Another ways to solve huge stack issue

Schulz

I had opened a similar topic in the past but forum requested me not replying agains because it was old threat. I've wanted to discuss it in more detailed

Firstly it is so sad for me that really no one compalins about huge stack issues especially in WW1 maps. . I have been really seeking the best way without rendering strategic options. There are some ways but they came with some cons ufortunately. Maybe mixing up could be good idea too.

Upkeep: The simplest way but problem is how to determine the best rates of units considering their costs? So 1 upkeep would be ridiculous for conscript or having same upkeep for battleship and infantry, also its problematic assisting upkeep to naval and immobile units since you can't destroy them, they will continue draining resources.
Limiting stacks per territory: It would cripple a lot of strategic options.
Decreasing overall incomes or increasing costs: Not totally remove stack issue
Setting max TUV or unit quantitiy limit and making it dependent of total Income: Looks the most effective and fair way but the downside it this kind of codes does not exist
Automatically spawning gases from capitals in every round: A decent way but not definitely the best.
Decreasing cost of gas: In the old version of NML even fully upgraded gas (working women+mustard) provides less firepower than defensive strenght of infantry in terms of pus. I mean for example 1 Inf+4 gas has only %10 chance to take on 5 infantry which are the same cost plus you can use gases only one time and you need to research mustard+working women! Even if we make gases not dependent of ground units, 5 gases becomes only %15 chance against 5 Infantry! Also if target stack is bigger for example 15 infantry. You need 18 gases.

Ignoring their high mobility, it show that how underpowered/less cost effective them! Even 3 is expensive for full researched gas let alone 3.5 (it was just the last nail in the coffin for them). I would make their final cost 2.5. With that cost 6 gas still have zero chance against 5 infantry without mustard tech since 6 gas cost becomes equal to 5 infantyr in this scenario.

They only start outperform infanty only when making their cost 2.5 adding mustard tech and making independent from ground support mathematically.

redrum

@Schulz Most of these are the standard approaches though I don't think gas really is the answer. If you give free gas or make them stronger than you just replace inf stacks with gas stacks.

The best solutions IMO are:

Upkeep or use of a sort of manpower resource (like Civil War)
Limit stacks per territory or make counter units that hit all or lots of units in the same territory to force players to spread out their stacks
Limited combat rounds so battles are less all or nothing and you get more skirmishes

Schulz

I like upkeep but I can't really figure out the best upkeep rates for every single units. It is a bit problematic for immobile and and naval units.

alkexr

Reasons why stacking is a good strategy:

bigger stacks can trade TUV much more favourably than smaller stacks
the only thing that can counter a large stack is another large stack
you can't lose your capital, so a large stack needs to be stopped somehow, period

So options to adress the issue at the root causes:

reduce the impact of stack size on TUV swing. For example, give the first 10 units +1 power, +0 for the next 10, -1 for the 10 after that, etc. This way, adding further units would have less and less impact.
as per 2. by @redrum, think of a way to actively punish a large stack with something other than a large stack
remove capitals from the game. On a large enough map, there would be no need to stop a large stack. Sure, it will take whichever one single territory it wants, but you can take everything else.

Schulz

Well seems there are more way than I though, still not sure which one would be the best.

Are there any example of anti-stack units in maps?

redrum

@alkexr Good points.

And yeah your first option is kind of the opposite of my #2 where instead of having units with increased power against a large stack you would say have some kind of power penalty for increasing numbers of units in a stack. Not sure there is anyway to implement that at the moment though.

Removing capitals can make large stacks less necessary but from what I've seen, you still end up with them just a bit more regional. But even without capitals there are often "key territories" which you end up building stacks around anyways.

@Schulz Yes. The most common is the traditional AA gun as it tries to minimize the impact of attacking with lots of planes into a territory. Essentially, any unit that has some sort of unlimited targeted attack/defense or unlimited negative support is a form of anti-stack. CrazyG's WWI map has a "Gas" unit which gives all enemy infantry -2 defense so if you try to make large infantry stacks then I can use a single "gas" unit to make 10s-100s of units much weaker. Civil War has an artillery unit that hits up to 12 units so is a very strong counter vs large stacks.

Two other options are:

Some form of supply where moving a large army far from your supply would be very expensive
Some form of fuel system where at some point you don't have enough resources to move your units around if you have too many or use that resource to buy too many.

Some of it boils down to if you want to limit total number of units or just focus on limiting large stacks.

alkexr

@redrum said in Another ways to solve huge stack issue:

have some kind of power penalty for increasing numbers of units in a stack. Not sure there is anyway to implement that at the moment though.

Place an invisible infrastructure unit on every territory which gives 10x +1, 10x +0, 10x -1 etc. support of the same support type to all units, allied and enemy. Although right now maybe it wouldn't work for enemy, since negatives would be prioritized first, if I understand support attachments correctly. Looks possible to work around but 8/10 hacky. So probably no reasonable way to implement that atm.

Cernel

@Schulz As per the same confusion already happened in the past, I think you should clarify whether the aim here is:

Reduce total units accumulation overtime,
or
Reduce the tendency of grouping units in stacks.

Anyways, I believe the best way to achieve number 1 is upkeep, while the best way to achieve number 2 is by having huge defence superiority (for example, infantry at att/def 1/4 or very efficient static units).

Cernel

Should this topic be moved to Mapmaking, or does it fit the Feature Requests section?

RogerCooper

@Schulz You can use the "maxBuiltPerPlayer" property to limit the number of a given unit type. You could even have more expensive versions of the same unit, allowing players to build more at greater cost. This would have an effect similar to upkeep costs.

Schulz

Is it still not possible in the current engine setting up Max TUV number and making dependent it on nation's incomes? I'd prefer it probably because I also tend to avoid more complex things.

Also I liked the idea having more expensive versions of the same units, so in this case will they be sown as the same stack in same territories?

Wouldn't it be better that every units becoming more expensive after spamming certain amount of? Yes I liked it like TUV limit.

Schulz

I want gases destroying random type of units in stacks rather than allowing opponents to pick their casualties. Is there any property about that?

Like how we are unable to pick our air casualties when aa shots them.

Cernel

@Schulz Yes. You can give gas AA offensive attack and then make it a suicidal unit with normal attack power 0 (this is a hack to make it die, as you cannot relate the suicidal ability to the AA attack itself). However, the targeting setting of AA attacks are determined with properties, thus all your AA in the game will have to behave the same way, in this respect.

Then, if you also set that gas can AA attack only up to the number of possible targets, keep the AA roll fairly low (like at 1 or 2), while making it very cost efficient (meaning very cheap), you have a very good way to assure constant tuv destruction, that cannot be abused (as gas limit will be given by the amount of available targets, as said).

Schulz

After intensively calculating and trying to figure out the best cost ratio for gases I've finally concluded some stuffs.

Assuming fully researched them (mustard+working women)

6 gas (21 Pus) can kill 5 infantry (15 Pus) but gas performance starts rapidly declining if gas and inf stackt starts equally growing in terms of cost. Even in this case they are not cost effective at melting infantry stacks.

6 gas (21 Pus) can kill max 5 infantry (15 Pus)= 6 Pus defict
12 gas (42 Pus) can kill max 10 inf (30 Pus)=12 Pus defict
18 gas (63 Pus) can kill max 15 inf (45 Pus) =18 Pus defict

Even with techs their ineffectiveness is growing and other techs (propaganda+victory bonds+industry) starts to heavily outweight mustard+working women techs. Lets look at them with 3 Pus cost instead of 5.

6 gas (18 Pus) can kill max 5 inf (15 Pus)=3 Pus defict
12 Gas (36 Pus) can kill max 10 inf (30 Pus)=6 defict
18 gas (54 Pus) can kill max 15 inf (45 Pus)=9 pus defict

Still not cost effective. Yes they are mobile but you can already start benefiting them after mostly waiting extra 1 more round than as centrals and its enough time for entente to reinforce their key areas.

What if gas cost was 3.75 and infantry one 5? Also removing mustard tech. Lets take a look.

4 gas (15 Pus) has %70 chance to kill 3 inf (15 Pus). At this point they are effective wepon at melting stackt. and not enormously better than infantry considering gas is suicidal and can attack only one time also 3 infanty alsorequires less production capacity than 4 gas

8 gas (30 Pus) has just %35 chance to kill 6 inf (30 Pus). Well they started performing worse which I like it because it proves that even decreasing their relative cost %50 still does not make them broken or something.

As I said after calculating stuffs too much gas cost should be %33 cheaper than infantry. It is the most optimistic cost (alsono additional tech for gases).

Cernel

@Schulz My suggestion would be having regular gas attacking at 3 and mustard gas attacking at 4. Gas cost at 3, down to 2.5 with tech.

This way, with all the tech, 6 gas would cost 15 PUs and kill 4 infantry, worth 12 PUs.

However, I would add the limits that only a number of gas units up to the number of eligible targets can attack, and restrict the eligible targets to infantry, and the like, units only, as this would make gas a little more realistic and provide a limit to it. This way you would be almost assured a quite constant stream of gas production, and continuous grinding of the eligible targets.

Also, should these posts be moved to
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/1399/domination-1914-no-man-s-land-official-thread
?

Schulz

Finally seems I've detected what I really would like to see:

Gas 3/0/3 3 Pus: Gains nothing via techs. Can be placed to capitals only,no need ground support to kill enemy stack, enemy cannot pick their casualties (I am still failed to find right properies)

Conscript 0/1/1 4 Pus
Infantry 1/2/1 5 Pus
Bunker 0/0/0 5 5 Pus (gains +1 def via techs)
Field 2/2/1 6 Pus (gainst +1 attack via tech)
Cavalry 1/1/2 6 Pus (gainst +1 attack via techs)
Heavy 2/4/1 7 Pus (gaint +1 def via techs)

Cernel

@Schulz Maybe that only in case you remove tech completely from the game, cause if a WW1 game has tech, you gotta have the gas as part of it. Side note, it is wrong having gas since the start of the game, if the game starts in 1914. Gas should be unlocked by tech, like tanks. Nobody was using gas in 1914.

Schulz

You are right but also some countries never used gas yet gas is available for all nations except Arabia in the game.

The same applies to zeppelin. Only used by Germany in 1915 if I am not wrong.

Hepps

@Cernel said in Another ways to solve huge stack issue:

@Schulz Maybe that only in case you remove tech completely from the game, cause if a WW1 game has tech, you gotta have the gas as part of it. Side note, it is wrong having gas since the start of the game, if the game starts in 1914. Gas should be unlocked by tech, like tanks. Nobody was using gas in 1914.

During World War I, the French army was the first to employ tear gas, using 26 mm grenades filled with ethyl bromoacetate in August 1914

Cernel

@Hepps I mean, nobody was "seriously" using gas in 1914. Ypres was a surprise for virtually everyone, and I don't think the instances of 1914 rate for anything more than curiosities, or you can really find them even related at all in the main history books on ww1. Aside from this, I'm pretty sure tear gas doesn't count as "gas", as the unit in the game is clearly a short for "poisonous gas" only (you could rename it this way, to be more correct).