Turn based strategy games
PostPosted:Sat Oct 16, 2004 1:43 am
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Recently I got a working version of Advanced Daisenryaku for Genesis so I started playing what's certainly one of the best turn-based strategy game ever made. Now the era of turn-based strategy games has been over for a while, no doubt thanks to RTS games such as Warcraft 3, but I think there's more than just that. So as I go back to look at the turn-based strategy game I owned, here are some thoughts...
1. Length - This is usually the obstacle to multiplaying turn based game. In a decently complex turn based strategy game it is quite possible to take an hour or even longer on your turn. This obviously makes simultaneous play impractical (I usually end up playing myself). Usually you end up with some kind of speed Chess type play that pretty much takes the strategy out. I'd like to see better support for PBEM type (Play By EMail), especialy for 1vs1 type games.
2. Skill disparity - I remember one time (and the only time) I played Panzer General Online and the guy I played against resigned on turn 2 after a rugged defense. I remember playing Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (maybe was with people here) and there were people I could've killed on the first week (sort of a big turn) if I actually studied the map beforehand so I know where everyone's starting position was. Skill differences in turn based games seem to amplify even worse than RTS. I guess you can say this is because due to lack of time constrain a player isn't going to make a mistake, but I don't really think that's true. Sure if you're dealing with games with 15 units on each side (e.g. Warcraft 3, Panzer General 3) of course I will never misjudge each unit's capability, but throw in more units in the mix and it suddenly becomes very hard to predict everything accurately. In general, it'd appear if you increase unit complexity (# of units) it prevents lopsided victories. Daisenryaku's AI is quite capable of doing significant damage no matter how careful you are (unless you just always save/load) just because there are too many units to keep track of.
3. Game complexity - I think in any turn based game where units can do more than just attack, I have found some way to cheese the game. It seems to me there's a trend to make all kinds of games more RPGish, but then you end up with powerful unit/entity's show. The latest Panzer General, PG3, is pretty much just leveling an artllery to level 9 so you can use bombardment, infantry to level 6 to get ambush, and tanks high enough to get enveloping, and you're pretty much guaranteed to win against the computer. For that matter, if people actually played that online, high level tanks pretty much instantly kill anything in the open. There seems to be this notion that to have good strategy a unit needs to be able to have 5 thousand choices at all times, but this is really not a good idea. In Chess all you can do is move a piece from point A to point B that's already established by the rules. Most instruments of war don't do anything besides attack a target in some predetermined way.
4. Difficulty - A lot of games have the impossible/godlike/whatever you want to call it difficult. Of course that's just another way to say very hard because if something is impossible all you need to do is just lose automatically on the first turn and save the trouble. To this day, though, I have yet to see any 'impossible' difficulty that achieves any sort of difficulty without grossly cheating. Sometimes the AI cheats so bad to the point that it is indeed impossible. Sometimes I'm left wondering how certain scenarios are tested. For example HOMM4 on highest difficulty setting is not winnable in 3 out of 5 campaigns (and the other two would take so long you'd end up with a score of 0 by the time you're done killing everything) because 3 of the 5 campaigns require you to take a city with some starting force, except it can't be done on the highest setting because the game designers forgot that you can't possibly get any more units before getting your first city. In PTO (Pacific Theatre of Operation) if you picked the Okinawa Campaign on the Japanese side, and you do what the objective says (sink 4 or so US Carriers) you will die immediately after you start because your flagship Yamato is on a path through about a zillion Americans bombers. Take a game like Master of Orion the highest difficulty is not realistically winnable, though it is in practice easily winnable because the AI sucks at combat (because combat is too complicated) so even though you constantly find yourself outnumbered 1 to 10 and even a novice ought to pull off a win easy at those odds, you can still win.
Most of this I guess is because the game is too complicated. The makers set some 'impossible' odds but did not anticipate how it interacts with the game mechanism. On the other hand, if you take a game with a simple engine, like Panzer General, defend Berlin really is impossible (it obviously didn't work historically). It doesn't matter if you're the greatest military genius ever lived, you will lose ground against about 5 times your army size, and a major victory is being able to hold Berlin at all. Actually, Panzer General is the only I can think of where you can win by losing ground. Almost every other game out there expects you to completely annihilate the enemy (more or less), which means you obviously have to be stronger than the enemy.</div>
1. Length - This is usually the obstacle to multiplaying turn based game. In a decently complex turn based strategy game it is quite possible to take an hour or even longer on your turn. This obviously makes simultaneous play impractical (I usually end up playing myself). Usually you end up with some kind of speed Chess type play that pretty much takes the strategy out. I'd like to see better support for PBEM type (Play By EMail), especialy for 1vs1 type games.
2. Skill disparity - I remember one time (and the only time) I played Panzer General Online and the guy I played against resigned on turn 2 after a rugged defense. I remember playing Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (maybe was with people here) and there were people I could've killed on the first week (sort of a big turn) if I actually studied the map beforehand so I know where everyone's starting position was. Skill differences in turn based games seem to amplify even worse than RTS. I guess you can say this is because due to lack of time constrain a player isn't going to make a mistake, but I don't really think that's true. Sure if you're dealing with games with 15 units on each side (e.g. Warcraft 3, Panzer General 3) of course I will never misjudge each unit's capability, but throw in more units in the mix and it suddenly becomes very hard to predict everything accurately. In general, it'd appear if you increase unit complexity (# of units) it prevents lopsided victories. Daisenryaku's AI is quite capable of doing significant damage no matter how careful you are (unless you just always save/load) just because there are too many units to keep track of.
3. Game complexity - I think in any turn based game where units can do more than just attack, I have found some way to cheese the game. It seems to me there's a trend to make all kinds of games more RPGish, but then you end up with powerful unit/entity's show. The latest Panzer General, PG3, is pretty much just leveling an artllery to level 9 so you can use bombardment, infantry to level 6 to get ambush, and tanks high enough to get enveloping, and you're pretty much guaranteed to win against the computer. For that matter, if people actually played that online, high level tanks pretty much instantly kill anything in the open. There seems to be this notion that to have good strategy a unit needs to be able to have 5 thousand choices at all times, but this is really not a good idea. In Chess all you can do is move a piece from point A to point B that's already established by the rules. Most instruments of war don't do anything besides attack a target in some predetermined way.
4. Difficulty - A lot of games have the impossible/godlike/whatever you want to call it difficult. Of course that's just another way to say very hard because if something is impossible all you need to do is just lose automatically on the first turn and save the trouble. To this day, though, I have yet to see any 'impossible' difficulty that achieves any sort of difficulty without grossly cheating. Sometimes the AI cheats so bad to the point that it is indeed impossible. Sometimes I'm left wondering how certain scenarios are tested. For example HOMM4 on highest difficulty setting is not winnable in 3 out of 5 campaigns (and the other two would take so long you'd end up with a score of 0 by the time you're done killing everything) because 3 of the 5 campaigns require you to take a city with some starting force, except it can't be done on the highest setting because the game designers forgot that you can't possibly get any more units before getting your first city. In PTO (Pacific Theatre of Operation) if you picked the Okinawa Campaign on the Japanese side, and you do what the objective says (sink 4 or so US Carriers) you will die immediately after you start because your flagship Yamato is on a path through about a zillion Americans bombers. Take a game like Master of Orion the highest difficulty is not realistically winnable, though it is in practice easily winnable because the AI sucks at combat (because combat is too complicated) so even though you constantly find yourself outnumbered 1 to 10 and even a novice ought to pull off a win easy at those odds, you can still win.
Most of this I guess is because the game is too complicated. The makers set some 'impossible' odds but did not anticipate how it interacts with the game mechanism. On the other hand, if you take a game with a simple engine, like Panzer General, defend Berlin really is impossible (it obviously didn't work historically). It doesn't matter if you're the greatest military genius ever lived, you will lose ground against about 5 times your army size, and a major victory is being able to hold Berlin at all. Actually, Panzer General is the only I can think of where you can win by losing ground. Almost every other game out there expects you to completely annihilate the enemy (more or less), which means you obviously have to be stronger than the enemy.</div>