Full map awareness in Fire Emblem

[lenticular]

In chess, there's a concept that I've heard referred to as "full board awareness". I'm not sufficiently familiar with proper chess terminology to know if this is a proper official chess term, or just some term that some people use sometimes, btu it basically means what you think it means. It's about being aware of what's going on all over the board so that you don't fixate on what's going on in one part of the board and end up blundering because you didn't notice a threat from another part of the board.

I'm going to refer to the Fire Emblem equivalent as "full map awareness". Being aware of the whole map so you aren't caught unaware by stepping into the range of some enemy unit. Because I have to say that I make a lot of errors of that type. "Oh no, I didn't realise that I was leaving my pegasus knight in range of the enemy sniper. Guess it's time to reset again." That sort of thing. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that, for me, that sort of thing is by far and away the single most common cause of unit death/reset/turn rewind. And it isn't even close.

And while I have generally got better at full board awareness as I have got better at chess over the years, I still suck at full map awareness in Fire Emblem. I don't think it's particularly difficult to see why. In chess there are 64 squares, a maximum of 32 pieces on the board at any one time and only 10 of those pieces actually act at long range. Whereas in Fire Emblem, the maps are much bigger and you're keeping track of a lot more moving parts. I don't know what map has the single most units of the whole series, but one that quickly comes to mind for me as having a lot is Radiant Dawn III-E, "From Pain, Awakening". Per the wiki, that starts with 116 units on the map, with another 43 appearing as reinforcements as it progresses. Keeping 116 distinct items in your head at any one time seems like it can't be humanly possible. I know it's certainly well beyond my mental capabilities.

So, generally speaking, I don't even try to maintain faull map awareness. Instead, I recalculate at the start of every turn. Which are the enemy units that I actually need to think about this turn, and which are the ones that I can just ignore? I then set the ignored ones out of mind, and take my turn to deal with the current threat. And if all goes well then I'll do that, hit end turn, watch the enemy react on enemy phase, and then at the start of the next player phase, I'll go through the process again and figure out which of the enemies that I could previously ignore are now ones that I had to deal with. But more often that I'd care to admit, not everything goes well, and one of the units that I thought I could safely ignore turns out to be in range to kill one of my units.

And on the one hand, the answer for this is a simple one. I need to be more careful. I need to be diligent in checking ranges for all enemies and I need to repeat the process if ever I find that I'm advancing further than I was expecting to. But on the other hand, doing so is boring. Going around and highlighting a bunch of units to show their attack ranges isn't fun. Manually counting out movement is even less fun. It's sometimes a necessary part of playing Fire Emblem, but it isn't one that I particularly enjoy. Which means that it's very tempting to cut corners. If a unit looks like it's something I can safely ignore then that means that it probably is. Most of the time, that level of extra care and attention genuinely isn't necessary and would only be wasting my time. I can hardly berate myself for not doing that.

Honestly, I think that one of the reasons that Three Houses is my favourite Fire Emblem is that it has the red aggro lines. These massively reduce my cognitive load and let me avoid the busywork of repeatedly checking enemy ranges. I know that these aren't universally beloved, though, and I do sort of see why. Having enemy intent being shown so clearly can make it easier to cheese the AI. And there are occasional problems where the UI says that an enemy will attack one unit but they actually attack another, which can lead to player frustration. They definitely weren't perfect, but I love them because -- for me -- they solved the problem of an enemy coming from seemingly out of nowehere to kill a unit that I thought was safe.

So, having rambled on for a while, I have three questions:

• Do you think that having full map awareness for large Fire Emblem maps is something that is humanly possible, or do you think that it's pretty much required to ignore a lot of units each turn and only focus on what's immediately at hand?
• For people who are less prone to making "oops, I didn't see that enemy" style mistakes, do you have any tips for what I should be doing to better avoid them? Is it a play-style thing? Are you just more meticulous than I am? Better at concentrating on more things at once? Or are there tips and tricks that I could use to get better at this?
• How do you feel about the red aggro lines? Do you think that they do a good job of mitigating the problem of the inherent difficulty (impossibility?) of full map awareness? Or do you think that there are better ways that the problem could be addressed in the UI to take that cognitive load off the player?

[Vormanax]

The mistake you describe is something I commonly see in players, and for modern games is almost entirely due to bad use of enemy range markings. In the games where it is possible to mark enemies to permanently have their range overlayed, the following process will stop 99% of instances of being unexpectedly in an enemy range: 

On turn 1 of the map, mark every single enemy. Then every turn (including turn 1), unmark every enemy that you're actively considering. Ie enemies that you plan on killing this turn or enemies that you deliberately want to end up in range of. The remaining marked range is that of the enemies you're not considering, ie the enemies would would surprise you. As long as you stay outside of this new range, everything will go just as planned. The remaining instances of accidentally being in someone's enemy range is due to moving away one of your units and thus increasing an enemy's movement range, increasing the marked range after your move. For this there is no easy fix other than to just pay attention.

I used to think that every way of handling enemy markings are equally good so long as it works for that particular player, but having seen as many random deaths due to not having every enemy marked as I have, I've pretty much come to believe this system is objectively best. It's why I would really like to have a "mark all" button, but it's not like taking 30 seconds on turn 1 to mark everyone is a big deal.

The lack of good enemy range overlay is one of my biggest gripes with the older games, and why I don't play them much. There's no easy fix for this case. You just need to be diligent and keep checking ranges.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I can't imagine that the simple mistake of leaving units in range has gotten any of my units in a modern fire emblem game. I suppose in a recent replay of 4 I got caught out a few times simply because Road tiles grant a (to me, trying not to use a guide) unpredictable boost to a unit's movement range. Being able to highlight enemy ranges has given me all the awareness I need for moment to moment decision making. And unlike Chess, there is generally no unit in Fire Emblem that can cross the entire board in one lethal move. Just Witches in Echoes. Nor are there units that grant themselves a massive movement boost. Map awareness beyond where your units are is largely unnecessary in Fire Emblem - just glance around the map on turn 1 for the occasional side objective (chests, green units, villages). But there is one thing that no amount of map awareness can save us from:

Ambush Spawns. To this day no Fire Emblem has appropriately given warning about ambush spawns. Info about unit type, quantity, what specific tiles they spawn on, how many turns they'll be spawning. These are the vast majority of my unit deaths, even when I know that something is coming. Similar to how you can walk into a big, symmetrical room in an action game, correctly guess that there's a boss fight in here, then you start the fight and get rocked anyway.

As for red aggro lines, of course I think they're a good inclusion. Mostly because when you highlight the attacker you get a non-intrusive battle forecast detailing the three major data points: Damage, hit rate, whether the enemy plans to use its gambit. In previous fire emblem games, those first two questions had to be mathed out individually in order to calculate what Enemy Phase is going to look like. When I first started out in Fire Emblem, I had to learn enemy AI quirks through trial and error, like how they have no self preservation instinct, prioritize damage over hit rate, and prioritize targets that can't fight back over somebody they can do more damage to. 

Edited December 28, 2022 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Shadow Mir]

5 hours ago, lenticular said:

Do you think that having full map awareness for large Fire Emblem maps is something that is humanly possible, or do you think that it's pretty much required to ignore a lot of units each turn and only focus on what's immediately at hand?

Honestly, I'd say no, it ain't possible to have full map awareness. And honestly, it isn't needed, as almost nothing in FE can move to hit you from way across the map - only witches in SoV and the spirits in the last two parts of Radiant Dawn's endgame. Aside from what is nearest my units, the main things I am on the lookout for are chests, villages, and green units. I'd also mark any enemies with particularly long attack range - like ballistae, for example.

5 hours ago, lenticular said:

For people who are less prone to making "oops, I didn't see that enemy" style mistakes, do you have any tips for what I should be doing to better avoid them? Is it a play-style thing? Are you just more meticulous than I am? Better at concentrating on more things at once? Or are there tips and tricks that I could use to get better at this?

Mark the danger zone for everything.

5 hours ago, lenticular said:

How do you feel about the red aggro lines? Do you think that they do a good job of mitigating the problem of the inherent difficulty (impossibility?) of full map awareness? Or do you think that there are better ways that the problem could be addressed in the UI to take that cognitive load off the player?

Yes, the red aggro lines help.

[haarhaarhaar]

5 hours ago, lenticular said:

Do you think that having full map awareness for large Fire Emblem maps is something that is humanly possible, or do you think that it's pretty much required to ignore a lot of units each turn and only focus on what's immediately at hand?

The RD map you mentioned is absolutely nuts on that front - I find highlighting every enemy range actively works against me there, because it messes up my ability to class threats by high/mid/low priority. I normally lean towards the school "focus on what's in front of you", which works for me generally, but in an effort to be a better player I actively try to fix that by checking enemies most turns. If there's a difference between our playstyles, it's probably that I enjoy that activity a bit more than you might, but it definitely adds real time to a battle, and often for not much benefit. Despite this, I still make mistakes, mainly because I've either been over-ambitious with what I want to do on Player Phase (which is consistently a flaw throughout my FE-playing career), or I've misread enemy AI (and there's no way around that except spending more time with the game in question). 

As I'm sure you're aware, full map awareness isn't physically possible for certain maps (ie. Fog of War, or where the majority of enemies show up as reinforcements) and sometimes it works against you, because the best tactic relatively speaking might be the one where you ignore lots of enemies (i.e. quick clears), so trying to be aware of everything can put you on a one-track mindset. So I don't feel too bad when I haven't predicted everything.

5 hours ago, lenticular said:

For people who are less prone to making "oops, I didn't see that enemy" style mistakes, do you have any tips for what I should be doing to better avoid them? Is it a play-style thing? Are you just more meticulous than I am? Better at concentrating on more things at once? Or are there tips and tricks that I could use to get better at this?

The thing that's helped me the most with FE playing (apart from hearing about other people's playstyles and tips) is XCOM 2. The mechanics are fairly different, but that game is really explicit about treating enemies as pods, or small groups, following similar objectives/movement patterns and so on. In XCOM 2, it's pretty obvious what counts as a pod because of how enemies are placed, and sometimes it's less clear in FE when lots of enemies are bunched up and their movement triggers overlap. But the general lesson is that instead of seeing enemies as individual units, it's better to see them as threat groups, with the grouping decided by placement/movement type/attack type etc. Which cuts down on the number of different items you're tracking as you play, while maintaining a rough idea of who's coming where, and their level of importance. I think FE does encourage this sometimes, and experienced players are probably already doing this instinctively, but sometimes pointing out the obvious is also helpful.

I also freely admit to spending real time each turn just understanding how the map works, how it's changed, and whether there are any immediate red flags - even if I did it the previous turn and not much has changed since then. Which others might find a bit dull. 

6 hours ago, lenticular said:

How do you feel about the red aggro lines? Do you think that they do a good job of mitigating the problem of the inherent difficulty (impossibility?) of full map awareness? Or do you think that there are better ways that the problem could be addressed in the UI to take that cognitive load off the player?

It definitely helps me cut down on the mistakes you describe (just forgetting or not noticing an enemy). Even though sometimes I get suckered because the AI changes its mind between your turn and its turn, I think it's an improvement even FE purists would appreciate. If there's any tweak I'd make, it's for the colour of the line(s) to change if the unit is predicted to survive or die that Enemy Phase, according to the battle windows. That way, it might be a bit easier to take the map in at a glance. Hardly a crucial change, though. 

1 hour ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Ambush Spawns. To this day no Fire Emblem has appropriately given warning about ambush spawns. Info about unit type, quantity, what specific tiles they spawn on, how many turns they'll be spawning. These are the vast majority of my unit deaths, even when I know that something is coming. Similar to how you can walk into a big, symmetrical room in an action game, correctly guess that there's a boss fight in here, then you start the fight and get rocked anyway.

Fully concur with this. On higher difficulties, just having reinforcements that act immediately is an insane advantage for the red team - even if the player knows exactly what's about to come, that doesn't necessarily mean they can be trivialised. So players should at least have the opportunity to figure out, without relying on a guide, whether, when and from where reinforcements might arrive. Completely obscuring knowledge from the player should only happen in a few, critical scenarios, ideally aligned with big story events (like a sudden betrayal or smth), not as a shorthand for building difficulty. 

[Armchair General]

9 hours ago, lenticular said:

the maps are much bigger

True, but the dungeons in SoV might as well be an chess board.

9 hours ago, lenticular said:

you're keeping track of a lot more moving parts.

And this where I start disagreeing with you, since the AI is normally set to remain stationary until you walk into.their attack range.

 

9 hours ago, lenticular said:

Do you think that having full map awareness for large Fire Emblem maps is something that is humanly possible, or do you think that it's pretty much required to ignore a lot of units each turn and only focus on what's immediately at hand?

It's entirely possible to keep track of everything that's on the map; but this isn't really much of an necessity, considering how the battles in FE generally have several waves of combat. If you can enemy phase most of the shit that runs up to you, then you've got it made; if not, well, turtling is still an option, right?

 

9 hours ago, lenticular said:

For people who are less prone to making "oops, I didn't see that enemy" style mistakes, do you have any tips for what I should be doing to better avoid them? Is it a play-style thing? Are you just more meticulous than I am? Better at concentrating on more things at once? Or are there tips and tricks that I could use to get better at this?

What happened to just going through nearly every enemy on the map and charting an path to avoid certain groups of enemies? Or at the very least, find an area where you can aggro them so you can kill them piecemeal?

9 hours ago, lenticular said:

How do you feel about the red aggro lines? Do you think that they do a good job of mitigating the problem of the inherent difficulty (impossibility?) of full map awareness? Or do you think that there are better ways that the problem could be addressed in the UI to take that cognitive load off the player?

Aggro lines are nice, never really cared that much for them. But they're only relevant from when you're actually fighting to around 2 turns from before you start fighting. Otherwise, it's mostly an contest of killing shit as fast as you can before their buddies with an javelin line up behind them.

[Armchair General]

8 hours ago, Vormanax said:

The mistake you describe is something I commonly see in players, and for modern games is almost entirely due to bad use of enemy range markings. In the games where it is possible to mark enemies to permanently have their range overlayed, the following process will stop 99% of instances of being unexpectedly in an enemy range: 

On turn 1 of the map, mark every single enemy. Then every turn (including turn 1), unmark every enemy that you're actively considering. Ie enemies that you plan on killing this turn or enemies that you deliberately want to end up in range of. The remaining marked range is that of the enemies you're not considering, ie the enemies would would surprise you. As long as you stay outside of this new range, everything will go just as planned. The remaining instances of accidentally being in someone's enemy range is due to moving away one of your units and thus increasing an enemy's movement range, increasing the marked range after your move. For this there is no easy fix other than to just pay attention.

This is something that I regularly do, fwiw. Of course, the main problem is that you occasionally don't have the time or the room to stay out of the opposition's attack range.

8 hours ago, Vormanax said:

It's why I would really like to have a "mark all" button, but it's not like taking 30 seconds on turn 1 to mark everyone is a big deal.

I thought that the 3DS games had that feature?

5 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

And unlike Chess, there is generally no unit in Fire Emblem that can cross the entire board in one lethal move.

There kind of is, if you count the 7 or 8 tiles of unrestricted that fliers have and siege magic.

5 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Nor are there units that grant themselves a massive movement boost.

Hinoka's last stand in Conquest not only did this to fliers, it also reduced the movement of everything else.

 

5 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

what specific tiles they spawn on,

There might be an tooltip in at least one of the newer games about stairs and forts, but reinforcements were mainly conveyed through dialogue in Awakening and 3 Houses. There's that border fortress in Birthright that had me laughing at the sight of that empty fort. But otherwise, reinforcements generally wasn't that big of an deal for me, maybe because I like fighting an unfair fight or something.

 

 

[Vormanax]

Quote

I thought that the 3DS games had that feature?

Unless I have somehow always missed this, no. Of course you can display the cumulative threat range of all enemies combined, but that doesn't help you avoid enemies you weren't considering in this way, since you can't differentiate between enemies you want to be (or accept to be) in range of vs those you can't.

They do however have "unmark all," if you press B over an enemy, which I annoyingly occasionally do by accident so I have to mark them all again.

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Armchair General said:

There kind of is, if you count the 7 or 8 tiles of unrestricted that fliers have and siege magic.

Long-range magic on fliers is pretty much not a thing - only 3 games have had fliers able to use magic, and in one of them (Three Houses) the class in question is DLC, another (Fates) has no long-range magic, and the last (Awakening) has the only long-range magic as dark magic that only specific classes can use (unless you have a specific skill only certain units have, that is).

[Dark Holy Elf]

The 3DS games and Three Houses do have a "mark all" feature, and it's extremely useful. I toggle it on at least once each turn, and often just keep it on if I don't mind the purple overlay of the map. My general strategy is to use "mark all", and then manually mark some enemies who I am NOT planning to kill this turn, but are "the next threats back" from my current environment. Especially if they carry certain types of weapons. Often when playing Awakening I just manually marked every bow-user, wind tome-user, and warrior with Counter (screw that skill) because of how much more threat they posed than other enemies.

[Armchair General]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

Long-range magic on fliers is pretty much not a thing - only 3 games have had fliers able to use magic, and in one of them (Three Houses) the class in question is DLC, another (Fates) has no long-range magic, and the last (Awakening) has the only long-range magic as dark magic that only specific classes can use (unless you have a specific skill only certain units have, that is).

I was talking about two separate units: Sorcerors with Waste and just about any flier with high accuracy

[Shadow Mir]

7 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

I was talking about two separate units: Sorcerors with Waste and just about any flier with high accuracy

I assume you mean Mire, as Waste is another tome entirely. Also, there's like one map in the whole game with both Mire sorcerers and fliers.

[Hawkwing]

13 hours ago, lenticular said:

Do you think that having full map awareness for large Fire Emblem maps is something that is humanly possible, or do you think that it's pretty much required to ignore a lot of units each turn and only focus on what's immediately at hand?

Considering how many enemies some maps have, along with some games having skills to keep track of, I don't think full map awareness is truly attainable. However, it is still important to scour through the map to identify enemies that could be prove problematic, whether they're a threat from turn 1 or will be an issue later on.

Personally, I tend to focus on immediate threats and enemies who will be a problem on the next turn. I keep future threats in mind, especially if they're powerful, but they aren't a priority and I don't plan that far ahead. Especially since I prefer doing ironman runs, where my entire strategy has to change on a dime if I lose a character.

13 hours ago, lenticular said:

For people who are less prone to making "oops, I didn't see that enemy" style mistakes, do you have any tips for what I should be doing to better avoid them? Is it a play-style thing? Are you just more meticulous than I am? Better at concentrating on more things at once? Or are there tips and tricks that I could use to get better at this?

As other people have said, pay attention to enemy ranges and use the ability to mark enemies liberally. Dealing with overlap or how moving a unit into position can disrupt where enemies ranges can be annoying, but it should be something you get used too.

Also, make sure you keep defense in mind when positioning for an attack. It can make the difference between whether you will be attacked by one enemy or three during the enemy phase.

13 hours ago, lenticular said:

How do you feel about the red aggro lines? Do you think that they do a good job of mitigating the problem of the inherent difficulty (impossibility?) of full map awareness? Or do you think that there are better ways that the problem could be addressed in the UI to take that cognitive load off the player?

It's a nice feature that I don't mind being absent in previous games. Because it tells you who will be attacked on the enemy phase, I find myself playing more aggressively in Three Houses compared to previous games, as I know who I can safely move into enemy range without fear of them being attacked, whereas in other games I approach situations more defensively since I don't always know who the enemy will target. It's not a foolproof system, since the enemies plans can change if someone takes enough damage, but I feel like players should keep that in mind anyway.

9 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Ambush Spawns. To this day no Fire Emblem has appropriately given warning about ambush spawns. Info about unit type, quantity, what specific tiles they spawn on, how many turns they'll be spawning. These are the vast majority of my unit deaths, even when I know that something is coming. Similar to how you can walk into a big, symmetrical room in an action game, correctly guess that there's a boss fight in here, then you start the fight and get rocked anyway.

Ambush spawns and by extension Fog of War have no business being in Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem is heavily reliant on you knowing what enemies you're facing, what your troops are capable of, and how stats or weapons can completely change your approach. Mages can often wreck armor knights, for instance, but I might think twice about attacking an armor knight if they have a javelin and enough HP to survive the first strike. Ambush spawns and Fog of War say "screw that" and throw any enemy they want at you. Calvary and Wyvern riders may outpace you units, a mage could destroy your low res units, a warrior can chop through, etc. I hate that you either have to figure this out through trail and error, or just look up a guide to prevent getting screwed over, and I don't like whipping out my phone to have a website ready as the default way to play a game.

As frustrating as cantors can be, I always preferred them because at least they're predictable. You know where they're going to spawn, a look at the bottom screen tells you what they're going to summon, and will practice you can predict when they'll do so. They cause several maps to overstay their welcome, but the same can be said about regular reinforcements. 

[Armchair General]

1 hour ago, Hawkwing said:

Ambush spawns and by extension Fog of War have no business being in Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem is heavily reliant on you knowing what enemies you're facing, what your troops are capable of, and how stats or weapons can completely change your approach

I kind of disagree with this on the basis that fog of war works out for other series like Company of Heroes or XCOM (in Xcom 2, you're always going in blind without an certain upgrade to your frieghter) in the sense that you're supposed to know how to think on your feet once you start seeing people. At least with FE you can kind of cheese the experience by forming an wall or something.

 

1 hour ago, Hawkwing said:

I hate that you either have to figure this out through trail and error, or just look up a guide to prevent getting screwed over, and I don't like whipping out my phone to have a website ready as the default way to play a game

But is with you people and the inability to deal with the unknown? With most RPGs, you generally have no idea what the boss of the week has on him or what he was resistant to until you've went through it once or twice. And even if you do know what's coming at you, shit can still happen because the RNG fucking hated you.

 

But hey, that's XCOM for ya.

Here's the obligatory FE example.

 

To be fair, he was asking for it with those rerolls

 

 

Edited December 29, 2022 by Armchair General

[Hawkwing]

Just now, Armchair General said:

I kind of disagree with this on the basis that fog of war works out for other series like Company of Heroes or XCOM (in Xcom 2, you're always going in blind without an certain upgrade to your frieghter) in the sense that you're supposed to know how to think on your feet once you start seeing people. At least with FE you can kind of cheese the experience by forming an wall or something.

XCOM deals with ranged combat, and damage is effective against everyone. Accidently activating a pod can be frustrating or even mission ending in some cases, but you have enough tools and tactics to potentially get out of the predicament.

Fire Emblem, meanwhile, is largely melee focused, and ambush spawns and fog of war attacks come in all forms. An ambushing myrmidon may do nothing against a knight but it can slaughter a mage, or a Pegasus knight could fly around your wall and strike at a healer. And you won't know what kind of opponent you're dealing with until they've already shown up and acted.

XCOM also allows you to recruit rookies to replace fallen soldiers, and encourages not relying on a single team. Fire Emblem units are gone for good if you play with permadeath, and how well the series is at giving you replacements has been a topic of discussion and debate for decades.

1 minute ago, Armchair General said:

But is with you people and the inability to deal with the unknown? With most RPGs, you generally have no idea what the boss of the week has on him or what he was resistant to until you've went through it once or twice. And even if you do know what's coming at you, shit can still happen because the RNG fucking hated you.

I love roguelikes. I enjoy being given random tools and a difficult situation and being told "make this work". I'm the madman who enjoys Shadows of Valentia because of the unreliable hit rates. I don't have a problem with Fire Emblem using randomness.

What I do have an issue with is the series throwing enemies at you that you can't prepare for without trial and error or using a guide. Fire Emblem is heavily reliant on you knowing what your opponents are capable of as well as the abilities of your own team and planning accordingly. A single stat difference in speed can make all the difference in whether or not a unit gets doubled. I might not use a mage to attack a knight if said knight is using a javelin. Ambush Spawns and Fog of War says "screw that" and forces you to deal with a threat that you won't know the class, stats, or weaponry for. That's not a good thing in a series that has permadeath when the games range in how well they are at giving you ways to recover from unexpected losses.

Also, if you lose against a boss in an RPG or action game, learn from your mistakes and return for a second attempt. Ironmanning is a popular with Fire Emblem, and Ambush Spawns needlessly punish continuing with your mistakes instead of resetting after every loss. They're not fun.

[Armchair General]

21 minutes ago, Hawkwing said:

Also, if you lose against a boss in an RPG or action game, learn from your mistakes and return for a second attempt. Ironmanning is a popular with Fire Emblem, and Ambush Spawns needlessly punish continuing with your mistakes instead of resetting after every loss. They're not fun.

Okay, if you're ironmanning an game that you've already played, what's stopping you from being ready for the ambush spawn?I mean, when was the last time those guys didn't pop out of an set of stairs or forts? Or the edges of the map?

34 minutes ago, Hawkwing said:

An ambushing myrmidon may do nothing against a knight but it can slaughter a mage, or a Pegasus knight could fly around your wall and strike at a healer

I might have had an similar issue in "Falling Short of Heaven" but I really don't remember much about that run, except that it took me an while to find the bosses. I think it was the only map in 3H that had me stretched thin. As for fliers in them, I'm going through this list in reverse order and I'm not seeing an lot of fliers in those maps. Sure, there's at least 2 Falcon Knights in Radiant Dawn, but your defending an fort in that one. I'm also seeing some pretty weak monsters in the 11th chapter of an GBA game, another where they're funneled through an fort or something. I'm halfway through, but an feels like nearly all the enemies within the fog of war maps throughout the series are ground units.

 

52 minutes ago, Hawkwing said:

XCOM also allows you to recruit rookies to replace fallen soldiers, and encourages not relying on a single team

Yeah, but it also eats into your budget and fighting capability if too many people go down in quick succession.

 

[Hawkwing]

Just now, Armchair General said:

Okay, if you're ironmanning an game that you've already played, what's stopping you from being ready for the ambush spawn?I mean, when was the last time those guys didn't pop out of an set of stairs or forts? Or the edges of the map?

If the games were more consistent about reinforcements always appearing in forts and arriving on certain turns, I would be less critical. Instead, it can heavily depend on the map and game, and I'm not a fan of resorting to a guide to figure out exactly which side of the map an enemy that the game doesn't warn me about will appear on as well as the who and the when. It doesn't help that sitting on a fort to block reinforcements is not exciting gameplay.

Like I said in my first post on the topic, as annoying as cantors can be, you can at least always tell where they're going to summon monsters as well as what creatures will appear, and eventually you can get a feel when they'll act.

1 minute ago, Armchair General said:

I might have had an similar issue in "Falling Short of Heaven" but I really don't remember much about that run, except that it took me an while to find the bosses. I think it was the only map in 3H that had me stretched thin. As for fliers in them, I'm going through this list in reverse order and I'm not seeing an lot of fliers in those maps. Sure, there's at least 2 Falcon Knights in Radiant Dawn, but your defending an fort in that one. I'm also seeing some pretty weak monsters in the 11th chapter of an GBA game, another where they're funneled through an fort or something. I'm halfway through, but an feels like nearly all the enemies within the fog of war maps throughout the series are ground units.

Like I keep saying, the game hides stats and weapons from you. In a series that revolves around making choices by comparing enemy and ally stats. The same class may appear twice on the same map, yet my approach on how to deal with each one could differ drastically depending on which weapon they have equipped and/or if one is faster or stronger than the other. Ambush Spawns and Fog of War hide a core part of the game, and can be overly punishing for something you don't have many opportunities to prepare for fairly.

1 minute ago, Armchair General said:

Yeah, but it also eats into your budget and fighting capability if too many people go down in quick succession.

Which discourages you from playing foolishly. XCOM gives you the ability to recover from losses, even if it eats away at other resources. If you lose a unit in Fire Emblem, you have to hope the game has a replacement prepared and that they'll actually do their job of replacing that niche.

[Vormanax]

7 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

The 3DS games and Three Houses do have a "mark all" feature, and it's extremely useful. I toggle it on at least once each turn, and often just keep it on if I don't mind the purple overlay of the map. My general strategy is to use "mark all", and then manually mark some enemies who I am NOT planning to kill this turn, but are "the next threats back" from my current environment. Especially if they carry certain types of weapons. Often when playing Awakening I just manually marked every bow-user, wind tome-user, and warrior with Counter (screw that skill) because of how much more threat they posed than other enemies.

I guess I'm not being clear enough. What I mean when I say I would like a "mark all" feature is that I want a way for every enemy to be manually marked at once, so that I can then start unmarking the ones I consider this turn. Overlaying the cumulative range is obviously very useful, but the method I described relies on every enemy being manually marked and then unmarking the ones that are being considered, and you can't unmark enemies from the cumulative range.

[X-Naut]

One detail I have yet to see in this thread is locked rooms. They're used to isolate a portion of the map against long-range threats and warpskipping, but at the same time they deny information about enemies and their formations. While you have part of a turn to react some might be much harder to react to, and you do generally have to have one unit sticking out their neck to open the door. In a few cases it's essentially another form of same-turn reinforcements.

Speaking of same-turn reinforcements, I think they're marred by poor execution. Reinforcements tend to be concentrated to one phase or the other, and in modern games this is done by flipping the phase. On top of forcing the player to essentially learn a new mechanic on Hard+, it doesn't consider that some groups are not suited to acting immediately. It also denies the possibility of using non-STRs in tandem to provide a more organic warning system.

tl;dr reinforcements don't have to be locked to one phase and I'm tired of IntSys pretending they do

[Armchair General]

At least with locked rooms, you can more or less ignore them until everything near them has been cleared out. How many people does it takes to clear them if you're only using an thief to pick the lock to deal with what, exactly?

[Shadow Mir]

10 hours ago, X-Naut said:

One detail I have yet to see in this thread is locked rooms. They're used to isolate a portion of the map against long-range threats and warpskipping, but at the same time they deny information about enemies and their formations. While you have part of a turn to react some might be much harder to react to, and you do generally have to have one unit sticking out their neck to open the door.

In general, doors are something you can deal with at your leisure. The one time I'd worry about them is Blazing Blade's endgame, as the doors open without you needing to do anything. And most of the enemies in those rooms are really really powerful.

Edited December 30, 2022 by Shadow Mir

[Dark Holy Elf]

13 hours ago, Vormanax said:

I guess I'm not being clear enough. What I mean when I say I would like a "mark all" feature is that I want a way for every enemy to be manually marked at once, so that I can then start unmarking the ones I consider this turn. Overlaying the cumulative range is obviously very useful, but the method I described relies on every enemy being manually marked and then unmarking the ones that are being considered, and you can't unmark enemies from the cumulative range.

Ah yeah, that's fair, and that would be useful.

[Jotari]

On 12/28/2022 at 8:46 PM, lenticular said:

But on the other hand, doing so is boring. Going around and highlighting a bunch of units to show their attack ranges isn't fun.

Well there's your problem. You're not using range highlighting.