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One of the most annoying things in any RTS is harassment.  The moment enemies get in with your workers, it's a nightmare.  Worse off are enemies that completely raze a settlement with swift attackers before you can even get close.

Well, here's my idea to keep harassment balanced and a part of the game, without making it management intensive to deal with, or overpowering:

Buildings essentially would have three phases of destruction. 

The first phase, which is easy to achieve, is to simply damage it to the point at which it's non-functional.  You could probably achieve this by having some raiders run by and toss in some torches.  The problem?  The moment you're gone the building can be repaired at next to no cost.  All you achieved was costing your opponent some building materials (the most expendable resource in the game under most circumstances), taking up some of their work force for a short while, and putting the building out of commission for a little while.

The second phase isn't too hard to do, but it's hard to maintain.  In the second phase, you actually drive out the enemy from the structure and remove their ownership.  Until they reclaim it, they can't do anything with it.  The real interesting catch is that anyone can claim it at this point - even you (not all structures are useable, and if you take a Balkurn barracks, you make your own units, not Balkurn units.  In a mirror match, you could completely assume an enemy's base if you wanted).  Removing the enemy's ownership requires their troops and worker population to actually be evacuated from the vicinity and your own troops to take up position.  The catch here is that if you leave before completely wiping out the settlement, the enemy's workers will gradually reclaim the entire thing.

The final phase is literally to crush a building to utter ruin.  At this point, the structure is little more than rubble.  This will actually require siege equipment to accomplish in most cases (although rag-tag structures, like Varnost slums, will go down with a liberal application of fire), and plenty of time.  Essentially, it's not worth the effort, and will probably just be a byproduct of long drawn out sieges.


The idea of the above is to give harassment its place - it pulls some of your economy out of commission (or possibly defences) for a short duration, but if you want to keep the enemy down, you have to stay around.  Even a moderately defended town can probably hold out long enough for a good sized army to arrive.  That's the ideal; raiding and skirmishing has its place, but ultimately drawing out the army and moving the troops around the field tactically is the aim of the game.

i have always feeled that structures in an RTS should be a real investment. they cost quite a bit to put down, but once they're there you're not going to lose them easily (with the "rag-tag" buildings being an exception to this, of course)

a thing we could do is that you can build wooden buildings, which are completely functional, but give the option to upgrade them to stone, to make them tougher

Building materials are a bit tough to tackle.  I think for simplicity sake, all building materials are building materials, end of story.  Some structures will be wood, others stone, others even brick or thatch, but the type will be independant of the source of building materials.  In any case, this should be tackled on a case-by-case basis.  I don't think Varnost cares much for upgrading their rag-tag settlements, after all, and I'd imagine Balkurn would build in stone to begin with.

the upgrade could be done in a BFME style, so there would be no need for another resource type

I don't think Varnost cares much for upgrading their rag-tag settlements, after all, and I'd imagine Balkurn would build in stone to begin with.

indeed there are exceptions

Ok, Darvin, now you've done it.... there is hardly a way left to start about the rushing issue etc. Your system to give harassment it's place will be a good step in the right direction of solving that problem. There will no doubt be ways around, but I don't think it can be improved by much. And I'm impressed with the simplicity of the solution.

The idea of 2playgames is one of these finishing touches, to making the system vary a little with the different factions.

To see if I got it right:
Short time: Hindrance of income for a limited time and causing limited damage
Indefinite time: Disabling and eventually capturing the enemy structures.
Siege: Destruction of the buildings, which takes a long time.

Depending on the factions, the structure strenght can be upgraded.


I've got two questions:
- Does the buildings have to be damaged to be captured? (I think not, but to be clear...)
- The 2nd is more of a suggestion, building on the idea of 2play. Guardposts upgrades for a few structures, the barracks for example, or important resource buildings. The guards would be limited to defending the direct surroundings of the building they are attached to. And like with 2play's structure upgrades, they would vary with factions. The question: What do you think of it?

Solinx

The exact requirements for capture are simply that the enemy be removed from the structure and its vicinity, and that your own troops take up position.  If the structure was defended, chances are it will take collateral damage no matter how cautious you are, but damage is not a requisit of capture.

I think guard posts are a good idea, although with the exception of barracks I think they should be their own independant structure, and not an upgrade.

I think guard posts are a good idea, although with the exception of barracks I think they should be their own independent structure, and not an upgrade.

yeah, like the commonly seen defense tower, but more realistic

We'll have to find some way of limiting them that does not reduce the standing army, but also prevents them from being spammed.

how about a radius for each guard post? guards will not go further than that radius, and only 1 tower (or some other limit) can be placed within that radius.

and/or they can only be built within a certain range from the main fortress/citadel/town center

While reading the comments, 2play's first idea from the above post was just what came to my mind. The second would be possible too, but in addition it would have to be possible to place guardhouses around resource structures.

Solinx

I think there's nothing wrong with having two guard houses overlapping (otherwise a circular radius would mean you'd have defensive "gaps" and "blind spots" which conceptually make no sense), and equally limiting them to a certain radius doesn't prevent a large quantity from being spammed in a small area.  I think both of these solutions prevent one aspect of the problem (unfair density and unfair map control with guards, respectively), but each have their own problems.

We need some solution that keeps guards from being spammed in one area, and from being placed all over the map.  There needs to be some fair medium that lets you protect an important area without making it unrealistically well defended.

well, take a look at the attachment

....


the system (and problems) you are talking about, are on the right. the system i'm talking about is on the left, and doesn't have gaps

2play, in theory, your left drawing is quite perfect, in reality, it needs a little more. Using that system, assuming the radius you have drawn also indicates the patrolling radius, there are bound to appear gaps nonetheless. Structures can't always be placed systematically, due to uneven terrain or other structures.

What I suggest is to use two radia, the ones 2play drew to determen where the next tower may be build, and a larger radius in which the guards can partol, making sure that the guard towers can cover the entire base without the need to have them placed as close together as allowed.

Perhaps there could be gradations in the guard towers themselves. Better range, more guards, closer together, stronger tower structure, stronger guards, etc. All depending on the faction and/or upgrades.

Solinx

Graduation of guard towers seems like the best option.  I think this will do nicely.

All those ideas sound really good. Sometimes its just so annoying when someone just harrasses the whole game but this could change it.

One of the goals I'm going for is low economic management, while still maintaining economic complexity.  It seems like a contradiction, but the idea is to keep player choices while lowering the amount of orders the player needs to give.  By automating more redundant tasks such as base repair and actually gathering up workers to build a structure, the player is free to simply give the order once and then focus on more important things.

Playing into the same theme, this idea gives harassment its place while making the enemy's focus repelling harassers, not giving two dozen various orders to repair the damage once they're gone.  You still lose some resource and peasant work time, but not actual play time you must spend focussing on giving mundane orders.

The end result is less focus on economy, and more focus on combat, without the loss of strategic complexity to the economy.

very good

I think it would be better if guards were low level sword/bow units that could garrison the structure. You could not use elite infantry or other high level units, not to mention that only a few guards per building could be issued. Further, after a certain point, the more guards in the building, the lower its efficiency (with a few exceptions like a barracks). This would have a particular effect on say, an economic structure like a farm, the kind of building which would be a likely target for raiders anyway.

The result is this: Guards are little more than an expedient solution, used only to slow down an attacker rather than to stop him entirely. A player who wants his economy to survive would need to garrison only a few soldiers, maybe 10 at the most (which is a very small garrison).

This leads us to the problem of an army. Why place soldiers as a garrison if the forces already trained are around? Can you not just move them to the area of the attack? I think that soldiers should naturally be placed in Barracks after training. Furthermore, the closer to an economic structure, the more of the impact on the economy; for instance, if you had a Barracks right next to a farm, it's efficiency would be reduced significantly.

That's my solution. To keep things interesting, this could be applied to only one faction, whilst having guards with a radius could be applied to another.
 

On considering this topic further, I've begun to think that there may not be a need for guard posts.  Most RTS games in the past have been about decisive battles.  You bring along your entire army to crush the enemy in one decisive blow.  However, one of my focusses here is to balance decisive force with divide and conquer.

In other words, my goal is to make it so that you can leave units behind in your settlements.  They will obviously need to receive a considerable defensive boost, particularly in allowing them to survive for a long period of time even if outnumbered.  The biggest advantage of defensive structures will be in drawing out a defensive battle.  This means that there is time for reinforcement to come.

As I said, the real focus of this game will be on troop movement and placement.  If decisive force (moving the entire army together...) is the best strategy, that can't possibly be interesting.  It has to be broken up.  Decisive force will still have its place, but to take the entire army needs to be suicide.  My idea is that if someone goes all out against a settlement, you send your army to ALL his settlements.  This is a classic case of the "base trade" where each player razes the other's base because their armies can't respond to their own base in time.  However, the player who chose to decisively attack with all his units will take out only one base, whereas the one who split up will take EVERY base. 
If this process continues, then the player who split up will just recapture every base the main force of the enemy took as soon as it moves on.  The only options for the decisive player is either to split up his army to defend a base or take multiple bases, to sit in one resource site and be heavily out-produced by an enemy who controls the rest of the map, or to split up to defend and capture multiple resource locations.

I'm hoping that the end result of this is that tactically you are forced to divide your forces and leave defenders in every base.  An undefended base is just an invitation for the enemy.

I like it where it is more efficient to base trade. In Sun Tzu's Art of War, he talks about such tactics (albeit in reference to an entirely different thing). As far as I remember it, one empire had sent an army to attack another at it's capitol. The defenders then began pleading for help. One allied general of theirs thought it would be best to bring his forces to attack the enemy besieging the town, but an expert strategist warned this would not be the best course of action. Instead, they opted to counter-attack the opposing capitol, causing distress, to which the attacking empire returned it's besieging forces to home. On the way, they were waylaid by fresh, eager soldiers, and the sleepless besiegers quickly succumbed.

On another note, I think it will be easier to apply realism (a.k.a nigh unbreakable bases) if we have different win conditions. In, say, good ole' BFME2, the victor is the one who destroys all of his opponents buildings. If the goal in this game was to capture points, or something other than pure annihilation (not advocating point capture), then bases that are both safe haven and solid defense are far more doable.

Indeed, capture or sabotage is much more realistic than outright destruction, and it would be really refreshing in a game.

I have to agree; I don't want to have to finish off someone who is just turtling in their main base with a defensively powerful faction, even when I have full map control. 

We must balance this sort of thing between the pros who want a clean-cut game and the casuals who want something thematic and climatic.  I think it's fair to say that the former group will demand that there not be a long "clean-up" period after the game is effectively over and when it is actually over.  If a player's situation has become hopeless, then the game should be moving to a swift closure.

Perhaps certain factors in the game will cause troop morale to lower. For instance, if 500 points worth of troops are defeated by 200 points worth of troops, than your troop morale will decrease, causing units to move slower, deal less damage, and route more easily. That's a very complex system, but it's the only thing I could come up with for now. Any other thoughts? I'll make a new topic.

I personally feel that will only add more things for the player to keep in mind, not really anything to improve the game.

Well, I don't have a problem with a morale system, but I don't think that's the right way to go about doing it.  This kind of effect will encourage turtling and consolidation.  We don't want to introduce a system that will cause stagnation in the game.