archery tests (Bow Ashigaru vs unit stances)

[Tamur]

therother was kind enough to meet me on the multiplayer field of battle and let me shoot his poor Yari Ashigaru to pieces.

One thing we can conclusively state from this test is that 3000 corpses do not pile up over time.

After that morbid start, we can only go uphill! In a metaphorical sense, not in a totalwar sense because that would give us combat penalties. OK, research, right!

Hypothesis:

We had three test hypotheses:

1. Units in spearwall formation take less damage from arrows (shot frontally)
2. Units in loose formation take less damage from arrows (again shot frontally)
3. Samurai units of the same type as Ashigaru will take less damage from arrows

Method:

therother brought 10 units of Yari Ashigaru and 3 units of Yari Samurai to the battle. I brought 15 units of Bow Ashigaru.

It is hard to find a level spot on the two maps we tried, but we did manage to find a fairly flat spot covering about 100 yards. therother marched units to the same spot each time, and I replaced archers in the same spot, as they ran out of ammunition.

therother placed his General so that the unit being shot at was within the General's influence ring. This was not because he was nice -- it was so we would have more data to work with.

Finally, we ran between three and five test "mini-battles" per unit configuration, so the figures below reflect standardised averages over those tests.

Results:

Our results showed a fair bit of randomness, but some simple conclusions emerge. The following graph shows kills per volley.



Discussion:

Our hypothesis about the Spearwall stance was incorrect. They suffered the same loss rate as the non-stanced Ashigaru. The one difference was that Spearwall formation led to the unit routing an average of two rounds later than non-stanced Ashigaru.

Our hypothesis about units in Loose formation seems correct. They suffered an overall lower kill rate than either normal or spearwall formation Ashigaru. They also routed at a later time (2 rounds longer than Spearwall, 4 longer than non-stanced).

Finally, our hypothesis about Yari Samurai proved correct. They suffered the lowest casualties of all unit configurations tested. Not only that, but the standard deviation on kills was significantly lower than any other unit.

Conclusions:

1. If the enemy have archers, and you will be holding a position with standing troops, put them in loose formation. While this is one of the basic premises of command in TW, it bears repeating. This may be especially useful at bonus buildings on multiplayer maps.

2. Spearwall formation leads to higher morale and longer time on the battlefield, even when facing arrows. If you have peasant units, it may be worth it to put them in this formation at all times when not on the move.

3. The higher cost of Samurai units seems to be very well worth it. In some of our tests, the Samurai suffered half the kill rate of the Ashigaru.

Further Research:

1. The longer staying power of Spearwall formation needs to be studied in more detail. It could be that we simply had lower kill rates those last few rounds, and therefore the troops didn't have the "fast kills going on" morale penalty.

2. The stable kill rates with Yari Samurai deserves more attention. Does this hold up in an infantry vs infantry battle?


OK, that's enough text for one day!

[gauch0]

I would like to know if archery units in loose formation have a lower kill rate than archery units in standard formation. (Does spreading out the archers make them less deadly?)

[therother]

Nice write up, thanks Tamur!

We did do a small number of tests on number of archer ranks. Not enough draw to draw any firm conclusion, but number of ranks didn't seem to have a major impact. We'll add archers in loose formation to the list of things to test.

[chrisj]

I would like to know if archery units in loose formation have a lower kill rate than archery units in standard formation. (Does spreading out the archers make them less deadly?)

This is what is really interesting.

[Tamur]

Based on data we got from another round of testing this past weekend, it looks like archer formation (both number of ranks and loose/normal stance) makes no difference in kill rates.

Data:

We tested three different conditions, averaging multiple runs with each configuration. Each archer unit fired at a single unit of Yari Ashigaru, 5 ranks deep, in normal formation.

Condition 1: Archers in 2 ranks, normal stance
Condition 2: Archers in 7 ranks, normal stance
Condition 3: Archers in 3 ranks, loose stance

I love graphs, so here's another one showing results:



(X axis is volleys, Y axis is kills, so any one point represents the number of men killed in a single volley)

As you can see, there is a slight variation in the kill rates but not much --- certainly not enough to say there's a significant difference in kill rates with any of these configurations.

7-rank formation seemed to have a slight edge, or at least seemed more consistent.

However, that could be down to experimental anomaly rather than real finding. Not enough data to say for sure. Someone else doing this test (requires multiplayer) would help verify the result.

[gauch0]

Wow, this is great! It looks putting your archers in loose formation during sieges (on attack, and on defense when there isn't room at the walls) is a no-brainer.

[frogbeastegg]

Interesting stuff, well done gentlemen.

Are you intending to test the effect of formation depth on the spearmen? If the missile engine works as it did in the first two TW games then a deeper formation should mean more casualties due to the higher chance of a missed arrow hitting one of the men behind the target. Recent TW games seem to have the arrows behave more as the result of a calculation, leading to a kind of homing effect, so misses may not be as free to accidentally hit.