Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Field of Glory II is a turn-based tactical game set during the Rise of Rome from 280 BC to 25 BC.

Should game show the rallying text and play fanfare for hidden enemy units that rally from rout?

Poll ended at Tue Apr 02, 2019 8:17 am

Yes
17
49%
No
18
51%
 
Total votes: 35

rbodleyscott
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Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by rbodleyscott »

We are currently removing various tells that occur when hidden enemy troops take various actions.

One on which we would like people's opinion is troops rallying from rout.

Currently the game shows a rallying message and plays a fanfare sound when enemy units rally from rout even if they are currently hidden.

I know that some people don't like this, but it is intentional. Without it some players might think the AI is cheating when a hidden unit rallies and then reappears out of the woods.

What is people's preference?
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melm
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by melm »

To be more specific, I welcome showing troop rally from rout but not troop rally from fragmented or disrupted.
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by MVP7 »

Voted yes because routed units rarely contribute to battle after rallying. Realistically speaking a fragmented unit hiding in a forest few miles from the battle would not effect the winner.
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by rbodleyscott »

melm wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 8:20 am To be more specific, I welcome showing troop rally from rout but not troop rally from fragmented or disrupted.
I think that might raise the same suspicions of AI "cheating".
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melm
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by melm »

rbodleyscott wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 9:05 am
melm wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 8:20 am To be more specific, I welcome showing troop rally from rout but not troop rally from fragmented or disrupted.
I think that might raise the same suspicions of AI "cheating".
It sounds like a dilemma.

Of course, the best way to please both sides is to code that shows all information in SP but hides some in MP. But it is like two systems. I don't wish it would give you too much coding annoyance in it, and slow more important work down(e.g. replay :wink: )
From MP perspective, I definitely wants fanfare sound to tell me where these used-to-be routed units are. They are potential threat. And it can also help to avoid hiding fragmented unit in the large woods or behind hill, which contributes nothing to the game but percentage. But I quite understand that when one is hiding fragmented or disrupted unit, especially disrupted, which is still capable to fight, he may try to maneuver it somewhere secretly, hopefully get a chance to rally or get chance to the flank. Rally texts indeed kill such stalking move. BTW, fanfare should not be deleted in this case. Everyone will be surprised and annoyed when seeing a supposed-disrupted unit going out of woods with full morale without any pre-alert.

I have an idea, perhaps not sophisticated, and definitely more extra work. Is it possible to show rally text randomly? I mean it still shows, but not marking the exact location. It can be above any tile within 3-tile radius if that unit is in the cover. Then for SP player, they won't have cheating feeling, and for MP player, their stalking move may still be undetected.
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by TheGrayMouser »

I voted yes, a hidden unit that rallies from rout is also hidden from his own army and thus if your giving that army the dubious benefit of being more resilient , the other army should at least know the source of why the scoreboard changed!
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by Cunningcairn »

TheGrayMouser wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 10:43 am I voted yes, a hidden unit that rallies from rout is also hidden from his own army and thus if your giving that army the dubious benefit of being more resilient , the other army should at least know the source of why the scoreboard changed!
I don't understand why you should know where the unit has rallied. You can see from the score that something has rallied but why should the visibility rules change? If units are not visible then why should the opposing player be able to see if they turn, move or rally? I agree with your statement regarding the dubious benefit of an army becoming more resilient when an unseen unit rallies. If they can't be seen by their own troops then the army should not become more resilient. So maybe the visibility rule should give no information to the enemy when troops are out of sight but at the same time units rallied out of sight should not affect the army losses until they become visible to their own army.
Last edited by Cunningcairn on Tue Mar 26, 2019 11:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by Morbio »

My preference is to have the fanfare, but not show the text. It can imagine that horns would be blown to rally the troops, to call the warriors back to the banner and this could be heard by both sides. I even don't mind much the camera panning as it is generally fleeting and would give the enemy a sense where the horns are coming from and this is realistic, however the text is far too specific it determines exactly where the rally is occurring and the enemy shouldn't know this.

If it is not possible just to hide the text then I'd remove all of the alerts. I voted NO.

Regarding the cheating aspect: Then it needs to be documented and I think that people should trust Slitherine to be doing the right thing.... we do this already with RNG and accept that it is the same for both side (Why do I feel if I've lifted the lid and am looking at worms? :twisted:)
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by Cunningcairn »

Morbio wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 11:21 am My preference is to have the fanfare, but not show the text. It can imagine that horns would be blown to rally the troops, to call the warriors back to the banner and this could be heard by both sides. I even don't mind much the camera panning as it is generally fleeting and would give the enemy a sense where the horns are coming from and this is realistic, however the text is far too specific it determines exactly where the rally is occurring and the enemy shouldn't know this.

If it is not possible just to hide the text then I'd remove all of the alerts. I voted NO.

Regarding the cheating aspect: Then it needs to be documented and I think that people should trust Slitherine to be doing the right thing.... we do this already with RNG and accept that it is the same for both side (Why do I feel if I've lifted the lid and am looking at worms? :twisted:)
Ha, ha I like both your statements and also voted no.
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by Paul59 »

Morbio wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 11:21 am My preference is to have the fanfare, but not show the text. It can imagine that horns would be blown to rally the troops, to call the warriors back to the banner and this could be heard by both sides. I even don't mind much the camera panning as it is generally fleeting and would give the enemy a sense where the horns are coming from and this is realistic, however the text is far too specific it determines exactly where the rally is occurring and the enemy shouldn't know this.

If it is not possible just to hide the text then I'd remove all of the alerts. I voted NO.

Regarding the cheating aspect: Then it needs to be documented and I think that people should trust Slitherine to be doing the right thing.... we do this already with RNG and accept that it is the same for both side (Why do I feel if I've lifted the lid and am looking at worms? :twisted:)
I agree with Morbio, a fanfare but no text over the event, would go some way to satisfy both parties.
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by rbodleyscott »

Morbio wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 11:21 am My preference is to have the fanfare, but not show the text.
That is certainly an option.
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by MVP7 »

rbodleyscott wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 11:43 am
Morbio wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 11:21 am My preference is to have the fanfare, but not show the text.
That is certainly an option.
Not that fair for hearing impaired or those who play without sounds though.

I wouldn't mind the hidden rallying being hidden if a rallied routed unit didn't count back towards victory percent before it reaches disrupted level. It doesn't make sense to me that a hiding fragmented unit would directly effect the outcome of battle.
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by Morbio »

MVP7 wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 11:55 am
rbodleyscott wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 11:43 am
Morbio wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 11:21 am My preference is to have the fanfare, but not show the text.
That is certainly an option.
Not that fair for hearing impaired or those who play without sounds though.

I wouldn't mind the hidden rallying being hidden if a rallied routed unit didn't count back towards victory percent before it reaches disrupted level. It doesn't make sense to me that a hiding fragmented unit would directly effect the outcome of battle.
If a player is playing without sounds then that's their choice to limit the notifications. I accept it is sub-optimal for hearing impaired, but at least the camera panning with no text will give a clue that something has happened in an area with no visibility. The score increase would also be a clue too. Whether fragmented should affect the scores is another issue, but one not for this thread. I tend to hide my fragmented units if I can for this specific reason and if a game has a slow turnover rate then it's possible that the enemy general may forget it is there. This seems reasonably realistic to me
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by rbodleyscott »

Morbio wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 12:24 pm If a player is playing without sounds then that's their choice to limit the notifications. I accept it is sub-optimal for hearing impaired, but at least the camera panning with no text will give a clue that something has happened in an area with no visibility.
I assumed we would kill the camera panning for hidden units, and just play the fanfare.
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by tomlowshang »

Add an option to remove the enemy rally indicator text only. The option default is on for single player and (perhaps) off for multiplayer.
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by Geffalrus »

The game should show BOTH the fanfare and the rally text to BOTH players. Here's why:

1) From a "realism" perspective, the routed percentage indicator is actually a measure of how the entire army is feeling about the course of the battle. If too much of your army is routed, things clearly look like a loss, and so the whole army (from officers down to individual soldiers) decides that flight is the best response to the situation. So % routed is an approximation of how your army feels about how the battle is going. Individual units may have different perspectives on this, of course, which is why some Break Cohesion, while others Hold Firm.

2) So why would a random unit rallying many, many squares away from the battle change how the army feels about the battle as represented by the change in percentage? That's where the fanfare comes in. In order for the rest of the army to know about the rally, much less take heart from it, the army needs to - hear - about the rally. Which is why the rallied unit is clearly making a lot of noise to alert the general and the rest of the army. That would be the quickest and easiest way of communicating that information.

3) Of course, communicating in such a fashion is hardly covert. You can't loudly alert your army of your rallying without the other army hearing something as well. So in order to gain any benefit from the rally by virtue of such loud signalling, the enemy army needs to be able to hear it as well. As such, both sides need to get the sound and word notification.

4) Finally, just because you got the notification one time doesn't guarantee you can do anything about it, or even remember where it happened. If there's a lot happening in the battle, if there's obscuring terrain - it will hardly be easy for an enemy to keep track of that unit or find it. From a practical perspective, even with the word and sound notification, a rallied unit in a forest is still pretty well hidden.
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by Cunningcairn »

Geffalrus wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 2:01 pm The game should show BOTH the fanfare and the rally text to BOTH players. Here's why:

1) From a "realism" perspective, the routed percentage indicator is actually a measure of how the entire army is feeling about the course of the battle. If too much of your army is routed, things clearly look like a loss, and so the whole army (from officers down to individual soldiers) decides that flight is the best response to the situation. So % routed is an approximation of how your army feels about how the battle is going. Individual units may have different perspectives on this, of course, which is why some Break Cohesion, while others Hold Firm.

2) So why would a random unit rallying many, many squares away from the battle change how the army feels about the battle as represented by the change in percentage? That's where the fanfare comes in. In order for the rest of the army to know about the rally, much less take heart from it, the army needs to - hear - about the rally. Which is why the rallied unit is clearly making a lot of noise to alert the general and the rest of the army. That would be the quickest and easiest way of communicating that information.

3) Of course, communicating in such a fashion is hardly covert. You can't loudly alert your army of your rallying without the other army hearing something as well. So in order to gain any benefit from the rally by virtue of such loud signalling, the enemy army needs to be able to hear it as well. As such, both sides need to get the sound and word notification.

4) Finally, just because you got the notification one time doesn't guarantee you can do anything about it, or even remember where it happened. If there's a lot happening in the battle, if there's obscuring terrain - it will hardly be easy for an enemy to keep track of that unit or find it. From a practical perspective, even with the word and sound notification, a rallied unit in a forest is still pretty well hidden.
A body of men running from battle stop and start to regroup into a "fragmented" body and then immediately decide (through training?) to notify the rest of their army they are okay and might be back to support them at some time? That is totally unrealistic. Also the men left a distance behind fighting are not doing so in silence and are also quite preoccupied with the task at hand and wouldn't know if it was their blokes rallying or the enemy. If you've played football you'd have experienced the "my ball" comment from behind which doesn't really help decision making because you don't know who said it. I understand the ability to communicate with trumpet, drum, bugle etc. but not when you are running in a disorganised group a long way away from the battle. This audible communication would rather occur when the returning, reformed body became visible to its troops still engaged in battle. Someone would then hear the fanfare look around and break into a rendition of The Boys are Back which would lift morale. No-one has discussed what distance the rallying units are from the battle but I'm assuming this is a kilometer plus and would take 5 or more turns to return to combat.
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by lapdog666 »

i vote NO
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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by stockwellpete »

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Re: Hidden Enemy Troops Rallying

Post by GamerMan »

If we remove the fanfare, it just promotes people watching the score really closely and keeping detailed notes on where routed units left so you can figure out where they rallied with reasonable precision. It would just change it from being unrealistic for everyone, to unrealistic to top players and a needless complication for people who are trying to learn to play well. If you are going to remove the fanfare for rallying, you have to do something to hide the score as well.
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