Tiring your men

[Ludens]

After playing Shogun for some time I started to wonder how the fatigue function works. I never seem to be able to move to the defenders of a province one without seriously tiring my men. How does it work?
Yes, I know that fatigue's gives penalties when attacking or defending, and and I know what these penalties are (the FAQ-download is a mine-field of information). What I mean is: how does the calculation for fatigue work? Which factors influence it, and to which extent?
Does a snow only tire heavy armored units or every unittype? And how does the recovery work? I saw my units recovering their endurance in the tutorial (the one with the arquebusiers which do not fire at you), but in battle this doesn't seem to work. Or at least not during heavy rain and snow.

Is their anybody here who can enlighten me?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Marching quickly and fighting are the big ones. Snow and rain affect all troops, but troops with more armor fatigue faster. I don't know the numbers for it though.

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Don't know the numbers either http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

But climbing hills is another one.

[Puzz3D]

The are two components to fatigue: a non-recoverable component and a recoverable one. Non-recoverable fatigue is associated with "standing" and affects all unit types equally. Recoverable fatigue is associated with walking, running, charging, fighting and shooting. It affects all units equally in good weather, but in stormy weather fatigue increases with armor. Off hand, I don't remember if snow covered ground on an otherwise fine day affects any of these fatigue rates. Cold by itself doesn't do anything as far as I remember.

The fatigue rate for standing changes with weather condition, but stops at quite tired regardless of weather. This standing fatigue represents a ceiling which can never be exceeded during a battle, and you can never recover from it.

Fine day:
All units ---> quite fresh at 19:45 min
All units ---> quite tired at 39:30 min

Heavy rain:
All units ---> quite fresh at 9:40 min
All units ---> quite tired at 25:40 min

The fatigue rates for walking, running, charging, fighting and shooting are all different and higher than the fatigue rate for standing, and there is a recovery rate applied which increases as the fatigue level gets worse. If you stop the activity causing the fatigue, the unit will eventually recover back to the limit that the standing fatigue imposes. Slower units incur more fatigue getting somewhere because it takes them longer to get there. Likewise, moving up an incline results in greater fatigue because units slow down and take longer to get to the top. A few numbers from tests I have done in stw and mtw (fatigue rates are the same in both games except for running cav which has slightly less fatigue rate in mtw) are:

fine day, fresh unit:
quite fresh at 4:40 min of walking
quite tired at 11:15 min of walking
very tired at 30:45 min of walking
quite fresh at 0:55 sec of running
quite tired at 2:00 min of running
very tired at 3:45 min of running

I think the recovery rate in the very tired range is about equal to the walking fatigue rate, and in the exhausted range it exceedes the walking fatigue rate. It also appears to me that running fatigue rate is about 5 times the walking fatigue rate. I don't have any numbers for fighting and shooting fatigue rates.

[Ludens]

Thank you very much, Puzz3D, that was exactly the information I was looking for.
I didn't know about a non-recoverable "standing" fatigue, but I guess next time I don't have my monks stand still in a snowstorm to catch their breath. I've just made a short check in a custom battle (bridge attacker with overwelming power so the defender didn't counter-attack) and non-moving naginata tire as fast on a fine day in summer as on a fine day in winter. In both cases monks tired as fast as naginata. However, in a snow-storm the naginata were already quite tired (after about 7 minutes, but the storm stopped for a few moments during this time), while my musketeers where still fresh, and my monks quite fresh.

Ludens

[Puzz3D]

It might be worthwhile to rest those monks, but it depends on how fast they fatigued and the level they are at. The standing fatigue is very slow in fine weather, so you would possibly be able to recover quite a lot of fatigue if the monks had been running for a while. However in very bad weather, you won't recover as much because that standing fatigue ceiling will come down faster. The recovery rate is fastest when the unit is exhausted, and declines as the fatigue level approches the standing fatigue. So, that's another consideration because you don't want to wait a very long time for very little gain.

I was very surprised to see standing fatigue be the same for all units in the test I ran in heavy rain because I remember running some test in STW where armor made a difference in standing fatigue and the final fatigue level for a standing unit dopped below quite tired. Maybe it was a snow storm test, but I don't remember. If I have time, I'll try running a few more tests on this.