Research: Effects of Command

[therother]

Some background info on command:

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

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.

Some research of mine, posted here:

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.