Research: Effects of Command

Some background info on command:

JeromeGrasdyke gave a fairly detailed answer on what command does in this thread.

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Originally Posted by JeromeGrasdyke

It currently affects both morale and combat ability - we tried it for a while with just morale, but it ended up being not enough of a bonus. The combat calculations have changed so much from Rome to Medieval as to be unrecogniseable, so it's no longer easy to equate stars to experience.

As a rule of thumb it's one point of attack per command rank, up to a maximum of 10, and this can become negative for very bad generals. This combat bonus is applied to all troops under his command on the battlefield. Experience is one point of attack and one point of defense per chevron, plus a morale bonus as well.

The general's command also controls his radius-of-effect, which is set to 30 m + 5 m * command + 2 m * influence. This is used to award morale bonusses to nearby units (in addition to the combat bonus), and when testing which units are affected it tests the distance between the actual general's position and the centre-point of the unit being considered.

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Some research of mine, posted here:

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Originally Posted by therother

Well, I did a few quick tests. As Duke John points out, there is definitely a morale bonus from units with the "command" attribute. Working out if there is a bonus to attack is a little more complicated.

One way to test at what level of bonus, in comparison to the General command stars, the "command" attribution gives would be to measure the radius-of-effect of the unit. But that would require the ability to measure distances accurately on the battlefield.

Does anyone know of a reliable way to measure distances on the battle map? There is a RomeShell command -- output_unit_positions -- but AFAIK that is not activated in 1.2.

Anyway, for comparison, I setup a test battle between two groups of peasants, with either a command unit or a general. To be honest, I didn't see much improvement in combat ability with the general on the field. From Jerome's rules of thumb, my 10 star general should have given my peasants +10 to attack. With that advantage, I would have expected them to mow through their counterparts. But the test battles were usually close, although my peasants usually won (although not always) with 75-80% losses, or thereabouts.

So I modded my peasant's attack to 11, and retested. The battles now went more as expected. The opposing peasants were all killed for the loss of only ~20-25% of my men, and there never seemed to be any doubt on the outcome. So there may be a problem with the General's melee bonus. Either that, or they've changed it for 1.2.

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We all know that the General gives a morale boost to nearby units, so far so good. I was wondering if this boost in morale applies to his own unit as well. Does anyone know?
If not it would be a pretty easy test (I'm on a comp w/o RTW right now so I can't do it). Just play a custom battle (MP battle would work better, the AI is so uncooperative) and have two of the same units slug it out, one with the general and one without and watch the morale. Of course the general's own kills might cause some issues, but I think running the test a decent number of times should let us know.

I'd be happy to help, especially as I've been doing some related work in terms of command attributes.

Did some cursory testing, giving a general a huge morale bonus to his troops, as well as command bonuses (+8 and +6 respectively). I then set up two identical units of general's bodyguard. During an impossible battle, they never wavered from eager until the leader was dead, when they both broke. So it's safe to assume that the General's unit gets at least some bonuses. Will separate Command and Morale when I find some more time, and see what happens.

This pretty much explains why battles are fast in RTW.
10star general gives extra 10 points to attack of his troops.
Just add to that "bugged" VH battle bonus and there is great disparence between defense and attack ratings.

Does the ranking of generals improve the way in which AI armies fight on the battlefield? Since the AI generally isn't very good it's rare for me to come up against a highly ranked enemy general so I haven't really been able to compare if command stars affect the quality of the AI's tactics.

The only noticeable effects of a high-star enemy general seem to be 1) morale in battlemap battles, and 2) large auto-resolve benefits. Tactics in battlemap battles do not seem to change.

After playing EB mod for some time I have some thoughts about attack bonus.
In EB AI gen's have huge star bonus while it is very hard for hman to aquire stars, so battles with AI having 10 stars are quite commmon.

Those battles have strange results sometimes.

2 units of peltastai charging downhill on one such unit - result: single unit routed both mine after killing half of each. Units have same stats, AI gen was 10 star mine 0 star

unit of pheraspidai charging Pantodapoi - (Pherasp: 13atk, 27def, 60men, Pantodapoi: 11atk, 10def, 50men) result: my elite inf lost half of men, and would lose more if I hadnt helped with cav charge. AI had 6-8 star gen and I 2star one

My Macedon gen with 3silver chew(16atk, 33def, 44 men) against AI greek gen with one bronze chew(10atk, 21def, 26men). I charged from the back, killing half(13) of enemy men without loses. In melee that followed my gen lost 18 men and enemy rest of his men(13). My gen was 1 star while enemy 6-7

Many times my Pheraspidai (13atk, 27def, 60men) charging AI's Peltastai(10atk, 21def, 80men). One against one I was loosing, two Pher units against one Pelt were winning but with huge loses.

On the other hand Pherasp ALWAYS win one to one fight Pelt in custom games. In fact they could hold TWO units for long time killing many men.

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Originally Posted by therother

Some background info on command:

JeromeGrasdyke gave a fairly detailed answer on what command does in this thread.



Some research of mine, posted here:

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perhaps it is your peasant's 1 point defense make them get killed so easily even with enemy peasant 1 point attack.......try test it with town watch or town militia with low attack and higher defense,perhaps eastern infantry would be better?:sweatdrop:

since the each command star +1 attack and +1 morale for every unit at battlefield,now i think of the use of eastern infantry,it is not that useless when the attack bonus bring by command star have cover the low attack of eastern infantry while eastern infantry have 10 defence point.........
And morale bonus bring by command star have cover the poor morale of eastern infantry too ....

eastern infantry poor morale=+2 morale
get armourer=+1 morale
5 command star general=+5 morale

total 8 morale= good morale(good morale =8 - 10 morale),check it in export_descr_unit file......

JeromeGrasdyke posted this in the EB forum:

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Originally Posted by JeromeGrasdyke

Just to clear this up ( as requested ;-) ), from the old code on my machine at CA the General's command modifier on attacks is still there in the last version, but it only applies to melee attacks and it is -inverted- so the quality of the defender's general is applied as bonus directionless defense for the defending soldier. It is also rescaled to range from -6 to +6, changing quickly at low bonus levels and then slowing down towards the top of the range. The idea was to limit the number of stacking bonusses which speed up the battles, i vaguely remember.

Also, the bonus is not limited by physical distance, and is supposed to represent a good general's ability to get superior performance from his troops through training in small scale maneuvers. The only way for this bonus to result in faster combat death rates rather than slower ones is if the defender's general has bad command traits...

If you want to test it, I would suggest a battle between some big peasant units, fighting the units 1v1 and timing the length of time to rout; then repeat giving each army a 10 star general. You should see a slower time-to-rout with the generals. In the end though 6 pts is not enough to make up huge troop quality differences, so don't expect to see miraculous differences.

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He added that most of the information in the original post should still be valid (link).

It good to a more complete explanation from Jerome. Goes some way towards explaining the observed behaviour. Unless I've misunderstood something, I'm not sure it answers all my questions though. I have actually done some tests similar to those proposed by Jerome, back on 1.1 (see above). I did some more a year later on EB running RTW v1.2. On neither version did I see much melee advantage to having a 10 star general on the field in peasant battles. I tried again a few months ago on EB using 1.5, and did see some combat advantage, but it didn't strike me that it was as much as my reading of Jerome's post suggests. (The latter two tests were reported in the internal EB forums, so I can't link to them I'm afraid.)

If I understand Jerome correctly, he is saying that a generals command bonus is applied to the defense stats of his own army not as a melee bonus

I think you are right about that. However, I was testing for changes in the results of the combat and not changes in the duration of combat. I strikes me that whilst increasing the defence stats of a unit would prolong the battle, the side with the higher defence should still win (i.e. kill more enemy) assuming everything else is equal. So increased defence should should endow a discernable combat advantage, and +6 should be a fairly large advantage when using peasants. I suppose I could redo a few of the tests...