Re: Auto Resolving Sieges
Sapi - Thanks for fixing the title.
Foz- What you say makes sense.
To confirm the theory I ran the test again with Bill Militia, that also has a total missile resistance of 0. The result were
Attacking Unit type-----------Lost----------Kills
Bill Militia--------------------391----------156
This fits the theory.
This made me wonder what results melee defenders would give. So I retested this time giving Magdeburg to the Papal States who garrisoned it with -
4 units of Mailed Knight.
2 units of Mounted Sergeants
2 units of Dismounted Feudal Knights.
All Melee - No Ranged units
The results were -
Attacking Unit Type-----------------Lost----------Kills
Armoured Swordsmen--------------59--------- 202
Feudal Knights--------------------88----------213
Retinue Longbowmen-------------129----------208
Town Militia----------------------288----------100------defeat
Hobilar---------------------------317----------84------defeat
Militia Archers--------------------354----------50------defeat
This is the same order as for the ranged defenders. Maybe because the settlement has so many towers, that inflict missile damage, the calculation assumes that all the defenders inflict missile damage?
Re: Auto Resolving Sieges
Hmm. As always I'm back with the defense analysis, this time for melee.
Armored Swordsmen: 22
Feudal Knights: 16
Retinue Longbowmen: 14
Town Militia: 7
Hobilars: 7
Peasant Archers: 1
They fall in exactly the same order as the missile defenses of the units did, I believe. So you can't say that the game is calling the damage from the melee defenders missile damage, there's simply no evidence that points to that. Granted I just read all those numbers out of the file, and notice that several do not agree with what you quoted in your original post. How exactly is it that your Feudal Knights and Retinue Longbowmen came out with the stats you listed? (btw you added the feudal knights def up incorrectly, 8+5+5=18).
It'd also point out that though town militia and hobilars have the same melee defense, there are several reasons the town militia probably beat hobilars:
1. They have many more men in a unit, and on the field, at one time. This allows them to have more men poking at the enemy unit than hobilars could, and thus possibly killing a few more.
2. They have anti-cavalry properties, and as most of the melee units garrisoned are cav, this may play some part. Also if routing and morale are considerations, they will rout with more men left due to having a larger unit size than hobilars, and thus more men are likely to successfully scurry off the battlefield (and so not be killed or captured). This may not happen so much at the end of the battle when cavalry can give chase, but in the beginning one would expect a fresh batch of militia enters the fray to replace the routing one, and they largely escape.
One more thing to point out - note how, while taking nearly the same number of casualties, the bill militia cause considerably more kills than do any other low-tier unit - almost up to the level of the upper tier ones. Just a guess here, but it's probably due to their much better attack value. They don't kill as many as upper tier units with comparable attack values, though, which seems to indicate that the attack and defense are somehow blended to determine the effectiveness of the unit overall. So I'd suggest that kills and losses aren't generated separately, but rather are results of some calculations that determine the direct unit strengths versus each other.
Re: Auto Resolving Sieges
Don't know if it's been mentioned, but I think auto-resolve causes the game to ignore settlement defenses. It also ignores advantages conferred onto defenders when on the walls I think, and this minimises your casualties. I don't have the exact stats here now, but I tried comparing auto-resolve vs assaulting myself.
I assaulted Tolouse as Milan with 5 Genoese Archers, 4 Famiglia Ducale, a general and the rest dismounted broken lances (full stack) vs a French army with lots of sergeant spears, some knights and archers (castle with full stack)
When I auto-resolved I lost only about 400 men. However when I played it out myself it was a near disaster as I lost 50% of my men to the walls (maybe I'm a bad assaulter?) The Frenchies burnt down one siege tower and my ram...
Re: Auto Resolving Sieges
You didn't mention if you had any fixes eg 2H fix. This could make a world of difference in favour of playing out seiges.
I auto resolve more than 70% of my battles to avoid the passive AI and also because they get very repetitive, particularly sieges. I find that I would usually sustain only moderately more casualties fighting a seige than auto-resolve, but not always. On the other hand sometimes it can be a total disaster if you loose your seige equipment.
Reloading and replaying an auto-seige will give you a very different and better result again!
Re: Auto Resolving Sieges
KHPike
I found differences in the losses, when attacking a castle and town. Therefore the calculation cannot be completely ignoring the settlements defences. But you may be right that it does not place sufficient emphasis on the defences.
Given the odds you faced in your Toulouse assault I think you did quite well. I doubt if I could have done any better.
Nebuchadnezzar
I run the original game with patch only on VH/VH. No other mods, fixes or cheats. I am waiting until after the next patch before considering if any fixes are required.
I also have used auto resolve more in this game than all the other games put together. In M2TW you often achieve more favourable results, especially in the early game or when using a larger attacking force of low quality troops against a small garrison. This is partly due to the new calculations used and partly due to the losses from the tower defences when manual fighting the game. In the later games, auto resolving has less an advantage, due to a bigger choice of siege equipment available and therefore greater flexibility to match your tactics to counter the defences.
Foz
Unit Stats.
I have rechecked my original post and you are correct there is an error.
The Town Militia, Hobilars, and Militia Achers are all standard units with no upgrades. The Armoured Swordsmen have weapon and armour upgrades giving them +1 to attack and +1 to armour defence. The Retinue Longbowmen has heavy mail armour and also experience 2 (from the woodmen guild HQ).
All the above details were correctly quoted.
The Feudal Knights also had weapon and armour upgrades, which gave them
Attack 11, armour 8, skill 5, shield 4, Total 17
And not
Attack 11, armour 8, skill 5, shield 5, Total 17 as I quoted. Sorry!:oops:
Hobilars vs Town Militia
Unit size
This could be argued both ways.. The town militia has more men per unit (8 x 75) but the Hobilars have more units (15 x 40). Both attacks used 600 men.
Against melee garrison
The Town Militia has a spear bonus + 4 verses cavalry (2/3rds of garrison) making attack 9. This does not apply to infantry (1/3rd garrison), leaving them 5 with these units. This would average out at 7.67 giving them a 0.67 advantage over the Hobilars..
Their total defence is the same as the Hobilars but mainly in shield, which only applies to front/left. If attacked from the other two sides they have almost no protection. Hobilar defence is mainly the more effective armour (applies 360°).
Against missile garrison
The Hobilars hits with 7 giving them a 2 advantage over Town Militia. Since the crossbow missiles are armour piercing, this gives an effective protection of 2 (360°) for the Hobilars verses 3 (front/left) for the Town Militia.
Both have a base moral of 3. Both will rout when they have lost a certain percentage of their numbers. Since the Hobilars are faster, they are less likely to suffer further losses whilst running away. Their speed will also get them past the towers / missile fire into a melee with fewer losses.
There is not a lot of difference between these units. Personally I would have put my money on the speed and flexibility Hobilars for both attacks. Whichever way you calculate it the Town Militia should not be better than Hobilars for both attacks.
The only theory that does fit the order of losses is to assume that the defenders are missile and the losses are ordered according to their missile resistance. This may not be an ideal explanation, but so far it is the only one that fits.
One of the problems with tying to find out what factors CA use in these calculations is the random numbers applied to the results. This suggests that there is not much point in CA spending a lot of time and effort (therefore money) developing complex formulae. Why calculate a units losses to the second decimal place, and then apply a massive random factor that make all the accuracy worthless.
They are much more likely to do a rough defence / attack average for both sides, season it with a few unit size / environment / unit type factors. Stir it all up with a set of random numbers and serve with a fanfare. Whilst the player simmers at the results.
Grouping all defenders (with towers) into one type of attack (missile) would simplify the calculation. Would they really go to the trouble of differentiating and allotting different factors to all the various types of attack.
e.g. Melee, spear bonus 4, spear bonus 8, armour piercing, normal arrows, ballista bolt, exploding shot, phalanx etc. etc. etc.