huh? why do you keep bringing this up? there's no way to effectively test this without "modding" the game. the pri/sec attack bug could only be definitively tested by "modding" a couple unit stats.Quote:
Originally Posted by Puzz3D
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huh? why do you keep bringing this up? there's no way to effectively test this without "modding" the game. the pri/sec attack bug could only be definitively tested by "modding" a couple unit stats.Quote:
Originally Posted by Puzz3D
Well, comparing Lancers to Greek Cavalry and then to Round Shield should be good way (without moding ~;) ).
The first one should be best for first charge and last one for prolonged combat.
Of course, if charging bonus works as should, otherwise you get couple of overpriced cavalry units.
Have it your way, but I'm not going to CA with this issue in its present form. Good luck getting them to fix it.Quote:
Originally Posted by tai4ji2x
what do you mean by "go to CA"? at this point, you still have faith that they will bother to listen even if we did find a way to exhaustively test this without modding? and even if you do think they'll listen, the pri/sec attack bug was thoroughly tested using modded unit stats for comparison. they certainly did something about that, didn't they?Quote:
Originally Posted by Puzz3D
So you are still insisting that the charge bonus works properly?Quote:
Originally Posted by Puzz3D
And as I said before, I did do some tests without using ANY modifications at all. Namely the Barbarian Noble Cavalry, Companions, SBC VS Iberian Infantry one. It still supported Red Harvest's and mine opinion. The Charge Bonus hardly helps a bit. But the Armour Factor matters a lot. Strange, no?
I think what Puzz is saying is that CA is not going to have any interest unless you/we can find a way to clearly demonstrated that the basic unit balance is not working right because of the charge bonus or that some part of the charge is demonstrably *broken* rather than illogical.
Contrast with the the pri/sec bug. A number of us had found some oddities about missile units being tougher than their melee stats would indicate. But nobody could we pin down precisely what was wrong. Fondler, frustrated with some modding issues, finally set up a test that revealed the true nature of the beast and was a slam dunk proof and illustration of a major bug.
Charge bonus is going to be nearly impossible to find such a slam dunk. I think nearly all of us testing it now agree that it is:
1. Working, but to a much more limited extent than the stat would lead one to believe during the charge itself.
2. VERY difficult to quantify in testing (short time, random events, need statistics to see what is happening.)
3. There are several other factors about the charge that seem to considerably water down or mask the charge bonus effect.
So perhaps someone will find some stat or effect that none of us have yet noticed that will reveal a true bug (rather than a questionable/controversial implementation.) Unless that happens, I doubt CA will be saying, "oops."
The best possibility is to start experimenting with things even "more out of the box", but it is a longshot at this stage. The only optimism I have is that it might be made more sensible in the XPack.
But it's so easy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Red Harvest
Greek Cavalry vs Lancers!
Lancers are more expesnsive since they are supposed to be more effecitve in charging.
Are they in game more effective in charging?
If not, there is a bug.
Puzz3d: "More armor would certainly increase momentum by adding to mass, and that would make a real charge more effectve."
I disagree with that. More armour would be more likely to *decrease* momentum as it would mean the horse couldn't run as fast.
If I'm not mistaken, I think you'll find that most lancer-type units throughout history, which are designed for the charge, are only lightly armoured units.
Quote:
Originally Posted by player1
I don't think it's a "bug" exactly. I think it's a problem with game balance.
The problem is that cavalry are already too powerful in other ways. So CA turned down the charge bonus as a method of reducing their effectiveness somewhat. The result is a knobbled charge bonus and therefore an imbalance in the relative power of the various cavalry units.
Face it, the game's a mess.
Game is designed in such way, that charge bonus should matter. That's why you get good charger and good melee cavalry units. If it doesn't matter anymore, it's a bug, not just balance question.Quote:
Originally Posted by screwtype
Not necessarily. There are a lot of factors involved. You'd certainly need a lot of armor to make a difference, given the starting weight.Quote:
Originally Posted by screwtype
How about cataphracts, or medieval knights?Quote:
Originally Posted by screwtype
-Simetrical
Some very useful collective data:
http://rtw.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/f...&f=1,2276,0,10
78 tests? wow :jawdrop: he must have a lot of free time?
This has slipped here???
Well, I was a bit interested in this subject and have just completed my own tests. I have always backed up the original files so it was easy to recreate vanilla 1.2. The only real difference is the unit size of 120 (which should have no impact whatsoever since there are sizes on both side of it).
Anyway, given all these tests and the "we need no modding tests" I'm highly surprised that none ever thought of Cappadocians and Cataphracts. They are essentially the same units, but the Cappas have a shield and 4 points less of armour making the two units exactly the same on the front. Or so we believe.
Well I sent them against a unit of Spanish Mercs 7 times each (well given the general strength of cataphract charges I considered Ibearians to be too weak). I ended every test as soon as the cavalry was standing still, might have meant a few kills were cut in both directions but the numbers more than made up for this. Well here are the results:
Cataphracts: 45, 42, 40, 29, 31, 48, 47 no routs or killed captains, average = 40.29
Cappas: 29, 27, 26, 34, 35, 25, 29 again no routs or killed captains, average = 29.29
This goes a long towards explaining why people have been dissing the Cappas as not all that great while Cats are boogymen out there. There should be no difference at the cahrge but there is.
The only difference between the units is the armour. 4 points of it and apparently it can make a difference of more than 25% of the best average. That is a lot.
This can't be right!
These test results do not prove the cavalry charge is broken unless you were able to get CA to tell us how it is SUPPOSED to work in the first place. What is the definition of "charge bonus" to begin with?
Is it the "to hit" chance? Does it deal more damage? Does it increase the likelihood of fatality? We simply don't know the intention of it. It is possible it doesn't do what was intended, but how could we know?
Of course...
But given that the Companions are considered 'better' by being higher up the tech tree it seems odd that the Catapracts are significantly better in basically all departments. I have a hard time believing that that was how it was intentioned.
And every post we have seen regarding the combatformula (which is to say the least very limited) have not indicated that heavily armoured cavalry will be any better at charging.
Suddenly Armour becomes by far the most important stat in the game. It adds survivability all round, it protects from ranged attacks and it even helps in charges. Some units are very heavily armoured but also very good in their own right without it, that is an indicator that armour at least initially was intended to be purely defensive. 4 points of armour is nothing when you look at the ranges of armour we see, and the impact they might give (we don't know yet, there might be other factors) is absolutely impresive.
All I'm saying is that it can't be right the way it is now. Especially considering the various costs of the units.
Now we just need to find out if the armour issue applies to infantry as well (as I think it does). Good candidates would be Hastati, Principes and Spanish Mercs (5,7,3 armour each but otherwise the same).
I think it's quite reasonable to say that if the "armour" stat is more important than the "charge" stat when charging, then the system is broken.
Anyway, great spot Kraxis!
I will indulge in some speculation about armor:
If the difference in the tests was only 4 points of armor, I speculate that this translates into enough weight in horse barding to alter the impact formula with regard to the total kinetic energy delivered on impact, due to greater mass.
I will speculate further and wonder whether the charge results include variables with different values assigned both for the type of weapon used by the cavalry, and for the defensive quality of the armor type used by the infantry. Such factors could become extremely complex when considering relative direction vs the shield side, the unshielded side, the rear, etc.
I believe that just these 2 aforementioned factors could produce such significant difference in results as to nullify the theory of the charge bonus being broken when that theory is based on the scant actual values we DO have access to.
There is also the matter of frontage. You can only impact so many troops with limited frontage. So the charge may not effect members of the infantry who are left or right of the frontage path as the cav plows through them. I very much doubt anyone has analyzed what the predicted number of struck infantry would be with different frontages and angles of cavalry charge.
Kraxis,
Good work. ~;) I had said to myself that I needed to test each (armour/def skill/shield) separately, but never did. Part of it was that I had become to disillusioned to do further testing.
Old Celt,
The problem is that cataphracts already have a higher "mass" value. Mass should the determinant in momentum, not armour. Cataphracts get higher mass than other horses. When I did mass testing i found it had little effect on the charge going from 0.5 up to 4 or 6. That was a rather nasty surprise to me.
While this whole effect might not be a "bug," it is poorly thought out. I wonder what the Iraqi information minister...err I mean CA...would have to say about this?
Hmmm... If mass suddenly has little relation towards the power of stopping an enemy or pushing back an enemy (or killing him in a charge) then I'm confused. Or rather in a state of disbelief.
Armour is a very bad way of giving power to a unit since it already gives other bonusses. If I want a powerful charger but a weak fighter I have little chance of actually doing it. At the very least they will be hard to kill due to their heavy armour. At the same time I can't make a weak charger that is strong at keeping itself alive, such as Cataphract Archers (they shouldn't be THAT good chargers, a viable testsubject btw). In effect the armour/mass combination makes the game much too limited.
Kraxis,
I'm not sure how much pushback influences killing power in RTW. Mass determines pushback, but it is not having the impact I would expect on the charge--other than disruption/penetration. The 0.5 mass horse unit's charge was stopped cold, but the charge was still deadly enough...it just didn't go very far. Normal horse mass leads to penetration and push back, but not that many more kills.
I have not tried to determine if pushback influences the combat calcs directly. I remember that it did so in MTW. In RTW it might be more of a case of being able to stay in position or force passage. But in all the tests I've run the unit with lower mass always ends up moving backwards relative to the one with higher mass. The difference or ratio seems to help determine how rapidly one can force the other back.
Have you tried given the horse a separate armour rating {stat_sec_armour} .
As I understand it , it wouldn't factor into actual defense rating {C/A mentioned it wasn't use for normal cavalry I think} , but might effect charge as it now seems to function .
If I am correct in my supposition , then you could use that as a claytons charge value {the charge value you have when you don't have a charge value ;p} and match actual charge performance to what the "official" charge stat suggests .
If ;p
This might have been an appropriate theory if the units wee real soldiers. However, RL physics don't really apply in a game world, no?Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Celt