Research: Artillery projectiles & Generals

[Roy1991]

Is it just me, or are arty projectiles strangely attracted to generals in some way?
If I set my onagers to fire at will at an enemy army, their general usually is one of the first to die.
This happens so often that I doubt it's just luck.

[Tamur]

I don't think I've seen anything investigating this, but it would be interesting to have some tests run. I've also seen more generals than I would expect die due to ballista fire &c.

[orangat]

The AI could be hardcoded to favour targetting general units. It would be quite easy to setup a custom battle to test this.

[Tamur]

Short answer after running a few tests: at least in 1.5, players either directly or "fire-at-will" targeting general units with artillery can expect the same as if they were directly targeting a non-general unit.

I ran about thirty tests this evening, Julii vs Brutii. I made myself the attacker, gave myself ten units of triarii for a spear wall just in case, and all of the artillery available (ballistas, repeating ballistas, scorpions, onagers, heavy onagers).

I gave the Brutii two Roman General cav units, made one general, and let the specific weapon fire at will.

The results...

Ballista - 4 tests, 2 fire, 2 no fire
Never killed the general, avg 8 kills

Repeating Ballista - 4 tests, 2 fire, 2 no fire
Never killed the general, avg 9 kills

Scorpion - 5 tests, 2 fire, 3 no fire
One general kill, using no fire - avg 8 kills

Onagers - 8 tests, 4 fire, 4 no fire
Two general kills, both fire - avg 15 kills

Heavy Onagers - 12 tests, 10 fire, 2 no fire
Ten general kills, all fire - avg 26 kills

Obviously the heavy onagers were 100% when using flaming shot. However, I think this is simply due to the fact that flaming shot consistently left 6 or 7 out of the 37 horses in the unit alive, so the general had a very good chance of being roasted.

Targeting one cav unit instead of the other made no difference at all in the kill rate. The average remained within a very close range on all weapons. Auto-targeting seemed more often to choose the non-general unit.

A couple of other observations: heavy onagers using flaming shot will kill 7-9 per hit. They rarely hit, but when they do they show why they're expensive. In contrast, regular onagers using flaming shot kill 3-5 per hit.

Second observation: flaming shot from onagers (heavy and regular) led to significantly higher kill rates than non-flaming shot, while on arrow-based artillery it led to significantly lower kill rates. This is due to the fact that in both cases the projectiles become far less accurate, but flaming onager shot explodes and does radius damage, while flaming shot from a ballista makes no difference except as a morale drop for the targeted unit.

[Ludens]

Interesting results Tamur. Could this be moved to the Ludus Magna?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Have you tested Cavalry v. Infantry as targets? I think hte larger targets seem to acquire more splash kills from flamer shots -- but I haven't specifically tested for it.

[orangat]

I doubt there would be more kills for cavalry targets since each horseman occupies a larger space than a single infantry.

[macsen rufus]

I've seen the same effect in MTW - artillery does seem to have a higher chance of killing the general, say compared to archers. MANY times I've had the enemy general killed by the first catapult firing - leaving the rest of his bodyguard unit still alive, yet when you use archers (or melee troops) against the general's unit, almost invariably he is the last man in the unit to die. Likewise I've also suffered losses of my general if he gets into enemy artillery range. The same effect also seems to apply for artillery defences in castle assaults, too. I suspect the game engine is biased.

[Oaty]

There was a problem prepatch especially chariot generals to artillery. I believe it was the 1.2 patch that killed the homing artillery that resulted in generals deaths. Always state what patch/version you are using.

[x-dANGEr]

I think you can kill generals with any other unit as easy..

Just charge where the General is around! He might take longer to kill because of the invidiual +x hitpoints he gets..

[Roy1991]

There was a problem prepatch especially chariot generals to artillery. I believe it was the 1.2 patch that killed the homing artillery that resulted in generals deaths. Always state what patch/version you are using.

I'm using 1.5.
Looks like it wasn't completely fixed.


Tamur, if you say "12 tests" (for example), do you mean 1 onager firing 12 times, or a bunch of onagers firing 12 times?

[Tamur]

Hi Roy,

I mean twelve battles, in which a single onager/ballista/etc empties its entire arsenal on one of two General cav units. Sorry if I did not make that clear.

[Roy1991]

Today I've been keeping track of enemy generals' deaths caused by my onagers, in my current Numidia campaign.

Fought 7 battles in which I was the attacker, against enemy stacks which consisted of at least 15 units, and were commanded by a general. (All battles were against Greeks, they've Armoured Generals).

Because the Greeks were the defenders, they'd usually just stand there, allowing my onagers to fire all their ammo.

Had 5 units of regular onagers, all set to fire at will, using fire.

1st battle: Commanding general not hit, another general killed by the 4th volley
2nd battle: General killed by the 2nd volley
3rd battle: General routed when most of his army was destroyed
4th battle: General not hit
5th battle: General killed by the 5th volley
6th battle: Commanding general killed by the 3rd volley, other general not hit
7th battle: General not hit, though about 90% of his bodyguard was destroyed

Seems to me that it's more than just luck, especially because captains rarely get killed by onagers.
If the enemy army consists of just a few units, then the general should have a big chance of getting hit of course, but imo not if the enemy army consists of 14+ units.

[Tamur]

Interesting results, Roy.

My tests assumed that it made no difference what size and composition the enemy army was, and so I had nothing but the general unit and one other of exactly the same type. This definitely could have skewed my results.

I'll give it another go with non-general unit types in the enemy army and see what sorts of results I get.

edit: also, I'm using custom battles rather than campaign battles, so that's another factor to consider. I guess I could savegame and play out the same battle over and over to control test conditions a bit.