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[Greenbane]

About rock-paper-scissors in strategy games, I think it was Age of Empires II which popularized the concept. Starcraft didn't have it (nor Warcraft), nor did Civilization, which as it was previously explained used to have attack/defense stats which made certain units better for defense (spearman) or offense (legion). Civ4 and its promotions added extra bonuses vs. certain unit types, but there was never a rock-paper-scissors triangle.

Another example of the mechanic, and perhaps the most hamfisted implementation of it, is AI War. There's three core unit types (fighters, bombers and frigates), and each is extremely effective against another while ludicrously resistant against anything but its hard counter (or special units). Good game, but that's just incredibly brutish from a design perspective.

[Sergarr]

"... it makes a circle and players will have to buy all of them in relatively equal proportions..."

But we call it good army composition and don't really consider it a flaw.

Well there's the problem: it is. All I've see the "combined arms" of Rock-Paper-Scissors variety do is to make it more annoying to build up your army, because you have to click more buttons. It doesn't really add any depth, since, with Rock-Paper-Scissors type of unit balance, there always exists a mathematically optimal combination of units and you should always use it.

EDIT: Also, that's a good point by Kanil.  What's the difference between rock-paper-scissors and combined arms? 

See above.

So is Total War a "wannabe"/"indie" strategy now?

No.
First, the "rock-paper-scissors" that exists in it is not "inexplicable", it's historical, more or less.
Second, in Total War, the "rock-paper-scissors" relies on proper positioning and manoeuvring. Spearmen only counter knights if they form a spear wall in the direction from which the knights come from, knight only counter generic infantry if they're using their charge ability, and so on. It requires you to think up a proper strategy in order to use your units most effectively, and this is why Total War is a strategic game.

But for some reason, a significant percentage of people who end up developing "strategy games" forget about making "positioning and manoeuvring" part matter and just make a game consist of throwing two balls of differently coloured units at each other.

[TBeholder]

About rock-paper-scissors in strategy games, I think it was Age of Empires II which popularized the concept.

Yeah, and Matrix introduced derp solipsism. 

Starcraft didn't have it (nor Warcraft), nor did Civilization, which as it was previously explained used to have attack/defense stats which made certain units better for defense (spearman) or offense (legion). Civ4 and its promotions added extra bonuses vs. certain unit types, but there was never a rock-paper-scissors triangle.

In Civ fighting tend to be 2 values, 1 roll... but is it so? Did you consider unit prices?
The whole rock-paper-scissors thing is pretty common, it's just rarely used naked without side-paths. But something like "Air unit > Ground unit > Anti-air unit >  Air unit" is a RPS too.

[Sergarr]

In Civ fighting tend to be 2 values, 1 roll... but is it so? Did you consider unit prices?

How would unit prices make it go rock-paper-scissors?

The whole rock-paper-scissors thing is pretty common, it's just rarely used naked without side-paths. But something like "Air unit > Ground unit > Anti-air unit >  Air unit" is a RPS too.

These example are not "inexplicable" though. I was specifically ranting about RPS of the naked kind.

[miauw62]

It being "realistic" does not in any way affect whether it is bad game design or not.

[Shadowlord]

So, why do you think it is bad? What do you think is a better game design?

Units that counter other units felt like a huge improvement in Civ over the att/def system. In Civ 2, there was no way to counter a particular unit except to attack it with something with higher att than its def, or defend with something with higher def than its att, or just to charge it with lots of units. It seemed pretty simplistic, and when you reached the endgame, howitzers beat everything, including other howitzers.

I'd say that the system in Dominions 4 makes a fun game, but at the same time a huge amount of the units (especially summons) are ignored by players because they're either not useful, too weak, too expensive, there are better units which you can afford instead, or w/e. Basically, there are a ton of units, they don't use RPS, they have a lot of combat stats, and they aren't really balanced per se.

The thing about a RPS design is that it makes it far, far easier to balance the units - you're not balancing them against every other unit in the game anymore. E.G. For a simple RTS, imagine you're making three research/building trees for three categories of units, you balance each category of units within their own category so they're better and more expensive or w/e as you proceed in research, and then you can just make sure that each one can beat the equivalent one from the category it's supposed to beat. Obviously that makes it sound relatively dull and simple, but they generally have their own mechanics and so forth to be fun and interesting. It's just that you don't need to test every unit against every other unit anymore and try to make sure they are all evenly matched somehow.

I'm not saying that it's what I would prefer to do, it just seems like it would make things easier from a design and balancing perspective. (And from a player's perspective, you can look at a unit and know what it's good against and what it's vulnerable to)

[Neonivek]

but at the same time a huge amount of the units (especially summons) are ignored by players because they're either not useful, too weak, too expensive, there are better units which you can afford instead, or w/e.

Dominions is a rather unique case because it is probably the only game where having terrible units is done... intentionally. Usually for plot/story reasons.

[Shadowlord]

Yeah, that's certainly true.

[Akura]

Unskippable anything is the bane of my existence.

This, more than anything else, funnily enough, is why I never played Knights of Honor more than I had. It's at least a solid 30 seconds of intro scenes.

I'll also note that most Ubisoft games will have the Ubisoft logo unskippable, but all the other developer logos can be skipped.

Why are you fighting a boss on the game over screen?

Hmm, that's not a bad concept. Like a Challenge-Death-for-Your-Soul kind of thing.

[Niveras]

Why are you fighting a boss on the game over screen?

Hmm, that's not a bad concept. Like a Challenge-Death-for-Your-Soul kind of thing.

Heh. Imagine a semi-roguelike - or perhaps semi-hardcore mode in an ARPG - where, if you die, you have to win another fight in order to keep your save/progress from being wiped.

But it would just be a gimmick, really.

[itisnotlogical]

Unskippable anything is the bane of my existence.

This, more than anything else, funnily enough, is why I never played Knights of Honor more than I had. It's at least a solid 30 seconds of intro scenes.

I'll also note that most Ubisoft games will have the Ubisoft logo unskippable, but all the other developer logos can be skipped.

The developer logos in XCOM are actually Bink video files. You can go into your game directory and delete them. Makes it much less agonizing to start the game.

[miauw62]

Reminds me of TF2. That game takes a while to load, and you can't alt-tab out of the loading screen.
You CAN, however, alt-tab out of the Valve logo and then have the game load in the background. Skipping and then immediately alt-tabbing doesn't work, either.

[Rolan7]

"Prey" actually had that sorta.  If you died, you went to a spirit realm and had to fight ghosts for your soul.  You couldn't exactly lose, but your performance affected how much health you had when you returned to the material plane.  And spirit arrows?  I haven't played it in forever, it was a nice gimmick though.

As for unskippable cutscenes, I was really miffed that Assassin's Creed 1 did that.  I really wanted to play again, but didn't want to sit through the assassin-master's long diatribes.  At least not every single one, ugh.

[Sergarr]

So, why do you think it is bad? What do you think is a better game design?

Units that counter other units felt like a huge improvement in Civ over the att/def system. In Civ 2, there was no way to counter a particular unit except to attack it with something with higher att than its def, or defend with something with higher def than its att, or just to charge it with lots of units. It seemed pretty simplistic, and when you reached the endgame, howitzers beat everything, including other howitzers.

I'd say that the system in Dominions 4 makes a fun game, but at the same time a huge amount of the units (especially summons) are ignored by players because they're either not useful, too weak, too expensive, there are better units which you can afford instead, or w/e. Basically, there are a ton of units, they don't use RPS, they have a lot of combat stats, and they aren't really balanced per se.

The thing about a RPS design is that it makes it far, far easier to balance the units - you're not balancing them against every other unit in the game anymore. E.G. For a simple RTS, imagine you're making three research/building trees for three categories of units, you balance each category of units within their own category so they're better and more expensive or w/e as you proceed in research, and then you can just make sure that each one can beat the equivalent one from the category it's supposed to beat. Obviously that makes it sound relatively dull and simple, but they generally have their own mechanics and so forth to be fun and interesting. It's just that you don't need to test every unit against every other unit anymore and try to make sure they are all evenly matched somehow.

I'm not saying that it's what I would prefer to do, it just seems like it would make things easier from a design and balancing perspective. (And from a player's perspective, you can look at a unit and know what it's good against and what it's vulnerable to)

It's bad because it simply changes the winning strategy from one optimal unit to an optimal combination of units. If you remember, the Civ4 system of "units counter units" has led to the so-called "Stacks of Doom" phenomenon, where because the combat system always chose the best defender, the only optimal strategy was to combine all different defensive units in a single stack so that it literally counters everything and then add up enough offensive units there to instantly capture enemy cities. The Civ5 has then, to solve the problem, has introduced positioning-and-manoeuvring as a large part of combat system, which made the combat much more strategic.

It's pretty much the same with every other inexplicable/naked RPS system of balance - it doesn't actually create any strategic depth for the game. It adds an illusion of depth, but there isn't any actual depth to it after figuring out the best combination.

In general, any system that makes things easier from balancing perspective should be viewed with suspicion. There is no such thing as free cheese, and here "cheese" is "strategic depth" that you can very much lose due to resorting to "easy" balance methods. And without strategic depth, people ain't gonna keep playing the game for long.

There's a reason why most people stop seriously playing the actual rock-paper-scissors when they get older than, like, 10, despite it being literally perfectly balanced.

[Rolan7]

Nah, scissors is OP.  It's easy to switch between scissors and paper, but not to rock.
But okay, I guess it's balanced without cheating