I was focused on the posts pertaining to the original scenario posted, but I do see that we have a third party saying that in another situation there were no mortal graves to turn into zombies. Maybe that is also true for the original poster, in which case I concede that the current gameplay is closer to what is described in the tutorial.
I think it’s great to ‘get into the head of’ this feature, but it still sounds half baked in a way that is likely to continue resulting in disappointment or confusion for new players unless either the mechanics are changed or the tutorial is made more clear.
To put it more briefly: a victory where all of your forces die, even if they don’t come back as zombies, doesn’t seem like much of a victory.
This is actually a 2a (dies based on luck) and 2b (turns into a zombie), in which 2b does not happen. Your soldiers were victorious, but took some nasty wounds. The zombies were destroyed and your soldiers even managed to burn the bodies so that nothing would raise up later, but probably not long after doing so, perish to their mortal wounds.
It is a crappy victory, but it’s still a victory I think. The wording in the tutorial is fine I think but maybe if the tutorial also shows how to check the battle log to properly analyze the battles you do and how to help you in future battles.
I can agree with this. I was tossing around suggesting that if you win, at least one troop should always survive to avoid some of this confusion. However, that could become a problem if you wander a powered up Ent around the map (for example). As long is it is strong enough to win, it would always survive, even if the odds of it dieing were 99%. It also means the enemy doesn’t get lucky like you can with the previous goblin and dragon tweet (in that case, a body would still have been left behind, because he did lose the battle, he was also lucky enough to take the dragon down with him). (Unless the same mechanic holds for the zombies, but I wouldn’t want that.)
In the end, a comment on the battle log and casualties should be in the tutorial either way.
I’m in the game with squatched and SpySat1, and squatched asked me to post this on his behalf (newbie limits and all).
Wow, quite the discussion was had while I slept =).
To sum up my experience, it was indeed a victory in that there were no bodies laying around and the undead were all gone, however it was extremely confusing for all combatantsn to just disappear and the position to seem as if nothing had happened (did the game glitch? what happened? I thought there was a battle there!). Maybe a marker in the world signifying a battle took place should remain that when clicked, links the player to the combat log? Some sort of memorial to those that sacrificed themselves or something.
For me—though I understand people’s point about “It’s not random whether you win”—it’s about the war rather than the battle. I’ve already had a few circumstances where I sent a large force that was easily greater than two zombie forces on a road, but when I logged back in, they were defeated by the second because of unexpectedly high losses to the first.
Having random losses makes long-term planning much less effective, because I’m only guaranteed to win the first combat I’ll predictably encounter, beyond which anything can happen (unless I check back in, confirming the new state of the game; it’s like Schrodinger’s combat). Much as I like having some random element in Blight, having to reassess after every single combat increases the need for attention to the game at odd times, making me turtle more, take fewer risks, and resent bad rolls more strongly.
Maybe that increased game interaction is desirable, but it edges toward the 24-hour vigilance that made me quit Neptune’s Pride and switch to playing exclusively turn-based games of Triton.
Once it was explained to me how the math works under the hood, I was more comfortable with it because I could make better decisions. I realllly wish the numbers would be very forward facing to the player. Maybe even a “Battle Calculator” option.
click the battle calculator.
click army 1
click army 2 (you would use this unit’s position for terrain bonus / defending bonus calculations)
It would show a popup of the results (who will win based off of power) then show the percent chance the winning army will be wiped out. (including the math behind it so players could learn.
That would be a useful in game tool.
An advance version of this tool would have an option to select the theoretical “which node the battle will take place” (for terrain bonus and any city bonus, etc.
Could the chance that any one unit be selected to die be inversely proportional to the overall strength that unit contributed to the fight? So, units of much higher strength in a stack would be less likely to die than fodder in any one stack.
For example. Let’s say I’ve got a stack worth 1500. A hero worth 500 and 100 troops worth 10 each. At the end of combat, base chance for a unit to die would be 30%. Each troop is worth 1/150 (10/1500), so scale 30% by 149/150 (1-1/150) and round so they stay at 30% chance approx. The hero however contributes 1/3 of the overall strength (500/1500) so his chance of dying would be 20% (30% * (1-1/3)). Of course, it doesn’t have to scale linearly, make it a curve for balance but something along those lines would make heroes feel just a little less squishy. It also fits into the narrative in that they’re stronger so they’re just less likely to get killed.