Battle Simulator

[IsaacCAT]

Preface: land warfare is very deterministic; you will have the same win rate and losses result every time for the same battle as the systems is designed (Imperator Wiki). You can try to simulate the same battle with the ir.pdxsimulator.com and once the initial conditions are set, the outcome is always a matter of dice rolls.

Observation: the use of a dice roll gives us the false impression of chance, when it is a random effect that is a poor substitute of the real role of luck in life.

Suggestion:

Simulate the real role of luck in battles using real chances while building a story for every battle.

Implementation:

Luck is simulated by the number of additional opportunities that show up. Skill and abilities will determine if opportunities are exploited.

Before implementation, we have to define the following concepts:

• Opportunity: actions in battle that have a chance to happen. We will limit these actions to movement and attack.
• Movement phase: it simulates the unit moving after the General instructions, it is function of the general martial skill.
  • The chance formula is P(M) = (80 / (100 - General Martial Skill))
• Attack phase: it simulates the unit attacking another unit, it is function of the tactic effectiveness. The tactic effectiveness expresses the coordination between units to perform the tactical attack. It is calculated in every combat phase to consider the current army composition after discarding destroyed or low morale units.
  • The chance formula is P(A) = (Tactic Effectiveness / 100)

When the battle starts, every unit will attack as usual, but the damage will only happen if the movement and attack phases are both successful.

With a success event, the damage formula will apply as it is now, but with the dice_roll value fixed by default to 6. With a non-successful event, there will be no damage as it will mean that the unit will have not successfully moved or landed the attack.

The battle will continue as usual, calculating every day the probabilities of movement and attack phases, and the damage dealt.

Finally, we will simulate luck in the following way:

Luck will be granted randomly to one general/army at the beginning of the battle and will have a X% chance to happen. That is, not all battles will have a lucky general/army. The lucky general/army will have for this battle and only this battle, a double roll random number between [0,1] for every check. This represents the increased number of opportunities to perform as desired that this army will have on that battle.

Example:

One unit attacking another unit with General Martial Skill 5 and current Tactic Effectiveness of 35%. The probability of successful movement and attack is calculated as:

• P(M)*P(A)= (80 / (100 – 5)) * (35 / 100) = 0.842 * 0.35 = 0.295.

The program will produce a random number between [0,1] and if it is equal or less than 0.295, the unit will have landed a successful attack.

If the general/army are lucky in this battle, if the first random number is above 0.295, then another random number will be generated. If the second number is equal or less than 0.295, the unit will have landed a successful attack. If not, then no damage will happen.

Bonus effect:

Battles with at least one good general and high tactic effectiveness will end faster than they do now.

Future evolution:

This system can be used to build a better battle simulator with decisions for types of movement and attack depending on the unit's relative situation in an improved battle chess board. By using distance and real movement, generals could take different decisions each turn, and the battle could be represented with animations in this greater chess board.
But this is a subject for a future suggestion.

Acknowledgments:

I have taken ideas from these posts and websites:

The battle system I wish RPGs would stop using

Dungeons and Dragons, son of Chainmail, is the great granddaddy of the modern role-playing game. Its importance cannot be overstated: not only was it revolutionary for its time, it has also directl…

sinisterdesign.net

Imroved Combat & Tactics

To start in spoilers is a simplified outline of how the current mechanics work Proposed changes to make battles/tactics more immersive, interesting, realistic. 1) Order Of Battle 2) Rules 3) Phases Of Battle 4) Battlefield Events 5)...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Require sufficient Tactic Effectiveness to use a Military Tactic

Just a small change that could help the army composition meta a little. I'd suggest requiring an overall Tactic Effectiveness of 1/3* to be required to use a Military Tactic. With this restriction, you would need to build an army around the...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Do you ever feel that the game is a bit "on the easy side"?

When i talk about easy i mean in single player (of course) and compared to your average paradox game. The other paradox games i have played are EU III, EU Rome, CK 2, EU IV. Probably EU is the most difficult of the lot. CK 2 was not super hard...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[IsaacCAT]

I am curious if any of the current Paradox Games use probabilities for resolving combat. I am certain CKIII does it for some of their character events. I will look into it and come back later:

• In Hearts of Iron IV they use it the same as I have proposed for air attacks state anti-air. In Land Battle they use probability to hit chances, function of defences level. The same in naval battles, here the probability is very well explained by physical and real world factors, as bad weather, night, screening bonuses, and the ship's admiral's level, logistics and planning skills .
• In Stellaris, probability to hit is nicely used with its Accuracy, Tracking, and Evasion. Also, The Shroud uses chances for its events.
• In CKIII no probabilities in combat
• In Victoria II, warfare does not use probabilities, only events have chances to appear.
• In Europa Universalis IV, probabilities are used to choose trade goods and rolling military leaders. But it is not used at all in combat.

But the concept of luck as an increased number of opportunities it is not used in any of these games. We are hard coded with the lottery concept of luck, such a disgrace!

 

[Magnar]

many events in IR are based on probabilty

 

[IsaacCAT]

many events in IR are based on probabilty

You can explain many events in IR using probabilities but it is not the base mechanism. Rolling dice is. There is a difference between calculating probabilties for one event and building a system with events with probabilities.

For example, when the program calculates the odds for a battle. For all things being equal, the variability is explained by a random 6d in damage.

With the system I suggest, because there is a chance to avoid hitting, you explain variability by armies failing to move or attack. And the chance to fail is function of variables the player can modify.

Finally, adding luck as a chance to double the opportunities in one battle, you add an unkown factor that all things being equal, increases the odds for the lucky army.

 

[Magnar]

Most PDX games use dice as a basis for combat. The number of sides to the die determine the impact terrain/commanders etc have on the outcome. More sides less impact from terrain and commanders.

events are probability based eg yuo can have p (10/1000 = x) or something like that and really its non different to dice if you ahve faces of a die where nothign actually happens.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Most PDX games use dice as a basis for combat. The number of sides to the die determine the impact terrain/commanders etc have on the outcome. More sides less impact from terrain and commanders.

events are probability based eg yuo can have p (10/1000 = x) or something like that and really its non different to dice if you ahve faces of a die where nothign actually happens.

Dices are used in I:R to calculate damage not to decide an outcome (Imperator Wiki), if I am not mistaken.

In case they were used as you say, to decide an outcome, e.g., 1: nothing, 2: damage, 3: 2xdamage, 4: escape, 5: surrender, 6: 1/2 damage; the probability of each event will be always 1/6. I am advocating for events to have probabilities based on actual real world variables. In my example, movement of the troop is directly function of the Martial Skill of the General, thus P(movement) = (80/(1-Martial Skill of the General).