Increasing everyone's hitpoints

[mrtwisties]

I have been experimenting with increasing everyone's hitpoints. It has brought battle casualty rates way down. If I inflict a serious loss on the enemy now, they suffer 40% - 60% casualties (instead of 100%). In a typical victory, I might lose 3% and the enemy lose 30%.

I kinda like that. It seems to bring casualty rates into line with the history books.

[Redmeth]

But that would assure that the battles never end, the AI will probably continue to assault you... or are you talking about autocalc only?

[Callicles]

I'm confused about this impacts casualty rate. Wouldn't the casualties be same only that the battle takes longer?

[konny]

That's when you mercylessly hunt down all routing units. With raised hitpoints you won't kill so much. So, hiting "End Battle" as soon as the screen pops up does the same.

[mrtwisties]

The way I see it, there are two kinds of battles - battles of attrition, on which this idea has a reduced effect, and tactical battles, for which it changes the dynamic significantly.

A tactical battle consists of two stages - the initial clash of lines, and a tactical blow at some stage that causes the entire enemy army to rout. The tactical blow usually depends on the main force of soldiers getting tired or on the manoeuvering of troops. If you increase hitpoints (or reduce lethality), fewer people are dead at the point that the tactical blow can take place (only 10% - 15%, actually), and fewer people die in the ensuing pursuit.

In reply to Redmeth...

I think I'll playtest this in my Makedonian campaign. I like the idea of Pyrrhos escaping with his army time and again, only to retrain and attack again the following spring. It's... well, it's realistic. Might be a really good way of slowing down player expansion.

I think it'd also reduce the rate of stack spamming. Think about it - if the AI has to pay upkeep for an army as it retreats from getting a bloody nose, it can't afford to buy as many units for stack spamming purposes. So I guess the key question here will be - does the AI retreat after suffering 40% casualties? I'm pretty sure it will.

[Lgk]

I tried increasing hps once and was disappointed - no, not with result, but with process itself. Basically you will have some lowly levies standing seemingly impervious under a vicious missile shower, and then suddenly they start to fall like flies in seconds... Hilarious, but quite unrealistic... so i dropped the idea.

[TWFanatic]

Try the SPQR mod. All units have 2 hitpoints (and the music is great!).

[mrtwisties]

I tried increasing hps once and was disappointed - no, not with result, but with process itself. Basically you will have some lowly levies standing seemingly impervious under a vicious missile shower, and then suddenly they start to fall like flies in seconds... Hilarious, but quite unrealistic... so i dropped the idea.

Yeah, that's why I thought I'd experiment with dropping the lethality down instead (to 1/4 of what it currently is). Only problem then is that I believe the lethality of missile units is hardcoded, so I'd have to do something to balance them out again. I'm considering just adding a bit of extra delay between shots.