how combat works?

Sengoku Jidai: Shadow of the Shogun is a turn-based tactical and strategic game set during this turbulent time; primarily focusing on the Japanese Warring States period and Japanese Invasion of Korea. Other armies from East Asia are also made available to simulate different conflicts across the region.
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valkyrieneven
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how combat works?

Post by valkyrieneven »

I didn't find any information about combat result list in manual. We can only see the probabilities of "win" "draw" or "loss", but how did it get that result? how to calculate it?
rbodleyscott
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Re: how combat works?

Post by rbodleyscott »

The calculation is quite complex.

You can see the factors that affect each combat by turning on Detailed Tooltips and Detailed Combat Reports in the Advanced Options.
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valkyrieneven
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Re: how combat works?

Post by valkyrieneven »

I see, it only shows those modifier factor . I think as other Wargames , a two-dimension combat result list is the most fundamental system,one is for dice result,the other shows the corresponding result like "break,victory,draw...etc". in Shadow of the Shogun , it shows casualties but I can't understand why it is, as a classic wargame player,it confuse me a lot, so please let me know how to obtain that result, thanks.
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Re: how combat works?

Post by jomni »

Detailed is very instructive. No need to know the die result.
Just learn about the POA's and the win-loss will follow no matter what die roll (of course there may be lucky and unlucky rolls but it won't affect average expectation).
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rbodleyscott
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Re: how combat works?

Post by rbodleyscott »

valkyrieneven wrote:I see, it only shows those modifier factor . I think as other Wargames , a two-dimension combat result list is the most fundamental system,one is for dice result,the other shows the corresponding result like "break,victory,draw...etc". in Shadow of the Shogun , it shows casualties but I can't understand why it is, as a classic wargame player,it confuse me a lot, so please let me know how to obtain that result, thanks.
The calculation is far more complex than in a conventional board wargame, and the combat RNG does not resemble dice. It really would not be possible to reduce it to a 2-dimensional chart.

Obviously board wargames have to have such charts because the players have to adjudicate the combat results themselves. This forces a degree of simplification in the combat calculations from which the use of a computer frees the game designer (unless they choose to exactly replicate an existing board wargame). We have taken full advantage of the abilities of the computer to make complex calculations almost instantly to have a much more detailed combat system, with finer gradations than is possible in any usable manual system.

The win:draw:loss chances do not use a look-up table, they are calculated on the fly by running through the actual combat calculation and then running the random part of the calculation 1000 times. The results are then displayed as % win:draw:loss. Even then, the final "result" will depend on whether the loser, if there is one, passes or fails a separate cohesion test.
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valkyrieneven
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Re: how combat works?

Post by valkyrieneven »

Thanks for the explanation. your post helps a lot.I just was not sure whether the combat reveal the reality in history and wanna if there's a way for players to adjust and approach the real fight.(something like: two armies impact,the casualties are able to reveal the time span or the unit of turn in the game,so they can not fight to death,but if increased the real time span of a turn,the casualties would also increase with the same caculation)
As you said,it follows a complex caculation to ensure that.So can I think this process like : caculate POAs > caculate casualties with that POAs ,and the casualties is the fight in one turn(could you plz tell me how long is one turn in real time?)

BTW, every circular icon in game is ellipse(as your screenshot showed above)... I thinks it's absolutely a UI bug?
jomni
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Re: how combat works?

Post by jomni »

There's a quirky screen stretching thing going on depending on resolutions.
valkyrieneven
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Re: how combat works?

Post by valkyrieneven »

any ways to solve that problem?
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Re: how combat works?

Post by rbodleyscott »

valkyrieneven wrote:any ways to solve that problem?
Sadly not.
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rbodleyscott
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Re: how combat works?

Post by rbodleyscott »

valkyrieneven wrote:(could you plz tell me how long is one turn in real time?)
We have avoided quoting such things for several reasons.

1) This is a top- down simulation, not a bottom-up simulation. Bottom-up simulations may appear to offer more realism at first glance, but it only takes a small error in the basic assumptions to result in a large deviation from realism in the final results. This game is designed to work backwards from the historical results of combat, not forwards from how many shots a unit can fire in a minute.
2) The game design is based on an action-counteraction model of simulating warfare, not on a time-slice method. This is why units can sometimes pursue and charge several times in a turn, if the enemy collapse in sequence. Such events did occur historically, and this allows them to occur in game. Most troops spent most of the time standing round doing nothing.
3) All of the action in the game is telescoped to make it more interesting. Historically, troops sometimes shot at each other in a desultory fashion for hours with little result. That would not make for an interesting game.

It follows therefore, that if the turn limit is 20 turns, one turn is 1/20th of the time taken for most battles to be resolved.
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GiveWarAchance
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Re: how combat works?

Post by GiveWarAchance »

That is the best thing about computer games we can just enjoy the fight while the computer does ridiculous amounts of number crunching to simulate the combat.
I'm not good at math so I just trust that all the calculations are happening somehow in good order and I just look at the combat modifiers to give me an idea why things are happening.
valkyrieneven
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Re: how combat works?

Post by valkyrieneven »

thanks for dev's replies . I just wanna dig it deeper while playing the game several times these weeks , with my interests in history .
As Jomni and Rbodleyscott post above , you don't care what's specific abilities a unit has ,cause it's "top-down" simulating , you focus on POAs and the result of a Campaign (For this reason if a campaign set by 20 turns and the real time it takes in history is 5 hours such as Sekigahara, can we say each turn approximate 10-30mins ,just estimate for historical reason) .
The problem is I do find there's "unit attribute" affect every combat result : total men , unit size , etc. such as ModifiedCloseCombatDamage FUNCTION written in CombatLogic.BSF script , it defined a basic damage value as 50 , then modified it by "total men" , "unit size" , "unit moral" and other parameters .So it decides each combat we see in game between two unit always causes 20-70 casualties .
But how could that fit the result and reality in history , when it set a static value like "unit attack" first .Because total time of a campaign or a skirmish was definitely known in history . You then set a turn number of each battle . I agree to trust calculating ability of computer . But how can you believe it could give a accurate and historic battle result , think if set the damage value or other bottom combat parameter would change campaigns result a lot .
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Re: how combat works?

Post by rbodleyscott »

valkyrieneven wrote:So it decides each combat we see in game between two unit always causes 20-70 casualties .
That isn't true, because it is heavily modified by the effects of POAs, unit strengths, previous casualties, disorder, morale state, obstacles etc etc.

The range you quote would only apply to a unit of UnitStrength 600 with no modifiers at all. The calculation has to start from somewhere, because the modifiers need something to modify.
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