Combat... That is one of the things I usually postpone when working on a design because in games where combat will play a role or even is the majority of the game I know that it is important to not only balace it right, but also to make it easy to learn, fairly quick to do and of course still fun.
My problem always boils down to the fact that I want combat to be less about luck and more about making smart moves and using tactics and strategy. However at the same time I do love the unpredictability of a die roll as history has shown us so many times that a small force can indeed defeat a larger force.
The game I am working on that needs combat is a 1800s wargame and the only units that a player can move around is Infantry and Cavalry. Each player will also have a general in each sub unit who can boost the power of the units around him.
But how to do the actual fighting? The most simple way I could think of would be to take 1 unit from both the attacker and the defender in a tile until one of them is no longer present. So that if 3 units attack 2 units then 1 unit would remain as both sides lost 2. But this way seems bad to me as it makes combat predictable and in many cases it would mean that you could break through the enemy line and have NO units left to push on the attack.
Then I thought about a die roll mechanic where players roll a number and adds one per unit engaged in that combat. But this does not seem very simple to me when you also need to differentiate between cavalry and infanrty and even generals.
I even considered to use cards for combat or a sort of Rock, Paper, Scissors system, but the latter seems like a lazy way to handle combat.
Anyone in here know of a good way to handle combat? Or have good ideas for it?
