What do people think of this: With multiple armies fighting armies get a initiative bonus same as the base creature, higher initiative check get to select their engagement, only pairs of armies can fight, then the results are determined.
So for example, current rules, say there's a 3 on 1 fight. The three all gang up on one, getting three atacks to that army's one. With this change, only two armies fight that round, the others remain disengaged. The following round one of the other armies can swap in, provided they win initiative over the solo enemy.
Now say there's 3-on-3, current rules, three on one side can gang up on one, and vice vera. With this change they must split up into three 1-on-1 fights, with the ones with higher initiative getting to pick their opponents.
An army with Ranged weapons, they can shoot and then have another army engage the enemy, provided they go first before both, and the ally army can delay to make that happen.
This is a little more complex to explain, but I think would be intuative and make sense in play. I like this because I think it would let you have more and different kinds of armies working in a more interesting way, without there being such an advantage to focus fire. The rational for why they need to pair off is armies would get in each other's way otherwise. To fight as one army they should be one army.
I also like the initiative bonus stat being a factor. "having the initiative" is an important thing in war after all, and some kinds of creatures are balanced to have a high initiative at the cost of other stats.
What do people think of this: With multiple armies fighting armies get a initiative bonus same as the base creature, higher initiative check get to select their engagement, only pairs of armies can fight, then the results are determined.
So for example, current rules, say there's a 3 on 1 fight. The three all gang up on one, getting three atacks to that army's one. With this change, only two armies fight that round, the others remain disengaged. The following round one of the other armies can swap in, provided they win initiative over the solo enemy.
Now say there's 3-on-3, current rules, three on one side can gang up on one, and vice vera. With this change they must split up into three 1-on-1 fights, with the ones with higher initiative getting to pick their opponents.
An army with Ranged weapons, they can shoot and then have another army engage the enemy, provided they go first before both, and the ally army can delay to make that happen.
This is a little more complex to explain, but I think would be intuative and make sense in play. I like this because I think it would let you have more and different kinds of armies working in a more interesting way, without there being such an advantage to focus fire. The rational for why they need to pair off is armies would get in each other's way otherwise. To fight as one army they should be one army.
I also like the initiative bonus stat being a factor. "having the initiative" is an important thing in war after all, and some kinds of creatures are balanced to have a high initiative at the cost of other stats.
I've made a number of small changes to how mass combat works based on suggestions from the author as well as some of my own additions. So far, we've run through three in-game battles (and I've run countless simulations) and I think it's a pretty good system (if I do say so myself). Rather than individual tactical initiative, the suggestion has been made for the army leaders to make Profession(Soldier) checks and have it act as an initiative roll for mass combat. This, along with other tweaks to the system can be found on my game's forum here: Tem's Kingmaker Game
The thread called "Game Mechanics" gives all the changes to kingdom building and mass combat but you might also want to check out the "Cast of Characters", "Kingdom of Volynia" and "Volynian Military" threads.