Super Medics?

Recently in several huge battles (~3400 vs 3600), I lost around 1600 troops - lost around 200 soldiers for the larger units. However, in the aftermath, 1000+ of my soldiers were "healed." I had several units of mercenary axemen and reserves who lost 200+ soldiers in each unit, and all 200 soldiers were healed. (healed the entire unit to full strength)

I was just wondering if this was a characteristic of that "surgeron" ancillary or a new generals trait?

btw, half of my casualties were from getting chopped up by the uber elite naked barbarian soldiers...

PS: 1000/1600 = 5/8 of the casualties were healed... 63% healing rate for casualties O_o

did you have more than 1 general in it by chance? perhaps a mercenary general in addition to a family member?

No, just 1 general with 1 ancillary that said "surgeron...improves battlefield casualties" with 0 command stars, 0 influence, and 5 management... :/

Well Mercenaries units normally have a high healing rate for some reason (mine always mostly get back to full strength after a battle). Your surgeon ancilliary could help a lot too. So I guess it is a super medic! thats really cool

Casualties of missle fire have a very high chance of beeing healed after battle, especially those who fell victim to friendly fire. Did you fight a battle with a lot of archer units on both sides, something like Parthia vs. Saka?

Considering his men were "chopped up by the uber elite naked barbarian soldiers", I rather doubt it.

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Originally Posted by Pharnakes

Considering his men were "chopped up by the uber elite naked barbarian soldiers", I rather doubt it.

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lol, I guess those naked Gastae soldiers can't hit the vitals with their large and unwieldy swords. XD

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Originally Posted by konny

Casualties of missle fire have a very high chance of beeing healed after battle, especially those who fell victim to friendly fire. Did you fight a battle with a lot of archer units on both sides, something like Parthia vs. Saka?

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I never noticed this. Is this really true? Can anyone else confirm this?

Just compare the ratio of healed men in units that had only suffered from missle fire to those that had been involved in heavy melee combat.

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Originally Posted by BerkeleyBoi

I never noticed this. Is this really true? Can anyone else confirm this?

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Yes, this is true. Casualties of missle fire have a better chance of beeing healed after battle.

Fleeing men, both routing and manually fleeing, are also more likely to be healed.

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Originally Posted by Intranetusa

I was just wondering if this was a characteristic of that "surgeron" ancillary or a new generals trait?

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Maybe they weren't "physically" hurt and needed a special treatment.


But seriously, when something like you described happens to me, i see it as a favor of the gods and the healed as an overall rate for the whole army, not for a single unit.

I've also noticed surprisingly high healing rates at times. I'm thinking a lot of those men falling down and looking dead are just mildly wounded and just decided to take it easy after getting hit. The reason the general is so much tougher is that he doesn't fall when he's wounded like a normal guy. But I've found that battle surgery ancillaries are probably essential, moreso than any other ancillary for a long trek into enemy territory.

I'd agree with Danest that a lot of your 'casualties' may be people with minor wounds lying low.

Maybe one of your chirurgeons is called Igor?

Are they any statistics on how many casualties that might actually get healed for your average Roman? I think it'd be interesting to get a deeper look at how 'healthy' the society was and how good was it's medicine/care.

I don't think that anything like that exists. The earliest sources of that kind that I know are from the 18th Century. For example lists of invalids naming the indivdual injury and in which battle it was recived. But these do not cover the wounded that became fit for service after battle. For something like that we need a real military medical system, what was not developed before the middle of the 19th Century.

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Originally Posted by Maeran

I'd agree with Danest that a lot of your 'casualties' may be people with minor wounds lying low.

Maybe one of your chirurgeons is called Igor?

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Lol, I don't think a swing from a longsword of a uber naked Gaestanae will only cause a flesh wound...

Not if you're the black knight. Maybe you had an army of those.

:laugh4: 'just a flesh wound'

Hahaha... I thought they had lots of amputations in those days? Medicine wasn't as advanced as it was today so people even with minor wounds tended to lose limbs due to poor hygiene... at least, that's what happened in the 1700s-late 1800s in many of the battles that took place (and also earlier than that). I guess ancient medicine was more advanced than we thought :-P

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Originally Posted by StinkoMan20X6

Hahaha... I thought they had lots of amputations in those days? Medicine wasn't as advanced as it was today so people even with minor wounds tended to lose limbs due to poor hygiene... at least, that's what happened in the 1700s-late 1800s in many of the battles that took place (and also earlier than that). I guess ancient medicine was more advanced than we thought :-P

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Bullets are dirty.

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Originally Posted by Thaatu

Bullets are dirty.

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Bullets are also made of lead...lead poisoning...

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Originally Posted by Thaatu

Bullets are dirty.

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And steel can be too! Usually, infections occur due to open wounds (the skin is a wonderful physical barrier between the rest of the body and unwanted microorganisms) that can lead to sepsis (bacteria in blood stream = BAD news :thumbsdown: ) Though I'd say that weapon metals are more prone to having bacteria on them as they're probably used more than once, hence more nasty bacteria. Bullets are only used once and to be used again, they'd have to be remelted, which kills all the bacteria :skull: . Anything that has bacteria on it is just that much more prone to leading to an infection. During naval battles like Trafalgar in the Napoleonic War, many deaths and amputations came from infections through open wounds caused by wood splinters of all things.

As for lead poisoning... that's a new one to me; I've never heard of people getting lead poisoning from a bullet. Let's put it this way, also around the 1800s, a common way to treat the STD syphilis was by injecting a lead solution up the urethra :dizzy2: and that didn't lead to many cases of lead poisoning. *shudder*

From that EB battle report, looks like medics were awesome back in the ancient days... we need more of those today! :2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by StinkoMan20X6

And steel can be too! Usually, infections occur due to open wounds (the skin is a wonderful physical barrier between the rest of the body and unwanted microorganisms) that can lead to sepsis (bacteria in blood stream = BAD news :thumbsdown: ) Though I'd say that weapon metals are more prone to having bacteria on them as they're probably used more than once, hence more nasty bacteria. Bullets are only used once and to be used again, they'd have to be remelted, which kills all the bacteria :skull: . Anything that has bacteria on it is just that much more prone to leading to an infection. During naval battles like Trafalgar in the Napoleonic War, many deaths and amputations came from infections through open wounds caused by wood splinters of all things.

As for lead poisoning... that's a new one to me; I've never heard of people getting lead poisoning from a bullet. Let's put it this way, also around the 1800s, a common way to treat the STD syphilis was by injecting a lead solution up the urethra :dizzy2: and that didn't lead to many cases of lead poisoning. *shudder*

From that EB battle report, looks like medics were awesome back in the ancient days... we need more of those today! :2thumbsup:

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Well, a person can get lead poisoning from a couple grams of lead paint chips...so a heavy lead bullet lodged inside your blood vessels would certainly cause your IQ to drop double digits or so.

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Originally Posted by StinkoMan20X6

As for lead poisoning... that's a new one to me; I've never heard of people getting lead poisoning from a bullet. Let's put it this way, also around the 1800s, a common way to treat the STD syphilis was by injecting a lead solution up the urethra :dizzy2: and that didn't lead to many cases of lead poisoning. *shudder*

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Actually it can and did. Ivan the Great/Terrible took lead for his syphilis and it is said to be one of the reasons he was so crazy in his late years.

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Originally Posted by MarcusAureliusAntoninus

Actually it can and did. Ivan the Great/Terrible took lead for his syphilis and it is said to be one of the reasons he was so crazy in his late years.

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Well you just said it: HE TOOK LEAD FOR HIS SYPHILLIS. Like it was Robitusin, or aspirin.

I "highly" doubt the amount of lead concentration in a fully grown human's blood recieved from a bullet/s blood will cause him to die from "lead poisoning". But take lead like it was medicine and ur gona get F*ed up.

I am not denying it can hurt the brains development of babies and small children playing (and eating) scraps of lead paint.

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Originally Posted by Thaatu

Bullets are dirty.

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This was actually just a bad joke. But bullets do need digging out, which will widen the wound, which if done poorly can lead to all kinds of bad things, which may lead to the loss of a limb. I guess that contributes to the mortality and amputation rate from the 18th century onwards. I wouldn't say there were more amputations than in EB timeframe, but EB is a game and the details of chirurgeon bonuses are basically unknown. It's just a RTW feature, which probably can't be modded, other than either include it, or scrap it completely.

To be fair to 18th and 19th Century medicines: the bullets that were jused in those days were round and of a much larger calibre than modern day ammo (about 11 mm and more; average modern day weapons use something between 5 and 9 mm and no roundshot). So they caused terrible wounds, even when hitting just an arm or leg. And the woundeds were not recovered by helicopter and brought within an hour to an excellent equiped hospital, but were recovered after the fighting has moved elsewhere, sometimes after hours in the mud. So a lot of those cases would even today result in an amputation.