest would switch them to forest-trained. Any kind of mixing already trained troops would revert them to a 'neutral' status, and maxed-out COM units could acquire new preferred terrains with a month of training that would not increase skill, of course, just switch the preferrence. I don't think the preferrence need drastically affect combat, just give a slight overall edge to more 'comfortable' troops. For example, if a battle occurs in a forest with one unit forest-trained and the other city-trained, the forest-trained unit would perhaps have a higher percentage to land blows each round (say, 60% instead of 50%). Two forest-trained units fighting in a forest would duke it out as normal; neither side would have an advantage. This preference should not affect the chance of killing. * How this could affect TAC The preferred terrain flag could work similarly with TAC. However, as TAC is more a mental skill (COM more physical), the location of the training unit need not matter -- the terrain that is preferred could be set on each STUDY TAC command, and could be switched just like COM, in one month of study. I am a big proponent of some type of scaled TAC comparison, as has been proposed in the past, so any advantage given to a preference in TAC would have to be weighted in with the TAC vs. TAC scaled chart. Off the top of my head, a possible (perhaps even already suggested) chart: TAC Diff. Effect --------- ------------------------------------------------------ 0 proceed with rounds as normal 1 slight advantage: 10% of force gain free attack 2 minor advantage: 25% of force gain free attack 3 significant advantage: 50% of force gain free attack 4 major advantage: 75% of force gain free attack 5+ overwhelming advantage: 100% of force gain free attack With a scaled system similar to this, a TAC terrain advantage could simply give the advantaged side a +1 bonus without unbalancing the combat system (and I think the current TAC system does unbalance things -- results of TAC 5 vs TAC 4 should not equal that of TAC 5 vs TAC 0!). As a software developer myself, I don't think either of these two systems would be terribly difficult to implement (although I do not know the Atlantis code, so I could be wrong), and feel that the added flavor would benefit the game. Comments welcome! Jeff +-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+ | Jeff Schmidt | "We learn from history that we do not learn | | hent0020@gold.tc.umn.edu | from history." | | jschmidt@datamap.mn.org | Hegel | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+ ---------------------------------------------------------- From: vjg@cbnea.att.com Original-From: v.guinto Date: 30 Nov 1995 10:46 EST Subject: re: Atlantis Design M. Inman wrote: >I would suggest either: (1) Allow studying units to >share silver the same way they do for maintenance, or >(2) have a SCHOLARSHIP flag, whereby a unit can set >itself up to automatically disburse funds to units >who require them for STUDYing. The flag adds complication >but would enable players who like the current system >to continue as they have. I view not sharing silver for studying as a good thing. A1 isn't a perfect comparison, as studying most skills was free in that game, but in A1 I had many turns where I miscalculated something, and had units that successfully studied a skill, only to starve to death in the maintenance phase of the same turn. This would be the potential problem of automatically sharing silver for studying. If something goes wrong in your plans, you spend silver for studying that you needed later for maintenance. The game processes STUDY commands before it assesses maintenance costs, so you could have units starve due to a simple error when you wrote your orders. I would, on the other hand, accept the idea of a SCHOLARSHIP or even better, a SHARE flag, as Mr. Inman suggested. It allows you to assess the risks involved and make decisions that you're comfortable with. And it would be a logistical boon for trade factions! While we're talking about these topics, I'd like to go back several months to re-mention my desire to have something along the lines of an ALLOW or ACCEPT command. It would let a faction grant special, localized privileges to another faction without needing to declare the other faction allied or friendly. Limit the range of the command to either a single region or a single unit (and add a target unit number). Thus, ALLOW <unit> would let the faction that owns the unit give things to your units, but only in the region in which the <unit> is located (or even more restrictively, only the specified unit, or even only the specified unit could give things only to the unit that issued the order). This command should not have any effect on taxing or combat. Reason: I feel very uncomfortable granting another faction broad privileges in all my regions for an entire turn just because I want to buy a half dozen herbs from them. ALLOW would fix this concern of mine. The way it is now, you treat everybody that you deal with as if you had known them all your life - let them stick tribesmen into your orc combat units, tax ALL your regions as much as they want, etc., just to buy a single item! You cannot ALWAYS trust EVERYBODY you do business with that much. I think I will make use of the @ORDER thing, especially with the selectable order templates. The current order template, as many people have already said, doesn't contain enough information to actually write orders using it. Should we send spell suggestions to the GM privately? Does he want to see them? I have a couple ideas myself. -Vince Guinto vjg@cbnea.att.com ---------------------------------------------------------- From: tim.hruby@his.com (Tim Hruby) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 21:42:43 Subject: Atlantis Design: Sharing among units > Having played for about 30 turns now, I think I can safely say that the > single biggest pointless pain in writing my orders comes from having to > disburse funds to my studying units. > > I would suggest either: (1) Allow studying units to share silver the same > way they do for maintenance, or (2) have a SCHOLARSHIP flag, whereby a > unit can set itself up to automatically disburse funds to units who > require them for STUDYing. The flag adds complication but would enable > players who like the current system to continue as they have. > > To a lesser degree, the same goes for exchange of wood, iron and other > raw materials when BUILDing or PRODUCing something, I suppose to fit > these cases SCHOLARSHIP could instead be called SHARE, but really > shifting the silver around is the big problem. > > It doesn't affect the play of the game one way or the other, and it would > make order entry MUCH simpler (for me :), I would call that a potential > major improvement. I heartily second this, including sharing for the Build/Produce orders (being a Trade faction, I can attest to the tedium in coordinating these transfers as well). Tim Hruby ---------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 1 Dec 1995 12:37:28 +0100 (MET) From: Michael Akinde <strategy@iesd.auc.dk> Subject: Re: Atlantis : Combat and Tactics issues (long) > Several interesting points have been raised recently about weaponry and armor in > Atlantis; I have several points I would like to raise about COM and TAC skill. > * Terrain has little impact in the game [...Snip...] > * How this could affect COM [...Snip...] > * How this could affect TAC [...Snip...] I think these comments are very relevant - in that Atlantis is a war game - I don't know if this was meant to be the case (I don't think so) - but the way it has been made, it will always end in Mega-wars between Mega-alliances. And insofar as it is a wargame - there isn't very much wargaming to be done - everything is but a matter of bringing large forces to slug it out. Crushing defeats almost never occur - recruiting and recovering from defeats takes hardly any time, and is easy. All you need is a surviving Level 5 tactician and some Combat 3 leaders. Wars become wars of attrition, rather than being something like real warfare of the ATlantis "time period". Small touches like the ones Jeff mention, easy to implement (IMO), add much to the game. At least the warmaking part of it. Regards, The Legate Up