Age of Frontiers: tactical combat
Happy new year! Let's start it with one of the biggest pieces of Age of Frontiers: combat. In the base game there will be three types of combat:
- Fast (or automatic): the fight is resolved straight away, for when you just want to know who won.
- Tactical: the one this post is about.
- Top-down (name to be decided): the closest and most action-based, where units move around the battlefield and you directly control your own character.
Tactical combat
Tactical combat happens on the overland, between two parties. You don't control each unit directly: they fight automatically, following the formation you have set up and the tactics you play over time.
The formation is the base of everything. Every unit in your band stands in one of three lines:
- Front: the vanguard, always attacking the enemy's front line.
- Reinforcements: units that wait for their moment. Harassers go for the enemy's front line once its reinforcements are gone, while sentinels defend their own front.
- Rearguard: units that support the rest without joining the melee. Providers repair the life, armour or stamina of the whole band, and observers watch the battle, softening every enemy blow and turning the terrain in their favour.
Fights break into melees as units engage each other, and each unit's role depends on its archetype and equipment. A band of fenders will not fight like a band of skirmishers, and the terrain itself matters: a battle in a forest is not the same as one in open ground.
Tactics
This is where you come in. Before a fight, you put together a deck of tactics from those you have available, and during the combat you draw them into your hand. Every turn you get a few operation points to spend on them, and the battle only moves on when you press Continue, so there is always time to think.
Some are simple and always available: gain an extra point, draw two more tactics, ignore the terrain this turn, stop a unit from being encircled, move a unit to another line or melee. Others need your band or your character to meet some requirements, like having experienced units in the rearguard or the right skills, and they get stronger as your band does.
Connected, not hard-wired
As promised, Age of Frontiers allows for full customisation, and tactical combat is no exception. It is not hard-wired into the game: it is a system connected to the rest, which can be removed or completely replaced.
In The Stranded mod, for example, tactical combat will be replaced by a turn-based ship commanding experience. For the old guys like me reading this: ideologically closer to the ship combat of Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday.
As always, everything here is work in progress. I'll keep you posted!
Om