(2) Stratagem

Game Type: Turn-Based Strategy
Players: 2 (will be increased with demand and interest)

Introduction
Stratagem is a slightly complex and complicated form of Warcraft where players fight each other in a turn-based environment instead of real-time micro'ing. The objective is generally to annihilate your opponent's army, but in some maps modes such as Capture the Flag map has no Bots/NPCs to play against, it is purely 1v1, and will become FFA when I increase the player count.

Gameplay
General
This is a turn-based game. This means that players take turns to move their units.
Each unit has a certain amount of Action Points (mana), which are used for movement, attacks and various special abilities. Moving drains 1 mana per second, and each attack costs 1 mana.

Combat
This game uses dice rolls (random numbers) instead of hit points / damage. This means that on each attack, the victim has a chance to dodge or block the attack, or even take a critical wound.
Most units have only 1 or 2 hit points (1 hit point = 100 'normal' hp, for trigger purposes).
Armour and armour types play a huge role in combat, as a light dart or arrow will not be able to penetrate a footman's heavy shield or damage a catapult. Likewise, a boulder shot from a massive war machine will kill almost anything that it hits.
Ranged attacks are affected by accuracy, and miss in a different way to melee attacks. Each ranged unit is like artillery with an area of effect attack - but an arrow obviously has a much smaller AoE, namely about 20. This means that the arrow has to hit precisely on its target to deal damage. The way that they miss is by the shot hitting a random area around the target point. Different units have different accuracies, and the possible hit area depends on the distance between shooter and target.

Damage Explanation
An arrow will kill an unarmoured unit if it hits but likely deflect off a heavy shield, but a glaive launched by artillery will kill just about anything it hits.

Dice Rolls
1 - 2 = block/parry/no damage
3 - 5 = 1 wound
6 - 7 = critical (2 wounds)
8+ = explode unit

Armour Modifiers
Unarmoured - Bonus from siege, pierce.
Small Armour - Bonus from pierce.
Medium Armour - Reduced from normal.
Heavy Armour - Reduced from normal, pierce.
Structural - No damage from pierce, normal.
Heavy Hero - Reduced from normal, pierce.
Light Hero - Reduced from pierce, siege.

Examples
A Dark Elf Guardian does 1 - 5 normal (melee) damage.
She hits a Dark Elf Archer and rolls 2. No wound.
On her second attack she rolls 3. The Archer's 0 Light Armour reduces the damage by 0%, and she dies because she only has one wound remaining.

A Skeleton Archer (somehow) hits a Skeleton Warrior.
Rolls a 2, does no wound.
Rolls a 3, which is reduced by the Warrior's 1 Heavy Armour, no wound.
Rolls a 5, and wounds.

An Orcish Deathcry Catapult hits a group of Skeleton Warriors and rolls a 6.
Their armour reduces the damage by 6%.
They all die.

Playability
This game can be quite tedious to play, so I am experimenting with different ways of effectively controlling your whole force. Traditionally, games like these would involve moving/attacking/using each unit one by one, but in a map like this where armies are usually 20-60 units, that becomes way too much of a hassle.

A previous build "featured" special chat commands - but that is also too troublesome so it has been taken out, and replaced with abilities in the UI.

Currently, ranged units can attack individually or as a group (arrow volleys of doom), and one player's turn shouldn't take more than 20-80 seconds.

To make things more clear, a unit that has spent all its action points (mana) becomes darkened.

Production
Testing
I have not yet tested this map against any human players, so I am in serious need of feedback on what doesn't work, what's imbalanced, etc.

The map is attached, so please do give it a try and post some feedback here.
Some screenshots have been attached, more coming soon.

If anyone wishes to help me with this project, I am looking for:
-terrainers (future maps will have areas of cover from ranged fire, arrows will deal better damage from heightened ground, etc)
-unit/race designers (one man can only have so many ideas)
-uber jasser/coder (it's quite possible that there are lots of unoptimized pieces of script in my triggers, so if someone could review them for me and point out latencies, thanks)

Progress
Code/Triggers/Systems 75%
Terrain n/a
Units/Races 25% (will fluctuate heavily)
Balancing 50%

The Team
rulerofiron99 - mapmaker, team leader rulerofiron99@Northrend, rulerofiron99@Azeroth, rulerofiron99@Lordaeron, rulerofiron99@GG
antsu - tester antsu@Northrend
Deitri - tester Krollis@Azeroth
TEC_Ghost - tester
Shade987 - tester Shadou_Phox@Azeroth and Shadou_Phox@Lordaeron

Suggestions/Input
Feel free to suggest units, races, terrains, abilities, trigger system, etc to me, as this project is basically in that phase.

Race Suggestions: try to keep all units in one race (e.g. no trolls in orcs), no double usage of models, multirace only when lack of models for one race, have a focus for the race (e.g. speed or firepower), have at least 5 units on any type (e.g. having 5 types of ranged units is okay), at least one hero, and any special rules you see fit (e.g. demon forces double every X turns or all units fully healed at start of turn)

Unit Suggestions: specify race, model, relative stats (e.g. can kill mechanical), any special skills

Map Suggestions: map style, tileset, focus (e.g. one player on hill, other player(s) start with less gold/pop)

Map Submissions: add a map to the Stratagem gamestyle, with full credit for map layout design.

This sounds interesting if you can pull it off without the aforementioned tedium.

What kinds of races do you have already?

Just that screenie of volley fire got me wet. I always enjoy the volley fire you know

Dark Elves
Archer (in screeny) - a highly accurate and long-ranged light infantry
Guardian - melee elf, fast but weak
Shadow Rider - bouncing attack, very fast and mobile
Assassin - short-ranged, many action points
Glaive Ballista - relatively accurate artillery, strikes units behind target

Forgotten Skeletons
Skeleton Warrior - slow and clumsy, but decent attack and extremely cheap
Skeleton Archer - slow and very inaccurate, cheap
Skeleton Mage - fully accurate, medium ranged attack
Skeleton Brute - a bigger warrior, very powerful attack
Skeleton Dragon - flying death thing of doom. huge damage, huge splash. easy to hit.

Tribal Hordes (orcs)
Gretchin - meat shield, good evasion vs. arrows (small collision size)
Brute - powerful melee warrior
Skirmisher - mobile cavalry with a good attack
Sky Hunter - smaller orc mounted on a flying beast with a highly inaccurate ranged attack
Deathcry Catapult - huge damage, huge splash, huge range, completely suck accuracy.

Sounds very interesting. Any idea when the first release will be?

This looks very instersting.
I've never seen an map with that ideia.
You have my thumbs up for that project!
Good luck :)

If you need beta testers, i can help! :D

You might want to try to add more variety in units. For example, things with various abilities. Just to make things a little more interesting. Just a suggestion; take it or leave it.

EDIT: I noticed that you do have the bouncing attack. But that's one unit in 3 races.

I understand what you mean by lack of variety. The current units are only a bunch of units I added for the beta testing, I will be adding various abilities, buffs, heroes, etc.

Release will probably be... I honestly have no idea xD.

Deitri, shall I put your name down as a beta tester? And do you play on LAN or which server?

Sounds interesting, Id be happy to do some testing for you, Working on my own turn based combat at the moment, although completely different (Mine uses a grid system)

Then I'll put your name down as a tester for now. What a coincidence, I was planning on making mine a grid system too, but figured a) it would take more work and b) the normal 'wc3ish' one is more precise in terms of movements and splash attacks.

A grid-based one looks a lot better though ^^, I'd be happy to help you test yours too.

I've seen a very similar idea in the past done to great effect by masda70. I've always wanted to see something do it without being incredibly time-consuming; finding a clean design for such a map is the most difficult part -- Far more important than balance or anything else at this point.

I couldn't agree more.

I took a quick look at the other map, but this one is way different.

Time-consuming is the way these maps are 'meant to be' - diehard fans will usually play this type of map happily, but I try to make maps that anyone can enjoy happily.

What I am currently trying to do is a number of 'group commands' - accessed through the UI by any unit - to make everything from moving to attacking much easier.

Special skills (except for things like heal or bloodlust) will be true micro-based.

Updating tomorrow night.

Time-consuming is the way nothing should be. A game of chess with marble pieces has the same appeal as a game of chess with the pieces as little people that actually attack. The problem is that for whatever reason, games of chess with little people that attack are made to take longer than games of chess with marble pieces.

This falls back on a few of the inadequacies of WC3, but inevitably is an issue that can be dealt with. You just need a responsive, forceful, and constrained enough environment for your map. There needs to be a very intuitive method to moving pieces, incredibly intuitive and extremely responsive.

What you could do is have a bunch of units act as a whole. One unit you click on to control the entire 'squad' per se. Now instead of having to use these silly commands like -aa or whatever, you can just click and order around the squad leader and tell him what to do. In that regard, sure, make it possible for a player to break up squads, give the squad leader a "Deferrence" ability that lets him transfer squad ownership to another unit or to split control over X units with another potential squad leader.

Everyone always says that when someone compares their map to someone else's. What you should consider is that it is an example with lots of testing of similar (Note the keyword there) ideas and how they succeed/fail. It is pivotal for mapmakers to build upon what came before them, lest they waste valuable time in the development process.

Excellent idea with the squad leader thing, but I think I'll change it slightly and give all the commands to each unit - or something like that.

The idea behind commands is to use all your units at once, but having to type in random stuff all the time definitely sucks.

At the moment the normal warcraft-move for groups doesn't work nicely with this map, because all the units just disperse into warcraft formation. A squad-based system will definitely improve this.

Another system I am implementing is advanced functions achieved with normal commands - e.g. the group movement will be changed into 'each unit move individually to a point offset by the target, etc', and groups of melee units attacking will be changed to 'every two units gang up on one of those'.

Took another look at Advance Wars, and yah - it is different.

Sure!
I play on Battle.net@Azeroth.
My nick there is Krollis.