Property "Abandoned Territories May Be Taken Over Immediately"

redrum

Wondering if anyone knows what this property is for and why you'd want it true/false: "Abandoned Territories May Be Taken Over Immediately"

Here is the POS2 XML:

    <!-- Any territory abandoned may be taken over by the remaining units on the same turn it was abandoned on. Also includes if a territory is attacked and both all the attackers and all defenders die, then any other player with combat units will take over the territory. -->
    <property name="Abandoned Territories May Be Taken Over Immediately" value="false" editable="false">
      <boolean/>
    </property>

I did a quick map repo search and looked like only caribbean_trade_war has it set to true. @Frostion any insight?

Cernel

@redrum The property was made back then when limited combat rounds were made (to support the never actually made "official" WW1 game), but, of course, it impacts on politics games too. It was made either by veqryn or under his supervision.

It allows units to conquer territories during someone else turn, if the territory is owned by an enemy of such units but no hostile units are in it (anymore).

What I don't know, and would be curious about, and would be nice to document is who's getting the territory in case of multiple not-turn units present in a to-them hostile territory, where all hostile units are destroyed. I don't think there is a way to know or decide who is getting the territory.

For example, this property needs to clarify what should happen if:

A is at war with B and C.
B and C are allied.
Units of A, B and C are in a territory owned by A.
The territory is originally owned by A (or by neutral).
During the turn of A, all units of A are destroyed (while attacking).

What should happen, is that either B or C immediately gets ownership of the territory, during the turn of A, but I don't think there is a way to actually sort out who's getting it.

redrum

@Cernel Ok, thanks for the description. I kind of wonder if you have limited combat or politics when you wouldn't want this to be true. As otherwise, it would seem odd for a territory to be owned by the player with no units left and have enemy units sitting in it. Though I guess you could argue that if you stick to more strict rules that you can only capture territories during your turn then maybe you'd want it false.

I glanced at the code and it appears if there are more than 1 defender then which ever has the greatest number of units get control. Which is probably reasonable, either that or highest TUV of units I'd say.

wc_sumpton

@Cernel
If you change this option to true and have limited battle rounds with air units, then the game can throw a 'Should not be possible to have a normal battle in: <territory> and have abandoned or only bombing there too.' if the only attacking unit (unit left over by the defender) is air.

If it is left to false then the territory is not changed until the end of a players turn.

Cheers...

Frostion

@redrum I think @Cernel described it as it is.

I am not sure what the feature is intended for originally. But I know that I have been using it and setting either true or false to get stuff on my maps to work. I think in AoT the nukes, and how they work, are pretty dependent on the feature. The nukes are captured when thrown at enemies (turns into a mushroomcloud), then replaced by trigger by a radiation combat unit owned by player "nature", and nature has combat rounds after every players endTurn, so that nature's radiation tries to kill present units and can even capture the territory. Mind you that the radiation was just placed there by trigger, and had no combat move, which is needed for capturing territories under normal circumstances (as I remember). So I think "Abandoned territories may be taken over immediately" needs to be true in AoT.

I have no access to my computer or TripleA for a few days, so cant look at XML. But this is how I remember it all to work. I can't remember if I use it in other maps

Cernel

@redrum Personally, I don't think I would ever set that option true, unless maybe in a game with no politics and 2 powers only (like Civil War). Conquering territories when it is not your turn may make for weird situations, especially the fact that being declared war upon may benefit you immediately (and enhance your movement in your next turn).

I have to say that I'm really unconfortable with how limited battle rounds work in TripleA, in that you keep switching attacking positions regardless of the territory ownership (the territory owner, and its allies, should rather either always be the defender or able to skip attacking in their own territories), so that is really something that I would want to change, if I were to make a map with limited combat rounds (I doubt I would want to seriously use limited combat rounds with the current behaviour, unless it is a map like War of the Relics, where there is no difference between attack and defence). I'm actually a potential fan of the concept of limiting battle rounds, but I really feel the way it is is too dumbed down for such a dynamic.

I've still three questions:

All units? It should be at least limited to accounting only the units able to conquer territories, thus no air, and, in this case, there is the question whether infrastructures should be able to (as currently the engine has contradictory behaviours, probably because this was never deliberated).
How about if all remaining units (hostile to the territory owner) are air units: will the territory not be taken over.
How about if multiple defenders have the same number of units, in any case?

Even tho I think I would just not use this option, my suggestion would be either changing the behaviour as to give the territory to the player that is up next or having a prompt to select who's getting it.

Rather, I would have a property that, if true, make you conquer uncontested enemy territories before your Combat Movement phase, so that you can, then, move like you always owned them.

In any case, this should be documented in pos2.

redrum

@Cernel Yeah, limited combat rounds is in my mind still kind of a 'beta' feature that needs some fixes and further improvements. I think Civil War does it fairly well but it is a simpler model from the fact it only has 2 players and no air units. I hope to make some improvements to it as I implement it in PoP.

I think you could argue for the territory owner to be the attacker (like now), the defender, or have the option to not fight at all (kind of like prompt whether to attack subs). This is something I'm thinking about and needs to be considered as unit types are defined and with the current system you mostly need to keep attack/defense values similar to avoid the territory owner as the attacker having to often retreat.

It appears kind of inconsistent from what I can tell from the code. If there is a battle and the 'defender' wins then it appears to default first to the 'defender' player which when the 'attacker' owns the territory, is then the enemy player with the most units (counting ALL units). If after the battle the 'defender' wins but has no non-infra units left then it looks for the enemy player of the 'attacker' that has the most non-infra units (an enemy player must have at least 1 non-infra to capture the territory). If there is no battle and its abandoned by the current player who owns it, then it appears to only be captured if an enemy player has at least 1 non-infra, non-air unit. But if that condition is met and there are multiple enemy players then it determines who captures it by the enemy player with the most units (counting ALL units including infra & air). This is what I gather from reading through the code and it would need to be tested to verify that is actually what happens.
If there is a battle, it appears that even if only air units remain then it would be captured from what I can tell. If there isn't a battle then only air units wouldn't capture it. That being said, I think the only way defending air units could be in the non-owned territory is if you allow air units to land in non-owned territories (dragons, etc). Probably needs changed.
No clear tie breaker. It calculates the number of units for each player then iterates through those players to see which has the most units only switching to the next player if it has more than the max calculated so far. Doesn't appear to be a consistent ordering of the players. Probably needs changed.

Cernel

@redrum If you are going to refine the limited combat rounds system, I think that can be raised to a good level by a couple of simple tweaks, leaving the rest as it is:

You can skip (prompt) attacking in a territory that is owned by you or by a player in an archetype Allied relationship with you, but you must attack if you combat moved anything into it.
Adding a "cannotAttack" unit option that, if set true, never allows the unit to be part of an attack force, in any case (units that cannot combat move would be unable too).

I think the addition of the two features above, on their own, would definitely bring the system to a neat level. I would just not worry much about the property at this topic, as I would just keep it false.

Another refinement may be a modifier for defence if you are defending in a territory not in a Allied relationship with you, but this would be a substantial bump in complexity, and arguably not strongly needed.

redrum

@Cernel Interesting ideas.

Why must you attack if you combat move additional units into it? Couldn't you just be reinforcing the defenses?
Examples on how this could be used? Are you imagining buildings like walls/castles/etc that wouldn't be included if you chose to attack? I would probably keep cannot combat move separate and just influence being able to move during combat and not whether they can be part of an attack especially if this new option was added.

Cernel

@redrum

Just saves a prompt, as if you want to reinforce, you should do it in non combat. But I guess since the engine illegally allows you to "redeploy" during combat move, I guess that would be consistent.
I disagree with units being unable to move during combat move, in general, and would prefer not using that option in a custom map ever. The main reason is that, for general consistency, I believe I should be able to Combat Move units not intended to be sent into battle as part of combined combat operations. For example, I should be able to load a AA gun on a transport, send the transport in a sea battle, and then offload the AA gun into a friendly territory, or load 1 infantry and 1 AA gun into a transport, then offload the infantry into combat and retain the AA gun on board. All such moves are forbidden in the basic rulesets, and I believe this restriction is based on nothing, thus dumb (also since both moves would be legal if the AA gun is already on board). If a unit is not meant to be sent into battle, I'd rather set its attack stack limit to 0 (this is what I did with the general of a Napoleonic Empires variant of mine).