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

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:

Quote:

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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.

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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:

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.

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

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:

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Originally Posted by ff_ladyan

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by Puzz3D

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.

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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.

Quote:

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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.

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~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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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

[rant]
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.
[/rant]

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.)

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.

Red Harvest,

I was concerned that something like that could happen at high speed, and have always conducted tests at normal speed.

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Originally Posted by Puzz3D

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.

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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.

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.

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*

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?

does this affect infantry too?

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HeresiarchQin

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.

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[MikeB]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! [/MikeB]

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HeresiarchQin

BTW, when can I edit the posts I made?

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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..

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.

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Puzz3D

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.