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Ways to visualise battle results?

Christoffer Lernö · 2016-06-15T10:13:44

Our game has a very simple combat resolution. Roughly, attacking with an army of X against an army of Y units and being victorious you'll lose Y units (and if the opponent is stronger, the enemy will lose X).(e.g. attack with 320 against an army of 50 and you'll loose 50 units)– So by design combat is extremely predictable and straightforward.At the same time, combat is a rather rare occurrence and is something that should feel "special". So the question is how to visualise it.Looking at other games there's the "Animated armies battling it out" style, and "Card game style" (with "cards" alternating taking damage)."Animated armies" feels a bit wrong for our game, since you mostly only have a single army type (and honestly it needs to look very good not to feel corny).I tried the "card game" approach, with the army "card" taking damage, but it was rather boring - again because each side usually has a single army type.There's the original "Pirates!" approach where the amounts for each side is slowly ticking down until one side defeated, but I don't know if that is interesting enough.What possibilities am I overlooking? Adding too complex a screen will be a bit weird as the battle is straightforward. But I don't just want to throw up the popup with the result.

2D and 3D Art Visual Arts

Started by lerno May 30, 2016 12:10 PM

9 comments, last by lerno 8 years ago

lerno

269

Author

June 15, 2016 10:13 AM

maybe not concentrate on the war but rather on the result?

When you win, you gain new grounds with resources, so what did I get?
When you loose, lives are lost (not that interesting perhaps), but does that have economic impact, less production, or need to replenish the army?

Perhaps a great warrior died or got wounded?

Winning the battle possibly captures the opponent, or the opponent simply loses the army and escapes. It's used to kill other player's characters.

There is also a battle against border armies and strongholds. These also simply annihilate the defense allowing you to pass through the area or take the stronghold. Note that this is a separate action though. You might simply defeat the castle army and choose *not* to seize it.