So, I think most of us remember the suggestion of new sounds being available to listen to in WarLight, for when you do things. Well, I have a suggestion that we should take things beyond Aesthetic and offer a new depth of Stratagem for WarLight.
As things currently stand, in theory a very aggressive player would have tons of armies because of Reinforcement Cards, whilst a very defensive player would have the +10% Defensive Advantage. more often than not, we see mashes of this playstyle, with early consolidation, middle game expansion frenzy and the late - game decisive movements and encounters. While this is great and all, the fact is that it's a really bland formula when you consider how limited you are. Where is the 300-style defenses, where you beat the miraculous odds with a superior tactic? What about Hannibal's tactical maneuverings of catching the enemy at their weak points, despite being undermanned? Where's Genghis Khan's (I know , I know, total vanity moment) brilliant Cavalry maneuvering? Well, I introduce a way to make WarLight more strategic.

If you've ever played Axis & Allies, or a similar game, you'll know that in the game you have a pretty good array of choices on how you want to use your budget, to purchase units you want, that is. In the latest update, there is Artillery, Armours and Infantry. It's loosely a Rock-Paper-Scissors between Armours' Mobility and offensive firepower, Infantry's Budget-Friendly Defensives, and Artillery the Economic Golden Boy (Navy and Air is irrelevant to my suggestion). What if we implemented a similar system in WarLight?

First off, let's get Unit Categories Down:

There'd be Cavalry, Anti-Cavalry, Infantry, Ranged and Artillery.
The roles are pretty intuitive, but a quick run-down:

Cavalry - They are more mobile, and would be able to to travel two territories per turn (an optional effect, that can be increased, digress). Thanks to mobility and striking impetus, they have a bonus versus Infantry and Ranged units. Your Go-To Offensive Unit, able to pierce the heart of an Empire.
Anti-Cavalry - These guys are there to curbstomp the Steamroll. Not necessarily a battling unit, but they can be useful on the defensive against Cavalry. As stated, huge bonus versus cavalry.
Infantry - The backbone of your army, your first line of defense and your cheapest unit. They can adjust well from an Attack Force, to a Defense Force. They'll chop down Anti-Cavalry units, letting your Cavalry continue the Train Ride.
Ranged - The Cornerstone of any Defensive Army, they suffer bad combat odds against all units. However, they have a very important ability : they can fire a volley of arrows at an enemy stack, and will have a 50-50 chance of killing a random unit. The drawback is that they won't be calculated as a defender if their territory is attacked, so they need some guards if you want to do this.
Artillery - Cavalry are your Blitzkrieg, but Artillery are the Anvil to your Cavalry's Hammer. They have an increase in ability against Ranged, because they outrange them. They can weaken your opponent's defensive percentages in a territory, from a range of 2 territories away. Doing this makes them useless in a defense however. They have stat decreases against all other unit types, besides Ranged.

However, this could become dull too! People could potentially spam Cavalry, and walk around your Anti-Cavalry units and then whip up a whole new army of Infantry! Infantry + Artillery can roll over anything! Well, the answer to that is an array of Special Unit Categories. Every player would randomly get a Special Unit Category, to diversify the playing field. The Special units categories :

Super Anti-Cav - They can fight at par with Infantry, and fight well against Cavalry still.
Super Cavalry - They can fight on par with regular anti-cavalry, but sacrifice their bonus against Ranged units.
Super Infantry A - They can fight better than normal infantry.
Super Infantry B - They get an extra First Strike Calculation before fighting begins.
Super Ranged - They can fire from 2 territories away like Ballista.

The drawback to these Super Units is that they cost more! This balances out their somewhat Game-changing effects.

Now, the EXACT costs of these units would be customizable, and the options for where you can deploy units should go something like this :

Either you can immediately deploy from any territory you own.

You can deploy at places you've owned from the previous turn and still own now.

You can only deploy at places you started from.

Now, let's look at how this could be profitable!

It's not hard to see how something like this could become dull or repetitive, and the answer to that is further Customization and Aesthetics!

Say you offer 2 default skins for this system :

Classical and Modern Era.

The Rosters would go something like ,

Classical - Cataphracts Cavalry, Legionary Infantry, Spearman Anti-Cavalry, Peltast Ranged, Ballista Artillery
Modern - Tank/Armour Cavalry, "Infantry" Infantry, Bazooka Anti-Cavalry, Sniper Ranged, "Artillery" Artillery

Now, you could throw in different Skins for different Eras, but for a price!

Era ideas : Victorian, Medieval, Stone Age, Renaissance, Futuristic
Or, you could do Rosters based on Historical Cultures!
Hellenic, Latin, Nomadic, Chinese, Japanese, American etc.

And an option that would be a lot more expensive than others could be to "Upload your Own Skin". This could be a way to bank on the system however, so I don't I'd personally do that.

Now, to make Membership more incentive :

Bring back the old days, and make Membership the go-to thing if you want to be cool and make Custom Scenarios!
A new incentive to Membership could be that you can make a scenario using the added details of Unit Types! Suck it, people who won't pay up $30.00!

Further Strategic Aspects :

You would see numbers of units in a stack like Normal WarLight, but you'd have no idea what are in those stacks. Only after you attacked it, you would get intel on it. Customization options would include how much intel you got from an attack, how many attack to get more intel, etc. This could increase strategic depth for Cavalry, the Cheap Infantry unit or Ranged unit's volley ability.

You could set neutrals to have a certain unit as their garrison, set a guideline on a formula for how they mix their garrisons. Something like, .40 Infantry, .20 Ranged, . 40 Anti-Cavalry could be the standard. of course, most neutrals don't have 5 units, so formulas could determine what the stacks of 1's , 2's , 3's and 4's would be composed of.

You would buy units with your armies per turn. An example , with figures comparative to unit values, could go something like this :

2 - Infantry
2 - Anti-Cavalry
3 - Ranged
5 - Artillery
3 - Cavalry

Super Units would be anywhere from 1.5x - 3x the worth of the unit they're "Super" to.

Of course, it'd be customizable.

Veteran players wouldn't have to fret, as this feature, like all others , would and SHOULD be another Customization Option.

Order of Combat :

Artillery and Ranged Volleys 1st, Super Infantry B First Strike result and Cavalry attack (and if Anti-Cavalry is involved as well, their orders would be included in this step ), All other combat would then be resolved.

The EXACT numbers should be something of speculation, but could be another Purchasable Customization Option, with an added effect that only Members could use.

Possible Incompatibilities :

Multi-Attack could make Cavalry Irrelevant, among other things.
Local Deployments could potentially jerk things up, or it could fit in really well given how recruitment worked back in the old days of war.

*This is a VERY Rough Draft, and it will likely not be included, if at all, into the game in this shape.*

Overall, I'd like to see how Veteran players would react to all the new options in gameplay, how they would develop their strategies. How would they figure out a way to exploit the system?

Anywho, I haven't User Voiced this idea yet because I wanted to see how everyone would react to it first. If popular, I'll get it up.

"Now let's look at how this could be profitable" you got fizzy hook, line and sinker with that line XD (or really anyone who wants warlight to keep afloat)

Also maybe a 10% overall offensive effectiveness bonus for having a little of everything in a stack(combined arms ftw!)

Edited 5/24/2015 06:53:16

Lol.

I don't know if anyone has this question, but luck and offensive / Defensive bonuses would still be a factor. The new effects would just be add-ons. I hope I'll get to start throwing pila at my enemy soon, or leading Rome to glory!

No no no, tupac. That detracts from the point of this, to avoid boring stack warfare. Besides,bonuses you'd get from how the units naturally fight each other would be good enough.

I admit to lying about one thing though : i never suggested anything that could make 300 a possibility in warlight.

You could also have a card showing you the forces a enemy has in a stack, and you with that you could predict what a enemy will throw at a chokepoint, and send some units to stop that, while withdrawing the rest safely behind until they are needed to stop another attack

simple to make 300: make some territories have different kill/defend rates, based on individual territories.

We already have rock paper scissors combat at times and it's something to be avoided.

Thomas, what about when you want to then go on the offensive. ... thermopylae was one battle, but the focus should be on every engagement to turn out a victory.
Beside, you'd only be getting 300 kills every defense. If you had an attacking force of 10,000, even on lowest setting, 100 Spartans would die.

How do we already have rock paper scissors? It's just numbers with offensive / Defensive ratio at current and a small luck factor. Tactical variation would free up people's options.

yeah there is already too much rock paper scissors in warlight, we don't need more

also tl;dr

Is this serious?

It seems too long to be a joke.

If you want to have a hand at designing a new board game, it's definitely worth doing.

Warlight, though? It's an entirely different beast.

(Having said that, I've found a lot of Thermopylae-type moments in my Multiform Warlight games, where I use a particular combination of settings to create very strategic and unpredictable warfare. If anyone wants to try that, just message me and I'll invite you to one.)

I'm serious.

Essentially, it'd be Normal Risk, with Variations in what your armies actually are and involves properly composing your army to counter it.

Besides, you really should read it. Introducing even a few of these concepts could breathe new life into WarLight.

Like Semicedevine's mention of possible terrain mechanics, or being able to purchase things with your armies per turn, rather than putting them all down.

It would keep things fresh, let's just analyze a possible turn of what would happen with these settings :

Your bonus has just been busted by an enemy army! It's a bit early game, but they're packing a lot of units. A totally unexpected attack, likely they made a Wasteland pick. But that doesn't matter, because you need to act to stop it.

You're a little dry on money because of the bonus break, but you figure you can buy a few units

You decide the first step should be to figure out what they exactly have.

Going off the fact that there are 2 enemy armies, with 1 ahead of the other, you estimate the Forward Force is Cavalry and the other is Slow-Moving units.

You set aside some money for Anti-Cavalry. Now, you'll need a good breakdown on their Second Army.

Knowing it's an effective scout method, and that you could bag a few kills, you make nearby archers shoot at this Second Army to get useful intel.

Just to get some extra assurance and to keep your expansion going, you buy a few cavalry and have them help complete a bonus.

You pull back all cavalry to keep them safe for a Counter-Attack, and you throw all Anti-Cavalry at what you suppose is their Cavalry. The rest of your forces you use as a Guard Garrison for your archers.

Yeah, not sure rock/paper/scissors is the analogy you want. Have you played rock/paper/scissors? There's not much strategy to it, just trying to guess what your opponent is gonna do, and Warlight has enough of that. Just one simple example of rock/paper/scissor in Warlight:

Two players have a territory adjacent to each other. Each has 5 armies and 5 income.

Rock: defend with 10
Paper: complete a bonus elsewhere
Scissors: attack with 9

Rock loses to paper, which loses to scissors, which loses to rock. All are valid choices, just depends on what your opponent does, which always involves an element of luck.

Anyway, sounds like you're talking about a completely new game. :)

It would increase strategic potential.

That current system is not really what people mean when they refer to rock-paper-scissors.
It usually refers to a system where a unit had strengths and weaknesses.

Currently, we only have percentages and luck factor (meta game doesn't count).

This would open new ways for people to consider their tactics.

I agree with Jaymer we dont need more shit

What do you mean? This game makes practically no profits. This could be the powder keg to get things moving.

It's dumb when we have ideas for how the clan system is flawed, but we don't get these innovative be features like local deployments.

This offers a balance between getting some money and some new features to add depth for those who want it.

It isn't that it is a bad idea, but it really isn't... well... Warlight. At all. And the rock-paper-scissors/defend-expand-attack thing does hold pretty true. You can also already manage to (not always, but occasionally) pull off some pretty whacky tactics if you can slip an island into someone's super bonus. A 5 income person can screw up Partha in RoR for quite a while, if they get a little momentum running and a few lucky rolls on turn order. Not just RoR either, any map that has some size to it. I would submit that instead of an entirely new game as you're outlining, you may want to just play with new settings on different maps. Many offer quite a bit more than rote stacking vs your opponent, especially when it comes to coordinated teamplay. Or make the game yourself as OC instead of an expansion, but I wouldn't consider it really mesh-able with Warlight. Just my two cents.

Having individual territories alterable via setting (or simply the ability to customize cards/the introduction of cards that aid defense or offense) would be an easier method to implement additional strategy, especially if you could make it so that certain cards were obtained from specific territories.

We should consider installing a sound in the form of a loud horn, shortly followed by the Benny Hill theme tune for every time Genghis makes a move - it would complement his playing style perfectly and would provide his team mates with a humourous perspective on the clownery that invariably follows after he presses the commit button? Good stress reducer and excellent way to quickly identify king noobs

It may hold true, but players de facto wouldn't be stupid and just expand, just attack or just defend. They use a mixture that suits them as necessary.

I do agree like many others that being able to have attack or defensive buffs and debuffs would be pretty good, very innovative as far as possible techniques.

@Formless Why is a newfag calling me a noob? Srs mate, just stop.