Unusually weak and strong units

I have the same feeling: unit stats don't give the true abilities of units. I think that the total defensive value is crap, it's not taken into account in full, in most of the situations.

Probably armour has seriously reduced effectiveness against even low level armour piercing weapons, defence skill against long weapons and ranged attack, shield doesn't even count against attacks from the unprotected sides.

All in all, before you use them you have no idea what is going to happen. The only thing that I can guess is if the unit is strong or not but not their exact ability in battle. Now, I can still play with that but since the stats are part of the game I would like the game explained to me by the people that made the changes. I don't get it why we have to see the unpacked files ourselves and no official source actually explains their new game mechanics and their changes.:inquisitive:

Everything could be easily explained, I guess, by someone that knows. It's a pity they don't, I think the game is potentially much better and challenging than RTW, if they fix the obvious problems with the day_0 patch (now that I write this, I realise that even the stats for the patch don't add up: 0 (zero!), come on, I'm playing the game more than a week now, anybody with a need of help with numbers in CA or Sega can apply in the forums for tutoring :helloo: )

I had a fight tonight in a city assault, Varangian Guards against Swiss Guards. When my VG charged the Swiss, I caused a lot of casualties on impact, but Ordas observations held true. The Swiss halberdiers cleared out all my troops within reach, then the tide turned. However, when I saw that happening, I ordered the Varangians to run (doubleclicked) on a point right behind the Swiss unit. That moved them all into close combat again, where I then told them to engage the Swiss. About a dozen Swiss Guards went down in a matter of seconds then. As long as I kept manually moving the Varangians closer, they outfought the Swiss Guards. If I didn't micromanage, I'd have lost that fight.

I believe there are definately some stats we don't have access too, though perhaps they are weapon and and/or animation related. I'm pretty sure i can explain one of the descrepincies (sp_meh) in the combat stats not reflecting performance.
Both lancers and german gothic knights appear to be the top of the line mounted troops. I tested them briefly (only 3 or 4 runs each) versus chivalric knights, christian knights (moorish), Russian Tzars, Stradiots and conquistadores. There was the odd time (always due to a charge gone terribly right/wrong) when some of these, notably the stradiots and tzars actually won but besides the odd victory pretty much everything lost to lancers/gothic knights. The stats for both lancers and gothic knights aren't that flash in the game though, i do notice however that neither of them have shields.

All the other mounted units have shields which take up a part of their armour stat. You can see it in game but not in custom battle. So i'm deducing that perhaps the stats are right but it's the improved armour that makes them perform better. I'm guessing because shields only help in certain situations, a lancer or gothic knight would be better in broken melee (surrounded, shield would only help vs one side) or when under attack on the flanks.

This might explain some of the other weird behaviour. It seems like a unit with comparable stats but without a shield will perform better then one with. It makes sense in a close melee, the lines break up a bit and as a result your soldiers can be attacked from more then one direction and however much armour they had from the shield is suddenly not applicable to the large scottish gentleman with the large sword and a surly disposition who's standing behind them.

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Originally Posted by IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer

Considering the fact that all computer programming is based on math, I doubt it will deviate from that any time soon.

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Correct. That's what I said - after all, I am a computer programmer. My point was that the math will become increasingly complex as it tries to approximate reality more and more closely. After a certain point, outcomes will be prohibitively difficult for players to calculate, and ratings such as "attack", "defense", and "armour" will become more or less meaningless. People will still think about how strong units are on attack and defense, and how effective their armour is, but they won't think about such things in such simplistic terms as simple integer numbers.

That's why I say unit stats are a game element destined to die out, like health bars. Think about a boxing match - as they fight, they tire out and receive damage from the blows of their opponent. Health bars are a way to approximate that phenomenon in fighting games, but they are a simple abstraction of it. In the same way, unit stats are a simple abstraction of the fighting abilities of different types of soldiers.

Don't worry, such advances are quite a ways away yet. You stats junkies will have plenty of time to work your arcane magics. :2thumbsup:

I been keeping up with this thread and wanted to throw some of my own test results into the mix. I tested egyptan units that are generally classified as light units, and come in the early era's mostly. I tested the mamluk's in 3 and 4 deep formations also, but i personally found 4 deep to be much better in actual campagin combat, and 1v1 in my testing it actually does better in most cases then a 3 or two wide formation, but this isent conclusive and i wasent testing this as much.

All tests were done vrs Levy spear men that were set on attack,but i allways 1clicked the enemy with the mellee option. the AI acted differenly against each unit over all though. All units are stock and on Medium difficulty.

Halberd milita- 7Att/8D (5armor-3def-0sheild) / 3 charge. They are avalible in large citys with approprate upgrade to the barracks. This unit was able to beat levy spears 3 times with no less then 10 losses, 10 kills in the charage, and winning with the enemy routeing with around 30ish men left. I was very shocked, and very impressed. Note that the AI ALLWAYS braced for the attack, and never chaarged


Dismounted arab cav- 7att /13D (4-3-6) / 3 charge. buildable early on at castles with upgrades if i recall, they are basically 1 defence weaker then the Scaracen milita. of three battles, these guys won 3 battles with an avrage of 20-30 losses before enemy spearmen routed. I was very unimpressed considering what there defence stats were looking like on paper ingame. Oddly, the AI allways charged them, as if knowing it had a chance of winning


Mamluk cav archers- 8att/15D (5-7-3) / 4 - This unit is buildable at your castle and costs 900 florins. I had them walk to the enemy wi th a single click and then they charged. Before and during the attack, about 5-10 spearmen were killed to arrow fire, takeing more damage as they mamluk's got closer. During the charage, they had no spears, but mananged to kill roughly 10 in the innital impact during all tests. During all 5 tests, they won, the worst losses in one test was 27, least was 10. The AI also allways used the circle spear formation (dont rember the name). I was somewhat impressed at there kills in the charge even with out spears and being light cav, but this was only to be expexted from such an expensive unit.


Mamluk cav. 11/ 15 (6-6-3) - 3 . These guys arent the same as above. They are avalible in the High era, and are your typical Cavalry unit. Let me say the results i recived with this unit were very random. The first test they lost flat out. Although killing about 15 or so men on the innital charge (again the ai was in the circle formation), they were hacked up and routed and only killed 50 enemy. The other two tests, they won with 26 men left beforee the enemy routed (they killed 73 spears) and during another test, only 5 Mamluk's were killed (about 20 enemy killed in charge) and the enemy routed when they had sustained 61 casulties.


Over all, Mamluk archers seem pretty good, but i need to compare to saphi's before i have a good comparison. Also on Cavalry, it seemed that if a few units sprung ahead of the innital charge they tended to die fairly easy and over all the results at the end had me with more casulties then when the formation charaged in more unison. Unfortently i couldent c ontrol this (i allways 1 clicked anyway) so its just luck. Also 2 handed units seem strong i agree, but the halberd mi lita were attacking somewhat fast and the 2nd row seemed to be able to hit the enemy sometimes, thus i think adding to there overall effectiveness. However, i must admit that i found it really odd they took so few casulties compared to everyone else with much higher defence rateings and sheilds, noteably the dismounted cav.


On a side note, i tested the halbarders against dismounted fudal knights. The verdect was 3 wins, 3 losses. Very shocking, considering the knights have 22 defence. As long as the halberders keep a formation even after the charge they seemed to win with alot of back and forth fighting (fudalknights had to charge twice). I will say that all battles favored fudal knights but the fact that it was 50/50 all the time was very intresting. It seemed that after the first few seconds after the charge once it was pure fighting, the halberders have a chance of going from "defeat is a distinct possibily" to "the balnce of forces is even" or what have you.