Army Battles in Survival Ascension
Last week I talked a bit about how some of the battle mechanics will work in Survival Ascension. Today's post is about the army mechanics.
Survival Ascension will feature the ability to recruit NPCs and other players into a single civilization or sorts. While I do not intend to include slavery mechanics, you will be able to recruit a large army. You will need to work out compensation for your NPC army and keep them paid and trained and supplied with the appropriate equipment. Raising and maintaining an army will be pretty expensive, just like it is in real life. Each individual NPC you recruit will represent a single person in the Army. So, if you come up against an army of several thousand, you'll know the enemy has some serious resources at their disposal.
My intention is for Armies to support formations, have leaders, and be able to use battlefield tactics. There will be different types of troops you can train which allows for various different counter unit types. I'd like for the armies to clash on the open world game map and make decisions based on terrain and general physics. For example, archers should prefer to shoot from cliffs, from tree tops, or even just up on hills. This gives them a longer natural range and fewer obstructions for their shots. It also provides cover for incoming ground attacks.
As opposed to simple cavalry, you can imagine having your mounted troops riding large cats or even dinosaurs into battle. Each different type of mount might have different battle mechanics which could break through certain types of enemy troops better. The variety of combinations will be quite interesting to see how they play out. I can imagine archers riding flying beasts and raining arrows on the troops from the air.
You will be able to lead the army and participate in the epic battles if you like. Or, you could oversee the battles from a cliff or a flying mount and simply order your generals around. The AI will try to follow your orders, but they will make overriding decisions on an individual basis based on various different factors like debuffs, fear, experience, certain needs which are not met, etc.
This is just a small teaser on some of the plans for armies. Stay tuned for more details to come in the future.