Continent shape, geography, barriers and (mental) influence on territory held.

Figment · 2012-06-08, 09:48 AM

So we've seen Indar. Sooner or later we'll be seeing some other continents. So far most of us seem to be under the impression a T-split will occur on Indar, mostly due to the permanent sanctuary warpgates. I think enough has been said about that particular split.

However, what we've not really discussed is the influence of geography and base layout on the map division.

If you look at Indar, the first thing you notice is that it's one almost square landmass. This makes us as a symmetry and pattern seeking species already biased to cutting it up in equal shares. Another thing I think we need to keep in mind is that we, as humans, also like "nice borders". Hence if we divide something in pieces, we like that border to be smooth and have some sort of aesthetic appeal. Such "perfection" of border seems to generate a protective illusion of safety perhaps: the border is visualy complete and uninterrupted.

With the more recent knowledge gained regarding Indar, the T-split seems to be further encouraged by the continent having multiple "climate" zones that create more "natural" boundaries and zones exactly along the edges of the "T". The barrier can be physical and literally block you from passing, but can also be mental and self-imposed. Either through intimidation or clear separation. Typically such geographical features form mental barriers and territorial barriers as it indicates a crossing into someone else's territory.

More or less how a river or mountainrange says "this is the border", but similar mental barriers ("their side, our side") are formed by more artificial features like walls, fences, hedges, highways and railroads. Sometimes you have buffer zones, neutral territory or conflict zones as well. A canyon or open road can also create a "natural path of expansion".

Now, with PS1 it was quite easy to predict how a sequence of bases would fall due to the lattice and the lack of imagination of some people to use other lattices. Typically there were clusters of bases that would be grouped together mentally. As such, bases, towers and outposts can also be mentally grouped together as part of the same piece of territory, or as border markers.

Typically groupings were made by relative distance, but other groupings had again something to do with geography or otherwise: islands, in-crater, out-of-crater, lattice links and of course, the biggest grouping of all: continents.

In PS1 then the most noticable mental borders to say "this territory is yours and this is ours" were the warpgates themselves and entire continents were assigned to factions (home continents) or considered "neutral/free for all". On any continent itself, the borders were vague and nobody would be hesitant to move into someone elses territory once the initial barrier was passed.

So the questions I'm posing now are:

How can you design continents such that the quantity of terrain held by an empire fluctuates a lot?
What are the influences of hexagon formations, patterns and distributions?
How can you influence mental boundaries?
What is the treshold for a player to cross such boundaries?
How can you create continents such that the mental and physical control a foothold provides over nearby hexes is reduced and makes those hexes more likely to be taken?

If you have any other comments on mental and physical distribution of territory, let's hear it.

Aractain · 2012-06-08, 09:55 AM

You sounds very VS right now...

But anyway Im sure we will find a place like Amerish from the PS1 that is Home and we will keep it! Forever!

There seemed to be a large peice in the top right that wasn't part of the hex grid so is this just no mans land? (turn back warning area)

Also I don't remember CR5s going "Good job, we took the base!. I think thats all we need. Just stay here guys! We good."

JimmyOmaha · 2012-06-08, 09:59 AM

Resource greed, and denying them to your enemies will motivate armies to break those natural borders and want for symmetry.

I just fear reinforcements will become to great near the footholds that provide you with all the terminals and protection.

Figment · 2012-06-08, 10:12 AM

@Aractain:
Yeah, non-hex territory is probably no-man's land, though I'd presume mentally a part of whatever hexes are adjecent. Especially if they lay behind a foothold, they're probably considered part of enemy territory. I mean, fighting up to a foothold is one thing, beyond a foothold and surrounding a foothold is another entirely! Remote locations often. Think of how the battle would often ignore the south-south-west side of Esamir (Kvasir - Ran - Gjallar - Ymir).

This raises another point though: I would presume that these are the "out of bounds" areas. Though if you ask yourself if this design element encourages or breaks boundaries, then I'd say it clearly encourages them and discourages lateral thinking and unsuspected maneuvres. Not only as it literally is a boundary, but also because it forces you to travel through areas with other forms of boundaries or other territorial ownership.

@Jimmy:
Resource greed and need might be one type of motivator, certainly. But like missions, these may be only temporary incentives and they're still going to be considered "the enemy's resources".

And as you indicate, there's the logistical (relative distance) issue. So anything one can do about that by mere map design?

In general, I'm thinking of changing the shape of a continent, using physical barriers around a sanctuary (mountains, rivers, putting them on islands and have them further removed from hexes of the continental landmass), funnelling, creating gaps, multiple paths and "islands" in the hex grid (for instance, a section of hexgrids can be surrounded by swamp on several sides without grids, making it disconnected from the rest and more neutral), etc.

As distance plays a big role, continent/island/continent headland's size may also be an issue.

Furthermore, you could also change how a foothold works, imagine for instance if it can be captured or turned neutral (into BWG) by taking the surrounding terrain. You could even have multiple footholds on a continent as a sort of portal for moving troops from one side of a continent to the other, in doing so connecting different parts of the continent through these portal links.

megamold · 2012-06-08, 10:23 AM

Originally Posted by Aractain

You sounds very VS right now...

But anyway Im sure we will find a place like Amerish from the PS1 that is Home and we will keep it! Forever!

There seemed to be a large peice in the top right that wasn't part of the hex grid so is this just no mans land? (turn back warning area)

Also I don't remember CR5s going "Good job, we took the base!. I think thats all we need. Just stay here guys! We good."

i'm not gonna get into the whole mental watchamacallit discussion, but i do think they said the out of bounds area was to keep people away from flying over the ocean. so i think we are more "limited" by the shoreline than the hex grind on land.

Landtank · 2012-06-08, 10:29 AM

My want and undeniable need to spread freedom and liberty across Auraxis will drive me to push all non NC forces off of the continent!

But yeah, I see what you are saying. I honestly don't know what to think with this square continent, it's not like any total war game I've even played so all my strategies are iffy at best. I think it will really depend on just zerging out, taking what you can and then going for the next big base along the path honestly. I can see splitting the VS in two as a viable strategy.

I would like to see a more realistic shape for the other two continents, I agree. I don't know about having no mans land, I don't see it encouraging battles there but doing the opposite. If you give nothing to fight over then you probably won't have any battles there, that's how I see it. But I could be wrong. Islands located offshore with artillery batteries would be cool though, but that's for another discussion :P

Stardouser · 2012-06-08, 10:29 AM

I'm beginning to wonder if the size of the continents is going to prevent there from being any land behind the lines. It seems like they are small enough that you can have a battle going on in every hex, so long as someone can zip a galaxy past the battle in another hex.

What good does it do, for example, to send a feint team to attack one area when you really want to attack another, if every hex in the map has an active battle? Granted, the landscape might prevent you from taking a tank column everywhere easily, but that's about it.

Figment · 2012-06-08, 11:05 AM

Timers are also an issue of course.

Though I'm trying to steer the topic direction towards continental layouts, both resources and timers are artificial, tangible, conscious incentives (positive and negative).

Basically these are artificial bait and repellents that can lower or raise an existing treshold. But are these enough to encourage fighting over this, or like WildVS suggests, would the resource incentive be cancelled out by the timer repellent?

Geographical, continental and hex layout incentives however, are on an instinctive, more subconscious process and decisionmaking level. It may be easiest to explore the balance of resources and timers, but perhaps not the most interesting as we've done that plenty.

Xyntech · 2012-06-08, 11:09 AM

Originally Posted by Stardouser

I'm beginning to wonder if the size of the continents is going to prevent there from being any land behind the lines. It seems like they are small enough that you can have a battle going on in every hex, so long as someone can zip a galaxy past the battle in another hex.

What good does it do, for example, to send a feint team to attack one area when you really want to attack another, if every hex in the map has an active battle? Granted, the landscape might prevent you from taking a tank column everywhere easily, but that's about it.

Some people are worried that there will be fighting on every hex. That would leave only 25-30 people per hex on average.

Other people are worried that everyone will zerg rush to the 3 way meet grinder, forcing 1000 - 2000 people into one hex and bringing the game crashing to it's knees.

Personally, I'm pretty confident that the two extremes will balance out. Some people will go for the big clusterfuck 3 way, others will go for the large 2 way fights, and the rest will go for smaller border skirmishes or the occasional behind enemy lines hex grab.

Now mark that I said "occasional" with the behind enemy lines thing. This part is important. The system is going to be made or broken by whether or not the front lines system works as intended. They need to find the right balance where it is generally ideal to attack/defend bases on the front so that most times players wont want to try to attack just any random hex on the map, while ideally at the same time making it still be possible to take a hex that's completely surrounded by enemy territory. It will probably be a difficult balance to strike, but I think we'll sort it out in beta.

Here's a mock up I did the other week to illustrate how I'm guessing the devs intend battle lines to be drawn. (click the image to enlarge):

I'm guessing that the 3 way will mostly occur where all 3 sides have a front meeting up, where they all have a vested interest in taking or defending the territory. I have no doubt that some 3rd faction players may occasionally drop in uninvited to another empires 2 way, but I don't think it will be the norm.

Along borders where only 2 empires have a front, I mostly envision those two empires fighting it out. Larger fights in more critical and/or defensible locations, smaller fights along the rest of the border.

If done properly, I would expect tactical strikes behind enemy lines to be reserved for things like resource denial. In the mock up, I have the NC dominating and trying to grab territory with a population advantage, but with both the TR and VS trying to grab some of their behind the lines territory to deny the NC access to one of the resource types.

GuyFawkes · 2012-06-08, 11:12 AM

Maybe one day (if) they add in some amphibious stuff to the game we might see maps with 3 land masses connected with very narrow and long strips /bridges etc , a bit like in supreme commander maps . Cyssor on steroids.

Figment · 2012-06-08, 11:39 AM

Originally Posted by GuyFawkes

Maybe one day (if) they add in some amphibious stuff to the game we might see maps with 3 land masses connected with very narrow and long strips /bridges etc , a bit like in supreme commander maps . Cyssor on steroids.

Now we're getting somewhere interesting.

In Cyssor we often saw that despit the existance of amphibious units (and Lodestars!) to bypass bridges, the majority of combat focused on bridges regardless. In part because we had to bring AMSes and tanks across eventually, but also because amphibious units were underpowered for TR in terms of manpower.

So how do we see bridges? Not just the practical role of bridges, but in a psychological sense. What is their meaning to us? Do we feel reliant on them? I'd say yes, if alternatives lack.

The first thing I think we need to realise is that people see a bridge as a land connection with the homeland. A direct, solid, reinforcement route and "backland". An isolated hex on the opposite shoreline would not feel connected, since there's no direct route. You need specific support units to transfer from one side to the other. Now, without the presence of Lodestars, this connection is "more distant", harder to reach. The Lodestar itself wasn't a unit you could easily obtain en mass and this strengthened that water barrier. With it not being present in PS2 at all, a water barrier to me seems an even stronger instinctive repellent.

With the VS having hover tanks and vehicles, the psychological and physical barrier of water is smaller. This could be seen on Cyssor at Kaang-Gunuku-Itan. Where TR and NC would focus on Itan from Kaang, the VS would focus on the Kaang connection with Gunuku more easily.

But even to them, the water barrier between Tore and Nzame was larger than the barrier between Tore and Leza and Leza and Mukuru. But even bigger the other way around, because where Nzame is a LLU and swiftly taken, attacking Tore from Nzame has rarely be done, ever. The position of bridges greatly influenced the sense of feasibility. Even if it'd have been quite easy to keep up a Thunderer/Deliverer attack from Nzame (distracting and raiding) with Skyguard support and AMSes and Vanguards moving around the north. Yet this was effort and Mukuru -> Leza was less effort.

CutterJohn · 2012-06-08, 11:45 AM

Originally Posted by Figment

1. How can you design continents such that the quantity of terrain held by an empire fluctuates a lot?

2. How can you create continents such that the mental and physical control a foothold provides over nearby hexes is reduced and makes those hexes more likely to be taken?

1. More land, or fewer people. On a continent that is poplocked by 2 or 3 empires, the fight will always stagnate in the middle somewhere. The factions are too balanced to allow any other outcome, and with such a large player population, skill will be extremely balanced as well. There will occasionally be momentary gains/losses, but any empire showing signs of dominance by taking more land will become the target of more double teaming, undoing any gains. The only way to get a high amount of fluctuating ownership in these conditions is to have population imbalances, meaning we're going to have to have more land than we can field troops for.

So basically.. More continents, without a higher population. Only then will we see 2 ways and dominations that will lead to imbalances of ownership on a continent.

Oh, and the [extremely rare] non aggression pact will also push individual empires back.

2. You cannot. The outposts near the foothold will always be the last to be taken, and the best defended, and the first lost to an invasion. They are the empires 'home territory'.

The only way to make them more likely to be taken is to imbalance the rewards from taking them based on proximity to the foothold. If a hex near the VS foothold produced 100 auraxium for the VS, but 200 if the TR or NC held it, there would be a much larger incentive to take these bases. It will have to be a very large incentive in order to overcome the sense of ownership the VS have due to its proximity to their 'home'.

ringring · 2012-06-08, 11:55 AM

Part of the reason that water combat wasn't so prevalent in PS1 was that TR and NC didn't cert the deliverer variant vehicles. In PS2, if similar are introduced it will be different, we will have enough vehicles but perhaps not as well specced as those of the VS.

I think Higby said the the TR quadrant (the desert one) had canyons that became increasing tight towards the North in the VS direction. Would this mean for it is more difficult for the TR attacking that was and therefore the battlefront of choice will be towards the VS?

I think it will. It would be interesting to know how far the SOE devs have explored the issue and 'gamed' it themselves.

It partically depends on populations, by that I mean if these is a big NC versus VS fight in the West that has dragged nearly all VS to it then there is potentially an opportunity for the TR to advance Northwards and from there it partially depends on the ability of the VS to reinforce their defence against the TR attack - which means the 'will' of commanders to abandon their own attack in the West (see above) and partially on the game mechanic allowing spawning anywhere, if it does in fact allow that.

Figment · 2012-06-08, 11:56 AM

@Cutter. I disagree somewhat, even with perma-footholds, there are ways to at least make it likely to approach such footholds.

It should be possible to design the continent such that pressure on a populace is applied more unevenly.

For instance, if you have a donut shape, the path of conquest is different from the Indar shape. By simply holding on one side, it would be possible to increase the pressure on the other and fight your way in a ring shape pressing enemies into one another.

The lattice in PS1 was often used in that manner. Now, of course it's going to become increasingly difficult in a donut to press far beyond a foothold as you up the density of players more and more in that scenario, while the foothold will start to poor out distractions behind your back.

However, it would be about multiple two ways on one continent that doesn't necessarily leads to a threeway.

You could also create a map where a donut shape or path is reinforced by canyons or mountain ranges and use a combination with the larger landmass in the middle to create multiple paths empires can take, that have some safety in the side by means of (semi-)impassable (logistically difficult) terrain.

ringring · 2012-06-08, 12:05 PM

Can someone post a large scale map of Indar as a visual queue of what I am talking about?