Game mechanics questions for CA

[therother]

At the behest of Simon Appleton, I'm opening this thread for questions about game mechanics that we might not be able to answer empirically. He has also volunteered to maintain the list based on the submissions in this thread.

PS: The existence of this thread does not mean that we have given up research on these issues!

[econ21]

This post is a compilation of questions drawn from subsequent posts in this thread up to 14th February. It will be periodically updated. I have not included bug/patch type questions - although they are very important, they are probably best put in other threads. Last time I checked, totalwar.com had a very good bug report/patch request thread.

In post #20 of this thread, JeromeGarsdyke of CA kindly took the time to answer almost all questions collected here. So I'll divide the list of questions into those he did not address, either by omission or because they came up later, and those he did.

Unanswered questions

Battle map questions

Mechanics

• How do rank bonuses work in RTW? Is the spear/pike rank bonus the same as in MTW/VI (2 ranks for spears, 4 ranks for pikes, bonus= 1/.5/1)?

• How does the combat equation work (included rank/AP bonuses)?

• How does AP bonus work? Is it the same as MTW/VI?

AI behaviour

• Why do missile units controlled by an attacking AI charge immediately leaving the Ai combat units behind? In M:TW battles it was quite normal to have a "missile war" but this interesting phase is often disregarded by the AI in R:TW.

• Why are some combat units so undecisive in charging?DukeJohn clarifies: I have setup equal battles and when the AI approaches my line it becomes indecisive. Units move up, decide not to charge (perhaps the algorithm for comparing values is flawed?) and move back. It becomes a little dance that is repeated until at one point the unit decides to charge, most of the time unsupported. As a result the player just needs to line up, and take the AI units piecemeal and win without a single click.

Campaign map questions

Mechanics

AI behaviour

• If you are at peace with another faction and one of their armies enters your territory but does not attack you, are there any negative consequences to allowing that army to remain in your territory?

• From the AI's point of view, is it always an act of aggression when the AI sends an army into one of your territories?

Archive of questions addressed by CA in post #20

• What is the new formula for determining the probability to hit in combat? e.g. how exactly do attack, defence etc influence it?

• What is the effect of being heavy or light infantry?

• What bonuses do weapons have against other weapons, eg swords vs spears, long spears vs other spears

• What is the difference between "heavy" and "light" weapons?

• What modifiers or effects do the "special" unit formations have, e.g. phalanx, Cantabrian circle, tetsudo, wedge?

• What exactly makes a unit gain experience? Killing peasants gives less than killing elite units, but what exactly determines this?

• Do units in phalanx get the charge bonuses for their spears/pikes? If they charge, they seem to draw swords (and so lower charge bonus). If in phalanx, they can't run so it does not look like they get a charge bonus.

• What are the effects of capturing another faction's capital or losing your own capital?

• Does the location of your faction leader have any effects? (Is it best to keep your faction leader in the capital? Does it matter?)

• What are the slave and the grain bonuses and how are they caused? Can they be removed?

• Can you give a detailed run-down of the strategic AI settings (caesar, mao, balanced, fortified, etc.)? That would make customizing games easier.

[Orvis Tertia]

What are the effects of capturing another faction's capital or losing your own capital?

Does the location of your faction leader have any effects? (Is it best to keep your faction leader in the capital? Does it matter?)

[Orvis Tertia]

If you are at peace with another faction and one of their armies enters your territory but does not attack you, are there any negative consequences to allowing that army to remain in your territory? From the AI's point of view, is it always an act of aggression when the AI sends an army into one of your territories?

In my Seleucid campaign, I was at peace with Armenia (and wanted to stay that way). An Armenian army entered one of my territories but did not attack me (wasn't strong enough to take my city). Instead of attacking, I let them wander around a couple of turns and they eventually wandered off without incident. The whole thing was odd, and I am curious about what was going on behind the scenes here...

[Penance0405]

When I have reinforcements and there is a general present in that army, why does the general rush into battle, instead of staying behind his lines to add morale and to stay alive?

Is there a future patch to include a user interface for the reinforcements before battle. This user interface can be used to add certain tactics that the ai can follow and also add what sort of actions you want your general to use.

This feature will make the suicidal general AI less frustrating (imo this is the main issue for me, i.e my faction leader and best general did the same charge because I didnt forsee the battle).

Will there be a fix to the city gates bug, i mean when my army goes through sometimes a couple of units dont seem to want to. Other times was that a large force of greeks attacked one of my cities that were defended by Town watch and a general. What happened was, I made my town watch surround the gate and the tower. I killed the men that stormed the walls by waiting at the bottom of the tower and slaughtering as they cam out. The other was that the gate invaders used the Phelanx (sp..) formation and got stuck at the gate, not hurting any of my troops. I won that battle because of the bug...

[Weirwood]

The one game mechanic question that comes to mind for me, I'd like a detailed run-down of the strategic AI settings (caesar, mao, balanced, fortified, etc.). That would make customizing my game really easier.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

What exactly makes a unit gain experience?
Defeating unit of peasants doesn't give the same experience as some elite hoplite unit or something like it. But what exactly determines this?

During a rather thrilling battle where I managed to eek out a miracluous win over an Egyptian army which was both numerically and qualitively outmatching my units. Then the game crashed just as I was driving the last units of the map. Afterwards I seriously nerfed the Egyptians so I could simulate the battle results without refighting the 2 hour long battle which I doubted I could win that resoundingly again. I noticed I hardy got any XP from it.
So I'm guessing it's from it's battle stats that XP is derived that get's awarded to the unit that kills it, right? If so, which stats influence this and in what quantity? Does charge bonus count? And attributes and weapon? How do primary and secondary weapon stats figure into this?
Thanks for any info!

[Herakleitos]

What is the effect of the general's command rating? In Shogun and Medieval you could see this reflected in the experience-level of your troops, in R:TW however I don't see 2 extra chevrons on my units when my general has four stars...

[therother]

What is the effect of the general's command rating?

I was going to direct you to the Forum Index, until I noticed that I forgot to put this link in. So thanks for reminding me of Jerome's post.

So, see this post. Or you could now go to the Index!

[Rurik the Chieftain]

I would like to know (if this isn't anwered already) the effects of armor vs defense skill and shields. Does def. skill affect hit probability only? What are the major effects of armor? Do shields function differently from armour, or are they just separate?

[econ21]

Rurik: I believe to hit rolls in melee are affected by the defender's defence skill, armour and shield which when added up give the overall defence rating.

However, to hit rolls with ranged weapons (e.g. bows) are only influenced by armour and shields.

Shields differ from armour in that they are affected by facing (shoot the trooper from behind and his shield does not protect him) and also cannot be used in melee if wielded by units with two-handed weapons (not sure if such exist in RTW, but in MTW, Varangian Guard & IIRC Swabian Swordsmen were an example)

[avatar]

When I am attacking on campaign map the defender withdraws backwards. My general gets a "Doubtful Courage" trait (this has happened more than once). Why? Shouldn't this be the other way around?

[Kraxis]

Is this thread even alive anymore?

Anyway I have a question:

How does one get the chargebonus of the pikes in a phalanx unit? If you charge them in they will use the weaker swords (and thus the weaker charge), and in phalanx they don't run, so it isn't obvious if the chargebonus is added or not (doesn't seem so).

[sunsmountain]

Campaign map

Growth

* What is the slave bonus and how is it caused?
* What is the grain bonus and how is it caused?
* Can these be removed?

Governors

* Which specific triggers are necessary for the game to make a chance roll for (example) 'Mildly Extravagant', exactly? Where can we find these triggers?
* How does this relate to Threshold (in the txt files), for this particular example?
* How can we mod/change the triggers?

[econ21]

sunsmountain, I have some files I downloaded on governor traits and triggers. One of them says they are by someone called Winnie the Pooh and gives a website www.geraldtan.com/rtw

I'll add the slaves and grain questions to the sticky, thanks.

[JeromeGrasdyke]

Ookaaay... that's a lot of questions. I'll have a go at answering some, although I probably won't have time to do them all, and the info probably won't be at hand for some. Here goes:

What is the effect of being heavy or light infantry?

None. This is a tag for the AI production mechanisms which corresponds to unit stats; generally all units with armour ratings above 7 should be considered heavy. The unit category is more important than class.

What bonuses do weapons have against other weapons, eg swords vs spears, long spears vs other spears

The spear bonusses are fed into the stats system in a couple of different ways, via the mounts bonusses (which are direct attack modifiers against units mounted on that particular mount type) and via the 'spear' weapon attribute. Units which are marked with spear gain a +4 combat bonus against cavalry and use the cavalry's charge bonus against them, while cavalry get a -4 attack penalty against them.

What is the difference between "heavy" and "light" weapons?

Again, this is a tag only, used by the sound I believe.

What modifiers or effects do the "special" unit formations have, e.g. phalanx, Cantabrian circle, tetsudo, wedge?

Phalanx formations gain rank bonusses when in formation, while testudo's get large defense bonusses against missile attacks. The Wedge gives an attack bonus based on superior concentration of weight at the point. The Cantabrian circle doesn't give an outright bonus, but gains its benefit from the actual battlefield behaviour.

What exactly makes a unit gain experience? Killing peasants gives less than killing elite units, but what exactly determines this?

Actually, a kill is always considered a kill for xp bonusses, except when the unit is routing (in which case it drops to a 20% chance of counting as a kill). Kills and xp are tracked on a per-soldier basis, and what is displayed is the unit average rounded to the nearest integer. There is a non-linear relationship between kills and xp which resembles a Fibonacci series. Then units which have been engaged in combat in a battle which started with a close to even strength balance may be awarded an extra kill per soldier at the end of combat.

What are the effects of capturing another faction's capital or losing your own capital? Does the location of your faction leader have any effects? (Is it best to keep your faction leader in the capital? Does it matter?)

None (other than what's normal for capturing a city), and no. The movement of the faction leader as used in Medieval caused so many annoyances during play that we decided to drop it.

When I have reinforcements and there is a general present in that army, why does the general rush into battle, instead of staying behind his lines to add morale and to stay alive?

We actually found this to have a whole slew of causes, the most common of which was that often the general's cavalry is the strongest unit in the army (especially early during a campaign). This means he'd generally look at the enemy army and say, "wow, I'm much stronger than any one of these units individually", and hurl himself into combat, expecting the rest of his army to follow... with unfortunate consequences. We've made the general's unit a lot more cautious in the 1.2 patch, but it still occasionally happens.

The one game mechanic question that comes to mind for me, I'd like a detailed run-down of the strategic AI settings (caesar, mao, balanced, fortified, etc.). That would make customizing my game really easier.

This was released onto the forums recently, you should be able to find it if you do a search.

What influences probability of hit in fight?

The most significant factors (in order) are: unit stats, height differential, relative facing, experience, fatigue, scissors-paper-stone, and the general's command bonus. There are a whole slew of special-purpose bonusses, such as ground and mount type, formations and so on as well. Detailing the whole system is well beyond the scope of this post...

I would like to know (if this isn't anwered already) the effects of armor vs defense skill and shields.

Armour is applied as a modifier to attacks from any facing, while defense is a parry-style bonus on the front and right flank, and the shield bonus applies front and left flank. Missile weapons ignore defense.

Is "Provincial campaign" going to be in the patch?

No, as you've probably already seen. It was intended as a mechanism for showing multiple campaigns other than the Imperial Campaign or the Sons of Mars, and I believe it still works as such. Any subfolders in data/world/maps/campaign/custom will get searched for extra campaign maps, and if they contain a valid campaign it will activate the Provincial Campaign menu. From this menu you can pick a campaign, which then leads to the 'pick-a-faction' menu, and so on. Could be quite useful for modders ;)

How does one get the chargebonus of the pikes in a phalanx unit? If you charge them in they will use the weaker swords (and thus the weaker charge), and in phalanx they don't run, so it isn't obvious if the chargebonus is added or not (doesn't seem so).

Pike units cannot charge while using pikes, and so cannot receive a charge bonus.

What is the slave bonus and how is it caused? What is the grain bonus and how is it caused? Can these be removed?

The slave population growth bonus, like the grain one, is caused by resources on the map. If you enslave a city, it generates a slave resource, and any cities connected to that province by completed road links (city-to-city) benefit from one growth pip's bonus. This is cumulative per resource in the road network - 2 cities taken with Enslavement connect to a third city by road, that third city should show *two* pips of slave growth. This is part of what makes Egypt such an economic powerhouse - the Nile delta contains two grain resources, and so as soon as the Egyptians start building roads to connect all their cities, the overall population starts to rise quite quickly... And no, the bonusses cannot be removed.

Well, I hope that's been useful to you guys.

[okeenan]

Just wondering what the default video settings for multiplayer are? They do not stay the same as what I have set in options. This is frustrating as it makes it difficult to know what I can comfortably host.

[xerex]

Why are some skeletons better in combat than other skeletons? (all other things being equal)

Probably a related question:

How is a unit's attack speed determined?

I believe it is some combination of animation speed and the min_delay parameter (second to last on the stat_pri) line, but which animation?

fs_dagger has 6 attack animations that are 36,38,28,28,36, and 36 frames long respectively. average=33.6667

fs_2handed has 6 attack animations also that are 24,22,20,20,22, and 18 frames long. average=21

Repeated test battles have shown that I need to set the fs_2handed min_delay to 13 to get the two skeletons approximately even. This seems to support the idea that min_delay is the time between the end of one animation and the beginning of the next in FRAMES, not as the EDU comments say...tenths of seconds.

However, when I do the same test between fs_spearman(average animation time =25 frames) and fs_2handed. I find that the fs_spearman skeleton is actually *faster* than the fs_2handed skeleton and I have to give it a small min_delay to get the two even. I expected to need to give the fs_2handed a 4 frame delay, but it turns out I need to give fs_spearman a 2 frame delay. This destroys the idea supported by the previous test and leaves no theory that I can think of remaining.

So, my point is that I can't figure out how to tell the affect of a given scale 1 skeleton on combat short of doing 100s of test battles with different min_delay values for *every* skeleton in the game. There is no formula that I can find that makes sense.

Please help...