New experimental version

[Nelphine]

Arnuz, strategic combat is one of those tings where literally the best answer is 'yup its got huge shortcomings. If you use it and swap back and forth with tactical, that's as bad as save scuming.'' We can't try to stop you.

As a note, it was FAR worse in original. Literally AI could beat sky drakes with spearmen. Even doombsts now require things like adamantium troops and fairly significant numbers advantage. Nowhere close to matching tactical combat, but nowhere near as bad as it used to be.

[Arnuz]

It's not that. Personally, I haven't ever even used it, I like tactical combat. It's just that the feeling that the AI cheats is detrimental to the game: the more it does, the less satisfactory/meaningful a victory/loss feels.

[Nelphine]

Right, but you were specifically referring to players abusing it. Unfortunately, there simply isn't space to do anything about strategic combat (we even figured out HOW to do it, but... it would be HUGE, and would probably require rewriting the code for the entire game, if it's even possible then). Which is why we've tried to eliminate the problems as much as possible. Considering the problem cases right now are ultra elite bezerkers (and to a much lesser extent all barbarian units, due to thrown; as well as about half a dozen other 6+ figure city troops at ultra elite level; plus paladins and war mammoths; although nothing else is nearly as problematic as bezerkers) being too strong and a handful of summoned units (primarily spellcasters + doombats + sprites) being too weak, it's actually in a really good place compared to where it was a long time ago. You LITERALLY had AI beating sky drakes with spearmen in the original. You never see that anymore.

The only place that even has major repurcussions on game play is the occasional AI that banishes another AI who is defending their capital with sprites. Everything else is either gaming the system at lunatic level (which isn't really an overall gameplay issue, and isn't strategic combat specifically, its just overland army strength, which wouldn't be properly fixable even if strategic combat could be fixed) or AI getting the occassional lair or node the human couldn't; but since AI have problems with lairs/nodes due to not being able to do attrition like the human can, I think it actually balances out pretty evenly in that case.

[Arnuz]

Sounds good, thanks for the explanation!

[Seravy]

One thing I noticed on that video. After attacking with a stack containing an Airship, when the army retreats exhausted, the stack still has movement points left. Looks like a bug...

[MrBiscuits]

Playing the latest version and I'm not at war with Tlaloc, but he keeps sending stack after stack at my cities as if we were. He's still happy to trade spells though which is odd.
Has something changed or is this normal? He's a ruthless expansionist.

[Seravy]

That's normal. If you don't have a treaty, they can attack you whenever they feel like it, and unless you lose a city or declare war yourself, it can keep going without counting as a war.

[Nelphine]

How does the minimum damage per attack interact with invulnerability? I'm hoping invulnerability reduces damage taken by 2 before minimum damage is considered. (So instead of doing minimum one damage if the attack does 6 damage, it would do minimum one damage if the attack does 8 damage.)

[Seravy]

How does the minimum damage per attack interact with invulnerability? I'm hoping invulnerability reduces damage taken by 2 before minimum damage is considered. (So instead of doing minimum one damage if the attack does 6 damage, it would do minimum one damage if the attack does 8 damage.)

Invulnerability is the last step in damage calculation so that can't possibly be that way.
Minimal damage doesn't interact with Invulnerability at all. The entire idea is based around dealing damage that can't be reduced.
That said, after calculating the minimal damage from your berserker, we'll need to restrict the mechanic to either single figure attackers, or fantastic units or something.
24 minimal damage is not funny.

[Nelphine]

Ugh. So having invulnerability on high defense units will no longer be helpful. Either the attack is weak enough that the defense stops it, which means invulnerability does nothing, or the attack is strong enough it does minimum damage and the invulnerability does nothing?