Formation systems
Units in a group maintain a spatial arrangement — line, wedge, column — that affects their combat effectiveness, movement speed, or vulnerability to attacks from specific directions. Total War's formations (shield walls that resist frontal charges but crumble to flanks) and Pikmin's squad-of-many formation-following both make group shape a tactical resource distinct from individual unit stats. Designers use formation systems to reward positioning at the group level (not just per-unit), to create rock-paper-scissors dynamics between formation types and attack types, and to make commanding many units feel different from commanding one. Key decisions: how formations are selected and changed (manual versus automatic), the bonuses/penalties each formation grants and against what, how terrain disrupts formation cohesion, and UI for visualizing and issuing formation orders at scale. Pitfall: formations that are set-and-forget with no real counterplay reduce to a single always-correct choice — formations should have clear, exploitable weaknesses that opponents can target.
- Dev effort: Large
- Timing: Real-time or turn-based
- Common in: strategy, wargame
Seen in
- Total War: Warhammer III
- Pikmin