Originally Posted by
Vardeus
Some folks are getting a bit confused. The OP is refering to the current gen system with greatly increased granularity on the stats, as oposed to med 2's that he favours (e.g. 80 hp for infantry instead of 1, elephants having 1000 hp instead of 6).
Personally i like the current system. From my pov, with med 2 system you'd have armour accounting for toughness and armour save from the warhammer system. I prefer the rome 2 one, where hp will probably represent toughness and wounds (and regeneration for trolls and the like); while armour will represent armour saves and possibly ward saves/magic resistance. There is probably going to be specific armour types for very tough creatures (dragons, trolls etc). For all we know though, CA might be adding a toughness stat just to give proper warhammer flavour to the game.
I've also had some bad experiences with the low granularity system in med2/rome1 where units with multiple hit points are utterly unstoppable. Generals, elephants, spartans, berserkers...you name it. Another thing that bothered me, precisely in rage of dark gods, is when a unit with virtually no prospects of harming a troll keeps chain staggering/stunning the poor thing by poking at it with sticks. It'd be nice if that kind of hard crowd control was somehow attached to hp loss in the current gen system.
And then there's magic. How do you get a 1 hp being to benefit from something like regeneration? Do you allow them to ignore the next killing blow? Similarly, having 1 hp entities limits your possibilities when it comes to offensive magic (like giving a plague aura to nurgle units that apply an area damage over time effect on the enemy). Are a human and a skeleton with the same armour both as likely to be eliminated by the same attack? And what happens if i revive a recently deceased imperial soldier, isn't it better if i bring it back with its original health pool with a certain percentage lost?
I like to dream of getting a more deep weapon damage system in the future, where a blunt weapon can be expected to deal more damage against a chainmailed soldier than it would to a full plated one. I believe the current system is a better foundation in that regard. I would also like to see bleed damage, that's only possible with an hp pool i'd say. The increased granularity is a boon in regards to unit variety as well.
I don't like seeing the health points as hit 0 = dead, but rather see 0 representing the soldiers' incapability to fight on (whether he's dead, utterly exhausted or simply wounded/incapacitated). Terror could cause single soldiers to run from the enemy, counting as a casualty (and this could be countered by the health pool among other things like experience) and run off the field like a horse whose rider has been killed in rome 2. Or a tzeenchian mage trolling orc grunts and making them go mad. To go in line with this premise, i'd like to see different combat animations that can induce you to think the victim is simply wounded (along with the return of wounded recovery mechanic from pre TW 3 games), and seeing the odd soldier running around like a headless chicken. I prefer that approach to fear and terror over the old meh morale debuff that we, sadly enough, are most likely to get. Just to sumarize, 0 health can be much more than "Oh look, my innards are touching the ground. Perhaps i should fall down".
Don't get me wrong, i still play med 2 and its system is alright. Simple and effective. But i can see some merits to the ways certain things are tackled in the newer TW iterations, and feel those left behind are becoming a bit outdated. I have a similar problem with the replenishment system in the older games (thinking it's a bit outdated and all). i'm too lazy to micromanage units back and forth to replenish them and in the end i just use the most overpowered/less likely to take huge casualties units (cav and archers) just to preserve my sanity, resulting in strange battles that look nothing like a historically accurate engagement. That doesn't happen in shogun 2/rome 2, i use my armies without regret. This is an important aspect to me as i put great value in unit viability for the sake of replayability and min-maxing. I must say though that i still think the manpower system of med 2 is nothing short of brilliant. i'd simply advocate for something very similar to be integrated into the auto-replenishment system of napoleon-onwards with supply lines length/infrastructure, unit quality, season and military buildings with technology as a multiplier being responsible for determining how fast units replenish.
And enough speculation for the week, i've met my quota.