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| Thread: Stack splitting - the source of all evil |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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B0rsuk
Promising
Famous Hero
DooM prophet
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posted July 16, 2011 02:50 PM |
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Edited by B0rsuk at 14:51, 16 Jul 2011.
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Stack splitting - the source of all evil
I'm playing through the HOMM1 campaign.
Heroes of Might and Magic (1) is the only game in the series that doesn't allow stack splitting. In fact, battle messages say stuff like "Ogre attacks pikeman". Always singular. You can't even have 2 stacks of identical creatures in one army.
There's exactly one negative aspect of it so far - you have to bend over backwards to avoid joining stacks when sending reinforcements. Ideally, you'd want to give all but 1 creature to your main force. This is possible in Heroes 1, but tricky.
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I realized that LOTS of cheesy tactics, especially in multiplayer, are enabled by stack splitting:
- Suicide bomber heroes (all stacks of 1 creature, cast nasty spell and run)
- wraith bomb
- genie splitting. In Heroes1/2 genies are neutral creatures which have 10% chance of HALVING the stack they strike. In Heroes3, genies cast random beneficial spells.
- splitting of fast flyers for purposes of blocking all archer stacks, or eating retaliation. It's quite ridiculous 1 serpent fly is enough to neutralize a horde of cyclops. Or 1 creature as decoy to eat retaliation of a devastating melee stack.
- splitting of basically any creature with harmful side effects. Ghost dragons, dragon flies, wyvern monarchs, archmages, mighty gorgons. Often it's a no-brainer to fill all the remaining stack slots with 1 creature. The only decision involved seems to be "which one?" if you have two or more creatures with nasty effects.
Neutral armies are resistant to this, as they can dynamically split into advantageous number of stacks when attacked (Heroes3).
So, what do you think ? I think surprisingly large number of ugly, cheesy, and banned multiplayer tactics center around stack splitting. Maybe we shouldn't blame heroes reappearing with full movement points, with fresh armies, or imba abilities (familiars, wraiths). Maybe stack splitting is the root of all evil ?
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted July 16, 2011 03:08 PM |
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H3 was infamous for massive amounts of these, but to tell the truth, balance in H3 was such a mess that it barely mattered.
H5 fixed all of those (specials' proc chance proportional to stack's total HP compared to target's total HP), familiars also drained mana depending on the size of their stack. So I think it's better to simply fix the distribution rather than preventing the hero to use two or more stacks of the same creature. It's no longer 90's and we don't need such spartan balance solutions to make good games 
And on the 1 dragonfly blocking horde of cyclopes... well it's as illogical as 1 dragonfly occupying same slot that 1000 dragons in your army. It's just something we have to accept since there's no realistic way of tweaking this without making the game annoying. Unless they would make it proportional i.e. 20 units block 100 shooters -> 80 of those can still shoot -> 20% damage reduction when shooting, however it would also be illogical to see, say, hydras which are massive and totally capable of blocking 10 units block 1 archer.
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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B0rsuk
Promising
Famous Hero
DooM prophet
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posted July 16, 2011 03:59 PM |
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Edited by B0rsuk at 16:03, 16 Jul 2011.
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Quote:
H3 was infamous for massive amounts of these, but to tell the truth, balance in H3 was such a mess that it barely mattered.
Two wrongs don't make a right :-).
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H5 fixed all of those (specials' proc chance proportional to stack's total HP compared to target's total HP), familiars also drained mana depending on the size of their stack.
That works, but introduces extra complexity. Heroes1 is almost like a board game. I can hold the entire battlefield in my head, I know who will go next. The fastest unit goes first. If there's more than one fastest unit, it starts with 1) attacker's unit 2) the topmost unit. Then it just alternates between attacker and defender, in descending order (by speed).
Heroes 5 put an end to that. Faster units act more often, I can no longer predict who will act next. Oh, but there's an initiative bar at the bottom, right ? How about I cast Haste or Slow ? Unpredictable result. I could totally play Heroes1 battle as a board game (I would only need help with damage calculation), I can't do that with Heroes5.
Comparing stack HP, calculating HP of attackers... I know computer will do a good job of that, but it's extra complexity for me. I like where computers reduce complexity.
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It's no longer 90's and we don't need such spartan balance solutions to make good games
I agree it's no longer 90's and we no longer have to do that. But good games ? That's questionable. Heroes2 was the top seller in a big part of Europe for a year.
I think stack splitting may be creating more problems than it solves.
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And on the 1 dragonfly blocking horde of cyclopes... well it's as illogical as 1 dragonfly occupying same slot that 1000 dragons in your army.
And there's only 1 such "illogicalness" in my army if stacks can't be split. Otherwise, up to 7. Stack splitting magnifies the issue. Think what would happen if people could split stacks in battle !
1 dragonfly occupying the same amount of space as 1337 titans doesn't make sense, but at least it's consistent. 7 dragonflies occupying 1-7 spaces is insanity.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted July 16, 2011 04:14 PM |
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That works, but introduces extra complexity. Heroes1 is almost like a board game. I can hold the entire battlefield in my head, I know who will go next. The fastest unit goes first. If there's more than one fastest unit, it starts with 1) attacker's unit 2) the topmost unit. Then it just alternates between attacker and defender, in descending order (by speed).
H6 is more like H3 on that matter, though speed and initiative are different things. But each unit acts once per turn.
I'm not sure if that's a step in good direction, I'd rather see "proper" initative, just balanced (high init units in H5 were too good and low init too useless in most cases over utility).
H1 is a very simple game. You can't make games like that nowadays and except them to get positive reviews. Tetris, even with the best graphics ever, will not revolutionize the market. H1's system belongs to the past. Complexity isn't necessarily bad.
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I agree it's no longer 90's and we no longer have to do that. But good games ? That's questionable. Heroes2 was the top seller in a big part of Europe for a year.
I think stack splitting may be creating more problems than it solves.
It was a great game, but making interface choppy like in H2 wouldn't make H6 a good game. H3 was arguably a more successful game and it had stack splitting. Besides, H2 also had stack splitting (iirc added in the expansion) and you could manipulate it to some extent on recruitment. I'm surprised anybody considers this good, H2 got a LOT of bashing for not giving people a simple way to split stacks. Say, you want to give some units to your secondary hero's army, oops you can't, can't separate stacks... derp
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And there's only 1 such "illogicalness" in my army if stacks can't be split. Otherwise, up to 7. Stack splitting magnifies the issue. Think what would happen if people could split stacks in battle !
1 dragonfly occupying the same amount of space as 1337 titans doesn't make sense, but at least it's consistent. 7 dragonflies occupying 1-7 spaces is insanity.
I'm sure there are better ways to battle logical loops (assuming they matter: this isn't an RTS, what you see on the battle screen is a simplified version and you can use imagination) than to make 90's interface again.
Cheers.
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted July 16, 2011 05:48 PM |
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There was one two massive abuse(s) that was never fixed, which is:
1) Retaliation soaking: One unit soaks retaliation from a whole stack. There is one very simple solution to this which I have suggested before, but which they (sadly) haven't introduced this time either, which I would refer to as retaliation capacity. Put in Heroes 6 language, let's imagine 1 Praetorian attacks a stack of 10 Cyclopses, and let's imagine the retaliation of 1 Cyclops is sufficient to kill the Praetorian. Then the Praetorian would only eat up retaliation corresponding to what is required to kill the stack - i.e. retaliation from 1 Cyclops. If another unit attacks the Cyclopses afterwards, they would still have a retaliation capacity of 9 Cyclopses (since 1 has used its retaliation to kill the Praetorian). Of course, if 100 Praetorians attack the Cyclopses, all 10 Cyclopses would just use their retaliation, as they won't have any spare damage afterwards (i.e. they deal less damage than total health of Praetorians).
2) Attack soaking: One unit soaks attack from a whole stack - thus, you can guard big stacks behind stacks of 1 unit. Again, the solution would be similar, a more dynamic battle mode - i.e. 10 Cyclopses move to hit stack of 1 Praetorian, but since 1 Cyclops can eliminate this stack, they can continue (if movement allows) and attack for 9/10th of normal damage on another unit. This might have to be calculated against original (i.e. start of combat) stack size, in order to avoid final battle skewing (i.e. if you're close to loosing, enemy gets its turn all the time due to your stacks only eating up a small amount of his damage capacity by nature).
An alternative solution (perhaps more fun for strategy, but would only work with Heroes 5 initiative) would be that if the attack only uses 1/10th of your damage potential, it also only uses 1/10th of your ATB. Thus, if your attack does full potential damage (stack is not eliminated), you have to wait a full turn for next attack - but if you have "spare" damage, you would get your next turn faster according to this - so if you only do damage corresponding to 1/10th of your stack potential, you'd get your turn after only 1/10th of a turn.
I think both of these things would effectively limit the usefulness of stack splitting enormously.
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What will happen now?
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted July 16, 2011 06:29 PM |
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I like alci's suggestions 
the less binary solutions in the game, the better!
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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B0rsuk
Promising
Famous Hero
DooM prophet
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posted July 16, 2011 07:07 PM |
bonus applied by alcibiades on 22 Jul 2011. |
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Quote:
H1 is a very simple game. You can't make games like that nowadays and except them to get positive reviews. Tetris, even with the best graphics ever, will not revolutionize the market. H1's system belongs to the past. Complexity isn't necessarily bad.
HOMM1 is significantly more complex than Tetris. It's also much more complex than all flash games I know except perhaps Robokill. Indie developers don't make strategy games. If it's more complex than a flash game, then someone will like it. It's just a matter of assigning the right price and finding the right folks. People are salivating over Angry Birds !
It's much deeper than it looks. I'm constantly running out of gold and have to prioritize things. Unlike Heroes3 where I often have enough gold for everything. A town produces 6 kinds of units, but an army can only consist of 5 kinds. What do you do with the 6th unit ? Do you value power or speed more ? If you leave one unit at home, you may as well leave both Orc and Ogre, and get a speed boost. Or you can hire a second hero and make him work as a rear guard. There's no 'wait' command - I find myself switching unit order all the time. It's hugely important, because obstacles can be so big.
"Fast" units don't always have the advantage. Castle sieges are so claustrophobic you can't reorder the 2-hex defenders. I can send a flyer to attack Swordsmen, and fast Paladins behind them will be forced to skip their turn.
Or maybe I'm just that good :-).
Also, "simple" doesn't have to mean "primitive". The interface is wonderfully simple and clutter-free (the same is true for Heroescommunity message board which is ancient). There's one Hero Screen, no separate screen for artifacts. One City Screen, one Kingdom Overview. No hidden surprises like (frequently abused) events, or - common in Heroes3 - villages you can't fully build. I also enjoy how little time it takes to fully build a city provided you have the resources.
Call me stupid, but I think Heroes3 graphics don't age as well as Heroes2 and 1. It's hand-made, it's artwork. Hydras make goofy faces when struck, and emit goofy sounds. Cheat codes are references to Monty Python's Holy Grail.
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It was a great game, but making interface choppy like in H2 wouldn't make H6 a good game.
Whoa ! It's not Heroes2 that has to prove itself as a good game, it's Heroes6. In many places Heroes2 sold better than Quake, C&C: Red Alert, Diablo, Duke Nukem 3D, Warcraft II, Z... and they're all games from the same golden year 1996.
Heroes6 is not a better game until proven otherwise. Just because a game is released later doesn't mean it it's better. Look at Elemental: War of Magic. Or Brink, the AAA title which is no longer in top 100 games played, and it has been released 3 months ago.
Moral of the story: to make a game better than Heroes1 or Heroes2, you have to understand what made it good. I'm not sure Black Hole can do that.
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Seraphim
Supreme Hero
Knowledge Reaper
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posted July 16, 2011 07:11 PM |
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@Alciblades
Awesome idea.That would make the game a lot less "Cheesy".
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 16, 2011 07:16 PM |
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Umm, I disagree.
Actually, binary games make pretty good games - rules are the same for everyone, so what?
It's a fallacy to believe that making things more realistic will make a better game - if that was the case, Homm would have gone real-time already, because, let's face it, real-time is more realistic.
Stack splitting is no problem, because - slots are severely limited.
So you CAN make a CERTAIN use of it, but not much.
That's why LAST STAND is such an amazingly good (and unbalanced) ability - it basically doubles the possible square blockings and other single-unit stunts.
But in my opinion it would be a mistake to alter this feature - it makes for tactical uniqueness.
That said, Heroes 6 has certain units that make these tactics impossible, and multi-hex attackers have been pretty good in that department too.
One way to keep the flavour, but allow some counter action would be an overrun ability. Overrun - in attack - would simply SACRIFICE the minimum amount of troops necessary to beat the stack in question, allowing to continue the move and conserve the attack - costly, in some cases, but still.
On retaliation soaking this would work the same - a unit might sacrifice the minimum amount necessary to kill the attacker, without losing retaliation.
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Warmonger
Promising
Legendary Hero
fallen artist
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posted July 16, 2011 07:35 PM |
bonus applied by alcibiades on 22 Jul 2011. |
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Splitting stacks is yet another tactical option, which allows you to make decision - be it good or bad. Player has to be given such strategic options, otherwise the game would be decided just by the raw numbers and thus hardly be strategic.
Keep in mind that majority of players don't split stacks or chain heroes - it involves deep understanding of game and, in many cases, some creativity. Or visiting startegic boards more often  Most players will just go and hit, or stay in town and wait for the army to grow. You can't claim that game is bad because after more than 10 years with it you know it by heart 
At player vs player level, every strategy has (or should have) counter strategy. Retaliation fodder stacks can be eaten by area spells or multi-hex attack, Last Stand can be countered by Flaming Arrows or Cold Steel. Splitting stacks works only against neutrals, but still, you need to be smarter to defeat armies 10 times biger than yours. If you try Time of Prophecy WoG map, you'll see that startegy basically involves creative splitting and positioning stacks of only one and the same creature. And it's challenging and fascinating.
In the end, split stacks can't win the game on their own, you will always end up with some casualties or run out of fodder. Unlike chanining, which has no weak point.
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Geny
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
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posted July 16, 2011 08:02 PM |
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Splitting stacks to soak retaliation or protect large units is a valid strategic option. I don't see anything abusive about it, it's just utilization of your troops.
As for realism, I was always against "over-realising" games. If you want realism, go join the army. But what's more important, is that such tactics are not as unrealistic as you might think. Small groups of soldiers are used in battle to draw fire upon themselves and give the main force an opportunity to attack. You can think of retaliation soaking as a imitation of flanking which doesn't exist on its own in HoMM games. Similar things can be said about protection. In many defensive formations, there are squads whose only purpose is to stall the enemy. These squads are usually much smaller than the main force.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted July 16, 2011 08:03 PM |
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I agree that it is one of the things that adds tactical options, and that it to some extent can be said to be a good thing - but I don't agree it is only a minor thing, I think there have been plenty of examples of very abusing creeping against high-level neutrals with this tactics. But true, that does not necessarily meen it's a bad thing - if the superior force always wins, the element of skill is neglected from the game.
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What will happen now?
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Aosaw
Promising
Famous Hero
Author of Nonreal Fiction
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posted July 16, 2011 08:26 PM |
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Part of me thinks that we ought to dispense with the notion that a stack of 10 Praetorians is representative of a group of ten individual praetorians.
I think that, perhaps for my own sanity and perhaps to make the battlefield seem more realistic, I'm going to start thinking of a stack of 10 Praetorians as one Praetorian that has the strength of ten 1-Praetorian stacks.
This way, things like creature growth serve to represent "creature experience" instead - the higher the number of your stack, the more powerful the unit.
That way, when you've got seven stacks of one Praetorian each, and they're all surrounding the one stack of 11 Cyclopes, you can visualize it as seven dudes all trying to take down one really big dude.
It offers some other illogical things, like heroes transferring creatures to make one big stack, or stack-splitting to create multiple smaller stacks, but when it comes to the battlefield and what takes place there, it just doesn't make sense to think of your 40 Succubi as forty individual Succubi.
There just aren't that many brothels in the world.
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pitsu
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 17, 2011 10:21 AM |
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Quote:
There's exactly one negative aspect of it so far - you have to bend over backwards to avoid joining stacks when sending reinforcements. Ideally, you'd want to give all but 1 creature to your main force. This is possible in Heroes 1, but tricky.
There are several version of H1, but for me the only trick is pressing SHIFT. Splitting cannot be done in army, but between armies split how you like.
Yes, i do enjoy several things from H1 and find them better than in later games. I'd guess that prohibiting splitting would be very unpopular, but I would certainly not mind it. It takes away certain micromanaging and tactics, but for a strategy game i do not see it always a bad thing.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted July 17, 2011 11:37 AM |
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Edited by MattII at 11:52, 17 Jul 2011.
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That way, when you've got seven stacks of one Praetorian each, and they're all surrounding the one stack of 11 Cyclopes, you can visualize it as seven dudes all trying to take down one really big dude.
Which throw out any vestiges of realism that still remain since that would mean you had an army consisting of 7 men, rather than the hundreds any real army would have (even at Trenton, which much surely be one of the smallest battles in history, Rall and Washington had between them almost 4000 soldiers).
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It takes away certain micromanaging and tactics, but for a strategy game i do not see it always a bad thing.
I this case it is, because we virtually no tactics to begin with (stacks disallow tactics such as encirclement, flying wedges, hammer-and-anvil, etc. While other mechanics prevent tactics like guerilla warfare, sieges, hit-and-fade, etc.).
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted July 17, 2011 12:24 PM |
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Quote:
If you want realism, go join the army.
I see what you did there
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odium
Known Hero
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posted July 17, 2011 03:01 PM |
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Edited by odium at 15:02, 17 Jul 2011.
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Or you can look at it from the perspective of a general for which number 1 signifies a division or a corp of units. Also in this way, one can justify why a division of praetorians occupies the same space as a division of cyclops. It's a zoomed out picture of the battlefield with a scaling of the numbers.
I believe that looking at it from the perspective of platoon leader where 1 represents actually one unit of that type leads to several logical inconsistencies which, for some, can ruin game immersion.
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Aosaw
Promising
Famous Hero
Author of Nonreal Fiction
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posted July 17, 2011 06:07 PM |
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For me, it makes the Hero's army feel more like an adventuring party.
It's a bit less realistic, but as soon as I make that shift in my mind, combat makes a whole lot more sense.
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Nirual
Famous Hero
Imbued Ballista
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posted July 20, 2011 09:26 AM |
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The way Praetorians work compared to the Shield Allies from H5 is a step in the right direction that aspect.
No more one single unit preventing 50% ranged damage on everything around it.
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In ur base killing ur doods... and raising them as undeads.
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polaris
Promising
Known Hero
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posted July 25, 2011 05:35 AM |
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I like stack splitting, therefore I must be evil
I wouldn't mind there being more disadvantage to it, though, as long as it wasn't cumbersome.
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