to the 10k and under crowd..

ok, god damn it, the math,
a v0 CMAA (attack of 4), quite tired is 4-2=2.that is a 50% reduction.....
a v4 CMAA (attack of 8), quite tired is 8-2=6.that is a 25% reduction.....
A 25% reduction is a long way from 50%.....8vs6 is NOT the same as 4vs2.....these are hard numbers, it is born out in the game, Everyone knows that the combat factors are adjusted for fatiuge, and that attack factors are taken away form a unit that is quite tired correct? That said unit will will always lose -2 attack; and it does not matter what its base attack is? And this has NOTHING to do with morale, it is the combat tables. We are NOT compairing two identical units of the same type with the same combat factors; one (the quite tired one) has -2 attack points taken away, If both units base stats were at 100, and 1 unit gave up -2 that is an insignifiant 2%, and will have little impact on the outcome, if both start at 4 and one gives up -2 that is half of ones attack (50%), if a unit gives up half its attack, what can we expect it to do? THE FACT IS, at lower florins levels, because of lower valor (combat factors, not just morale) levels, the impact of conditions like fatigue DO have a greater impact. Anyone attacking a hill camper at 5k has a much more difficult task than someone attacking a hill camper at 99999k...morale and other factors aside...the situational factors of fatigue, and hill attack penality, (and opponents (bonus) loom much larger at low florins, and much less at high...

Hi Lahll.

What you have shown is the adjustment to the attack bonus. you are right that the attack strength is reduced by 50% and 25% respectively for v0 and v4 CMAA under the said condition.

However the combat resolution doesn't look at just attack points, and the math doesnt depends on the relative strength of one vs the other, but the absolute difference of the two.

A success kill is determined by the probability
1.9% x 1.2 ^ (att - def). In both situations, the probabilty to kill remain the same.. which means that if the system is to ignore the effect of morale, both units will behave identically whether if they are at v0 or v4. This is because for both situations, the quite tired CMAA will have a kill probability of

1.9% x 1.2 ^ ((4-2) - 4)) or 1.9% x 1.2 ^ ((8-2) - 8)
= 1.32% chance to kill

Lahll,

Yes 2 is 50% of 4 and 25% of 8, but those percentages are not what is used to calculate the chance to kill. The chance to kill is not the ratio of the attack values. It's the difference between them. A 4/4 unit and an 8/8 unit both loose the same combat power if you take 2 points off their attack value.

Given that CTK = 1.9% * 1.2 ^ (att - def)

v0 cmaa (2/4) vs v0 cmaa (4/4)
CTK = 1.9% * 1.2 ^ (2 - 4) = 1.9% * 1.2 ^ -2 = 1.9% * 0.69 = 1.3%
v4 cmaa (6/8) vs v4 cmaa (8/8)
CTK = 1.9% * 1.2 ^ (6 - 8) = 1.9% * 1.2 ^ -2 = 1.9% * 0.69 = 1.3%

The 2 point disadvantage on attack means you are 44% weaker on the strike, and no weaker on the parry. You won't die faster from a reduced attack value until well into the melee when you are outnumbered by a significant number of men, and this is independent of overall valor level. While a 44% disadvantage is significant and will cost you 8 out of every 10 encounters, I don't see the need to incur that disadvantage except out of impatience. In anycase, the combat power disadvantage is no greater at 5k than it is at 15k, and this goes for the downhill/uphill combat power advantage as well. I roughly measured this as 1.5:1 for a 45 degree slope, but it's a very tentative measurement and would require more testing to nail it down. Even if higher morale allows the hill attacker to hang in their longer because some units fight to the last man, it doesn't mean he was closer to winning the battle. Higher morale shifts the game towards attrition and away from position, but the hill attacker is at a disadvantage in attrition, so I don't see raising florins as helping this aspect.

Of more import to the question of difficulty in attacking is the morale. There is divided opinion on this, and what I see is more defensive capability at high morale than at low morale. Isn't this increased defensive capability exactly what some vets were complaining about when mtw v1.1 moved from 10k to 15k. Since you can't rout a whole army as easily at high morale with a quick flanking move, the gameplay shifts away from one of position to one of better matchups and attrition. I was in a vi v2.01, 8k, 4v4 team game recently where a long term vet got 50 kills total and a kill ratio of 1:10. It was a quick rush by the attackers, one of them being me, that caught the defenters off guard. These were not a bunch of newbie defenders. The game was decided in the first 2 minutes of play. Although, it took about 20 min total to finish off the remaining defenders. The only challenge was in the initial setup and getting the drop on the opponents as a gunslinger would in a showdown. That's a concern I have about low morale team games that allies don't have enough time to respond to a double team threat.

Attacking hills is hard in 1v1 at 5k and at 15k. The thing is at 5k you can't spread your units out as much as you can at 15k because they start loosing morale support. Spreading out is something a player attacking a hill might want to do to give himself more angles of attack. I still don't really understand what the big deal is about attacking hills in 1v1. Do people do that in serious games?If the players are evenly matched the hill will decide the winner at any florin level.


Dion,

I made some measurements on fatigue recovery rates on fine day in temperate climate which should be the same as arid and lush. I have removed what was a faulty analysis and will give those measurements here instead. The main fault in the analysis was the assumption that the recovery rates were constants for each fatigue level. After making the mesurements, it looks like the recovery rate is a feedback system where the rate depends on how far the unit is below the recovery point.

If the potential recovery point has not dropped below 4 bars, the time for a standing unit, which has become fatigued from running, to recover all the way through the very tired (1 bar) and quite tired (2 bar) levels was:

exhausted to quite tired (very tired range) took 3:15 min
very tired to quite fresh (quite tired range) took 6:30 min

After 20 min, when the potential recovery point is sitting in the quite tired range (I actually waited a very long time to be sure the standing fatigue had equilibrated) the time for a unit, which I ran to exhaustion, to recover all the way through the very tired (1 bar) level was:

exhausted to quite tired (very tired range) took 6:45 min

Again, I waited a long time for equilibrium and I did a walking test from the standing fatigue recovery point and it took 6:55 to drop to very tired. I tried to walk the unit to exhaustion, but could not after 40 min of continuous walking. When the unit stopped walking, it took 4:40 min to get out of the very tired level (1 bar) back up to quite tired (2 bars).

I have a measurement which indicates that the recovery rate depends upon how far below the recovery point a recovering unit is. That measurement was made when the recovery point was in the quite fresh (3 bar) range.

exhausted to quite tired (very tired range) took 3:55 min
very tired to quite fresh (quite tired range) never got to quite fresh and after 20 min the recovery point dropped into the quite tired (2 bar) range.

This result clearly indicates that the recovery rate declines as the recovery point drops.


Note on running fatigue:
While all units fatigue at the same rate while walking, there is a small difference between cav and inf when running. The running fatigue rate for cav is less than for inf. That change was made in the mtw v1.1 patch

What would be very informative for me is for the 15k people to describe the technique they use to win a hill attack. If I have a hill of any significant size at 15k, you are going to have to kill practically all my men because you are certainly not going rout me off the hill. Is this about purchasing an army of greater combat power than the hill defender, and playing at high morale so that attrition decides that outcome?

Playing a 1v1 at 15 vs a hill camper, I'm clearly going to try to win the shootout and cause more attrition. To that end, I have to pick more missile troops at cost of cav and really pump up the combat power of my infantry while taking some v0 cav to counter a raid or to use as flanking force once I start the uphill battle.

One could take a more standard army and try to outmaneuver the opponent, but that depends on the location of the hill and surrounding terrain in general, as well as the skill level of the opponent. A skilled player camping on a hill (not that any would do that, god forbid http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...icons/wink.gif) is practically prepared for anything so you have to go for attrition.

Brutal DLX,

Yes, that army purchasing strategy of taking more ranged units than the enemy which allows you to field fewer but more powerful hth infantry doesn't work at 5k since you don't have the option of fielding hth infantry at 4 times the cost of ranged like you do at 15k. At 15k, each hth infantry unit you replace with a ranged unit saves you about 900 florins which is enough to pump one 1200 florin hth unit up +1 valor.

So, let's say you take 6 ranged and 6 hth infantry and 4 cavalry while the hill defender takes 4 ranged and 8 hth infantry and 4 cavalry and the cav are equivalent. You could have parity in 4 of your hth units with 4 of the defender's hth units and +1 valor advantage in 2 or your hth units vs the other 4 of the defender's hth units or you could get a +1 weapon (20%) advantage for 450 florins distributed across all 6 of your hth infantry facing 8 of the defender's hth infanty. Two v4 cmaa are not better than 4 v3 cmaa, and 6 * 1.2 = 7.2 is less than 8, so there is no overall advantage in the attacker's hth units. I guess it would come down to the attacker's 6 ranged vs the defender's 4 ranged to demonstrate an advantage, but I don't see it because the defender's ranged has height which means it will shoot farther and with more accuracy. I think it would depend on whether you can position your 2 extra ranged in such a way as to shoot the defender's hth infantry, and then will you be able to kill enough of them to offset the defender's hth advantage? I think it's unlikely from a position of lower height.

At 5k, you have the option of foregoing ranged completely since hth infantry and ranged are about the same price, and directly attacking the hill. You could have 12 hth infantry to the enemy's 8 hth infantry which is almost 150% more hth power if you assume ranged have almost no hth power. The question would be can you get up the hill before you loose too much of that hth advantage? I'm not sure that this is more difficult to achieve than is your 15k strategy.

Lahll,

Its voodoo math and its an arbitrary equation that has no real relationship to anything. Why 1.9? Why 1.2? No reason.

Let me see if I can explain the math in a simpler way. We dont need to actually calculate anything to understand what is happening. The combat equation is:

CTK = 1.9% * 1.2^CF

CTK is "Chance to Kill"

CF is "Combat Factor" and is equal to Attackers Melee stat minus Defenders defense stat. [att-def]. 1.2 with an exponent of CF.

Lets forget about fatigue for a minute.

If you have v0Chivman (attack=4) attacking my v2chivman(Defense=6), the CF is = -2.

If you have v1Chivman (attack=5) attacking my v3chivman (defense=7), the CF is still = -2.

Since the CTK is completely driven by the CF, the CTK remains constant even though valor has increased across the board by 1.

It's all relative. A v0 chivman has the exact same chance to kill a v2 chivman as a v1 has to kill a v3.

Edit:
Yuuki,

I'm also fascinated by the fatigue system because it does work fairly well (although it could be tweaked) and it meshes fairly well with the morale system (which is equally fascininating).

What your analysis suggests is that "standing fatigue" is a constant that applies to EVERY unit on the field, equally, based on the time since the game started. For example, your spear can walk 6 mins, rest 3, and get back to "fresh" BUT ONLY if the standing rate hasn't dropped below "fresh" yet
If more than 20 minutes have elapsed since game start, the spear can no longer achieve a "fresh" state.
Is this correct--"If you play a long battle, say 1 hour, and then you want to rest your units they can never get back to fresh because "standing fatigue" has already fallen below "fresh" and there is no way to recover standing fatigue.

Soooo hmmmm... ok, now I see where you are coming from on the "rest until equal" angle and perhaps you are correct that I dont have to wait 30-40 minutes to reach fatigue equilibrium.

I propose a test to you. Hypothesis: After 20 mins of game time the maximum "freshness" of troops is "quite fresh" Therefore, if an attacking unit of spears marches for 6 minutes and then rests for 3, it need only wait another 11 minutes and the defenders units will all drop to "quite fresh" at the SAME TIME the attacker does.

If we take it a step further, and forgive me for not following your ratios exactly--

Hypothesis: At the instant the standing fatigue reaches "quite fresh" all units above "quite fresh" become equalized. So maybe the spears can walk 12 minutes, rest 6 minutes (to achieve "fresh"), wait only 2 minutes, and be assured of fatigue equality. That would be a 8 minute wait for the defender, which is arguably acceptable.

Interesting.

Dion,

I edited my post above with that recovery rate analysis because the analysis was wrong. I've substitued some measurements I made tonight on recovery rates.

To answer your question: the fatigue of a unit is a parameter with a value on a much finer scale than the coarse fatigue levels (bars and text reports) that we see, and you are correct that a unit could be near the bottom of the indicated range, near the top or somewhere inbetween. So, as you say, just getting into the same range as an enemy unit doesn't mean the two units have equal fatigue. The combat and morale penalties are fixed values for each fatigue range, but the fatigue itself isn't.

Yes standing fatigue applied to all units, no matter their armor rating... etc... And there is no way back, and you can't recover from it.

I think we start looking at it some time ago, after playing some very very long game (skip the silly consideration about temporary fatigue in the topic)...

Fatigue in very long game

Temporary fatigue is... temporary and can be recovered.... I think fairly quickly.

I think there is a relation between recovery rate and standing fatigue, but I have never been able to prove it; just a gut feeling from long time game.

IMO, the closer you are from your standing fatigue cap, the slower is the recovery rate.

If you get a unit to very tired right at the start of the game, it will go back to quite tired, after say 1 min, then quite fresh, etc...

If you get a unit to very tired after 20 minutes, I think it will need more time to go back to quite tired and even more time to go to quite fresh.

After 40 minutes, it will take an even longer time to go to quite tired, and it won't be possible to go to quite fresh.

Louis,

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Puzz3D @ Oct. 28 2003,17:49)]At 5k, you have the option of foregoing ranged completely since hth infantry and ranged are about the same price, and directly attacking the hill. You could have 12 ranged to the enemy's 8 ranged which is almost 150% more hth power if you assume ranged have almost no hth power. The question would be can you get up the hill before you loose too much of that hth advantage? I'm not sure that this is more difficult to achieve than is your 15k strategy.

---

Hm. You didn't specify the florin level, or did you?
Anyway, I don't understand your last paragraph where you state that you can forego ranged units but then talk about attacking with ranged units uphill?

It goes without saying that when you want to do an attrition war, you have to place your hth units out of the range of the enemy units, so if they want to fire upon your hth they'd have to give up the hill position. If they don't you have a shootout between let's say his 4 missile unit vs your 6 or 7. You should win that one, despite the hill bonus the defending ranged units get. So you can either focus on the def's missiles or order one or two units to attack any infantry in range, which is hard to do and they are probably deployed a bit back on the hilltop. So you really have to get rid of of the enemy's ranged units. Either that will force them to go to attack or you can target his infantry after the shootout.
You might as well pick only one or two pavs and take 12 infantry plus two cav and rush the hill. It might work, it might not. The hill advantage of the defs plus the morale malus from missile fire can break a unit attacking uphill rather quickly, be it 15k or 5. I would think that you will see a 5k hth army rushing a hill rout much more quickly though due to the lower morale/armour. But it all depends.
Perhaps we can do a few tests on that, just to see which strat could be more effective. (However, the camping army's composition is always unknows, this can be a big factor in an actual battle)

Edit: Oh you did specify Apologies here. But you didn't state you want to compare 5k and 15k sttacking strats.

Brutal DLX,

Quote (Puzz3D @ Oct. 28 2003,17:49)
At 5k, you have the option of foregoing ranged completely since hth infantry and ranged are about the same price, and directly attacking the hill.

Sorry, I misstated when I said 12 ranged vs 8 ranged. I meant 12 hth infantry vs 8 hth infantry.

The subject of the thread is whether it's more difficult to attack a hill at low florins than it is at high florins. I'll grant that the attacker will probably rout sooner at 5k than at 15k, but I don't see how routing sooner means more difficult. Hanging in their longer doesn't mean you were closer to winning.

With your 15k strategy, even if you as attacker succeed in neutralizing the defender's 4 ranged with your 6 ranged and killing a few of his hth infantry, you still have weaker (meaning less total hth combat power) infantry than he does for the final assault. At 5k you can have significantly stronger (meaning more total hth combat power) inf than a hill defender who takes 4 ranged, but your infantry will be under fire as they move up the hill. This actually points up a problem with 5k games which is that you can get a significant combat power advantage by not taking ranged units because they are so expensive.

Okee, jumping in ---

First off, can we simply agree a person defending on a hill should have a bonus? It is the nature of having the high ground. If one wants to have "totally fair fights," then yes you need to play on "Green." But that gets boring and hills, trees and weather add spice and simply become disadvantages one accepts when joining a game. Fatigue as a defender can be overcome, but again, it is a combat situational disadvantage you accept being the attacker.
-----------

LAHLL / CBR
As for the LOW koku hill attack vs. HIGH koku hill attack:

I think you LAH is correct that the low koku hill attack is more difficult than a higher koku hill attack -- but for the wrong reason. It is Morale not the Combat that is making the difference. The Combat value is exactly the same as Yuuk has pointed out (LAH look closely at his first post closely as it shows why the % difference that you correctly point out is actually a non factor.)

However, since all units in a low koku game have less morale, the trigger for a rout is easier to set off (-2, -4). Since this is an on/off trigger (you are either routing or not) the easier it is made to trip, the more impact each morale trigger has.

In a low koku battle, guys will rout quicker overall and, as Yuuk points out, thus you can't separate your army to get at flanks. This lack of unit independence is a HUGE tactical factor and this DOES make a hill attack more difficult -- you are forced to fight much more frontally vis-a-vis a high koku hill attack. Now the army cohession affects all maneuver combat at lower koku games, but since the attacker is already at a real combat disadvantage for the hill, i believe these maneuver difficulties are amplified.

If, hypothetically all units were exactly the same for attacker/defender and all other factors are equal, in a flat battle, i can match up simply head to head and I have a 50/50 shot of winning.

However, same scenario vs. defender on a slope, if i match up head-to-head I can assume a loss for each unit all along my entire front. I HAVE TO catch a flank in order to win. Thus I have to maneuver wings/ independent units. Anything that makes this maneuvering more diffcult has a greater impact on the battle. And since the low koku game this unit independence is less, the impact affect the low koku hill attack more than the high koku hill attack.

Hi Mitch,

You make a good point about the need to flank, and I think flanking has to be balanced in terms of time and space. If fighting units don't hold long enough, there won't be enough time to make flanking moves before the fight is resolved. If units hold too long by virtue of high morale, flanking moves become less effective and can be more easily countered. In that regard, I think 5k is a bit too low and 15k a bit too high for optimal flanking gameplay. That's not to say you can't flank at 5k or that flanking in 15k is completely ineffective. If you successfully carry out a flanking move with a single unit in a 5k game, it's going to be very effective and probably rout the entire enemy line. In a 15k game, you'll have to flank with several units to get the same effect and hope that those units don't get counterflanked.

I don't think there is a single florin level that provides the best RPS gameplay, best morale level, and best ranged unit relative cost. Florin preference will depend upon how you rate those aspects of the gameplay.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Puzz3D @ Oct. 29 2003,14:25)]"I don't think there is a single florin level that provides the best RPS gameplay, best morale level, and best ranged unit relative cost. Florin preference will depend upon how you rate those aspects of the gameplay."

---

I think we can all agree to that.

agrees

i think too, with the right folks you can have enjoyable games at any florin level.