Domination 1914 No Man's Land - Official Thread
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@Hepps If you swap the infantry for Italy (adding the second one I uploaded), in the D1914NML map, does it fail for you too?
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Gass seems just fine the way it is now. Changing it to eliminate the land unit requirement would make gass even stronger, and I don't know that stronger gass is what this map needs.
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@redrum When conscripts alone attack trenches alone, the two immediately stalemate, but the territory remains to the previous ownership. Does this make sense?
First of all, if I have two otherwise normal units, except that are attack/defence 0, what one assumes it would happen is that you keep making combat rounds as normal, but nobody ever hitting anyone else.
Thus, as per normal combat, if I send conscripts alone against trenches alone, I would expect still to be able to retreat, while the program doesn't allow me to, but instantly stalemates me, like if the trenches are some sort of ignorable unit that I decided to ignore.
If there should be a default behaviour upon this case, I would rather say that the program should oblige me to retreat, as it would be pointless keeping making useless combat rounds (eventually, I will have to retreat anyways, to go on with the game).
On the other hand, if I cannot retreat, it makes sense to stalemate, as otherwise I would be stuck attacking at 0 against units defending at 0, and the game would remain stuck forever in this pointless battle loop. This would be the case of offloading 1 conscript into a territory with 1 trench, if the program would not stalemate me.
However, moving from a rules standpoint to a realistic standpoint, I can see that if I am in a territory with someone else, and we both cannot hit each other, there is nothing the other side can do to avoid me staying there, while I can do nothing to remove it from the territory, thus stalemate makes sense.
However, in this case, why is the conscript not capturing the territory?
Since the conscript can enter and capture an empty territory, why this same conscript is, instead, not able to enter and capture a territory with only trenches inside, in the moment these trenches can do nothing to keep the conscript out of the territory, how can they avoid the conscript capturing it, instead?
And how can any user be expected to infer that in case of conscripts attacking trenches all this will happen:
- I will have no ability to retreat at all.
- I'm able to stay in the territory, and I'm actually forced to do so.
- The trenches are able to avoid me capturing the territory.
?
Also, should the "v3" rule that you cannot send transports alone to make a battle extended to conscripts too?
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I'll sometimes attack a defended territory with pure conscripts, for the purpose of "teleporting" my conscripts from one territory to another. For example: suppose there is a large Austrian force in Don. I am too weak to hold both Moscow and Volgograd. There is one Turkish infantry in Ryazan. My goal is to hold Volgograd only while abandoning Moscow, so I attack that 1 Ryazan infantry with all Moscow conscripts and 1 conscript from Volgograd. After one round of combat I retreat to Volgograd.
If a territory is defended with pure trenches, the above cannot be done. As you pointed out, conscripts only are stranded when attacking trenches only. But there's an easy workaround for someone familiar with how this works: simply attack the trench with conscripts + 1 unit with offensive firepower. You don't have to worry about winning the battle and getting stranded in the territory you're attempting to teleport through, because trenches have two hitpoints.
I'm not a fan of converting conscripts to v3 rules for transports. For one thing, a conscript is conceptually different from a v3 transport. V3 transports cannot be taken as casualties in combat, whereas "taken as casualty" is pretty much the entire point of the conscript! Secondly, from a game play perspective, imposing a v3 mod on the conscript would make teleporting conscripts dicey. To take the above example: if I wanted to teleport my Moscow conscripts to Volgograd, by attacking the Turkish infantry in Ryazan, now I have to send the conscripts I'm trying to teleport, + 1 infantry. If that infantry hits on the first combat round, then my conscripts are stranded in Ryazan. Depending on the game situation, that could potentially be absolutely brutal.
On the other hand, I feel that a conscript being "stranded" in a trench-only territory is annoying and unnecessary. How to resolve that problem? One way to accomplish that is this: you get to launch an attack with pure conscripts, but you are forced to retreat after one combat round. There is no legitimate game reason for someone to want to continue the combat into a second round if they're attacking with 0 offensive firepower. This solution would eliminate the option for conscripts to strand themselves in conscript/trench stalemates, without doing anything to harm conscripts' ability to teleport.
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@KurtGodel7 said in Domination 1914 No Man's Land - Official Thread:
I'll sometimes attack a defended territory with pure conscripts, for the purpose of "teleporting" my conscripts from one territory to another. For example: suppose there is a large Austrian force in Don. I am too weak to hold both Moscow and Volgograd. There is one Turkish infantry in Ryazan. My goal is to hold Volgograd only while abandoning Moscow, so I attack that 1 Ryazan infantry with all Moscow conscripts and 1 conscript from Volgograd. After one round of combat I retreat to Volgograd.
I'm sure you do, and many others do. This is a typical strategy amongst games having attack 0 fodder land units that are both slow and cheap, especially with Neutral (unowned) territories. Question is, is it an illegal strategy? I can tell you that both in Classic and in all games from Anniversary onwards ( @Panther recently highlighted it), you cannot attack with transports alone, while you can in Revised. Is this because they are transports or is this because they are attack 0? My take is that it is because they are attack 0, so, unless the mapmaker makes an exception in Notes, this should apply to any offenceless units (and this game is supposed to follow Anniversary rules).
If a territory is defended with pure trenches, the above cannot be done. As you pointed out, conscripts only are stranded when attacking trenches only. But there's an easy workaround for someone familiar with how this works: simply attack the trench with conscripts + 1 unit with offensive firepower. You don't have to worry about winning the battle and getting stranded in the territory you're attempting to teleport through, because trenches have two hitpoints.
I feel like the strategy of attacking 1 infantry with 100, or so, conscripts, and keep teleporting endlessly is at odds with what the retreat dynamic is intended for, but, on the other hand, if you can do it against 1 defending infantry alone, I cannot see a reason why you cannot do it against 1 trench alone (though I see that thanks to the 2 hit points repairable, this practically works too, the way you say). Overall, I feel all these dynamics are very weird.
I'm not a fan of converting conscripts to v3 rules for transports. For one thing, a conscript is conceptually different from a v3 transport. V3 transports cannot be taken as casualties in combat, whereas "taken as casualty" is pretty much the entire point of the conscript!
This is actually not true. V3 transports, once in combat, are just normal units, and can be taken as casualties, with the only two exceptions that they have to be taken as casualties after all other units and autodestruction if alone (which is mostly there just to save you the effort of keeping rolling dice until all transports are inevitably destroyed). People might have the tendency of seeing v3 transports as sort of "sea infrastructures", but they are not.
You probably know, or anyways you can easily test, that if you attack with a number of transports and other units and get hit in excess to the number of other units, transports will be taken as casualties for the remained, then you can retreat the surviving transports (this is just to show you that it is not true that they "cannot be taken as casualties in combat", just they have to be taken as last casualties).
However, I get what you say, and basically the current behaviour of v3 transports is substantially the same thing as saying that "V3 transports cannot be taken as casualties in combat and are autodestroyed when alone", except only for giving you a chance to retreat some of them after a failed attack, that basically virtually never happens as long as you play Low Luck.
Secondly, from a game play perspective, imposing a v3 mod on the conscript would make teleporting conscripts dicey. To take the above example: if I wanted to teleport my Moscow conscripts to Volgograd, by attacking the Turkish infantry in Ryazan, now I have to send the conscripts I'm trying to teleport, + 1 infantry. If that infantry hits on the first combat round, then my conscripts are stranded in Ryazan. Depending on the game situation, that could potentially be absolutely brutal.
Yeah, but wouldn't this make more sense with the scenario in general. Do you actually feel it is sensible that you can keep attacking the same defender for hundreds of rounds with hundreds of units, endlessly. This is particularly extreme when you have one static Neutral defender, that becomes basically a jumping element in a platformer game.
On the other hand, I feel that a conscript being "stranded" in a trench-only territory is annoying and unnecessary. How to resolve that problem? One way to accomplish that is this: you get to launch an attack with pure conscripts, but you are forced to retreat after one combat round. There is no legitimate game reason for someone to want to continue the combat into a second round if they're attacking with 0 offensive firepower. This solution would eliminate the option for conscripts to strand themselves in conscript/trench stalemates, without doing anything to harm conscripts' ability to teleport.
I totally subscribe to this "petition", but want to point out that you also need to find a solution (alternative to stalemating) to the case in which I offload 1 conscript into a territory with 1 trench, otherwise the game will end stuck forever in an endless combat loop. Even forbidding sending conscripts alone would not be a solution, unless you enforce it "per ship", as offloading from hostile sea zones I can still end up with only offloaded conscrips remaining (because the other units had their transports destroyed or retreated).
Beside totally agreeing with this point and suggestion, I also add that I definitely believe TripleA should not apply rules based on values alone. If I make an attack or defence (or both) 0 unit, and, as a mapmaker, want that unit being just a regular unit that has that attack/defence value assigned, that unit should work by regular rules, except that it always misses (unless supported or something, of course). This is how the trench should work. If it should not, that should not happen because of having attack/defence 0, but because of some specific property or options (also better documented in notes).
To sum it up, I believe that, currently, TripleA applies (extensively) the "transport stalemate in combat" behaviour (with the bug of not offering the retreat choice) any time you have attack 0 pitted against defence 0. As I see it (beside fixing the no retreat bug), this should be changed as to require not only having attack and defence 0 in total, but also all defending units being ignorable (which the trench is not, as if you have only trenches you cannot move into that territory with attack-able units and choose to ignore the trenches).
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@KurtGodel7 Anyways, I see your point on the v3 transports rules where you cannot decide to attack with them alone, that is currently a moot point as those rules are not even part of TripleA but, extending them, it should basically be decided whether:
- This rule applies specifically to that particular game unit called as "transport" (thus, it should be an unit option "cannotAttackAlone", that you can assign or not to conscripts too) (this option is not really viable, as you would need updating all v3 Rules games, assigning this option to all regular transports in those games).
- This rule applies to any units having attack vaule 0.
- This rule applies to any units that must be taken last as casualties.
Personally, I would go with looking for "attack value 0", also on the account that already back in Classic you were forbidden attacking with transports alone, there were attack 0 but normal fodder.
Then, when implementing such a behaviour, you should also have a property for not having it, when true, this property being true for v2 rules only (not for v1 nor v3+ rules).
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@Cernel said in Domination 1914 No Man's Land - Official Thread:
I'm sure you do, and many others do. This is a typical strategy amongst games having attack 0 fodder land units that are both slow and cheap, especially with Neutral (unowned) territories. Question is, is it an illegal strategy? I can tell you that both in Classic and in all games from Anniversary onwards ( @Panther recently highlighted it), you cannot attack with transports alone, while you can in Revised. Is this because they are transports or is this because they are attack 0? My take is that it is because they are attack 0, so, unless the mapmaker makes an exception in Notes, this should apply to any offenceless units (and this game is supposed to follow Anniversary rules).
I'm going to set aside the question of whether conscript teleporting should or shouldn't be legal. Instead, I'll point out that if the goal is to prevent conscript teleporting, forbidding conscript-only attacks will not prevent conscript teleporting. Such a rule will merely introduce a 1/6 chance of the teleport failing. (Because now you have to send an infantry into the teleport attack, creating a 1/6 chance of an unwanted victory on round 1 of the battle.) If the goal is to stop Russia from teleporting Moscow conscripts to Volgograd (for example), introducing a 1/6 chance of the player getting diced and having the teleport fail is not the way to accomplish that. The reason that I (and most players) play this map low luck is precisely to avoid having the outcome of the entire game decided by a single die roll. Depending on the overall game situation, a bad die roll in Ryazan (or whichever territory you're attempting to teleport through) could absolutely decide the outcome of the game. Anyone who wants die rolls to be able to decide the outcome of the game is perfectly welcome to play dice. But having the fate of a very large stack of conscripts decided by a single arbitrary die roll is not something that would be welcomed by most low luck players.
In most cases it's already possible to prevent teleporting. If the Centrals player sees a situation in which Russia might want to teleport, then good game play on the Centrals part would involve depriving potential teleport territories of any units for the conscripts to attack. Almost all the conscript teleporting I've ever done could have been prevented by the Centrals using that tactic.
I totally subscribe to this "petition", but want to point out that you also need to find a solution (alternative to stalemating) to the case in which I offload 1 conscript into a territory with 1 trench, otherwise the game will end stuck forever in an endless combat loop. Even forbidding sending conscripts alone would not be a solution, unless you enforce it "per ship", as offloading from hostile sea zones I can still end up with only offloaded conscrips remaining (because the other units had their transports destroyed or retreated).
Fair enough. My solution is that at the end of a round of combat, if the attacker has no offensive firepower, then the combat is over and the attacker is forced to retreat. Any units which cannot retreat (as for example conscripts which arrived amphibiously) automatically die.
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@KurtGodel7 said in Domination 1914 No Man's Land - Official Thread:
@Cernel said in Domination 1914 No Man's Land - Official Thread:
I totally subscribe to this "petition", but want to point out that you also need to find a solution (alternative to stalemating) to the case in which I offload 1 conscript into a territory with 1 trench, otherwise the game will end stuck forever in an endless combat loop. Even forbidding sending conscripts alone would not be a solution, unless you enforce it "per ship", as offloading from hostile sea zones I can still end up with only offloaded conscrips remaining (because the other units had their transports destroyed or retreated).
Fair enough. My solution is that at the end of a round of combat, if the attacker has no offensive firepower, then the combat is over and the attacker is forced to retreat. Any units which cannot retreat (as for example conscripts which arrived amphibiously) automatically die.
I tend to agree. I already believed this myself, but didn't say so because I was mostly curious what others would have opted for, to solve the endless loop case, and the matter is not very clear to me, as arguments can be made that, if a unit is defenceless, than it cannot avoid me staying in the same territory (though, in this case, why can it avoid me conquering the territory, then?). Another argument might be that "infinite" combat rounds are actually an approximation for meaning a very great number of them, a number that is not given as it is assumed that it would be virtually impossible to reach it, thus, as long as I can go on for infinite combat rounds without anyone hitting, then I can reach this hypothetical end point, stalemating (meaning that every time I'm attack 0 against defence 0 I should have the option to retreat or stalemate, and only stalemate if I cannot retreat).
But, if we go with infinite combat rounds being really infinite, it is obvious that if I have a unit that is exactly like an infantry, except that it is attack/defence 0/0, then normal rules should apply, thus these two infantries should keep making combat rounds without ever hitting each other, thus the attacking infantry should be simply obliged to retreat, as it cannot do anything else (which is also the explicitly state behaviour for Classic transports that happen to be alone in attack, though this can be interpreted as a "no suicide" rule, as Classic has no defence 0 units). If the infantry cannot retreat, then it makes the only sense to remove it, because, if it cannot stay in the attacked territory and it cannot go anywhere else, then it cannot stay in the game. Stalemating units that cannot retreat, while not stalemating units that can, would make no sense, because, then, an offloaded infantry could do something more than a not-offloaded one could, and losing the ability to retreat should not be something that gives you more possibilities, over having such ability.
Now the matter would be:
Is any developer going to fix the program this way?
If not, should the Notes of this game be updated with this behaviour mentioned, and the players requested to use edit mode to enforce it:At the end of a round of combat, if the attacker has no offensive power, then the combat is over and the attacker must retreat, if possible. Any units which cannot retreat (for example conscripts which arrived amphibiously) automatically die. This applies also in case all defending units have no defensive powers (that means only trenches are in the territory). However, only in the case of only transports against only transports, the attacker can decide to stalemate in the sea zone (but never in land territories), instead of retreating.
The point where I don't agree with you, instead, is that I tend to think that the v3 rules of not sending transports alone to make battle, in the first place, should apply to conscripts too (I'm sure this will add a major dice element to a game that indeed is, as I assume you know, a regular dice game, as default). However, I also think that this rule should be optional, so, if preferred, this particular game could set this "property" (if it would exist) as true (meaning you can send them alone). However, as not being a player of this game, I cannot have a personal interest in it.
@Panther I know that you are mostly interested in the official games, but just referencing in case you have any ideas about how the rules could be most consistently applied to this custom game case (that is supposed to "follow" Anniversary rules).
Also, of course, @Imbaked.
Side note, I've a game under development (270BC Wars) in which there are skirmishers and walls that are about the same things as conscripts and trenches, so all of this would be relevant for that too (as long as I don't change how things work there, of course).
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@Cernel said in Domination 1914 No Man's Land - Official Thread:
I tend to agree. I already believed this myself, but didn't say so because I was mostly curious what others would have opted for, to solve the endless loop case, and the matter is not very clear to me, as arguments can be made that, if a unit is defenceless, than it cannot avoid me staying in the same territory (though, in this case, why can it avoid me conquering the territory, then?).
There are basically three ways to resolve that issue.
- Attacker loses (my suggested method)
- Stalemate (the current method)
- Attacker wins
The problem with option 3) is that if the attacker wins, that means that a conscript just killed something it's incapable of killing. A unit which lacks any offensive firepower at all shouldn't be able to go around killing trenches. Allowing a territory to be "stalemated" is not desirable, and serves no game play purpose. So that leaves you with option 1.
Now the matter would be:
Is any developer going to fix the program this way?
If not, should the Notes of this game be updated with this behaviour mentioned, and the players requested to use edit mode to enforce it:This would be a reasonable adjustment to the game notes, assuming that there's no developer available to fix this.
The point where I don't agree with you, instead, is that I tend to think that the v3 rules of not sending transports alone to make battle, in the first place, should apply to conscripts too (I'm sure this will add a major dice element to a game that indeed is, as I assume you know, a regular dice game, as default).
The larger the map the longer it takes to play, and therefore the larger the impact of getting diced. If you lose a game because of dice in a game that only took you 1 hour to play, that's only 1% as bad as losing a game to dice in a game which lasted 100 hours. This may be why the overwhelming majority of Domination 1914 NML players play the game with low luck.
The map already contains a larger luck-based element than a typical low luck map, due to the way the tech system works. The negative of the increased luck-based element is more than offset by the positive of the added depth and richness that tech system brings. Imposing a 1/6 chance of a conscript teleport failing would add another luck-based element to the game, and the negative of that would not be offset by any positive. The change would not improve the game play in any way. Virtually all the conscript teleporting I've done or seen done can be prevented by good game play. It's much better for things to be decided by game play, than it is to try to prevent them by making them dicey.
However, as not being a player of this game, I cannot have a personal interest in it.
Maybe it's time you changed that! This is hands-down the best map I've ever played. If you want to get started, I'd be happy to be your partner.
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@KurtGodel7 said in Domination 1914 No Man's Land - Official Thread:
- Attacker wins
The problem with option 3) is that if the attacker wins, that means that a conscript just killed something it's incapable of killing. A unit which lacks any offensive firepower at all shouldn't be able to go around killing trenches.
This would be viable only if TripleA would have an option for declaring a units specifically as "destroyed if alone", and assigning such option to the trench unit. This would both imply that you can destroy trenches alone by sending conscripts alone and you can never strafe trenches.
Hovever, this would be a specific and deliberate game change, that is currently not supported by TripleA.
Is everyone fine with the game dynamic that an enemy territory with only 1 trench in it is basically a jumping platform for infinite teleporting at absolutely no cost, as long as you send an offensive power in between of 1 and 6 (like sending up to 6 infantries and infinite conscripts, for 1 round then retreat)?
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@KurtGodel7 said in Domination 1914 No Man's Land - Official Thread:
If a territory is defended with pure trenches, the above cannot be done. As you pointed out, conscripts only are stranded when attacking trenches only. But there's an easy workaround for someone familiar with how this works: simply attack the trench with conscripts + 1 unit with offensive firepower. You don't have to worry about winning the battle and getting stranded in the territory you're attempting to teleport through, because trenches have two hitpoints.
Actually, no, if by "pure trenches" you mean trenches alone. As you can test, if you attack a territory with 1 trench and no other units using 1 infantry, the trench is immediately removed, and you are unable to retreat. So, either for stalemate, if sending all conscripts, or auto destruction, if sending anything else than conscripts (doesn't matter if together with conscripts), you can never strafe trenches alone.
If the trenches are not alone, then you can strafe with only conscripts, so I don't get where you are getting here. That infantry, or whatever, added to a conscript attacking stack, will avoid you stalemating against only trenches, that's right, but will cause all trenches being instantly removed, instead, so, either ways, you cannot retreat.
So, I'm really not understanding if I'm missing something here, or what?
Anyways, I wonder if the players of this map are also aware that:
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The retreat before stalemate is bugged, so, if extending the stalemate to conscripts alone attacking trenches alone, then you should be able to strafe, in this case (the bug is that the engine stalemates you before giving you the option to retreat).
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The retreat before auto removal units is bugged, if it happens after the first round of combat, so, if extending the auto removal to anything but conscripts alone attacking trenches alone, the defender should be able to assign hits so to leave only trenches surviving, and, this way, negating the attacker the option to retreat (the bug is that TripleA doesn't allow you pulling this tactic, or should I say trick, offering retreat in face of only trenches, as long as it is not going to be a stalemate and it happens after the first round of combat).
This game really needs having all the matters involving offence or defence 0, or both, units fully clarified in its notes, as I guess right now its players are just going with what the engine does (are they?), which also means they are going with a couple bugs at least. I believe all matters that need to be clarified, and documented in this game's notes (because the referring rulebook is just talking about transports, that are the only offence or defence 0 units, there), are the following ones:
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Is the transport rule that defence 0 units alone are auto destroyed applying to trenches alone too? If yes, then the notes should better inform the players that they can never retreat against trenches alone, hence the trick of taking out the other units to avoid your opponent being able to retreat (the engine is bugged here, so they may need to edit).
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Is the transport rule that offence 0 alone against defence 0 alone allows stalemating applying to conscripts alone against trenches alone too? If yes, the notes should better inform the player that they can always retreat before stalemating, for example you can strafe trenches only with conscripts only, while the program doesn't allow you to, forcing stalemate (the engine is bugged here, so they may need to edit).
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If stalemated, should the territory be conquered by the attacking units? The behaviour of the program here is that the territory isn't conquered, but I don't believe anybody can know about this aside from testing, so that's just a thing that needs to be decided. While it would be weird having a territory belonging to a different owner then the owner of the trenches in it, I tend to think that if something cannot stop you from staying in a territory, it should not stop you from conquering the same (also think about convoy centres, even though this is not the case of this game).
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Is the transport rule that offence 0 cannot attack alone applying to conscripts too? If yes, then the notes should better inform the player that this rules exist both for transport and conscripts, the same way, because this is a totally unsupported element.
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@Cernel And, of course, if the answer to point 2 would be a no, it would be needed to sort out what to do when you cannot retreat (as said, I definitely believe the attacking units should be removed from the game), and document it (and preferably having the program actually working that way). In this same case, it would also be good obliging retreat, but not necessary.
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@Cernel Let me also point out that I dislike the "correct" behaviour of negating the possibility of retreating before auto destroying v3+ transports or v5 AA guns (apparently, all defence 0 units, for TripleA, that is transports and trenches, in this game), and actually prefer the current TripleA bugged behaviour, that doesn't allow you to pull the trick of saving the worst units to impede retreat, as that seems extremely absurd to me, but I didn't write "that" rulebook. So, there, I'm just talking about what is what, not what I prefer.
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Conscript and trench cannot take on each other alone due to 0/0 stats and stalemate makes sense in game perspective also most likely retreat is blockaded because this battle normally would never end.
Realistically of course the conscript should take on the territory and the trench should not be destroyed instead should turn into invader's trench.
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@Schulz said in Domination 1914 No Man's Land - Official Thread:
Realistically of course the conscript should take on the territory and the trench should not be destroyed instead should turn into invader's trench.
Capturing trenches is disputable, @Schulz. Since trenches are borderline fortifications, they are realistically really only useful if some enemy is attacking from the same border whence you came, and really only from the same direction, as well, thus you almost never have use for trenches you captured, aside from converting them to face in the opposite direction, and, in this case, they would be defending the territory whence you came, not the one where the trenches were captured.
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@Cernel That is assuming the trench or fortification is one thing or facing a specific border... however in Triple A these units automatically function regardless of the direction or directions of the attacker... thereby giving the impression that whatever they are they face all directions from a (presumably) highly defensible position within the territory... thus capturing it should make it as useful to the invading army as was to the original owner.
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@Cernel said in Domination 1914 No Man's Land - Official Thread:
@KurtGodel7 said in Domination 1914 No Man's Land - Official Thread:
If a territory is defended with pure trenches, the above cannot be done. As you pointed out, conscripts only are stranded when attacking trenches only. But there's an easy workaround for someone familiar with how this works: simply attack the trench with conscripts + 1 unit with offensive firepower. You don't have to worry about winning the battle and getting stranded in the territory you're attempting to teleport through, because trenches have two hitpoints.
Actually, no, if by "pure trenches" you mean trenches alone. As you can test, if you attack a territory with 1 trench and no other units using 1 infantry, the trench is immediately removed, and you are unable to retreat. So, either for stalemate, if sending all conscripts, or auto destruction, if sending anything else than conscripts (doesn't matter if together with conscripts), you can never strafe trenches alone.
If the trenches are not alone, then you can strafe with only conscripts, so I don't get where you are getting here. That infantry, or whatever, added to a conscript attacking stack, will avoid you stalemating against only trenches, that's right, but will cause all trenches being instantly removed, instead, so, either ways, you cannot retreat.
So, I'm really not understanding if I'm missing something here, or what?
Anyways, I wonder if the players of this map are also aware that:
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The retreat before stalemate is bugged, so, if extending the stalemate to conscripts alone attacking trenches alone, then you should be able to strafe, in this case (the bug is that the engine stalemates you before giving you the option to retreat).
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The retreat before auto removal units is bugged, if it happens after the first round of combat, so, if extending the auto removal to anything but conscripts alone attacking trenches alone, the defender should be able to assign hits so to leave only trenches surviving, and, this way, negating the attacker the option to retreat (the bug is that TripleA doesn't allow you pulling this tactic, or should I say trick, offering retreat in face of only trenches, as long as it is not going to be a stalemate and it happens after the first round of combat).
This game really needs having all the matters involving offence or defence 0, or both, units fully clarified in its notes, as I guess right now its players are just going with what the engine does (are they?), which also means they are going with a couple bugs at least. I believe all matters that need to be clarified, and documented in this game's notes (because the referring rulebook is just talking about transports, that are the only offence or defence 0 units, there), are the following ones:
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Is the transport rule that defence 0 units alone are auto destroyed applying to trenches alone too? If yes, then the notes should better inform the players that they can never retreat against trenches alone, hence the trick of taking out the other units to avoid your opponent being able to retreat (the engine is bugged here, so they may need to edit).
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Is the transport rule that offence 0 alone against defence 0 alone allows stalemating applying to conscripts alone against trenches alone too? If yes, the notes should better inform the player that they can always retreat before stalemating, for example you can strafe trenches only with conscripts only, while the program doesn't allow you to, forcing stalemate (the engine is bugged here, so they may need to edit).
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If stalemated, should the territory be conquered by the attacking units? The behaviour of the program here is that the territory isn't conquered, but I don't believe anybody can know about this aside from testing, so that's just a thing that needs to be decided. While it would be weird having a territory belonging to a different owner then the owner of the trenches in it, I tend to think that if something cannot stop you from staying in a territory, it should not stop you from conquering the same (also think about convoy centres, even though this is not the case of this game).
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Is the transport rule that offence 0 cannot attack alone applying to conscripts too? If yes, then the notes should better inform the player that this rules exist both for transport and conscripts, the same way, because this is a totally unsupported element.
I was tired when I wrote my earlier post, and therefore made an error. It's true that if 1 infantry attacks a lone trench, the outcome is an automatic win for the infantry (no option to retreat). But, if the owner of the trench has discovered bunkers tech, that trench now defends on a 1. This means that the attacker no longer gets an automatic victory against a lone trench, but instead must fight the lone trench until it is destroyed or until the attacker retreats or is destroyed. The "retreats" part of that means that lone enemy trenches can be used to teleport infantry--once the enemy has discovered bunkers tech, that is.
An argument could be made that an attacker with zero firepower should be treated differently than a defender with zero firepower. (In fact, that's how the engine is currently set up.) The argument here being that if the defender has zero firepower, and if an attacker with at least a little offensive firepower shows up, there is nothing the defender can do to prevent all his units from being killed eventually. So, you may as well hurry that process along and count all defender units automatically destroyed. But, if I as the attacker show up with zero firepower, there is something I can do to keep all my units from being killed: I can retreat. It would not make sense for the engine to automatically kill off all my units in that instance, because the underlying assumption being made is that I, as the attacker, would want to keep attacking the territory until all my units were dead. That assumption is not logical. I can't think of any circumstance in which an attacker, while making a good faith effort to win the game, would want his firepower 0 units to keep attacking until they were all dead.
Bearing the above in mind, I'd like to reiterate my earlier suggestion. If at the end of a combat round the attacker has no offensive firepower, the attacker should be forced to retreat. Any units which cannot retreat are automatically killed.
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@Cernel @KurtGodel7 @Hepps Given that in A&A v3+ rules when each side only has transports left which have no attack/defense value they are allowed to retreat, I think that should probably extend to any "stalemate" situation where both sides have no attack/defense power left. So I think the minimum change here is instead of forcing them to stay in the territory they should be offered the choice to retreat this also makes the behavior more consistent for the other scenarios discussed around using retreat to move units (which while gamey is how things work).
Would you agree with that and are there any situations you can think of that a group attackers with 0 attack power against a group of defenders with 0 attack power should not be offered the choice to retreat?
The change to TripleA would just be to add a retreat option if the stalemate is detected and if there are valid retreat paths then the user can retreat otherwise they will just stay in the territory like they do today.
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@redrum said in Domination 1914 No Man's Land - Official Thread:
Would you agree with that and are there any situations you can think of that a group attackers with 0 attack power against a group of defenders with 0 attack power should not be offered the choice to retreat?
There are two rules changes WRT this issue that I'd like to see.
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If there is an attacker (0 firepower) and a defender (0 firepower), the attacker should be allowed the option to retreat.
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If the attacker has 0 firepower, the attacker should be forced to retreat at the end of the combat round. (To prevent conscripts and enemy trenches hanging out in the same territory as is currently the case.)
If you want to make one or the other of these changes that's 100% fine with me. Both changes together would be ideal, but either change alone would be an improvement. In answer to your question, there is never a situation in which an attack 0 group should be denied the option to retreat.
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@redrum Makes sense.
Since almost everything is on the attacker it makes sense that the prompt would be immediate and mandatory for the attacker as soon as there is no offensive capability left in an attacking force.
