I bet you don't believe this: cavalry charge is broken. [Archive]

HeresiarchQin

03-24-2005, 17:49

First off, this thread is exactly the same as the on I posted in .COM. But I know here have more people who do care about bugs and actually will do some research on them, so I decided to post it here too, in case the original thread in .com sunk to the bottom. Here's the link to it: http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm7.showMessage?topicID=23928.topic

I've always surprised by how useless Companions are. They have a huge 16 charge bonus but their charge attack simply doesn't show any significance difference from, say, Round Shield Cavalry, who have a pathetic charge bonus of 2 for a cavalry. So I did some tests and I was shocked by the results.

At first I did some custom battles, used one group of Silver Shield Legionaries to pin down one group of Urban Cohort and then let one group of Companion to charge the Urban Cohort from the rear. I did the same test several times, either with the SS Legion + Companion combo and the Legionaries + Praetorian Cav combo. The results were disappointing: despite that the Companion's charge bonus is 7 points higher than the Praetorian, and minus the 2 extra normal damage the Praetorian have, the Companion's full charge damage is still 5 points higher, the Urban almost always suffer the same damage from either the Companions or the Praetorian. Sometimes it's even worse, the Companions could kill less in the first charge.

After that I did the same test with various cavalries, like the Round Shield, Macedonian, Light Lancers, Cataphracts, Sacred Band and so on. Except for the Cataphracts who did kill more Urbans in one hit thanks to their huge mass, all the other cavalry did more or less the same damage with each shock, despite how much differences their stats are.

Then I did another test. This time, first, I edited the Sacred Band Cavalry's charge bonus to 1, and kept the Companion's stats the same, and used them to charge one group of falxmen. The results were frusting beyond believe: the Sacred Band Cavalry with virtually no charge bonus at all can reduce the falxmen's number from 81 to 45 to 55 in the first clash, while the Companion's with the 16 charge bonus could kill only about 20 to 30 in the first charge!

Here I hope everyone with some patience, after reading this lot, can do some similar tests and see if the cavalry charge is broken or not. It's simply unacceptable that Companions with 16 charge does the same or even LESS damage than the Round Shield Cavalry. And please post any result you've got here.

In my opinion, if this is indeed a bug, then it's quite a serious one.

So now, go testing! Go go go! Please...

Maltz

03-24-2005, 18:10

First thanks for the comprehensive research work. Perhaps charge bonus is calcaculated against the defense (armor, shield) points...? (just guessing) This way, as long as the charge bonus is greater than the defense points (no armor/shield in the back), then the damage is done, and the kill number is determined by another set of formula excluding the charge bonus.

I would think of a follow-up study by charging the horses directly into the face of different infantry non-pike units (ranging from no defense to iron walls) and see the effect... ~:)

hrvojej

03-24-2005, 18:51

If I'm not mistaken, charge bonus factors in the calculation to see whether the hit landed. That is, it enhances the attack value to put it in simple terms. However, whether the hit landed and whether the hit killed are two separate things, the latter being linked to the lethality stat.

If the killing chance is low, you wouldn't necessarily see too much difference between the high charge and low charge units in a few tests. So, for example, if there was a 20% chance that each blow that lands also kills, that would mean that even if all blows land, killing would still be fairly low and feel random.

Now, to assert these claims for sure, one would have to do the proper stats procedure with proper sample sizes and blah blah, but it would of course be way easier if we could actually stop assuming and get info from the devs about combat calculations. But since it seems that won't happen, your guess is as good as mine (unless one of us actually gets to work and does several dozens of boring test runs, that is).

Red Harvest

03-24-2005, 19:10

Arg! The charge bonus is not broken. I've done my own tests of it today. It works. Your test is not apples to apples.

The Stranger

03-24-2005, 20:22

yeah it works fine on my comp, are you using a mod. 80 cataphracts vs 160 poeni infantry, casualties from 1st impact are 2C vs 36P. 80 Companions vs 160 poeni infantry, 4C vs 32P. don't see your problem. but 80 round shield vs 160 warband
is 6RC vs 10W

player1

03-24-2005, 20:44

Well, charge definetly works, otherwise I would not use Lancers for Macedonians.

HeresiarchQin

03-25-2005, 09:02

Charging WORKS, as you'll see people flying away, but charging bonus is BROKEN, because there is NO difference between charge bonus of 1 and charge bonus of 60. And no, I'm NOT using any mods when I was doing the tests, and I strongly advice everyone who wish to do the tests above do it this way: use only one kind of cavalry, say, Companion, edit ONLY its charge bonus, and use only ONE KIND OF target, with the fewer special abilites the better (Iberian Infantry is an excellent choice), not test one against Poeni test two against warbands. I've made a new reply in the .COM and I promise it's a good read. ;)

HeresiarchQin

03-25-2005, 09:41

Ok, apparently even the infantry's charging is broken as well. A Falxmen with 50 charge bonus VS A Falxmen with 7 charge bonus have NO advantage at all. At least no obvious advantage, and if there IS, then the effect is so little that's simply pathetic.

player1

03-25-2005, 10:08

Well, let's see:

Lancers charing Iberian Infantry: 18 soliders killed
Round Shield Cavalry charing Iberian Infantry: 12 soliders killed

Lancers charing Chosen Swordsmen: 10 soliders killed
Round Shield Cavalry charing Chosen Swordsmen: 3 soliders killed

Yep, it works for me...

EDIT:
It's pretty possible that the reson why you see the difference is that you need to understans that attack is not a lethality stat but stat of dealing blow. So if you take a unit with already high attack against unit with very low defense, it will by itself deal maximum lethality (killing maximum number possible in one blow), making extra points of attack (by charge) meaningless.

You see that in my example, that against low defense unit charge added 50% more kills, while against high defense unit it tripled it.

QwertyMIDX

03-25-2005, 10:23

I think he might be right, I just tried Greek Cav v. Legionary Cohort and Companions vs. Legionary Cohort. The GC killed 15 men in the charge and the Companions killed only 11.

We should all try testing this a little more...

AntiochusIII

03-25-2005, 10:25

Strange...is there a possibility of random? Since many people got different results...

Oh, and what map are you testing in?

HeresiarchQin

03-25-2005, 11:06

Grassy Flatland.

And I suggest everyone should test it more...the more, the better. I know it's tedious (heck, I've planned to play as the Macedon until I encoutered this problem and then I stuck 2 whole day doing tests and making debates about it), but the truth will be out there only more tests are made. And if it IS a bug, then it's definetly a gamebreaking bug.

Seriously, I WISH I was wrong, but the more tests I did, the more depressing I feel. This bug, if exists (which is quite obvious IMO), really ruins many good cavalries and almost all barbarian factions (as their infantry need the charge bonus more than the more civilized factions).

HeresiarchQin

03-25-2005, 11:18

Zorn

03-25-2005, 11:37

I don´t think it helps a lot if you compare companions with round shields, as there are too many other things that come into the equation.
I think it is necessary to use the same unit (and the same target of course) and modify the charge bonus. And also run a greater number of tests, like ten to get reliable results, as there is always some random factor.

HeresiarchQin

03-25-2005, 11:45

Yep, that's what exactly what I did (as suggested by Mike of CA, who insist that I'm wrong) and what I recommend to everyone who are willing to test.

curufinwe_91

03-25-2005, 11:51

Actually, the cataphracts will kill more men than companions in a charge because of its mass bonus (you know, the mail). There's a large difference between that mass and just the mass of a guy on a horse

Red Harvest

03-25-2005, 16:59

Strange, I did exactly the same test like you but it didn't work for me. The Lancers and the Round Shield did almost exactly the same damage to the Iberian/Chosen. I hate to ask this but, did you use any mods?

Are you modifying the file without exiting and reloading the program? RTW loads the unit file at the start, so I don't believe changes after the game has loaded will take.

HeresiarchQin

03-25-2005, 17:33

I assure you I'm not new to RTW and game modifications, so I can tell you the answer is: I did everything in the right way, I.E. restart the whole game whenever I want to edit the stats. ;)

Red Harvest

03-25-2005, 17:48

I've tested this many times now. The charge bonus definitely works, except in specific circumstances (pila anyone?) The duration is very short. The charge is spent on the enemy's front rank. This places an upper limit on how many can be killed. One problem is that the high kill rate in the game makes it tough to distinguish charge and non charge attack effects vs. lightly defended opponents. But when I use high charge values, I get ~3 times as many kills in the original clash.

HeresiarchQin

03-25-2005, 17:58

Red Harvest, do you mind telling me what kind of RTW are you running with? 1.2 or not? Vanilla? SPQR? RTR? EB? Or self modded? If your version do work correct, then I would like to see what may cause the nullify of the charge bonus as some if not many people see. I don't know if you will bother with this but I suggest you just try to do the following test:

Grassy Flatland
Round Shield Cavalry with 0 charge bonus VS Iberian Infantry, head on charge, double click on the infantry right after employing. Look carefully at the result of the first clash. Exit the battle. Do this 3 times.

Next, Round Shield Cavalry with 10 charge bonus VS Iberian Infantry, head on charge, double click on the infantry right after employing. Look carefully at the result of the first clash. Exit the battle. Do this 3 times.

Last, Round Shield Cavalry with 20 charge bonus VS Iberian Infantry, head on charge, double click on the infantry right after employing. Look carefully at the result of the first clash. Exit the battle. Do this 3 times.

Tedious, isn't it? Heck, I spent 3 whole days doing similar tests.

If anyone is interested, I sincerely hope you can join in this research and see if the charge bonus actually exist or not. If it do exist, then what it actually do, and how much the effect is.

And an additional note: CA said that units with the Spear attritube fighting cavalry would use the cavalry's charge bonus against that cavalry. Yet a Round Shield Cavalry with 2 charge bonus and with 52 charge bonus head on charge into a hoplite phalanx suffered similar casualities, without any critical difference. So apparently either the phalanx ignore the cav's charge bonus, or the charge bonus doesn't even exist.

If anyone insist that charge bonus do give difference, and for difference I mean big, noticable increase in casualties, not some small error due to the randomness in each test, then I would gladly to reinstall the whole game just so I can see if the original world is clean and clear.

HeresiarchQin

03-25-2005, 18:01

I just saw Red Harvest's post right after I made the reply above...

Ok then, tomorrow I'll try to reinstall the whole game and test it from 1.0 to 1.2 and see what happens.

hrvojej

03-25-2005, 18:05

If it do exist, then what it actually do, and how much the effect is.
Have you read my post above?

HeresiarchQin

03-25-2005, 18:29

Yep, I saw it. Though I always thought that somewhere mentioned that charge bonus gives killing power instead of chance to hit...where did you know that charge bonus helps to-hit instead of to-kill? Any info would be very appreciated. The only bad thing of this forum is there's no proper "search" function...

Red Harvest

03-25-2005, 18:29

Ok, I've been testing some various aspects of the charge. Lots to discuss and I think I have the answer:
I don't use any other's mods (except the horse jumping fix.) The only mods I use are my own, so I know what to change. I use 1.2.

1. Part of the problem is that for "weak units" like Iberian infantry the cav just tear them to shreds, even with no charge bonus to speak of. Is this a problem? YES. I do see this. It isn't going to matter if I give large or small charge bonuses in such cases. With a charge bonus of 1 the companions are cutting the Iberians down from 81 to 53. This is ridiculous.

So what else is going on:
2. Mass effects. These are apparent, but not great. In this test I cut the horse mass down to 2 then to 0.5. The 2 had a negligle effect, while 0.5 was measurable. Iberians dropped from 81 to ~62 on average. So it cut the kill rate in this particular test by ~1/3. Changing the mass of the rider had NO impact (tried 0.1).

3. Defense of the charging unit??? ~:confused: This is the problem. CA is actually using the defense of the charging unit to determine the number of kills in the charge. I cut the Companions from 17 defense to 8, and the kill rate fell dramatically, they only dropped the Iberians to 70 men on the charge. ~:eek: :dizzy2:

HeresiarchQin

03-25-2005, 18:40

What??? Hmm...maybe because the armour rating takes part into the calculation of a unit's momentum when charging? Higher armour rating = heavier armour = heavier unit = bigger momentum = bigger damage? Maybe you should try to give teh Companions 60 armour and see if they will obliterate the guys they are charging at...I bet the sight would be hilarious (if it happens).

And what I still don't understand is, charge bonus = greater chance to hit, instead of greater chance to kill? I don't find it makes much sense...but still I would be fascinated if some evidence about it could be dug up and saw by me. If that's true...hmm...very interesting. A lot of aspects in the game would be changed in my mind.

Red Harvest

03-25-2005, 19:06

It is starting to gel. I just tried three tests (and repeated the 2nd one):

First Test: I have the companions 63 armour for total of 69 defense. I have them 0 pri/sec attack, and 0 pri/sec charge. They killed 0 in the charge. Yay! They did kill a number in melee as the units became tired then exhausted.

Second Test: Companions still having 63 armour, for total 69 defense. Pri/sec attack of 1. No charge bonus (left at zero.) Result: They killed 7 in one, 8 in the other.

Third Test: Companions at normal 11 armour, total 17 defense. Pri/sec attack of 1. Zero charge bonus. They killed 2.

So what is going on? The charger's defense is being incorporated into the charge attack value in some non-trivial fashion. A 1 charge attack should result in essentially no kills (my Iberians are slightly modded to have 11 total defense vs. 8 in vanilla.)

Obviously defense is not being added to the charge in a 1 to 1 fashion. Otherwise 69 defense would result in many more kills even with a 1 attack. Instead it seems to tie in as some sort of base attack multiplier.

I can't say that I'm too impressed by this implementation. The effect is that the charge bonus itself is muted, while the defense values are amplifying the overall charge effect. Non-intuitive in the extreme!

player1

03-25-2005, 19:19

hrvojej

03-25-2005, 19:24

And what I still don't understand is, charge bonus = greater chance to hit, instead of greater chance to kill? I don't find it makes much sense...but still I would be fascinated if some evidence about it could be dug up and saw by me. If that's true...hmm...very interesting. A lot of aspects in the game would be changed in my mind.
Charge bonus is added to the attack value. Attack value determines whether the hit has landed, and not whether the hit has killed. Another stat determines the latter probability.

Search might not be perfect, but it still works. If you do a search on "charge bonus added" for example, a lot of good old posts will come up.

For example, repeated assertions by people doing the tests in MTW that 5 points of charge are roughly equal to 1 point of melee attack. Which translated into your tests wouldn't reall make much of an impact. The +3 attack isn't all that much to be able to discern with a few tests and considerable variability in distribution of data stemming from randomness (if you know statistics, you know what I mean). And if it's true that around 10 points of difference in combat stats make for a 100% improvement in RTW (which is double than it was in MTW where 5pts = 100%), plus all other things about needing to be at full speed to get the bonus etc., and the effect could really be easy to overlook unless you have a good sample size and controlled test environment. Or an insider knowledge of the combat calculations.

We don't have any hard info on RTW, since we don't have any info whatsoever from the devs on battle calcs in RTW , but we have to draw conclusions from what little we do know from past and present. And from that there is no real evidence that it's bugged IMO.

Crandaeolon

03-25-2005, 19:24

And what I still don't understand is, charge bonus = greater chance to hit, instead of greater chance to kill?

That's how it has been working in the previous TW games. When charging, the charge bonus is added to the attack value, and the combined value is then compared to the target's defense. A formula is applied to get the % chance for a successful strike, which is then confirmed by the lethality value. Since most units have only 1 hitpoint (and most weapons have a lethality of 1), the chance to kill is usually the same as the chance to hit.

That's roughly how it's _supposed_ to go. I'm following this thread with great interest... ~;) Too bad I'm vacationing now and can't help with the testing.

Puzz3D

03-25-2005, 20:18

Cranda,

That's true in STW and MTW a hit = a kill except for the general who has more than 1 hitpoint. In RTW, lethality can be a fractional value between 0 and 1, but it appears to me that hits of fractional lethality do not fractionally reduce hitpoints. So, you can get a lot of hits and not kill anyone or even cause any damage.

Crandaeolon

03-25-2005, 20:48

Yes Yuuki, that appears to be a correct observation. The RTW lethality value is probably just applied to the to-hit formula, and if lethality is lower than 1, it's possible that an otherwise successful strike won't be a hit after all. And if it isn't a hit, it won't reduce hitpoints.

EDIT: Just to make sure we're talking about the same thing... by "lethality" I mean the last, undocumented parameter of each attack, right after attack delay. This:

it appears to me that hits of fractional lethality do not fractionally reduce hitpoints. So, you can get a lot of hits and not kill anyone or even cause any damage.

Sounds odd to me. Fractional lethality certainly does kill, and it's frequently used by modders to prolong battles and "flatten out" the differences between normal and elite units.

New tests have shown that the effect of lethality on battle length is linear only if the involved units have equal attack to defense values. If the involved units have greater defense than attack values, reducing lethality affects battle length in an increasingly diminishing manner.

Uh... we're probably hijacking this thread a bit. Apologies for the intrusion. :tongue2:

Puzz3D

03-26-2005, 01:33

Yes by lethality I meant the last undocumented parameter, and by a "hit of fractional lethality" I just meant a strike that didn't produce a kill because it didn't remove a full hitpoint. Now I wonder if a non-lethal strike can turn into a knockdown if it's for example, 0.5 < x < 1. In the SPQR mod which has high defend values and reduced lethality, there are a lot of knockdowns.

Likewise cav charge kills are lower in the SPQR mod. For instance, Companion cav (40 men) with 14 attack, 42 charge and 0.9 lethality (armor 8, 46, 4) gets 2 charge kills on hastati (63 men) with armor (8, 16, 10) = 34 total defense (16 attack, 4 charge and 0.7 lethality). If the calculation is att + charge - def, it would be 56 - 34 = 22 points difference.

In RTW v1.2, Companion cav (54 men) with 10 attack, 16 charge and 1.0 lethality (armor 11, 6, 0) gets 20 charge kills on hastati (80 men) with armor (5, 4, 5) = 14 total defense (7 attack, 2 charge and 1.0 lethality). Using the same calculation it would be 26 - 14 = 12 points. Fewer combat points difference and yet the charge kills are 10 times higher, and that can't be accounted for by the increase from 40 men to 54 men.

If you drop the charge value altogether the SPQR difference would be 14 - 34 = - 20, and the RTW v1.2 difference would be 7 - 14 = -7. Now we get a much weaker charge for the SPQR unit, which is consistent with the fewer kills and the lower lethality would reduce them even more.

Red Harvest did a test which indicates that the cavalry's defend value is being used in the charge calculation. It's conceivable that the calculation is mixed up in some bizarre fashion. Nothing can be assumed to be working properly, especially after seeing some of the other mistakes that have been uncovered in RTW.

ff_ladyan

03-26-2005, 02:04

hrvojej

03-26-2005, 02:17

Also, either charge against a unit with an equal overall defense value to the attack value of the charger (best do it by removing shield and defense altogether and just use armor (is this even possible?) - no directionalty to mess around with) or against a unit of grecoroman peasants. The first option would be better due to the possible overkill effect which could mask the charge effect.

And please, once you're done tell me that defense value of the charger is not the deciding factor for the charge effectiveness... :shocked2:

Red Harvest

03-26-2005, 03:23

Anyone consider the charge distance yet? I have not seen that you made the charge through a correct distance. I am assuming you did do so, just want to confirm.

So:
- charge from the correct distance
- charge using the primary weapon
- Modify same unit to charge same unit, the only difference should be the charge bonus value.
- Lethality should remain 1 in this test. Any different value would void the test (too much assumption of what lethality actually means).

Annie

I've done all that. Varied charge distances somewhat, changed pila throwing distances (which helped uncover the pila "window of invulnerability.") Etc. Whether one doubles or single clicks, the charge is from the right distance, with the right weapon against the units I've chosen. In each case when doing comparison I make sure that I have a fully established charge and that the target is in the same relative stance for comparison between runs.

Lethality of 1 simplifies matters (so that it is what I used,) but it is not necessary to see the effect. In some instances lower lethality might even be more useful since the kill rates are so high against light infantry. There is a chance that some parts of the charge might not even go through the "lethality" filter. Not sure if I am going to test that though.

Red Harvest

03-26-2005, 03:37

Yes by lethality I meant the last undocumented parameter, and by a "hit of fractional lethality" I just meant a strike that didn't produce a kill because it didn't remove a full hitpoint. Now I wonder if a non-lethal strike can turn into a knockdown if it's for example, 0.5 < x < 1. In the SPQR mod which has high defend values and reduced lethality, there are a lot of knockdowns.

When I did my "max defense" tests for the hard coded limits thread a few weeks back, there were very few kills...very, very few...but still a substantial number of knockdowns. So I suspect there is some range of non-lethal strikes that does as you suggest. More fun: 0 attack, 0 charge still produced kills very slowly against a "normal infantry unit" but only once some substantial fatigue was setting in for that unit.

Red Harvest did a test which indicates that the cavalry's defend value is being used in the charge calculation. It's conceivable that the calculation is mixed up in some bizarre fashion. Nothing can be assumed to be working properly, especially after seeing some of the other mistakes that have been uncovered in RTW.

~D I've been hinting at that possibility. It would not surprise me to find CA somehow pulled in an unintended value somewhere, or that the effect is an order of magnitude stronger than intended due to some formula error. Look at the traits...

I've actually got 3 or 4 explicit tests that have demonstrated the defense value heavily influencing the charge.

HeresiarchQin

03-26-2005, 05:11

I've just re-installed the whole game and tested it in 1.0 and 1.2. Clean Vanilla 1.2. The results on my PC were similar to the tests I did before......the charge bonus have very little effect, far from what we expected.

HOWEVER, I must apologize to everyone. Because I've somehow proven it out that the charge bonus DO exist. Yes, their effect is somewhat minor, but do exist.

I've made a new test. Light Lancers with 1, 9 and 15 charge bonus VS Iberian Infantry, each tested 5 times. Fighting till one side routed. The Light Lancers with 1 charge bonus loses all of them. 9 charge bonus won all, and the 15 charge bonus won all too, with one case routed the enemy with faster speed. So after all, the charge bonus do exist, and I must admit I'm very relieved by this fact. We don't want more real bugs don't we?

However, this is not the end of story. There is still much can be digged into the charging system.

First off, there is no doubt that charge bonus are supposed to add to the attack rating of the unit when it charges. But is the ratio of the actual bonus compared to what's written there really 1:1, I.E. 16 charge bonus = additional 16 attack rating? I doubt it very much. Take Light Lancers for example, Light Lancers with 22 attack 0 charge does much more damage than Light Lancers with 7 attack and 15 charge, when charging.

If it's not 1:1, then how much? I bet it's a very low ratio, from what we can see from the tests. With the test just finished, Light Lancer with 9 and 15 charge bonus vs Iberian Infantry. Fighting till one side routed, all except one case the Iberian were routed. The outcome was:

9 charge bonus
Killed LL vs Killed II
36 vs 65
39 vs 62
35 vs 65

15 charge bonus
31 vs 61
35 vs 63
24 vs 17 (LL got routed due to general's dead)
22 vs 48

As we can see, the actual bonus give from the charge bonus is not very great, unless the charge bonus is very significiant compared to other unit, like charge bonus 15 VS 1.

Next, it seems that the charge bonus fades out slowly overtime instead of wear out instantly in the charge. It sounds stupid that I'm aware of this just now if everyone already know... but does anyone know how the charge bonus carry over to the unit during this time? Does 16 charge bonus mean "for the next 16 seconds you've got xxx extra attack rating"? Or "for the next xxx seconds, you've got 16 divided by X of bonus attack rating"? If this can be figured out, then it will explain a lot of things.

Finally, I suspect that the limit of charge bonus is less than 63 as commented by Red Harvest. Because I've just find that Light Lancers with 60 charge bonus performed as BAD as with 1 charge bonus. I think that's why all the tests with 60 charge bonus show that cavalry charge failed miserably.

So, the conclusion (so far for me):
1.Charge Bonus do exist.
2.A higher Charge Bonus don't make the initial charge much better than with a lower one.
3.The Charge Bonus helps the units overtime.
4.The actual bonus from the Charge Bonus is not very signifiant, still more or less some help nevertheless.
5.Charge Bonus' maximum limit is below 60, maybe as low as 20s.

Red Harvest

03-26-2005, 05:37

I'm glad you posted the original topic, despite the fact that the original thrust turned out to be less than 100% correct. It has helped uncover some oddities and improve overall understanding of the mechanics. The fact that you and others were getting such vastly different results led me to try more things to try to duplicate what you were seeing. And for the most part I eventually did. Initially, I had the misfortune/or good fortune depending on how you look at it, of starting with Equites who were more sensitive to the charge bonus.

Did you happen to run any tests in 1.0? The reason I ask is that according to CBR (I think) who was a patch beta tester, CA had said that the cav charge was toned down in 1.2. One way to do that would be to treat the charge bonus differently than the base attack. However, what I am presently seeing suggests that there are other things that are having a greater impact than the charge bonus might ever have had. I haven't got a copy of the old EXE to test it on.

My impression is that the charge effect (and bonus) lasts until the cav finishes colliding into the line. The target unit numbers count down rapidly for just a few seconds, then the normal casualty rate begins (for both sides.)

HeresiarchQin

03-26-2005, 05:54

I did some quick tests in 1.0 and the situation were not very different from what I see in the past...but there were not enough tests so I can't say if 1.0 is the same as 1.2.

And it seems if the game time is set to triple speed it will affect the going on fighting too, because it seems units rout quicker in triple speed.

I've just ran another test with the Scythian Nobles and the results of 1, 7, 17 charge bonus were very random that's driving me nuts. With charge bonus of 1 sometimes I can rout the Iberian faster, or kill them more than with 17 CB, and 17 CB don't have much help either sometimes...

And what about counter-charging? And charging into phalanx that are pushing at you? It's hard to test because the AI won't cooperate with me to do tests...and for some strange reason I can't even login to multiplayer so testing it online is impossible for me.

Anyway, I take back the words that charging is broken, but I insist there are problems with the charging system. There are so many weird things in it, and it's a kind of pain to play knowing that the charging bonus is so random and uncontrollable, at least without some guide of explaining how charging bonus actually works.

Puzz3D

03-26-2005, 06:09

Each man in the unit has his own combat values. The charge bonus will end for different men at different times. So, there will be a dying out of the charge over some period of time, but that time appears to be very short. I would say about 2 seconds effectively. In previous total war games, the charge ended for a man when he dropped below a certain "momentum", but it was really just a certain velocity in those games since men didn't have mass. When a man collided with an enemy, he would loose all of his momentum if the man wasn't killed or pushed back. If the man was pushed back, then only some momentum was lost. If you collided into your own men, momentum would be lost. The charge bonus seemed to last about 2 seconds in the earlier games as well. In RTW, mass is modelled so you can have a true momentum calculation.
Linear momentum = mass * velocity.

Having 22 attack and 0 charge will be more effective than 7 attack and 15 charge because, unlike charge value, the men don't loose any attack value until they get fatigued. In the previous games, about 5 points of charge provided the equivalent of 1 point of attack in determining the final result. So, you could say the ratio is 1:5. However, it's not a constant ratio for every matchup because different matchups fight for different lengths of time.

HeresiarchQin

03-26-2005, 06:16

Nevermind the comment "CHARGE BONUS DOES EXIST" I said before. The completely randomness makes it that statement futile.

Sometimes I just got very frustrated. CA MUST have some kind of tracking tools used to monitor and track down units' attacking rate and other variable to see if everything works. It would take them only a few minutes to see if the charge bonus does works or not but they just leave the work to us to do, making us to waste a big deal of time to get unreliable results. Better yet, I bet at least SOME of the CA devs KNOW what's going on but they just keep their mouths shut. And if some players find out a bug with good evidence they just either keep silent or deny the whole thing. They really should learn the way Blizzard or Bethesda treating customers if you ask me.

Red Harvest

03-26-2005, 06:25

Triple speed definitely can have an impact on combat. I even had it help me get around a bug when testing non-phalanx spear units with a secondary weapon. I used the exact same commands, but one time I got stuck in 3x while the lines made contact. On that occasion the AI failed to use the same weapon as it normally did (despite identical commands to the previous half dozen tests.) This prevented the normal CTD from the weapons switch, although I recreated by switching back and forth manually again in the same test battle.

For tests I always make sure 3X is off before units enter any sort of action range (missiles, warcry, you name it.)

Puzz3D

03-26-2005, 06:31

HeresiarchQin

03-26-2005, 06:47

The 3D engine and new effects in RTW makes things a lot more complicated. There are no vets that understand this stuff, and maybe there's no one at CA either. There is no one forcing the players to test this stuff or try to figure out how the game works. It's a lot of work, and without more info on how the game engine is supposed to work, you might not be able to figure things out no matter how much time you put into it.

True. But bugs like this are so obvious that deserve some good attention. Sarmatian Mercernaries with 17 charge bonus works exactly the same as Round Shield Cavalry? Companions with 16 charge bonus works exactly the same when you edited the bonus to 2?

Most people who complain about bugs have the "I deserve a completed game with my 50 bucks", I for one don't mind the money very much but what I'm really concerned is how they rip off the fun to enjoy a game due to so many serious bugs. And they should at least say something like "we are looking through it" "we'll fix it and somehow release the fix" (not patch, 1.3 are not allowed, isn't it? stupid Activision policies).

I know CA is very busy, they are working with the History Channel, making some LOTR-wannabe Total Warrior game and such, but hey...oh well, nevermind.

Red Harvest

03-26-2005, 08:42

I just went through another lengthy batter of tests with Equites and Iberians this time. In this case, defense was having only a small effect on the charge. It's been far more important in the other tests.

I tried all sorts of crazy stuff:
1. Equites with no defense, Equites with max defense, EQ with 1/0 attack/charge, 1/30 and 30/1.
2. Iberians with 0/0 attack. Iberians with normal attack. Lots of combinations.

Conclusions:
1. Large charge bonus (30) with low attack (1) does little compared to 0 CB. Adds a few kills, not much. Average without CB was 6 kills, with a large value it rose to 14 kills (delta of 8).
2. Large attack (30) with small CB (1) is a wrecking ball wiping out vast numbers. As many as half on the charge--41 casualties. (Delta of ~35 with baseline above.)
3. 1 attack with 0 charge is still deadly if the enemy walks and doesn't counter charge (with 0/0 attack/CB the Iberians walk) Typically this cost them 7 losses out of 81 men on initial contact.
4. Defense for the charger did not do as much in this particular set of tests. Although it helped when the Iberians had some attack.

Overall the charge bonus does something, but not much in most situations. The mere act of charging is worth as much as a large charge bonus itself. And defense can be worth more than the charge bonus--again depending on the test. Charge bonus is worth an order of magnitude less than base attack EVEN DURING THE CHARGE. However, charging is useful because of its "innate" killing potential that seems to be independent of the other stats.

And with that, I give up. If CA can post something explaining the charge system, it would be nice.

HeresiarchQin

03-26-2005, 09:03

It's actually quite sad right now to see so many major bugs still lurking around.

Right now the only workaround for this is to rise the attack value of all the cavalry which have 15 or higher charge bonus. Because all of them, namely the Companions, Cataphracts, Cataphract Camels, Sarmatians, Scythian Nobles and a few others, in order to balance their huge charge bonus, they all have a slightly lower normal attack value. For example, the Companions, compared to the Sacred Band Cav, who 90% of the stats are the same, have 7 points higher of charge bonus but 2 points lower in attack and 1 point lower in defense to balance it out. Now that the charge bonus is just for show, it's fair to give the Companions a +3 or +4 rise in their main attack. Similar to this, the other elite cavalry which high charge bonus deserve some attack bonus as compensation.

It seems that the whole game supposed to have two kinds of heavy cavalry: one is the melee fighting type who don't have much shocking power when charge (have a charge bonus no higher than 10) but can last longer in close-up fighting like the roman and barbarian cavalries, the other is the true shock cavalry who though don't perform outstandingly well in melee (have a slightly lower base attack value) but could be devastating when charging, like Light Lancers, Companions and Sarmatians. However, now because the charge bonus doesn't work at all, the second type of cavalry are half crippled because they have inferior attack and no charge bonus at all, so we are forced to use the only way to balance everything out: make all the shock cavalry the melee fighting type. *Sigh*

HeresiarchQin

03-26-2005, 09:08

And yeah, I give up too as I'm 99% sure the charge bonus virtually don't work at all and all the testing is driving me insane, hehe. After using the fix I just said above balanced the whole game back in some acceptable way so I'm done with it. For now, at least.

BTW, when can I edit the posts I made?

tai4ji2x

03-26-2005, 09:16

does this affect infantry too?

HeresiarchQin

03-26-2005, 09:47

As far as I can tell, yes. Falxmen with 17 charge bonus VS Falxmen with 7 charge bonus, both sides' men died at the same rate. I tried with 60 CB with 7 CB and still the same.

tai4ji2x

03-26-2005, 10:12

As far as I can tell, yes. Falxmen with 17 charge bonus VS Falxmen with 7 charge bonus, both sides' men died at the same rate. I tried with 60 CB with 7 CB and still the same.

This bug is all in your head. Even if it exists, it's because of your modding the game. Matter of fact, it's the fault of everyone who tries to mod the game. We've got nothing to do with it, you ungrateful louts!

EDIT: yes, guys, this is a JOKE. i'm not quoting mikeb word-for-word. simply paraphrasing him, with some "embellishment", with the purposeful intent of being facetious and sarcastic.

Craterus

03-26-2005, 11:30

BTW, when can I edit the posts I made?

you can't until you are a member.. which is a shame but i'm a member now, since sometime last night! thanks to whoever promoted me!

I don't have a problem with cavalry charges on my game.. maybe it is the mods..

HeresiarchQin

03-26-2005, 12:34

Nah...try use your Round Shield Cavalry to charge head on a group of Iberian Infantry. Fight till one side routed. Get the final result of casualities. Do it again a few more times. 5 is good.

Then bump up your Round Shield Cavalry's charge bonus to, say, 20, and then do the test above again 5 more times. Compare the results.

HeresiarchQin

03-26-2005, 12:36

And BTW...I've heard in TWC that in Vanilla 1.0 bumping up the Charge Bonus do increase the unit's killing power to a notable degree, so it is possible that it's 1.2 that screwed up the charge bonus.

Puzz3D

03-26-2005, 13:01

Charge is time dependent. Imagine the charge bonus as the sum of each individual man's bonus plotted on a graph vs time. It will start out at a high peak value, and then decay away with some time constant as the men loose the bonus after contact. The kills the charge produces is going to be proportional to the area under that curve. That would be the integral of the waveshape. Now if the charge is decaying away very fast, the integral is going to be very small even if the peak value is very high. Rather than a bug, the low charge kills may just be a result of things not being fine tuned.

I don't think CA is going to spend the necessary time to optimize the combat system. It's not something they have ever done for any of the games in the series. They will fix bugs (coding errors). Companions of 54 men get 20 charge kills on 83 man hastati in RTW v1.2. So, there are significant charge kills occuring.

When you change charge values, you are modding the game, and I think that's where Mike B is drawing the line. A problem has to be demonstrated in the unmodded game.

Epistolary Richard

03-26-2005, 14:56

When you change charge values, you are modding the game, and I think that's where Mike B is drawing the line. A problem has to be demonstrated in the unmodded game.

That is how this thread started, though, with HeresiarchQin saying that he could not tell an appreciable difference in the vanilla game between two units with significantly different charge bonus. The only modification came to try and test to see if there was an actual issue. Such testing is not possible (or at least not useful) if it is done in the vanilla game as there are too many other variables going into the combat calculations, all of which vary between the vanilla units, so we would not be able to use 'apples vs apples' as Red Harvest says.

Without testing in this manner, issues like the pri/sec bug could not have been demonstrated accurately. People would have the feeling that something was wrong, but it would have to remain supposition as there would be no way to isolate that variable and prove that it was not being used correctly.

This issue of the small impact of the charge bonus variable, I think, has to be filed under 'feature' (though it is not one that is particularly intuitive and we can argue back and forth about whether it's accurate).

The identification of it, and this subsequent discussion, has been useful in providing a caveat to stat researchers and unit designers not to place undue reliance on it.

Crandaeolon

03-26-2005, 14:59

I'd like a few things clarified about the defense rating affecting charges...

Exactly what aspects of defense affect charge efficiency? Armour / Defense Skill / Shield / some combination of them / all of them? That _should_ be testable... (I can do some tests too once I get home tomorrow...)

Maybe armour is somehow connected to mass, which is then used in charge calculations to determine attack rating and / or pushback effect...? This hypothesis would get some credibility if DS / Shield have no effect on charges.

HeresiarchQin

03-26-2005, 15:19

Puzz3D: As a somewhat experienced modder with various games I assure you editing certain variables like the CB in RTW won't break the game. We modders do understand what will break the game and what won't in most times. Saying "we won't help you because you modded the game and that's what caused the bug" is an excuse to ignore issues, and it's even worse if it's a dev who said it despite that all the evidence it's support the existance of a bug.....

It's hard, though not impossible, to not mod the game and make tests. 20 mins ago I decided to take the challenge to test it out again using fresh, clean, pure 1.2 Vanilla units. I used the Gothic Cavalry and the Companions. They both have the same attack (10), but the Gothic have 10 CB while Companions have 16. It's the classic head-on-charge-Iberian tests, and the result is.......

TATAH! The Companions always killed around 25 units in the initial charge while the Gothic killed only 15 or so!

But wait. As I was worrying about "damn, it looks like that the CB do works, how should I explain it to everyone", I remember what Red Harvest said. Armour rating. The Gothic have 6 armour factor while the Companion have 11. So I lowered the Companion's armour factor to 6, and made the tests again.

Voila. The Companion killed around 15 Iberian with their initial charge in each new tests. It's more than enough to prove that the armour factor affected the charge, while the CB did NOT.

Oh, what, I lowered the Companion's armour factor, so I modded the game, so it can't prove anything. Ok. I did yet another test. Sacred Band and Companion VS Iberian this time. Of course, everything with the fresh, clean, pure Vanilla settings. The best thing of using Sacred Band to compare with Companions is that their stats are extremely alike, the only important differences are:
1.Sacred Band Cav have 12 attack rating, Comps have 10.
2.SBC have 7 defense skill, Comps have 6.
3.SBC have only 9 CB, Comps have a hefty 16.

And remember one thing: SBC's armour factor is 11, the same as the Comps.

And the followed up tests showed the truth: the SBC's charge power is almost exactly the same as the Comps, each charge killed around 25 Iberians.

So you can see:
SBC with 12 attack 9 charge 11 armour rating kills about 25 Iberians in one charge.
Comps with 10 attack 16 charge 11 armour rating kills about 25 Iberians in one charge.
Comps with 10 attack 16 charge 6 armour rating kills about 15 Iberians in one charge.
Gothic with 13 attack 10 charge 6 armour rating kills about 15 Iberians in one charge.

Make some simple comparision and you'll find what's wrong with the charging system.

HeresiarchQin

03-26-2005, 15:29

OOPS. Please chage the words "Gothic Cavalry" to "Barbarian Noble Cavalry" in he post above by yourself. I was using Barbarian Noble Cavalry who have 10 attack and 6 armour factor instead of Gothic, who have 13 attack and 9 armour factor. Aside from the typo I did everything else I said above is correct.

Puzz3D

03-26-2005, 18:24

What I'm saying is that if you want CA to recognize this as a problem that should be addressed, it has to be shown that it adversly affects the unmodded game in a significant way. As you said before, we don't know how much of a contribution the charge bonus is supposed to make to the effectiveness of a charge. The greater kills for Companion cav compared to Gothic cav might be correct. It could be that heavier armor is supposed to increase charge effectiveness. More armor would certainly increase momentum by adding to mass, and that would make a real charge more effectve.

Red Harvest

03-26-2005, 22:03

I don't think that was an actual MikeB quote from the thread in question. He's said things to that effect in other threads before about modding, but that's a different story.

The problem is that charge doesn't work as one expects, where high charge bonus troops inflict substantial initial casualties *based on their charge bonus plus attack*. Instead the melee attack is much more effective IN THE CHARGE, and that is just completely FUBAR.

"Ideally" cav with lances would get an initial *charge related* bonus, then have weak melee with the lance. But that is not possible with the way charge bonuses work. Switching to 2nd weapons should be a near requirement after the charge for those who have them, because melee is weak.

In effect, Sarmatians have an 8 primary attack, the charge bonus means little, but the act of charging itself does help...primarily because of their armour...

The separation between charge and melee effects is very much porked. As it is, the charge bonus is not a useful measure.

Mass seems primarily to determine push, rather then kills. Now in melee, steadily pushing the enemy backward seems to be advantagous for the cavalry, but in the charge the actual momentum effect is rather small for determining *kills*. It of course helps with penetrating the formation--see elephants.

tai4ji2x

03-26-2005, 23:18

player1

03-26-2005, 23:33

Well, comparing Lancers to Greek Cavalry and then to Round Shield should be good way (without moding ~;) ).

The first one should be best for first charge and last one for prolonged combat.

Of course, if charging bonus works as should, otherwise you get couple of overpriced cavalry units.

Puzz3D

03-27-2005, 04:57

huh? why do you keep bringing this up? there's no way to effectively test this without "modding" the game. the pri/sec attack bug could only be definitively tested by "modding" a couple unit stats.
Have it your way, but I'm not going to CA with this issue in its present form. Good luck getting them to fix it.

tai4ji2x

03-27-2005, 05:05

Have it your way, but I'm not going to CA with this issue in its present form. Good luck getting them to fix it.

what do you mean by "go to CA"? at this point, you still have faith that they will bother to listen even if we did find a way to exhaustively test this without modding? and even if you do think they'll listen, the pri/sec attack bug was thoroughly tested using modded unit stats for comparison. they certainly did something about that, didn't they?

HeresiarchQin

03-27-2005, 05:31

Have it your way, but I'm not going to CA with this issue in its present form. Good luck getting them to fix it.

So you are still insisting that the charge bonus works properly?

And as I said before, I did do some tests without using ANY modifications at all. Namely the Barbarian Noble Cavalry, Companions, SBC VS Iberian Infantry one. It still supported Red Harvest's and mine opinion. The Charge Bonus hardly helps a bit. But the Armour Factor matters a lot. Strange, no?

Red Harvest

03-27-2005, 07:20

I think what Puzz is saying is that CA is not going to have any interest unless you/we can find a way to clearly demonstrated that the basic unit balance is not working right because of the charge bonus or that some part of the charge is demonstrably *broken* rather than illogical.

Contrast with the the pri/sec bug. A number of us had found some oddities about missile units being tougher than their melee stats would indicate. But nobody could we pin down precisely what was wrong. Fondler, frustrated with some modding issues, finally set up a test that revealed the true nature of the beast and was a slam dunk proof and illustration of a major bug.

Charge bonus is going to be nearly impossible to find such a slam dunk. I think nearly all of us testing it now agree that it is:
1. Working, but to a much more limited extent than the stat would lead one to believe during the charge itself.
2. VERY difficult to quantify in testing (short time, random events, need statistics to see what is happening.)
3. There are several other factors about the charge that seem to considerably water down or mask the charge bonus effect.

So perhaps someone will find some stat or effect that none of us have yet noticed that will reveal a true bug (rather than a questionable/controversial implementation.) Unless that happens, I doubt CA will be saying, "oops."

The best possibility is to start experimenting with things even "more out of the box", but it is a longshot at this stage. The only optimism I have is that it might be made more sensible in the XPack.

player1

03-27-2005, 09:07

screwtype

03-27-2005, 11:48

Puzz3d: "More armor would certainly increase momentum by adding to mass, and that would make a real charge more effectve."

I disagree with that. More armour would be more likely to *decrease* momentum as it would mean the horse couldn't run as fast.

If I'm not mistaken, I think you'll find that most lancer-type units throughout history, which are designed for the charge, are only lightly armoured units.

screwtype

03-27-2005, 11:56

But it's so easy.

Greek Cavalry vs Lancers!
Lancers are more expesnsive since they are supposed to be more effecitve in charging.

Are they in game more effective in charging?
If not, there is a bug.

I don't think it's a "bug" exactly. I think it's a problem with game balance.

The problem is that cavalry are already too powerful in other ways. So CA turned down the charge bonus as a method of reducing their effectiveness somewhat. The result is a knobbled charge bonus and therefore an imbalance in the relative power of the various cavalry units.

Face it, the game's a mess.

player1

03-27-2005, 14:41

I don't think it's a "bug" exactly. I think it's a problem with game balance.

The problem is that cavalry are already too powerful in other ways. So CA turned down the charge bonus as a method of reducing their effectiveness somewhat. The result is a knobbled charge bonus and therefore an imbalance in the relative power of the various cavalry units.

Game is designed in such way, that charge bonus should matter. That's why you get good charger and good melee cavalry units. If it doesn't matter anymore, it's a bug, not just balance question.

Simetrical

03-27-2005, 20:24

I disagree with that. More armour would be more likely to *decrease* momentum as it would mean the horse couldn't run as fast.Not necessarily. There are a lot of factors involved. You'd certainly need a lot of armor to make a difference, given the starting weight.

If I'm not mistaken, I think you'll find that most lancer-type units throughout history, which are designed for the charge, are only lightly armoured units.How about cataphracts, or medieval knights?

-Simetrical

HeresiarchQin

03-28-2005, 02:58

Some very useful collective data:

http://rtw.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=1,2276,0,10

Craterus

03-28-2005, 13:12

78 tests? wow :jawdrop: he must have a lot of free time?

Kraxis

04-04-2005, 16:19

This has slipped here???

Well, I was a bit interested in this subject and have just completed my own tests. I have always backed up the original files so it was easy to recreate vanilla 1.2. The only real difference is the unit size of 120 (which should have no impact whatsoever since there are sizes on both side of it).

Anyway, given all these tests and the "we need no modding tests" I'm highly surprised that none ever thought of Cappadocians and Cataphracts. They are essentially the same units, but the Cappas have a shield and 4 points less of armour making the two units exactly the same on the front. Or so we believe.

Well I sent them against a unit of Spanish Mercs 7 times each (well given the general strength of cataphract charges I considered Ibearians to be too weak). I ended every test as soon as the cavalry was standing still, might have meant a few kills were cut in both directions but the numbers more than made up for this. Well here are the results:

Cataphracts: 45, 42, 40, 29, 31, 48, 47 no routs or killed captains, average = 40.29
Cappas: 29, 27, 26, 34, 35, 25, 29 again no routs or killed captains, average = 29.29

This goes a long towards explaining why people have been dissing the Cappas as not all that great while Cats are boogymen out there. There should be no difference at the cahrge but there is.
The only difference between the units is the armour. 4 points of it and apparently it can make a difference of more than 25% of the best average. That is a lot.

This can't be right!

Old Celt

04-04-2005, 16:45

These test results do not prove the cavalry charge is broken unless you were able to get CA to tell us how it is SUPPOSED to work in the first place. What is the definition of "charge bonus" to begin with?

Is it the "to hit" chance? Does it deal more damage? Does it increase the likelihood of fatality? We simply don't know the intention of it. It is possible it doesn't do what was intended, but how could we know?

Kraxis

04-04-2005, 17:05

Of course...

But given that the Companions are considered 'better' by being higher up the tech tree it seems odd that the Catapracts are significantly better in basically all departments. I have a hard time believing that that was how it was intentioned.

And every post we have seen regarding the combatformula (which is to say the least very limited) have not indicated that heavily armoured cavalry will be any better at charging.

Suddenly Armour becomes by far the most important stat in the game. It adds survivability all round, it protects from ranged attacks and it even helps in charges. Some units are very heavily armoured but also very good in their own right without it, that is an indicator that armour at least initially was intended to be purely defensive. 4 points of armour is nothing when you look at the ranges of armour we see, and the impact they might give (we don't know yet, there might be other factors) is absolutely impresive.

All I'm saying is that it can't be right the way it is now. Especially considering the various costs of the units.

Now we just need to find out if the armour issue applies to infantry as well (as I think it does). Good candidates would be Hastati, Principes and Spanish Mercs (5,7,3 armour each but otherwise the same).

Camp Freddie

04-04-2005, 17:15

I think it's quite reasonable to say that if the "armour" stat is more important than the "charge" stat when charging, then the system is broken.

Anyway, great spot Kraxis!

Old Celt

04-04-2005, 17:27

I will indulge in some speculation about armor:

If the difference in the tests was only 4 points of armor, I speculate that this translates into enough weight in horse barding to alter the impact formula with regard to the total kinetic energy delivered on impact, due to greater mass.

I will speculate further and wonder whether the charge results include variables with different values assigned both for the type of weapon used by the cavalry, and for the defensive quality of the armor type used by the infantry. Such factors could become extremely complex when considering relative direction vs the shield side, the unshielded side, the rear, etc.

I believe that just these 2 aforementioned factors could produce such significant difference in results as to nullify the theory of the charge bonus being broken when that theory is based on the scant actual values we DO have access to.

There is also the matter of frontage. You can only impact so many troops with limited frontage. So the charge may not effect members of the infantry who are left or right of the frontage path as the cav plows through them. I very much doubt anyone has analyzed what the predicted number of struck infantry would be with different frontages and angles of cavalry charge.

Red Harvest

04-04-2005, 22:09

Kraxis,

Good work. ~;) I had said to myself that I needed to test each (armour/def skill/shield) separately, but never did. Part of it was that I had become to disillusioned to do further testing.

Old Celt,

The problem is that cataphracts already have a higher "mass" value. Mass should the determinant in momentum, not armour. Cataphracts get higher mass than other horses. When I did mass testing i found it had little effect on the charge going from 0.5 up to 4 or 6. That was a rather nasty surprise to me.

While this whole effect might not be a "bug," it is poorly thought out. I wonder what the Iraqi information minister...err I mean CA...would have to say about this?

Kraxis

04-04-2005, 23:25

Hmmm... If mass suddenly has little relation towards the power of stopping an enemy or pushing back an enemy (or killing him in a charge) then I'm confused. Or rather in a state of disbelief.

Armour is a very bad way of giving power to a unit since it already gives other bonusses. If I want a powerful charger but a weak fighter I have little chance of actually doing it. At the very least they will be hard to kill due to their heavy armour. At the same time I can't make a weak charger that is strong at keeping itself alive, such as Cataphract Archers (they shouldn't be THAT good chargers, a viable testsubject btw). In effect the armour/mass combination makes the game much too limited.

Red Harvest

04-05-2005, 01:03

Kraxis,

I'm not sure how much pushback influences killing power in RTW. Mass determines pushback, but it is not having the impact I would expect on the charge--other than disruption/penetration. The 0.5 mass horse unit's charge was stopped cold, but the charge was still deadly enough...it just didn't go very far. Normal horse mass leads to penetration and push back, but not that many more kills.

I have not tried to determine if pushback influences the combat calcs directly. I remember that it did so in MTW. In RTW it might be more of a case of being able to stay in position or force passage. But in all the tests I've run the unit with lower mass always ends up moving backwards relative to the one with higher mass. The difference or ratio seems to help determine how rapidly one can force the other back.