I have had combat between players for months now, but I always felt it was a stop gap. I did not want a standard “roll the dice, see what comes up” style of combat.

I am extremely proud of the direction this took — and the neat thing is this system arose out of the wall building mechanism (not shown in this video).

In this video, I attack a herd of deer, but the basics work against predator herds and humans. I use a “flank attack” and commit a few to flanking. Flanking results in sending some of my soldiers to the rear of an opponent. You cannot flank everyone. Each tile has 9 sub tiles — NW, NN, NE, WW, CC, EE, SW, SS, SE. You don’t directly control which sub tile you are on, but basically if you enter a tile from the SE you will be in the SE sub tile. To flank, an opponent has to be able to path behind a target within its movement cost that turn (in this case, 3 minus how ever times I have moved that turn).

Flanking is a gamble. If an opponent has another unit guarding its rear, you could lose all send to flank pretty easily. That is not shown here because while that ability (to cover another unit) is implemented for the human, the AI is currently playing an older version of the game without covering units or villages (the human can build villages but that’s not the topic of this post).

Anyways after you click the attack begins and the unit will auto move to the tile (cannot flank if already on the tile, thats a normal “frontal assault” with no flankers but also less risk in case of coverage).

Once the attack begins the “Pick 3” system begins. I don’t know what to call it. It was Pick 3X2 but now there’s no X2. Anyways it works like this. In combat, you have two sets of 3 sub tiles you pick. One set is your “tendency pick” and is not up to you or the AI player. Your choices are NW, NN, NE, WW, CC, EE, SW, SS, SE. When combat begins you can click the three sub tiles, but as I will explain you usually click only one button.

You can see your “tendencies” here on the right:

This means my automatic tendency pick is a 7.20% chance of CC, EE, SE. I am 90.30% likely to pick CC in all my picks. This information is private and at the beginning, only you know this information. But each time you are “scouted” by an opponent (even a deer herd), their information level on you increases. Similarly, your information level on them increases when you scout them.

Also, note the “Enable Deceit” button. This is what I am going to be working on the next week. When enabled, if people scout you they will get the wrong impression of your tendencies. However, there will be consequences to a neighbor finding out you were lying (as in, they won’t like you, won’t trade with you, won’t trust you).

So when combat begins, you have to guess what their tendency is. And your opponent has to guess what yours is. With zero information, the best guess is of course 1/3rd chance of each. But the tendencies are designed so that you are going to be heavily biased and there is nothing you can do about it except try to keep that information hidden.

Here is a video of it working out, but before combat I use a cheat (you gotta cheat if you are making a game!) to increase my info level on my opponent. Then I click “optimal pick.” Note the “sub optimal pick” option. When you enable deceit, you will tell everyone the statistical opposite of your true tendencies. So if you think someone is lying, you want to click sub optimal pick.

Combat!

So here’s the thing I forgot to mention. I gave myself 1000 soldiers as a cheat. So the outcome doesn’t matter because its multipliers. Basically its set so that all else being equal (soldier quality, soldier quantity, etc), if I guess 3 of yours and you guess 0 of mine, its like a 7–1 kill ratio. The most likely is 1–1 but that will only happen like 22% or something like that — its two sets of 9 choose 3 so each outcome is 1/84².

You will have a choice. Be dishonest, and you get the military advantage. But no one will trust you. AI players, over the coming months, will be hardwired to be more honest or dishonest, and you won’t know who is what at the beginning.