The odds are so stacked against my enemies.

[FacetiousCoconut]

This game is too unfair toward my enemies. Playing the games make me feel like a big bully toying with my poor victims, which is not how I want to feel if I choose to play on hardest difficulty. The biggest problems are:

• Enemies rarely have combat arts at all, and when I try to give enemies combat arts by meddling with game files, they can only have 1 combat art each. I say all archers should have Encloser, all swordsmen Grounder, all lancers Knightkneeler and all axemen Helm Splitter. Bosses also do not use personal combat arts for some reason, even though they have them.
• Enemies rarely have battalion, and when they do they often have very weak gambits like Disturbance. I say all enemies should have battalion, and they should all have Fusilade and Resonant Ice.
• Same things with "battalion" skills: there is no way enemies can make good use of them, and their condition is too easy. I say they should only activate at 1/12 durability at the very least.
• My biggest gripe: Support gambits. They shouldn't have existed. Stupidly broken things like Impregnable Wall, Blessing, Retribution should not be handed out in such abundance to the players. Now, this would be fine if enemies also use them too, but they do not; and when I try to give all enemies Impregnable Wall, it turns out they are not even programmed to use the thing. This is so ridiculous that I had to delete them all. Either they should not have existed or should have been confined to DLC, honestly.

[Armchair General]

Eh, at least the game doesn't randomly shits itself to point where it stops being a game, like that XCOM port for the Switch.

 

But overall, 3H mostly exists for the story and memes.

Edited May 25, 2021 by Armchair General

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

32 minutes ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

This game is too unfair toward my enemies. Playing the games make me feel like a big bully toying with my poor victims, which is not how I want to feel if I choose to play on hardest difficulty. The biggest problems are:

In every Fire Emblem game, the enemy army and the player army have different advantages on either side. Enemies almost always have a numerical advantage, and on difficulties like Maddening, they tend to outstrip your side statistically. The question is, what tools are appropriate for the player to have (i.e. support gambits, combat arts, repositionals, supports), tp "even the odds"?

38 minutes ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

Enemies rarely have combat arts at all, and when I try to give enemies combat arts by meddling with game files, they can only have 1 combat art each. I say all archers should have Encloser, all swordsmen Grounder, all lancers Knightkneeler and all axemen Helm Splitter. Bosses also do not use personal combat arts for some reason, even though they have them.

This sounds rather overtuned. Archers being able to hold your army in place, on top of the bonus range and Poison Strike? Armor Knights never being able to deal with Axe-wielding enemies? I can agree with bosses and named enemies using combat arts, though.

36 minutes ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

Enemies rarely have battalion, and when they do they often have very weak gambits like Disturbance. I say all enemies should have battalion, and they should all have Fusilade and Resonant Ice.

Giving them all the same kinds are boring. I'm not a fan of every enemy having a battalion - it risks making Charm an excessively important stat, while also making the game a matter of continuqlly crossing your fingers that you don't get hit by a gambit. I would agree, however, with giving battalions to some Aux battle enemies - they seem to be absent there.

41 minutes ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

Same things with "battalion" skills: there is no way enemies can make good use of them, and their condition is too easy. I say they should only activate at 1/12 durability at the very least.

What if, instead, enemies started with their battalion at 1/3 durability? That way, any enemy with battalion skills would activate them right away. And, doing damage to force the battalion to flee (thereby weakening the enemy, and preventing gambits) would be a viable strategy).

44 minutes ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

My biggest gripe: Support gambits. They shouldn't have existed. Stupidly broken things like Impregnable Wall, Blessing, Retribution should not be handed out in such abundance to the players. Now, this would be fine if enemies also use them too, but they do not; and when I try to give all enemies Impregnable Wall, it turns out they are not even programmed to use the thing. This is so ridiculous that I had to delete them all. Either they should not have existed or should have been confined to DLC, honestly.

I'm a huge fan of support gambits, personally. That said, they're not all well-balanced (i.e. Stride gives a huge boost, to basically your whole army, twice). I do wish that the enemy would make use of them - say, Blessing is cast on the commander, so that they're harder to defeat.

[Benice]

I am certainly one of the bigger detractors of Three Houses on these forums in most regards, but I am sorta willing to defend some of the odd balance and design decisions on account of them being new and inventive for the franchise. If future FEs use these systems, do I think they need a ton of refining? I definitely do. However, it's a first step, and first steps are often shaky.

[Armchair General]

35 minutes ago, Benice said:

I am certainly one of the bigger detractors of Three Houses on these forums in most regards, but I am sorta willing to defend some of the odd balance and design decisions on account of them being new and inventive for the franchise. If future FEs use these systems, do I think they need a ton of refining? I definitely do. However, it's a first step, and first steps are often shaky.

For one, they could have made the first half of the game a little bit more challenging, along with actually filling up the map with enemies.

[lenticular]

One other issue with giving the enemy units more tools is that there would also need to be an improvement to the UI to effectively communicate all of that information to the player. If it's not communicated clearly and effectively then you're left in one of two situations. Either you spend a ton of time closely inspecting every single enemy or you sometimes get killed by something you hadn't seen and weren't able to plan for. Neither of these options sounds fun to me.

Compare the situation in Fates: Conquest, which is the game in the series which does the most in terms of giving enemy units all the same tools as the player has. Personally, I feel that it already goes too far into difficulty through obscurity, but I know a lot of people like it. However, in Fates, there are really only three things that you have to look for with each unit: stats, weapons, and skills. What you're asking for here is that you have to look up each unit's stats, weapons, skills, combat arts, and battalions. Furthermore, in Fates, we're on a system with a second screen, so inspecting the unit is as simple as moving the cursor over the unit and shifting your gaze down slightly. For Three Houses, you need to actively go into the unit screen and then scroll through three individual pages of stats if you want to see everything. It's significantly more cumbersome and feels like something that would get old fast. And this is a negative comparison against a game that I personally feel is already too cumbersome.

Now, maybe it is possible to come up with some killer new UI conventions that do effectively communicate all of this to the player. I can't immediately think of any way to do it that would satisfy me, but that doesn't necessarily mean they don't exist. However, the sort of changes being proposed would absolutely need to have significant UI improvements if they were to work as anything other than a hardest "fuck you" joke difficulty.

[Cysx]

I think the worst offender is by far Divine Pulse, personally, but sure, we could certainly make do without stuff like Impregnable wall. I'm not necessarily in agreement that the solution is to give our busted options to the enemy, though.

[LoneStar]

I guess they could give some Advanced+ tier enemies combat arts, I remember some Snipers in the Fhirdiad having Combat Arts. Generally they should have given the enemies more variety in weapons, like Killer and Slayer Weapons to encourage the player to pay more attention. Although with Fliers and their innate Avoid+10 and other evade stacking shenanigans, some of this become irrelevant.

Every enemy having battalions would be obnoxious, and kill traditional enemy phase. The support battalions are a near necessity in Maddening, good luck dealing with these enemies that will one round any of your units otherwise.

[FacetiousCoconut]

23 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

In every Fire Emblem game, the enemy army and the player army have different advantages on either side. Enemies almost always have a numerical advantage, and on difficulties like Maddening, they tend to outstrip your side statistically. The question is, what tools are appropriate for the player to have (i.e. support gambits, combat arts, repositionals, supports), tp "even the odds"?

In all games, the player always has a massive advantage over the enemies: the advantage of being a human. For clarity, let's call any advantage outside of the battlefield, and not mechanic-wise a meta-advantage.  Being controlled by a human is a meta-advantage, and an absurd one at that, therefore enemies should compensate by having actual advantage, mechanic-wise. You simply do not want to be on a level playing field with an AI, especially the kind of dumb AI that Fire Emblem games employ. Three Houses, in addition to giving the player another meta-advantage in the form of Divine Pulse, also has many mechanics that only benefit the player, as I listed, hence my grievance that it is too unfair for my enemies.

23 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

This sounds rather overtuned. Archers being able to hold your army in place, on top of the bonus range and Poison Strike? Armor Knights never being able to deal with Axe-wielding enemies? I can agree with bosses and named enemies using combat arts, though.

What you failed to consider is that, since enemies always outspeed more than half of your army, they almost always deal more damage by attacking normally than using combat arts (even if enemies right now do not double, it can be solved by just increasing enemies' speed). It follows that they would only ever use combat arts against the faster ones in your army. Armor Knights would not need to fear Helm Splitter, unless their defense are too high, since axemen deals more damage with doubling anyway.

23 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Giving them all the same kinds are boring. I'm not a fan of every enemy having a battalion - it risks making Charm an excessively important stat, while also making the game a matter of continuqlly crossing your fingers that you don't get hit by a gambit. I would agree, however, with giving battalions to some Aux battle enemies - they seem to be absent there.

Again, since enemies almost always deal more damage by attacking normally, unless your units is a dodgetank who already broke the game, in which case I think it is a good thing that enemies do spam gambit, enemies are not going to use gambit at all. The problem with the Charm stat can be easily solved by balancing it with other stat, like character with low charm is compensated by having other stats being higher.

23 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

What if, instead, enemies started with their battalion at 1/3 durability? That way, any enemy with battalion skills would activate them right away. And, doing damage to force the battalion to flee (thereby weakening the enemy, and preventing gambits) would be a viable strategy).

Another problem with "battalion" skills is that they straight up nullify normal skills sharing the same name. Tightening the condition remedy this. Either that or just reverse the condition to "when battalion is full".

22 hours ago, lenticular said:

One other issue with giving the enemy units more tools is that there would also need to be an improvement to the UI to effectively communicate all of that information to the player. If it's not communicated clearly and effectively then you're left in one of two situations. Either you spend a ton of time closely inspecting every single enemy or you sometimes get killed by something you hadn't seen and weren't able to plan for. Neither of these options sounds fun to me.

Compare the situation in Fates: Conquest, which is the game in the series which does the most in terms of giving enemy units all the same tools as the player has. Personally, I feel that it already goes too far into difficulty through obscurity, but I know a lot of people like it. However, in Fates, there are really only three things that you have to look for with each unit: stats, weapons, and skills. What you're asking for here is that you have to look up each unit's stats, weapons, skills, combat arts, and battalions. Furthermore, in Fates, we're on a system with a second screen, so inspecting the unit is as simple as moving the cursor over the unit and shifting your gaze down slightly. For Three Houses, you need to actively go into the unit screen and then scroll through three individual pages of stats if you want to see everything. It's significantly more cumbersome and feels like something that would get old fast. And this is a negative comparison against a game that I personally feel is already too cumbersome.

Now, maybe it is possible to come up with some killer new UI conventions that do effectively communicate all of this to the player. I can't immediately think of any way to do it that would satisfy me, but that doesn't necessarily mean they don't exist. However, the sort of changes being proposed would absolutely need to have significant UI improvements if they were to work as anything other than a hardest "fuck you" joke difficulty.

Why would these solutions complicate the UI when all enemies that look the same use the same things. All archers have Encloser, all swordsmen have Grounder and all enemies have Fusilade/Resonant Ice depending on whether they are physical or magical enemies. You do not need to scroll through the UI, just look at the enemy.

19 hours ago, Cysx said:

I think the worst offender is by far Divine Pulse, personally, but sure, we could certainly make do without stuff like Impregnable wall. I'm not necessarily in agreement that the solution is to give our busted options to the enemy, though.

Divine Pulse is fine, since it is just a strategical assist, a sort of tutorial hint. Having Divine Pulse is no more or less an advantage than being a human fighting against AI, or one could think of it as a sort of built-in wiki/guide. Divine Pulse is of the same kind of advantages as, say, the greenhouse, or grinding. Players will always have these kind of meta-advantages, problems only arise when it is not reciprocated by an advantage on the enemies' side. Not to mention that it is entirely optional, whereas if I do not want to use support gambits, I would have to compromise by not using Indech Sword Fighters, Black Eagle Pegasus Co, or a gambit that has the appropriate stats for my character. I am fine with these broken gambits being confined to DLC though, but one should be able to have a complete experience without these.

17 hours ago, LoneStar said:

Every enemy having battalions would be obnoxious, and kill traditional enemy phase. The support battalions are a near necessity in Maddening, good luck dealing with these enemies that will one round any of your units otherwise.

Unless your tank/dodgetank already broke the game, enemies would deal more damage by attacking normally than using gambits, so they would not use gambit at all. As for support gambits, so far I have been fine without them.

On 5/25/2021 at 11:20 AM, Benice said:

I am certainly one of the bigger detractors of Three Houses on these forums in most regards, but I am sorta willing to defend some of the odd balance and design decisions on account of them being new and inventive for the franchise. If future FEs use these systems, do I think they need a ton of refining? I definitely do. However, it's a first step, and first steps are often shaky.

All being said, I think a lot of Three Houses's balance problems would vanish if one think of the game as being balanced for a no monastery no grind no recruit run. Indeed, since all these features are entirely optional in the games' design, it is not unreasonable to assume this is indeed how they balanced the game.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

9 hours ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

What you failed to consider is that, since enemies always outspeed more than half of your army, they almost always deal more damage by attacking normally than using combat arts (even if enemies right now do not double, it can be solved by just increasing enemies' speed). It follows that they would only ever use combat arts against the faster ones in your army. Armor Knights would not need to fear Helm Splitter, unless their defense are too high, since axemen deals more damage with doubling anyway.

Now you're just creating perverse incentives. "Armor Knights want their defense to be high, but not too high, lest they face an effective combat art. Dodgy/doubling units want to be fast, but not too fast, or they'll be hit with a combat art or gambit." 

9 hours ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

Another problem with "battalion" skills is that they straight up nullify normal skills sharing the same name. Tightening the condition remedy this. Either that or just reverse the condition to "when battalion is full".

IMO "when battalion is full" is worse, because then the player can start with the skill's effect, every single battle, without really trying. And maintain it, so long as they take no damage. The skills as they stand demand a different, but not necessarily easier, setup than traditional "Wrath" or "Vantage".

9 hours ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

Again, since enemies almost always deal more damage by attacking normally, unless your units is a dodgetank who already broke the game, in which case I think it is a good thing that enemies do spam gambit, enemies are not going to use gambit at all. The problem with the Charm stat can be easily solved by balancing it with other stat, like character with low charm is compensated by having other stats being higher.

Or just don't make Charm something that matters on every single enemy phase? Diluting its effect, with other stats that affect gambit hit rates, just makes it harder for the player to figure out how to deal with enemy offensive gambits. Which, I maintain, should be a common threat, but not an omnipresent one.

9 hours ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

Why would these solutions complicate the UI when all enemies that look the same use the same things. All archers have Encloser, all swordsmen have Grounder and all enemies have Fusilade/Resonant Ice depending on whether they are physical or magical enemies. You do not need to scroll through the UI, just look at the enemy.

Can't you see how plastering two offensive battalions on the vast majority of enemies would get real tiresome, real fast? What happened to Assault Troop, or Poison Tactic? Different threats that require different preparation for.

[Shadow Mir]

9 hours ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

Another problem with "battalion" skills is that they straight up nullify normal skills sharing the same name. Tightening the condition remedy this. Either that or just reverse the condition to "when battalion is full".

Making them require a full battalion would make them all but worthless, because you can't restore battalion endurance mid-battle, meaning taking even 2 points of damage renders them useless for the rest of the battle.

[Cysx]

10 hours ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

Divine Pulse is fine, since it is just a strategical assist, a sort of tutorial hint. Having Divine Pulse is no more or less an advantage than being a human fighting against AI, or one could think of it as a sort of built-in wiki/guide. Divine Pulse is of the same kind of advantages as, say, the greenhouse, or grinding. Players will always have these kind of meta-advantages, problems only arise when it is not reciprocated by an advantage on the enemies' side. Not to mention that it is entirely optional, whereas if I do not want to use support gambits, I would have to compromise by not using Indech Sword Fighters, Black Eagle Pegasus Co, or a gambit that has the appropriate stats for my character. I am fine with these broken gambits being confined to DLC though, but one should be able to have a complete experience without these.

Well now your point of contention feels oddly specific to me, though, since Divine Pulse is relevant during active gameplay and strategization, and the optional argument feels neither here nor there ever if we're discussing things that make the enemy powerless, which it does. With that being said, if its existence doesn't bother you, good.

As others have said giving the enemies the strong disruptive tools we have can easily turn the gameplay into a chore on several levels(I'd say unfair but with the player having DP very few things are anymore), which something like Conquest Lunatic(an overall simpler game mechanics wise) gets very close to at times. That's the risk. But I can agree that it sometimes feels like the enemy has their numbers and nothing else(heck, even that is untrue in a logical sense, since our units each command a battalion and most of theirs are alone, but I digress). It's not an easy thing to balance. At least demonic beasts exist, yay?

Edited May 26, 2021 by Cysx

[FacetiousCoconut]

On 5/26/2021 at 10:21 PM, Cysx said:

Well now your point of contention feels oddly specific to me, though, since Divine Pulse is relevant during active gameplay and strategization, and the optional argument feels neither here nor there ever if we're discussing things that make the enemy powerless, which it does. With that being said, if its existence doesn't bother you, good.

The only instance where Divine Pulse come into active gameplay that I can think of is when player uses it to reroll RNG, which I agree is currently very intrusive. I forgot this at the time, so it was my blunder. However, do note that rerolling RNG is not something new to the series, or even uncommon (I am pretty sure FE12 Lunatic almost requires you to reroll RNG for the final chapter; I think a normal strategy is possible, but so far they all seem impractical.) You are right that the optional part is not relevant to the current topic, but it is something about Divine Pulse that is better than some of the other things I listed, like support gambits: like the greenhouses and grinding, it is easy ignore these things, whereas it is very difficult to ignore combat arts and gambits. Let me reframe it: imagine that now all battle results are completely determined, no matter the order of your action. Under this new Divine Pulse, whether or not the player choose to use it or not they would still have to follow an exact sequence of steps. If this sequence is known, then the map is solved and divine pulse is irrelevant; if this sequence is not known then the only difference between having and not having Divine Pulse is the amount of time it takes to come up with the sequence. This is why I think Divine Pulse is okay. It is like restarting the game, which I think all players already did.

To put it more generally, imagine the ensemble, or set, of all possible board states (all configuration of units and their respective states) of a given map. Call any ordered pairs of board states that differs by only one action a "move". All moves have their initial state and final state. Call any pair of moves "successive" if either: 1) The initial state of a move is the same as the final state of another move and 2) their initial states are not the same and both moves are successive to one other move. Call any set of pair-wise successive moves a "tactic". Any tactic of which moves contain the beginning state and final state of the map (whether a win or a loss) is called a "strategy". Any strategy of which moves contain a "victory" board states is called a "solution". The set of all strategy is the "strategy space" and the set of all solutions is the "solution space". So far we have not introduced RNG. To do so, call the probability that a move is successful the "strength" of that move. The product of the strength of all moves in a strategy is the "strength of the strategy". The sum of the strength of all solutions divided by the sum of the strength of all strategy is the "trivialness" of a map. A mechanics that increase the trivialness of a map is said to "trivialize" that map. A mechanic which preserve trivialness is described as "balanced".

In this way, Divine Pulse without RNG rerolling is "balanced"  because it affects neither the solution space nor the strategy space. RNG rerolling trivializes maps by making weak solutions stronger (it could go either way, but it is hard to imagine anybody use RNG rerolling to make a fail strategy even more guaranteed to fail). Any mechanics that only benefits player, or lopsidedly benefits the player trivializes map by introducing more solutions than deadend.

On 5/26/2021 at 9:32 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Now you're just creating perverse incentives. "Armor Knights want their defense to be high, but not too high, lest they face an effective combat art. Dodgy/doubling units want to be fast, but not too fast, or they'll be hit with a combat art or gambit." 

Why would there be any such incentives? Imagine your armor knight has an exact amount of defense, such that axemen deal exactly the same amount of damage with doubling and combat art, and the axemen choose to double. If your armor knight gets one more point of def, then doubling deals two less damage and combat art one less, and the axemen now choose to use combat art, since it would deal one more damage than doubling, but the combat art in the second case still deal one damage less than doubling in the first case, so overall that one point of def has saved your unit one point of HP. To summarize, even though the enemy switch to a different mode of attack to deal more damage, the final damage your unit takes is still reduced by the def you gain, so more def is always better. The only difference is that, beyond a certain point, every new point of def start to worth a bit less, but its net worth is still positive, and because def is a snowballing stat, the higher your def the more each point is worth, I think this is a bonus point, not minus, since it also solves this problem. The same thing applies to dodgetanks.

The only problem is when the combat arts inflict additional adverse effect, like Encloser and gambits. One need not concern oneself with gambits, since they always deal less damage than combat arts, for their individual might are often lower than the might of silver weapon, and their hit rate is 80 max, so likely lower than combat arts (Even if right now some gambits have more might than silver weapon, 1) they would still deal less damage than combat arts and 2) we can just decrease their might, since the reason to use them is rarely for damage). The only instance where gambits deal more damage than combat art is if your unit has very low charm, like 12 points lower than the enemy. But then, isn't that the whole point of the charm stat? That characters with lower charm gets hit by gambit in exchange for higher stat in other areas? This is also why I propose Fusilade and not anything else, since otherwise enemy will not ever choose gambit over combat art. So onto combat arts, the only relevant combat arts that do things other than damage are bow combat arts, in this case Encloser. Solution is 1) increase enemy archers' speed and 2) weigh your character down when you do not want to get hit by it. The first step has other justification also: it ensures archers can actually kill your fliers. The second step is not perverse at all, since: 1) intentionally weighing your character down to avoid killing an enemy has always been a staple tactics in Fire Emblem, and this is no different; 2) if your character is somehow so fast and strong that no weapon in the game can possibly weigh them down enough so that enemies can double them, you have other bigger problems to worry about. Maybe this will give players some reasons to use steel weapons over silver weapons?

On 5/26/2021 at 9:32 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Or just don't make Charm something that matters on every single enemy phase? Diluting its effect, with other stats that affect gambit hit rates, just makes it harder for the player to figure out how to deal with enemy offensive gambits. Which, I maintain, should be a common threat, but not an omnipresent one.

It won't, for enemies are almost guaranteed to use combat art instead of gambit, unless your charm is very low. And by balancing stats, I mean something along the line of low charm but high strength high def and such.

On 5/26/2021 at 9:38 PM, Shadow Mir said:

Making them require a full battalion would make them all but worthless, because you can't restore battalion endurance mid-battle, meaning taking even 2 points of damage renders them useless for the rest of the battle.

 

On 5/26/2021 at 9:32 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

IMO "when battalion is full" is worse, because then the player can start with the skill's effect, every single battle, without really trying. And maintain it, so long as they take no damage. The skills as they stand demand a different, but not necessarily easier, setup than traditional "Wrath" or "Vantage".

I do not have a definitive solution to this, so if anybody has better solution, I am eager to listen.

Edited May 27, 2021 by FacetiousCoconut
Fix some typo

[Cysx]

2 hours ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

The only instance where Divine Pulse come into active gameplay that I can think of is when player uses it to reroll RNG, which I agree is currently very intrusive. I forgot this at the time, so it was my blunder. However, do note that rerolling RNG is not something new to the series, or even uncommon (I am pretty sure FE12 Lunatic almost requires you to reroll RNG for the final chapter; I think a normal strategy is possible, but so far they all seem impractical.) You are right that the optional part is not relevant to the current topic, but it is something about Divine Pulse that is better than some of the other things I listed, like support gambits: like the greenhouses and grinding, it is easy ignore these things, whereas it is very difficult to ignore combat arts and gambits. Let me reframe it: imagine that now all battle results are completely determined, no matter the order of your action. Under this new Divine Pulse, whether or not the player choose to use it or not they would still have to follow an exact sequence of steps. If this sequence is known, then the map is solved and divine pulse is irrelevant; if this sequence is not known then the only difference between having and not having Divine Pulse is the amount of time it takes to come up with the sequence. This is why I think Divine Pulse is okay. It is like restarting the game, which I think all players already did.

To put it more generally, imagine the ensemble, or set, of all possible board states (all configuration of units and their respective states) of a given map. Call any ordered pairs of board states that differs by only one action a "move". All moves have their initial state and final state. Call any pair of moves "successive" if either: 1) The initial state of a move is the same as the final state of another move and 2) their initial states are not the same and both moves are successive to one other move. Call any set of pair-wise successive moves a "tactic". Any tactic of which moves contain the beginning state and final state of the map (whether a win or a loss) is called a "strategy". Any strategy of which moves contain a "victory" board states is called a "solution". The set of all strategy is the "strategy space" and the set of all solutions is the "solution space". So far we have not introduced RNG. To do so, call the probability that a move is successful the "strength" of that move. The product of the strength of all moves in a strategy is the "strength of the strategy". The sum of the strength of all solutions divided by the sum of the strength of all strategy is the "trivialness" of a map. A mechanics that increase the trivialness of a map is said to "trivialize" that map. A mechanic which preserve trivialness is described as "balanced".

In this way, Divine Pulse without RNG rerolling is "balanced"  because it affects neither the solution space nor the strategy space. RNG rerolling trivializes maps by making weak solutions stronger (it could go either way, but it is hard to imagine anybody use RNG rerolling to make a fail strategy even more guaranteed to fail). Any mechanics that only benefits player, or lopsidedly benefits the player trivializes map by introducing more solutions than deadend.

I'd say the player's interactions with said ensemble of spaces can be considered a space in and of themselves. We do not play as AI ideally would, and when faced with a puzzles complex enough, trial and error can generally be expected. This is of benefit to the enemy if we consider that its ultimate goal is to defeat the player(even though it is actually to entertain them); every mistake is a win, and most every attempt carries a risk. DP doesn't remove said risk, but it minimizes it as there is much less to lose, and in a more relevant fashion, it minimizes enemy victories as they get immediately overwritten. This interaction space can be simplified, as you did, but I'd argue it shouldn't be; time and nerves are a factor to the perception of difficulty and the satisfaction in overcoming challenges. You're not wrong though, in an rng-less, sterile scenario, structurally DP doesn't affect the puzzle itself. But if we accept that human perception is relevant here, which I'd say it is, suddenly it does, in a much more direct way than grinding and co do.

You've made your point, I can admit that there's a difference. Yet functionally, I'd say it matters little, because games are primarily about the player, in one way or another(largely how do we entertain them vs how do we get them to give us more money), and the player's experience is a key point of game design as a whole.

It is worth mentioning that DP is automatically used whenever a game over is triggered, which I'd say definitely pulls away from the "optional" aspect. As for rerolling rng having a recurrent presence throughout the series, while it did exist I'd disagree in spirit, aside from prep screens or the very few first turns of a chapter. Of course there's a difference in tedium much as described above, but most importantly it was never something the player was directly encouraged to do(and many are largely clueless to the concept I'd assume), unlike either forms of DP we've had thus far, which are 100% about such an incentive. It's not reality reminding you in so many ways that failing in a video game isn't an actual dead end, it's a bona fide game mechanic, with potentially growing presence in the plot to boot... though I digress again. I really don't think there's much of a resemblance.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

4 hours ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

I do not have a definitive solution to this, so if anybody has better solution, I am eager to listen.

Well, Shadow Mir and me disagreeing is nothing new, haha. I would just reiterate what I had suggested before:

On 5/24/2021 at 10:18 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

What if, instead, enemies started with their battalion at 1/3 durability? That way, any enemy with battalion skills would activate them right away. And, doing damage to force the battalion to flee (thereby weakening the enemy, and preventing gambits) would be a viable strategy).

As it stands, durability on enemy battalions means next-to-nothing. Likewise with the "Battalion" skills - it's very rare that an enemy has enough HP that you drive their battalion into the red, much less clear it away entirely. Starting them at red would give usage for these skills in enemy hands, while also making "eliminate the battalion to weaken the target" a viable approach in some cases.

4 hours ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

The only problem is when the combat arts inflict additional adverse effect, like Encloser and gambits. One need not concern oneself with gambits, since they always deal less damage than combat arts, for their individual might are often lower than the might of silver weapon, and their hit rate is 80 max, so likely lower than combat arts (Even if right now some gambits have more might than silver weapon, 1) they would still deal less damage than combat arts and 2) we can just decrease their might, since the reason to use them is rarely for damage).

The big issue with gambits isn't the damage dealt, though - it's the rattling effect, which debuffs your units and holds them in place. A more clever AI would favor high-accuracy gambits that do less damage than combat arts or doubling - especially when it creates an opening for their allies to do more damage to the targeted unit. If you don't change the AI, it can be worked around, but it still creates a "perverse incentive" for high-speed units (9 times out of 10, I'd rather take 15 damage twice, than take 20 damage and suffer the gambit's side effects).

4 hours ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

It won't, for enemies are almost guaranteed to use combat art instead of gambit, unless your charm is very low. And by balancing stats, I mean something along the line of low charm but high strength high def and such.

Oh okay, I misinterpreted. I generally like the idea of stat balance, so we're good here.

5 hours ago, FacetiousCoconut said:

This is also why I propose Fusilade and not anything else, since otherwise enemy will not ever choose gambit over combat art.

Then change the AI, so that enemies favor high-accuracy gambits against unrattled targets, even at a cost to immediate damage. Suddenly the melee offensive gambits would remain relevant. 

[Shadow Mir]

14 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Well, Shadow Mir and me disagreeing is nothing new, haha. I would just reiterate what I had suggested before:

On 5/24/2021 at 9:18 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

What if, instead, enemies started with their battalion at 1/3 durability? That way, any enemy with battalion skills would activate them right away. And, doing damage to force the battalion to flee (thereby weakening the enemy, and preventing gambits) would be a viable strategy).

As it stands, durability on enemy battalions means next-to-nothing. Likewise with the "Battalion" skills - it's very rare that an enemy has enough HP that you drive their battalion into the red, much less clear it away entirely. Starting them at red would give usage for these skills in enemy hands, while also making "eliminate the battalion to weaken the target" a viable approach in some cases.

Honestly, I think your point was excellent. It's just I happened to think of the opposite, as frankly, how often do your units (mainly frontline units, e.g. Byleth) get out of chapters without being hit at all??

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Honestly, I think your point was excellent. It's just I happened to think of the opposite, as frankly, how often do your units (mainly frontline units, e.g. Byleth) get out of chapters without being hit at all??

Hey, thanks. And you definitely have a point - while it would become a much simpler matter to go into battle with the Battalion skills active, keeping them that way would be another matter entirely. Battalion Renewal, in particular, would become literally useless (honestly, not that big a change).