Hi Crynsos!

First up. I really like the mod. Formations are something that has been missing from the game and I appreciate you taking the time to create a mod that enables them for us.

Thought I’d provide some feedback for you on my experiences thus far.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

- Your formations are mostly thematically appropriate and very fitting!

- Your distribution for which formations are available to which units is generally pretty good. Initially I thought they were a little “dwarf heavy”, so to speak, but upon reflection I think that the broad availability for dwarfs is rather important given the factions heavy reliance on infantry units.

- Query: Is there a reason that Chaos/Beastmen/Elves haven’t been included with the mod? Are they intended for future inclusion?

- Your numbers are sound. It would be really easy to overdo the relative power provided by these formations. Particularly since they’re not currently available for all factions. You’ve kept the raw numbers sufficiently low that they don’t represent an imbalance and yet still manage to provide a bonus that makes them worth using. I find the numerical bonuses are generally in line with those obtained from attributes/cumulative experience ranks and this works well.


FORMATION OBSERVATIONS

Note – I make some suggestions with some of these about potential changes. I’m only assuming such changes are possible to make. If not, then obviously those suggestions can’t be implemented but the feedback remains.

Lance of Bretonnia – This is a really strong formation for shock cavalry. The bonuses are considerable and the pointed wedge shape combined with the mass of the “large” creatures really enables you to PUNCH into the enemy. Unit distribution and availability is pretty good.

Da Green Tide / Slayer Fury – Number bonuses here are ok , nothing overwhelming. What makes this one strong is the capacity to cause fear. This provides a pretty significant boost to early to midgame Orc “line” infantry which I think traditionally struggles a lot in many encounters and helps them to close the leadership gap somewhat. I do somewhat question the need for this fear capacity to be available to Black Orc units, as I think they already function really well with their extremely high armour and very good armour piercing damage. I feel like Black Orcs are pretty strong in their original incarnation and don’t really need the ability to reduce enemy leadership. Availability for Slayers is entirely appropriate and helps offset a small amount of their general squishiness in combat (they’re still super squishy!).

Ring of Steel / Wall of Bone – I really like this one. I’m an enthusiastic dwarf player and I find myself organising my units to achieve this sort of formation on a larger, “whole army scale” in a variety of different engagements. The ability to utilise individual units to this effect alters the dynamic of infantry heavy forces in a really positive way. It enables viable defence of ranged units without having to commit your entire force to a static position and frees up larger groups of your infantry for other more dynamic uses. The numerical bonuses here are pretty solid, and the charge resistance bonus really makes this an effective choice of formation. Unit distribution is very broad and the availability of this formation to a significant number of units in multiple factions really does have the potential to shake up battle dynamics, in a positive way.

Shield Breaker/Shield of Humanity/Spear of Undeath – This one is a little….quaint :P The bonuses are pretty small (although always appreciated) and the pointy formation tip is kind of neat looking, but overall I find doesn’t accomplish a whole lot on a practical level. The formation doesn’t provide a charge bonus, and infantry in general doesn’t seem to have the requisite mass to really make use of a “tipped” formation of this nature for any kind of actual penetrating offensive effect. They tend to charge in and just flatten out against the enemy unit as per normal without much discernible effect. It strikes me as a “better than nothing” general purpose offensive formation, but I think the bonuses could probably use a little tweaking to come up with something a little more useful.

Last Stand – This one is another nice one and provides the opportunity for some interesting gameplay choices. One thing I do think needs to be carefully considered is the 100% charge resistance. As it stands there’s a pretty limited selection of units that has “expert” charge defence. This makes a similar effect (the same? not sure) available to a larger number of units and I think some potential for abuse with an infantry heavy army in prime condition could exist.

One possible solution would be to limit this “last stand” formation to units that have either a) suffered a significant number of casualties or b) are suffering from low leadership. Either of these criteria would be thematically appropriate and would negate the ability for an infantry force to just instantly “turtle up” on the battlefield and create a fresh, whole line of units that are 100% resistant to charge right from the outset which might be a little unreasonable.

Shield Wall – This one is a great “go to” formation for line infantry. The defensive stat bonuses are very useful and the charge resistance means you can actually “hold the line” more effectively. Added missile parry is a godsend for troops who, being obvious and accessible targets, will be absorbing large quantities of random missile fire. The reduction in movement speed is a good offset for the defensive bonuses of this formation. Some of the units to whom this formation is available……don’t have shields :P and whilst the bonuses themselves don’t really preclude this from being appropriate (excepting missile parry), perhaps naming it something other than “shield wall” would seem more fitting, since a sizeable number of the units don’t require shields to use it? Petty quibble I know, just thought I’d mention it.

Diamond Formation – A clone of Da Green Tide / Slayer Fury….but for horses. The bonuses are handy, especially for units that are often used for maximum offensive effect. Nothing really special to write home about here, but its a nice option to have for cavalry units. I also note in passing that the numbers on the screenshot for this formation are listed as percentile bonuses, whereas your description contains numerical bonuses. Are these equivalents? Or was there a change made that is causing the two to be different?

Overall I think this mod is very well done and I appreciate the time you've taken to provide it to the community. It adds an element of tactical consideration to battles that helps shift the focus away from "make line, smash enemy" which often seems very prevalent.

Keep up the good work Crynsos!

Hello and thanks for your extensive comment on this mod and it's good to hear that you like it.

I'm always very open for feedback, especially on a mod like this one, which can be quite balance tipping if done wrong and can easily tip off various people about lore accuracy and such.

Now onto those specific points...


Dwarf heavy is true, but after all Dwarfs are probably the most organized and trained military in the Warhammer world, with them being such an old race (both individually and as a whole), where even Miners go to the battlefield.

I specifically removed the units which were unfitting for certain formations though, mostly due to gameplay reasons, because the Shield Wall auto-disabled ranged attacks. So Ranger being a good example, were excluded from Shield Wall for that reason and also from Ring of Steel, as they might still be good combatants compared to Empire Crossbow units, but within the Dawi army, they would be considered light skirmishers and thus not something that you would use for advanced defensive formations - so they only have Shield Breaker and Last Stand available.

Similarily, irregular Empire troops such as Free Company Militia are more limited in the number of formations they have, just like how the Vamps have little units that are formation capable and Grave Guard do not have "Last Stand" available either, as survival is a non-concern for undead units, so I aimed to keep the availability of formations both gameplay-wise fitting as well as thematically based on the unit background.


For this initial release, I wanted to focus on the core game units, those which I knew where formations would be certainly appropriate, which ones specifically and how they should be named.

This is why Wood Elves were not included yet and with them living literally "under a log" compared to knowing about what the rest of the world does, I wasn't sure if formations would be really appropriate for them at all, plus I don't really know much about their units at the moment. They are probably planned for the near future though, in whatever form that will be.

Chaos is another one of those I wasn't so sure about, although I guess at least Chaos Warriors and Chosen can get some formations as they are the more orderly kind of fighters, compared to the Norscan cannon fodder units.

I don't think Beastmen are suited to have any formations at all, with as chaotic and feral a race they are, which focuses so much on attack and destruction and so little on defense or tactics, with their only real tactic being ambushes and those don't work well together with formations.


Numbers
Originally I wanted to make the numbers percentage based, but especially regarding balancing I tend to double check with others who are more experienced with unit balancing (as I'm more of a background gameplay mechanics modder), which in this case was Cataph and who warned me of the power creep that could be achieved with these formations paired with high tier generals and endgame units. I wanted the bonus to scale well over all units and since almost all unit bonuses are percentage based anyways, giving out some flat bonuses makes the early units a bit stronger, while still adding a fair bit of bonus, but probably not quite as much to the high tier units. Pretty much what I aimed for, despite the method being different.


Da Green Tide
Black Orcs I was also not so sure about, but since their numbers in an army would be typically not all that high and they are still Orcs, I wanted to make this ability to be uniformally available for all Orc Melee Infantry. Why would high tier units not have an ability that their low tier version can do? (Unless it becomes obsolete of course)

Either way, I'll think about it as they are pretty strong indeed, but yes, the ability is mainly meant to make low and mid-tier Orc units better without actually increasing their combat skills, especially versus non-Dwarfen units, which I think I achieved rather well with this method.
I did think about adding a negative leadership bonus here too for balancing purposes.


Ring of Steel / Wall of Bone
Yeah, using this kind of formation army-wide is probably the most common Dwarf tactic and very sound with their whole theme of being both the most defensive race, while wearing their enemies down via ranged units and artillery, but giving this ability to a single unit gives them a whole lot of new tactics, massively reducing the amount of units you need to leave with your artillery to defend against flanking attacks.

In general, it should clearly make for more interesting fights, than purely staying in a static defensive positioning, allowing for actually less micromanagement (despite the whole point of formations being an additional, optional bonus for extra micromanagement of your army), which gives you more time to focus on organizing flanking attacks and thelike.


Shield Breaker/Shield of Humanity/Spear of Undeath
I know that I was being very careful with the numbers on this formation and will probably change them a bit, entirely removing the defensive numbers and just going for full charge and offensive bonuses, I just wanted to release it to get this kind of feedback and generally be very careful with offensive numbers, as those can much more easily get unbalanced and break otherwise fine combat than defensive, static formations with high defense bonuses.


Last Stand
Yes, I did also think about the potential for abuse with pristine armies, but from my testing, the formation auto-dissolves if the enemy gets too far into the formation anyway, removing the bonuses after like a quarter or a third of the formation's unit died, so it's not that great for a "set and forget" formation for keeping your frontline stable and relying purely on it.

The charge negation is a valid concern and another one of those points I wasn't so sure about, however Cataph informed me that the charge resistance is a pretty negligible bonus that can either do a fair bit or nothing at all, so I can go pretty wild on it. But yeah, I could probably reduce it to 75%, but clearly wanted it to be a bit higher than the other formations with it, as it is still a formation meant for isolated units, which are highely likely to be charged by cavalry more than anything else.

I'm not sure if its possible to deactivate the formation until such a situation is reached, but I will look into it as the idea is good and has been done with other abilities to a degree.

Also, if we were to balance purely for abuse situations... well, we all know how CA reacted in regards to Vampire Counts regeneration spells and the feedback on that...


Shield Wall
The reduced movement is something that I didn't actually add myself, but would clearly have done if it wasn't there already as it's an obvious and easy balancing mechanic, I guess it comes from back from Rome's heavy Legionaires, which would have a hard time walking fast in heavy armor and with shields high.

I specifically made two variations of each formation which includes a Shield Parry bonus, where the units without a Shield get a +1 extra Melee Defense instead, which is not much but should mostly balance it out. Maybe I'll add another point of it or something else to compensate. I could of course have left the Missile Parry bonus, but that wouldn't have made much sense, although there is also the the "Missile Resistance" bonus that I added to the Diamond formation, which I could utilize here to a small degree.

I did think about different names but couldn't really come up with anything good so far and wanted to keep the same formations familiar to people, regardless of units used and even if they provided a few differences due to the unit type involved, mostly for memorizing which formations do what without having to look it up.


Diamond Formation
Actually it's much more than a clone, because it is meant to be a lesser form of the Lance formation, which focuses less on pure attack and more on mobility and acts as a generic useful formation for most situations.

Especially the factor that Da Green Tide will deactivate once a movement order is given while the Diamond Formation (and most others) can be used indefinitely makes a bit difference.

Ah yeah, the description is actually wrong, the bonuses are just what is listed in the screenshot and I copied in the formatting from Da Green Tide but forgot to change it to the actual numbers, just an error on my side.

Originally posted by Crynsos:

Hello and thanks for your extensive comment on this mod and it's good to hear that you like it.

I'm always very open for feedback, especially on a mod like this one, which can be quite balance tipping if done wrong and can easily tip off various people about lore accuracy and such.



Diamond Formation
Actually it's much more than a clone, because it is meant to be a lesser form of the Lance formation, which focuses less on pure attack and more on mobility and acts as a generic useful formation for most situations.

Especially the factor that Da Green Tide will deactivate once a movement order is given while the Diamond Formation (and most others) can be used indefinitely makes a bit difference.

Ah yeah, the description is actually wrong, the bonuses are just what is listed in the screenshot and I copied in the formatting from Da Green Tide but forgot to change it to the actual numbers, just an error on my side.

Always happy to provide feedback. Modding is where much of the future interest of the game lies, so its worth encouraging the people who do it wherever possible!

As for diamond formation, I hadn't realised the movement restrictions differed to Da Green Tide. That's a really interesting distinction. Provides a unique take on a similar mechanic. Will have to check it out in more detail.

Thanks for your response.

Yeah feedback is always highely appreciated, especially the highely constructive and detailed kind like this and it sure helps to motivate us modders.

You might have misread what I said about the Diamond Formation, it has nothing in common with Da Green Tide and I don't think making it largely the same just based on a different movement mechanic would make sense anyways. I just happened to copypaste the formatting from that one and forgot to edit in the actual values that Diamond Formation has, which are now corrected in this thread and have been always correct in the screenshot. It has more in common with the Lance of Bretonnia than any other formation.

I'd like to chip in and say that the Wood Elves do pretty decently without formations as is, and as they rely almost solely on archer spam to win, formations would be lost on them since most of their army is running the opposite direction when the melee units come charging in.

Yeah, that's part of the reason why I didn't bother with them at the moment and because they are supposely still a bit overpowered.

Any plans to add formations for chaos? Even without bonuses as chosen/chaos warriors/chaos knights probablydon't need those being so powerful already.

They are next up on my todo list, just wanted to add all of the remaining working formations first.

Hey Crynsos, I've been watching your iterations of the formations within the mod closely and as it stands I've a couple of additional points of feedback for their present incarnations.

1. Shield Wall/Phalanx - I understand that shield wall/phalanx formations are having some functional problems with unit behaviour after the formation is assumed (AI problems I believe?). This is unfortunate, I hope you're able to find a workaround for it, because to be blunt, the melee combat conditional really doesn't work very well for this formation in my opinion.

I find that melee infantry units often tend to become somewhat less responsive (especially to movement orders) after becoming embroiled in direct combat. I'm not 100% certain what qualifies a unit for being engaged for the purposes of the "melee combat" flag/conditional, but after some pretty thorough testing I can reasonably state that once an infantry unit has become involved in melee combat, its really difficult to reliably order them into the shield wall formation with any success. They tend to start to try and carry out the formation shift, and then stop when they realise they're being attacked and they then continue to fight as they were.

The above behaviour is fine from the perspective of the bonuses received from the Shield Wall/Phalanx formation, as these kick in immediately after you click the button. However a significant benefit to using this particular formation is that units pack in tighter, and receive their charge defense bonus. The positional, mass density and charge resistance bonuses are really much more useful in being established before combat is commenced and in its current format, this isn't achievable.

In your most recent post you indicated that a workaround was potentially available:

"The workaround is fairly simply, you activate a specific other formation first, then Shield Wall becomes available for selection for a few second and once it is active it becomes unable to get selected (so you can't deactivate it by itself) but it stays active and works as intended."

I was wondering if you could clarify this workaround for me a bit? Are you suggesting that the shield wall/phalanx formation has another, "pre-requisite" formation button that has to be clicked first? Or that you simply use ANY other formation before using the Shield Wall and then it will work properly?

Additionally, when you cite that the shield wall/phalanx icon becomes "unable to get selected (so you cant deactivate it by itself)", what does this mean for de-activating the formation in general? Is it deactivated by doing the same thing in reverse? selecting a differerent formation to cancel the shield wall/phalanx? Or does this mean the unit will be stuck in Shield Wall/Phalanx for good once its toggled on?

2. Ring of Steel - I've been messing about with this formation a bit today and for starters, I have to say its a great idea. Functionally this is really, really cool. It allows for the encirclement of larger units than just a single lord or monster, at the offset of the "wall" being only one unit thick. I really really like this formation and it works very well with melee infantry.

However, something I've noticed whilst messing around with dwarf missile infantry (holds true for quarrelers and thunderers in my testing though i believe it would also apply to irondrakes/torp troops) is that after moving into this formation, the firing of missiles doesn't really conform to the expected behaviour.

The unit models for the missile infantry face outwards in all directions, however the "firing arc" for the unit whilst it is in "Ring of Steel" formation only allows the unit to fire to ONE side of the square. And thus far in my testing, the side that it points towards is NOT the direction the unit was facing when I ordered them into "Ring of Steel" formation.

In my testing this usually results in 3 out of 4 of the sides of the square not shooting at anything.

I've created a screenshot to help illustrate what I'm talking about.

http://imgur.com/a/kZB10

I think the ideal solution to this would be to fix it so that the unit can fire outwards in all the directions that the guys are facing (360 degrees) if at all possible. This would be consistent with how the formation SEEMS to be intended to function.

Alternatively, if its not possible to instill a 360 degree firing arc, then a secondary (less than ideal) solution would be to make sure the available firing arc aligns with the "forward" direction that the unit was facing before it shifted formation so that at least one side of the formation can shoot at the enemy.

A third last resort option would be to allow this formation to be "rotated" (using Ctrl+alt+left mouse click movement) so that the off-centre firing arc can be repositioned to point forward and allow one side of the box to shoot at the enemy.

A secondary issue I’ve discovered with the new “Ring of Steel” formation is that the unit using the formation won’t re-adjust its positioning after recovering from an impact of any kind. (for all I know this might be an issue with your other formations as well, this is the only one I’ve noticed it with so far).

Traditional infantry units will distort out of shape if they get charged, or as they enter melee combat or if their own allied units move through them……but after the charge has moved on, or combat has stopped or the allies have passed through, the unit will reform back to its original configuration. This behaviour doesn’t seem to occur with units in “Ring of Steel” at all. Units that suffer displacement of models from charges, combat or allied movement will distort out of shape and NOT reset their configuration after time. I have to physically order the units out of the formation and into the formation again to rectify this mis-shapen behaviour. This is a bit counter intuitive and means the unit can’t recover from its first encounter and effectively utilise the box shape without manual intervention.

See the attached screenshot for an example.

http://imgur.com/a/lY6w5

3. Iron Guard - No real issues with this one, its effectively the old "Ring of Steel" formation, works fine. Just one observation. This formation seems to disable ranged attacks and force units to haul out their melee weapons. I recall this being stated as intended behaviour, but I also don't seem to be able to find a written in game reference to the fact that it disables ranged attacks.

It might be worth adjusting the formation tooltip and/or unit mouseover information to reflect the disabling of ranged attacks.

See the following screenshot.

http://imgur.com/a/5cWMb

4. Last Stand – I realise in my other lengthy post I suggested that having this particular formation trigger on a lower amount of health or leadership might be a good idea and thematically appropriate, but I’ve since come to the conclusion that I was wrong.

As you yourself noted, this formation tends to dissolve once a certain number of the unit models have been killed. When you couple a 50% HP requirement for triggering with this tendency for dissolution with reduced unit models, you end up with a formation that can be activated……at about the same time or just a little bit before it was also be dissolved because its unit count is too low. This is a functional problem and renders the formation rather useless in a lot of my testing.

It can SOMETIMES be ok if the distribution of lower HP is across a large number of unit models so you still have a lot of men, but are at the 50% hitpoint mark, but for some reason this doesn’t seem to consistently be the case. Most often I will find that by the time I have hit 50% HP and can trigger this formation……I’ve lost so many unit models that it dissolves shortly thereafter. Too shortly to be of much practical value.

In theory it’s a good idea, in practice it just doesn’t work very well unfortunately. I think it might be wiser to revert this one to not requiring a low health trigger and perhaps tinker with the bonuses instead.

how any formation could give to humans immune to fear? I disagree with that thing.

Well, it is fear, not terror that they are immune to as it is a formation to fight mostly against large enemies and monsters. Essentially it is just a pretty strong leadership buff, that only works against enemies using the fear effect, so it is actually less powerful than a high leadership bonus.

i mean that formation isn't a special ability, but training effect in army. It doesn't give anti-fear to troops anyhow. Well... if there is no troops in flanks, they are rounded... enemies are fearsome - them would feel fear anyway. it is OP to make formations have an ability to anti-fear i think. But its your mod, i just say as i feel any medieval-like warfare (especialy phantasy where many different races with very fearfull as it is nature and the people aren't to fearless, as we wish to think... )

@crynsos: Looks like some very good work. Will follow. I dabble mostly in balance style modding myself (as an amateur really). From this background, I ask, what exactly are the negatives of each formation? I have read the above, and maybe due to my own fault, I haven't seen them. My secondary question to that is, how does the default/no formation remain relevant for each unit? Without downsides, what is stopping me from simply putting some of these units in a formation every battle because there is no drawback? Does that make sense? Without a drawback they seem to take more of the form of unlimited use powers.

Thanks! Great work!

@crynsos: Apologies, must clarify. It is only SOME of these formations I beg this question of. Diamond Formation, Last Stand, and Lance of Bretonnia are the formations my above questions apply too.

@guardianru
Again, it only works against the fear effect that some monsters or monstrous infantry have, which is a flat -10 leadership effect. It does not have anything to do with leadership loss due to flanking attacks, loss of unit size or other effects, those still occur normally as it just makes immune to that -10 flat effect that happens when in close proximity to an enemy unit with the fear ability.


@sdunnyw506
Last Stand is immobile and cannot be activated until the unit is at less than 50% Health to make it last a bit longer at that stage, especially when isolated. Diamond Formation is not really meant to have any disadvantages, after all it was used a lot to good effect in the past from what I read, but I heard it suffered a bit (yet less) from the same side effects as Lance of Bretonnia.

The Lance's side effects are twofold and often not so obvious and can be a bit situational. You become better at penetrating enemy formations, but that means that you get so deep into an enemy formation, that said enemy army can easily lock your cavalry unit inside that penetrated unit by coming up behind your unit and flanking from your behind, which I have seen the AI do quite quickly now and then. Another side effect that I mainly heard of, didn't really watch that affect so much myself, is that you get only less units engaged at once with the formation active due to the smaller size of the units making contact, though that might be a bit negligible. But in general, both are meant to be quite heavily used by default but can offer different advantages for different situations for the few units able to use both such as Vampire Lance cavalry.