Research on battle map - post test results here

Moderator edit: in the (perhaps temporary) absence of a Ludus Magna for M2TW, let's use this thread to post the results of all custom battle tests about units.

If you are not posting test results, please keep any commentary or questions to a minimum. This is not a thread to debate or to report on your solo games - it's for research results.

If you do research on battles and want to start your own thread for some reason, that's ok. But let's sticky this thread for those who want to use it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I see so much speculation on these forums, so many small grievances. I think it's time to test the game. Instead of complaining about game mechanics let's try to figure out how they work.

First test: AI passive bug.

I think this one doesn't really exist, or it's a lot smaller then we think. It seems to be some kind of decision the game makes. I'll explain.

Ran a test with one unit of spearman and one unit of knights (A.I. on attack, me on defend)

Faced my spears towards the cavalry and stood still ("braced"). The enemy cavalry approached me from the front and halted about 40 yards out. They wouldn't move at all - until I decided to move my spears forward. The A.I charged and slaughtered my spears. It waited for a chance to strike - when the spears are moving they aren't bracing and when they aren't braced they don't seem to receive any kind of defensive bonus.

Repeated the test, but now turned the spears 180 degrees. Again the A.I. waited for this moment and struck home.

The confusing part of this routine is that the A.I. isn't predictable in this. Sometimes it waited for the right time, sometimes it just struck home. This could be indented, but it might be a small error.

Now, unit depth:

This time I used a unit of late era pikes vs english knights. First run I put the unit of pikes in deep formation (10 men front, 6 deep). The A.I. charged into the pikes (3 deep 13 wide), loosing their front horses, except the ones on the flanks. Those instantly killed my general and flanked my pikes on both sides. Killed approx half the knights, but lost all in the end.

Second test I put the pikes 3 deep, 20 wide. The A.I. charged directly into the pikes, loosing the front rank instantly. After a short melee, they pulled out in the following way:

edit: The picture didn't show correctly. The cavalry pulled out on a 45 degree angle (finding the flank of my pikes on the next charge)

After this they recharged and pulled out again. In the end I beat the cavalry unit but lost 35 pikemen.

I didn't test swordinfantry yet but I believe I would be able to conclude the following:

Deep formation might absorb a lot of the charge. Sacrifices about 10% of your men but force the A.I. in melee. I expect the cavalry to withdraw after a short time and recharge in.

A wide formation will probably get you killed since the A.I. has a larger "hit zone". It will simply hit more soldiers in your troop who will be instantly killed without killing anything. This sudden loss, loosing battle and being outnumbered will rout your soldiers before the momentum of the charge is zeroed.

Moving your troops and receiving a charge will hurt your force even more (Running towards horses that are charging you doesn't feel like a smart thing to do, so I like this feature)

Can someone confirm my tests?

-------------------------------------------

feel free to ad your tests here.

Great thread Kenchi... I'm still waiting for the local store to get the game (fogged in airplanes are currently my worst enemy) so I can't confirm anything you've tested. However, you can be sure as soon as I get it, I'll be spending most of the first month or so testing and retesting systematically. Would be great to see others take this approach!

Did the swordsmen test. It was as I expected

The A.I. behaved in a smart way. I put 3 units of armoured swords up vs 2 templar knights. the 3 swords were in a 10 rank deep formation, without spacing. Basicly it was a mass of soldiers of 18 wide, 10 deep.

The A.I. refused to charge this formation of men. I had to shuffle them around to get the A.I. to attack. This is not a bug, it's "smart" behaviour.

While not fully braced, the knights charged my soldiers. I lost most soldiers in the front rank (also because the A.I. didn't have much room to charge it wasn't at it's full potential). I was winning the melee and the A.I. pulled out. It again refused to charge back (my men were bracing). After some shuffling and exposing the A.I. recharged and beat my swords (there were 30 knights left in the last charge). Vs fresh full, deeply ranked, swords the knights couldn't win. vs fresh, 80% strength swords in a messed up formation the A.I. won easily while being heavily outnumbered.

Interesting - and a great improvement.

The passive AI bug definitely exists. Not only did CA announce that it existed before the game was even released (prompting the 0 day patch development), I have personally witnessed it several times. It is manifested by an attacking AI army marching up to your lines, then simply halting and doing nothing until you engage. This IS a bug, because theoretically you can sit there and do nothing and win by timer.

It's not engaging that triggers A.I. action. It is the movement of your troops. You could call it a bug and perhaps it wasn't intented to work like this but there is some benefit for the A.I. to behave like this (except when you work with timer).

I thought I read, somewhere, that the Passive AI bug actually occured mostly when you had superior missile units. Basically the AI would just stand there until your archers run out of ammo and then attack instead of attacking immediately or something like that.

I am disappointed that the so-called Zero Day patch won't be out for at least two weeks. While I appreciate that CA is trying to fix as many bugs as possible as quickly as possible, I would prefer they release the patch that fixes large issues like the Passive AI bug now and release additional patches later regarding newly discovered or more difficult problems.

Try to use this thread as a test thread - not a bug discussion

ps

I didn't have archer units so there goes your theory

The only flaw in this behavior is with archers. Cause if u put your archers behind a good close formation of knights, the cavalry won't charge as u don't move.

So then, u have all the leasure to fire arrows at them and surely kill everyone. I have experienced it a few times in Azincourt.

Passive AI:
not exactly testing but i used this tactic in the campaign like almost every battle:

example of army composition:
ai: 1 or 2 missile units on the 1st line, 2 or 3 spear or militia in the 2nd line, 1 or 2 cav in the 3rd line (typical rebel army)

me: 2 heavy cav and a generals bodyguard (sometimes i bring other troops, even archers, but making sure none of those actually touch an enemy)

situation: i'm the attacking force, or the enemy is sallying, and i let them deploy outside the gates first

tactic:
Rush my cav to the enemy archers, on a ratio 1 to 1, in the standard ai army formation i can charge those archers full frontal. The archers always start running behind their infantry too late so i catch them just before the infantry and mow them down, making sure no single horse touches the infantry (distance can be as close as 1 feet, as long as my cav don't engage them). The ai infantry just stands there and does nothing, watching their archers get chopped up.
Then i pull back a little and send each cav around either side until they're positioned behind the enemy general or his cavalry, still no reaction from the ai (my bodyguard unit still is in front of the enemy army, maybe that's why they don't react to the cav going behind their backs, althoug at least the ai army's 3rd line, the cav, should start to face me).
I charge my cav home, slaughtering the enemy cav from the rear since they didn't face me. Sometimes the infantry now reacts, but not always, after which i pull back, line up a charge and hit the infantry in the back.

This tactic works _every_ time in my campaign battles, and feels kinda cheesy, so i eventually stopped exploiting the passive ai.
The rushing the front line archers works every time , and the rest of the army will idly stand by as long as no units engage anything but the 1st row of archers.

The ai clearly also fails to react when you move horses or horse archers behind his lines, except if it has ha's itself, which it starts using right after you start the battle, so i guess that breaks the passive ai routine for the whole army cause it's already in skirmish mode or something i guess.

In the interest of finding out about the anti-cav ability of my Danish units I decided to run some tests. I have posted the results here because they show off some odd behaviour on the part of the AI.

I ran a bunch of custom battles, in each case I was the attacker with the computer 'defending' settings of Large units/Very hard/Grassy plain. I used 1 unit if English Knights to charge the single infantry unit. I formed the cav into a 3 deep formation and single clicked on the target charging it directly from the front, after the charge was completed (this is not so easy to tell and I left the cav in longer if they were not getting killed) I withdrew them, rinsed and repeated until 1 unit routs. The units had no upgrades.

1st up
Danish Obudshaer. These have long halberds and formed a spear wall 3 men deep.
Results: Obudshaers routed after 3rd charge with 20 men remaining, 11 English knights remaining.

2nd
Danish Sword staff militia. These guys look pretty much like the Obudshaers, they also have heavy armour, long pikes and form a spear wall.
Result: Sword staff militia routed after 3rd charge with 22 men left, 15 English knights survived.


3rd
Danish Chivalric Knights. Unlike the defensive spear wall types the knights counter charged the horses...
Result: Chivalric knights routed inside 2 seconds with only 9 men remaining, 44 English knights survived.

This picture is repeated with the Norse axemen and Dismounted Huscarls as well (and presumably other non-spear infantry)

4th
Venetian Armoured Sergeants. I decided to skip the spear militia and try these instead (the Danish get axemen instead of these guys). These decided to form up into a schiltrom, I played nice and let them finish.
Result: Armoured Sergeants routed after second charge 7 sergeants remaining, 54 English Knights survived.

Not sure how good the schiltrom is supposed to be but surely it should be better than this.

5th
Spanish Terico pikemen. These long pikemen for a narrow spear wall formation 8 deep, very like the phalanxes from RTW.
Results: English Knights routed after 4th charge with 1 man remaining, 47 Terico pikemen survived.

The deep formation of the Terico pikes looked to be key, the impact of the horses charge on the formation was minimal whereas practically all of the first rank of chargers died instantly.

In his thread on "mechanics unite", beefeater raised some issues about researching battle mechanics which I am moving here:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by beefeater

Cavalry charges

From the forums it seems that quite a number of us have this problem. Cavalry are, apparently, well placed to charge. When the order is issued to do so (seemingly regardless of whether one single- or double- clicks on their victims), they either lower lances and then raise them again at the very last moment, robbing the charge of its impact, or they simply charge in with swords drawn. This latter looks quite impressive but again, you lose the shock factor of a heavy cavalry charge.

Since the AI seems quite capable of charging properly, this is either a player-specific bug or, more likely, I am doing something wrong. I'll start testing tonight to see if I can find what causes this but in the meantime, has anyone identified the factors affecting whether or not a cavalry charge is properly made (note I'm not asking about how it affects its target, merely about how to get them to couch lances and have a go). Some ideas I had were: distance you start the charge from, single/double clicking on target, whether or not the cavalry are in clear formation before the charge, the angle of the charge, and the speed they're moving just before impact.

Battle Morale

Back in MTW you could increase the chance of routing an enemy line, if their morale was weak AND if they were engaged in combat, by running cavalry around behind them. VI and BI made clear the factors affecting unit morale on the tooltip (I liked this feature, a lot). What do we know about factors that scare the troops, and what have we discerned from testing?

---

And Spendius replies:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Spendius

Cavalry charges:

I tried in skirmish on an open plain, 1 heavy knight vs 1 archers:

- double clicking causes the 'sword charge'
- single clicking makes the knights walk towards target, then trotting, then finally galloping while lowering the lance. Looks awesome. however, as soon as the first 2 / 3 knights make it (sending archers flying), the rest of them stop/raise lance, then goes to normal melee without charge.
This is caused, I think, by an arrow volley that kills/slows down the first rank of the knights, disrupting the formation. I had the same issue in triangle formation.
The same situation occurs after I try to disengage: just double clicking outside the melee make the knights disengage but end up not facing the enemy: turning back to initiate a new charge leaves a bad formation.

I'll have to try again with 1 knights vs 1 peasants.

I want to find a workaround to use knights properly, at least on open field for charging the back of a melee, but this needs to be fixed (they should not stop because one of them gets engaged)

---

ObsOt has done some tests on which are the best infantry here:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=72302

And there is a nice test (with screenshots) of gendarmes vs spears by RabidGibbon here:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...76&postcount=9

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kenchi_Sulla

I didn't have archer units so there goes your theory

---

The AI does indeed become passive when facing archer superiority.
In one battle test, I charged and killed AI unprotected crossbow units and after that the AI was clueless. With superior infantry and with many good cav, it decided to do nothing. I expected it to attack my infantry, which it would surely have defeated and it had plenty of cav to rear my engaged units and cover my own cav. Even when I marched up nose to nose with them they did nothing

......Orda

Ya, I ran a series of tests on Obudshaers. Obudshaers for anyone who hasn't looked at the Danish troop list are heavy armored halberd troops capable of forming a spear wall.

For the sake of space I won't recount the result of each battle unit strength versus unit strength.

Suffice to say the majority of the highend dismounted knights are relatively similiar in form and function with a point here or there the differerence statistically.

On the largest unit size, I ran 10 battles per unit, 5 battles receiving a charge and 10 battles "attempting" to charge.

Thus far I have tested against.

Dismounted Fuedal, Chivalric, Imperial and Normal Knights.

These knights are all very similiar in that they are heavily armored with a shield and have a decent attack rating.


Dismounted Gothic Knights, Highland Nobles.

These are heavy two-handed sword infantry, with moderate defence and slightly higher attack values than the previously mentioned knights.

Scottish Noble Pikemen.

Top of the line pike formation.

Finally Varangian Guard.

The most impressive "offensive" infantry unit I have seen statistically.


Universal to ALL of these tests was the Obudshaers unimpressive charging, despite it being higher than nearly every unit it faced. In fact, so unimpressive is the charge, that if they are charging into a unit charging back at them, they take devastating losses, on the order of 30+%.

Also universal to all of these tests, was the Obudshaers general worthlessness in recieving charges if they were not in spear wall formation. If they simply receive a charge they suffer from about 5-20% casualties instantly depending on who just charged them.

Finally, what happens after the charge is rather remarkable.

After a brief skirmish between the units the Obudshaers establish a buffer zone. Essentially this buffer zone is a killing zone. They out-reach ALL of the listed units with the exceptions of the pikemen, and the units they are putting at arms length are mercilessly butchered.

In the case of the pikemen, they are most effective if they are in a long thin formation, the default formation serves the purpose. They wrap around the sides and begin to do their damage. The pikes actually were the least effective unit, losing all 10 battles without inflicting more than 30% casualties total.

The most effective unit's were the Dismounted knights (Chivalric etc) with high defensive skills. They seemed to be able to hold on better and inflict sustained casualties throughout the fight. The Obudshaers generally broke them with 30-40 men left.

Finally the Varangian Guard. They inflict heavy casualties in the initial scuffle. They quite quickly reduced Obudshaer numbers to 50-60%, then the buffer was established and the fight ended with the Obudshaers still around 50-60% strength.

Shockingly dismounted gothic knights were completely ineffectual and got torn apart.

My final tests were Heavy Jannisary against Obudshaer. They are similiar units. The Jannisary with slightly superior statistics and costing 840 florins to the Obudshaers 720. The Jannisary would break the Obudshaer in a close fought battle. Jannisary won each battle with 20-30% strength remaining. Neither unit was particularily effective in charging.

In the end, the margine of victory depended entirely on if the Obudshaer unit charged or received a charge. As a rule, once the enemy forces that had penetrated their formation in the charge were mopped up, they stopped taking casualties and it was not unusual to see the Obudshaers catch the other unit at 70~ men, and then suffer 5 or 10 more casualties the rest of the way.

PaulTa has done some test on the effectiveness of different missiles:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=72510

I have being doing a variety of tests on many battle map parts, this is one of those test regarding cavalry charges on different formation settings.

I won't bother giving any boring numbers but if anyone wants them I have them in paper.

First I tested the best formation for charging with me has cavalry against melee units.
Charging in loose formation will always result in a heavy defeat has it should.
Charging in wedge results in an even bigger defeat, Maybe I just can't figure out how to make the most of this, but I see no real advantage for charging in wedge. my Cavalry always stops right after impact and kill very few enemies in the charge.
Clicking on the rear of the unit and pressing the R button results in defeat has should because the charge bonus doesnt count.
Tight formation with 2,3,4 ranks seems to make very good charges against a dense enemy. Killing plenty on impact than loosing men gradually in melee.

I tried this In SP and MP, and found out that it was more beneficial for me to charge against very ranked or dense troops, than against the looser , or rearranged formations.

Why because (ill show this more ahead in the defensive tests) The cavalry charge is mor effective on an man-to-man impact in a certain tight area.
If you charge against a very desorderly formation or loose formation, you might give the enemy moral damage but the charge is always less effective leaving many more men to fight back against. Soon after reaching the 1st or 2nd man the charge seems to break off, therefore killing less.

Instead of choosing the looser or disorderly blobs that I used too, (thinking that they would be the logical choice since being in loose would let my cavalry charge better through the ranks.) I started Charging against the neater and tighter formation of men Resulting in much better kills. It also seems more benificial to withdraw your cav from melee losing some in the process and charging again. Charges are very damaging too neat formations.
AI seems to do this well.In MP I even started to disengage and give the enemy unit enough time to organize itself so I could get a more effective charge.

Receiving Charges.
After scratching my head trying to figure out why my 580 gold Spearmen where always loosing against French 370 gold Merchant cavalry. I went testing.

I tried to put hem in very Deep ranks like squares 6,4 ranks, hold ,Schiltrom and they always lost against the merchant cavalry, General would mostly always die in the first charge too.

Then I tried Crazy formations like 2 men streched out lines, marching columns and I would still loose but with better kills, and once or twice win!!!
Then I changed too the loose formations And Started Wining!!! like 3 deep loose, 2 deep loose formation.
This seems very contrary too popular belief but works very well.

What seems to happen is that the cavalry focusses on one point of impact, it cant spread out to target man-on-man and so kill way less men int the initial charge resulting on more to fight against in melee , something it isnt good at, and so loses.

Well thats all on cavalry charges.
MY impression on charges has left me thinking that they lose charging power
right after making contact so putting a very long line of peasants in loose formation with some heavy spears a bit behind is killer against them.

So instead of making very deep ranks of melee troops to better receive a cavalry charge change to longer loose formation and you will start getting better results.

Edit: Forgot to say take your foot troops out of guard mode in those looser formations so they close in on the cavalry after recieving the charge.
Ho and this doesnt apply to pike formations, I am happy with my pike men in deep ranks and in pike formation they will loose lots on an head charge but kill plenty too. and don't lose as much has spears, must make more tests with pikes though I admit its just normal battle conclusions with pikes and not battery tests.

I have also being making some tests on fighting in loose formation, melee against melee, and have an initial impression that it can be beneficial for the player to fight this way in some cases.

I am not trying to make any crazy battle stratergies and am not a mad pro-loose guy :dizzy2: but am rather trying to make the most out of my men in different situations, just thought you should know.:beam:

1-1 encounters always, always seem to benefit the loose formation. You don't seems to get much of a moral penalty. for fighting this way and get the extra flanking bonus and when fighting general units get to kill the general very early on, even if you don't want to change your line to loose, spread it out more so you wrap around the enemy unit, Moral penalty seems very low on this.
I have already mentioned the cavalry problems against loose, this I am always doing now, it is always better to change to loose against cavalry.

In bigger unit encounters I still cant say if its better or not.
I have tried it out in SP custom battles, historical battles (4 times) and in MP (3 times) and don't seems to get more or less of an advantage or disadvantage unless fighting against heavy cavalry armies or heavy archer armies.
In any case I think a player should be getting more of an moral penalty than what we are getting now. It doesnt seem natural for me to win the agincourt historical battle twice after changing my whole army to loose (minus the archers, only when needed to fight hand to hand) with very similar end results has in winning the "normal way" with the same tactics.

RomoR, those results sound...discouraging. If loose formation is better against charges, archers, and infantry, then why go tight formation at all? I sure hope this isn't a fundamental game mess up and I'm not seeing something here.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RomoR

1-1 encounters always, always seem to benefit the loose formation. You don't seems to get much of a moral penalty. for fighting this way and get the extra flanking bonus and when fighting general units get to kill the general very early on, even if you don't want to change your line to loose, spread it out more so you wrap around the enemy unit, Moral penalty seems very low on this.
I have already mentioned the cavalry problems against loose, this I am always doing now, it is always better to change to loose against cavalry.

---

Geez, this sounds like a complete and total game-buster, an absolute abandonment of any semblance of realistic combat at the tactical level :scared: .

I won't have M2TW myself until near the end of the month so I can't verify these results. However, I wish somebody would take a good look. I'm not doubting RomoR, but it would still be nice to see further investigation of this problem. If this turns out to be as bad as RomoR indicates, then this is a SERIOUS problem and should be moved up to #1 on the fix-it list.

After doing alot of testing to try and figure out if horse armor was giving later units the upper hand or if the 2 handed lance was doing something.

Going on 10 rounds each, all on grassy plains. I used demi lancers as the target, having neither armored horse and using 2 handed lances/no shield. I was on huge unit scaling. During this I found some interesting bugs. First of all the AI has been given way to much credit in its ability to charge its cavalry. Flat out the ai pretty much sucks at charging anything but infantry. They also have a bug of reforming their lines right before the charge. They usually bunch up in a ball, almost as if their turning their formation on its tail.

Out of 10 rounds of me commanding the Templar's vs the Demi Lancers, the Demi lancer won 0 of them. There were cases where the Demi Lancers reduced the Templar's numbers to 20 or a little below, but on average the Templar's were only reduced to around 40.

Playing the demi lancers myself vs templar's, the Demi Lancers won 3 rounds. Out of those 3 they were always left with under 20. In all 3 cases the Demi Lancers had the more momentous charge.

Out of 10 rounds of me commanding Lancers vs Demi Lancers. The Demi Lancers won 0 rounds. The Lancers walked away with exception of 1 time with over 60 men still remaining.

Playing the Demi Lancers vs Lancers. The Demi Lancers won 0 rounds. Though the lancers were on average at 40 men. There were a few rounds were they did get reduced to 20 though, but again the Demi Lancers had the more momentous charge.

Now I also did 10/10 rounds of Gothic Knights vs Templar Knights. Each and every time the Gothic Knights won, regardless of who commanded. Each and every time they walked away with less then 50% casualties. :sweatdrop:

I think I can say that the 2 handed lances arent playing a factor in the incredible results of the Later fully armored cavalry. Without having access to the export_unit file, and baring that there could be new hidden stats. I'd have to say that armor on horses seems to be very important in M2TW.

I did some testing on the best formation for infantry to receive a cavalry charge.


I used a single unit of Berber spearmen (75) to receive the charge, the AI had control of a unit of mailed knights (40). I tried 4 formations for the spearmen

1. Tight 4 rank formation so the width of the spearmen front rank was similar to the width of the cavalry's front rank.
   
2. Loose 4 rank formation.
   
3. Schiltron.
   
4. Tight 4 column (file?) formation (19 ranks), so the front rank was much narrower than the cavalry's front rank.

My impressions from looking at what happens during the cavalry charge: The majority of casualties inflicted by the cavalry happen during the charge. During the charge, it looks like every target unit inside a small radius around each cavalry gets attacked with the charge attack value, i.e. they have a kind of 'killing zone' that knocks out any infantry within a certain range of a knight, so one knight can kill many infantry pretty much instantaneously during a charge.

Results: In all cases, the knights killed most of the spearmen and routed the rest. I did 5 test runs for each case, and the spearmen were never in guard mode so as many as possible would engage in combat:

1. 50-60 spearmen killed in the initial charge. The remaining spearmen killed ~14 knights before being routed.
   
2. 30-40 spearmen killed in the initial charge. The remaining spearmen killed ~25 knights before being routed. In one case, the knights pulled out and re-charged - in this case the spearmen killed 29 knights.
   
3. 40-50 spearmen killed in initial charge. The remaining spearmen killed ~28 knights before being routed. There was quite a large spread in the number of knights killed each test - I did 8 tests for this case, the results were 6,20,23,29,31,32,34,34. This was due to a large spread in the number of spearmen killed during the charge.
   
4. 20-30 spearmen killed in the initial charge. The remaining spearmen killed ~30 knights before being routed, and in 4 out of 5 cases, forced the knights to withdraw and re-charge.

These results make sense when you think about my impressions of the charge effect above - the more closely packed the infantry are, the more casualties they'll take during the charge. The case where the spearmen's front rank is the same width as the attacking cavalry's is the worst case, and the cavalry will inflict the most possible kills during this charge.

It looks like the best way to receive a cavalry charge is with as few ranks as possible (or a schiltron), so the impact of the charge can be taken with the smallest number of spearmen possible inside the 'killing zone' of the cavalry.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by grinningman

I did some testing on the best formation for infantry to receive a cavalry charge.

---

Thanks for doing this. Your results are definitely food for thought.

[quote[I used a single unit of Berber spearmen (75) to receive the charge, the AI had control of a unit of mailed knights (40). I tried 4 formations for the spearmen[/quote]

Did you do anything with the spearmen after the knights made contact? Specifically, did you tighten the loose formation back up to try to engulf the knights in melee from all sides? I'd really hate it if this ends up proving to be the best cav defense tactic, but I'm worried. Loose infantry formations should not stop a charging cav unit in good formation--the cav should go right on through. But if the loose formation does stop the cav, preserves the most infantrymen from destruction, and allows the dispersed troops out beyond the cav's flanks to wrap in after the impact, then there's a serious realism problem.

Quote:

---

These results make sense when you think about my impressions of the charge effect above - the more closely packed the infantry are, the more casualties they'll take during the charge. The case where the spearmen's front rank is the same width as the attacking cavalry's is the worst case, and the cavalry will inflict the most possible kills during this charge.

---

IMHO, this doesn't make sense. Infantry in good formation historically was able to withstand cav charges fairly easily and with little damage. As long as the infantry's discipline held, and their ranks stayed tight while presenting the horses with a mass of long pointy things, the cav would bounce off or break up and go around them, from Hastings to Waterloo. So you'd think a unit of spearmen in good formation, with a frontage at least equal to the cav's, would be in good shape. But your results show this is the worst possible option. Hmmmm.....

OK, you can make the case that the cav in this situation has a greater reach due to its lances being longer than the spears. Also, cheap spearmen's light shields ain't much good against anything, anyway, especially not a lance with cav momentum behind it. So maybe cheap spearmen are just doomed from the start. But what about other situations, such as better infantry defense and/or longer reach?

Is there any unit in M2TW that can form a shield wall formation like in BI? If so, does a shield wall help the infantry withstand a charge better, even if the infantrymen have swords/axes instead of spears?

And what about pikes? Do pikes (even unarmored) do a better job against cav than spears?

And finally, does cav treat melee infantry differently than missle infantry? I've heard that missile infantry won't stop charging cav--the cav just runs through them. Is that true?

Thanks in advance.

Quote:

---

Did you do anything with the spearmen after the knights made contact? Specifically, did you tighten the loose formation back up to try to engulf the knights in melee from all sides?

---

No I didn't do anything in any of the test cases. Most of the spearmen in the loose formation ended up joining in the combat without having to do this (as long as guard mode wasn't set).

I should add that this was on very hard difficulty, with no upgrades.

Quote:

---

IMHO, this doesn't make sense. Infantry in good formation historically was able to withstand cav charges fairly easily and with little damage.

---

I meant it made sense given my description of how the cavalry do damage during a charge (i.e. the game mechanics) not compared to what would happen in real life. I have no idea what happens in real life :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by grinningman

I meant it made sense given my description of how the cavalry do damage during a charge (i.e. the game mechanics) not compared to what would happen in real life. I have no idea what happens in real life :)

---

Interesting results, thanks. But very disappointing from a historical realism point of view. In real life, a thin column (essentially a march column) would be massacred by charging cavalry. :no:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by grinningman

I meant it made sense given my description of how the cavalry do damage during a charge (i.e. the game mechanics)

---

Yes, it certainly does. Sorry for the misunderstanding :).

The basic finding, at least in this unit match-up, is that the number of infantrymen killed by a charge is directly proportional to the number of men in the path of the charge. If this is just due to the cav having longer reach and the basic spearmen having little in the way of defense, then that's cool. The result you got is what should happen if that's the case. OTOH, if the cav can do this to all types of infantry--IOW, that charging cav is surrounded by an invincible "disintegration field", then there's a big problem. That's why I'm curious as to whether or not different infantry weapon lengths and defense values (armor and formation) make any difference.

It might end up that basic spearmen do OK resisting frontal charges by light cav, but are hopeless against heavy cav. However, if better infantry can resist frontal charges by heavy cav, then I'd be happy. This still, OTOH, leaves the weaker infantry with the knowledge that they can reduce their casualties to the charge by minimizing the number of troops in its path, either by adopting a smaller frontage or going to loose formation. And that's still a problem, IMHO.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bullethead

IMHO, this doesn't make sense. Infantry in good formation historically was able to withstand cav charges fairly easily and with little damage. As long as the infantry's discipline held, and their ranks stayed tight while presenting the horses with a mass of long pointy things, the cav would bounce off or break up and go around them, from Hastings to Waterloo. So you'd think a unit of spearmen in good formation, with a frontage at least equal to the cav's, would be in good shape. But your results show this is the worst possible option. Hmmmm.....

OK, you can make the case that the cav in this situation has a greater reach due to its lances being longer than the spears. Also, cheap spearmen's light shields ain't much good against anything, anyway, especially not a lance with cav momentum behind it. So maybe cheap spearmen are just doomed from the start. But what about other situations, such as better infantry defense and/or longer reach?

Is there any unit in M2TW that can form a shield wall formation like in BI? If so, does a shield wall help the infantry withstand a charge better, even if the infantrymen have swords/axes instead of spears?

And what about pikes? Do pikes (even unarmored) do a better job against cav than spears?

And finally, does cav treat melee infantry differently than missle infantry? I've heard that missile infantry won't stop charging cav--the cav just runs through them. Is that true?

---

A shieldwall will stop anything dead in it's tracks. With the shield wall you have each man being supported by 2 others from behind. So the impact of the charge is spread to 15+ people, cavalry can't push that amount of weight out of the way. The lance may go through a cheap but the charge would still be stoped cold and more then likely ridders would have been tossed into the shieldwall formation from inertia.

But sadly there are no units in the game capable of forming a shield wall. Cheap spearmen are just there to absorb a charge if that's all you have. They will be massacred by any heavy cav charge. Now if you happen to have those cheap spearmen in thin ranks, 4 or lower deep, they will be completely destroyed in a charge and the following seconds. That is part of the reason cavalry just murder the missile troops, their in such thin ranks.

But also in the game the cavalry are very weak. Once their stoped they will be murdered by even peasants.

Later infantry can decimate heavy cavalry though. Any pike unit thats braced and is charge will skewer 50%+ of the heavy cavalry in a few seconds of a charge. Halberdiers that brace will have the same results. Across the board even militia late units that can brace will decimate cavalry as long as their formations are unbroken.

The new charges in this game are interesting. But keep in mind anyone reading this who likes the english, the billmen are buged against cavalry and arent a good judge of heavy infantry resisting a charge. It has truly added more depth and danger to battles.

After reading all the diagnostics done by the various members, I am concluding that the patch is necessary and that even if we all adapt to the various methods, the results are random and cannot be trusted in each situation. Bring on the patch.......

I did some more testing using the Danish Obudshaer (these are armour-piercing, can form a spear wall and have 'very longs spears') vs Mailed Knights.

I didn't record any numbers this time, but the Obudshaer do a lot better against the knights. It's hard to make any definite conclusions because it was difficult to make the AI knights charge. It looks like a spear wall is best for receiving a charge (it didn't seem to matter whether guard mode was on or not). Once in combat, they seem just as effective with or without the shield wall set. Again it looked like guard mode should be avoided, as fewer infantry participate in combat when it's set.

I can also confirm what other people have said - there is definitely a bug with Dismounted English footknights. Once they are in combat, the only guy who kills anything is the captain, who has a different model (an armoured guy holding a sword) to the rest of the unit. So it does look like there is something wrong with the English footknight model animation which means that they never hit anything in combat. (Note they still kill the enemy during a charge).

I think I'll wait until after the patch to do any more testing.

I'm glad someone else made some tests on Cavalry charges. I was Starting to think that Amazon had sent me a different version of the game:beam: .
because no body else seems to be getting the same results has me, or didn't really care.

I can see that the results above confirm with my results.
The crazier loose formations, (try 2 line loose, its better than 4 line) and marching ones actually are more benificial against a CAvalry charge than the more popular tight deep ranked formations.

I have made these test with 5 different spear units (not pikes, those seem to work) ranging from very weak to very good and all seem to indicate that loose is a better option.

Has stated earlier I just started playing most battle in loose formation for this, but it really takes away from game immersion since everything that history tells us seems contrary this.

On a similar note my Dismounted Portuguese knights also seem rather pants for there stats, all my units get better kills than them, AND I mostly use these guys has flankers!!!

I will like to mention that the only reason I started making more serious tests arose after a custom 1-1 unit test of merchant cavalry 380 gold( cant get much lighter than that I think) against some good muslim spear unit (590-or 560 gold lamasomething) and in ALL 6 tests (normal deep ranks and schiltrom) it lost.

Now why is a less cost efficient unit wining against an "anti-cavalry" unit thats much more expensive??!!

Why should I Ever choose a spear unit over a cavalry unit if its cheaper and does a better job in battle? (excluding sieges and bridge battles)

Maybe it's a good thing that it's so difficult to pull off a cavalry charge, otherwise everyone would be complaining about how broken they are ~;p

It seems that the only units that won't take heavy casualties from a knight charge are ones that 'can form a spear wall' - usually pike, voulge or halberd units. Some factions don't have access to any of those units (like the Moors, my favourite from MTW, the English and the Russians), so it will be trickier for them to deal with cavalry.

It would be nice if standard spearmen could stand up to a frontal cavalry charge a bit better. It would also be nice if the standard spearmen formation (tight with ~4 ranks) wasn't the worst formation for taking a cavalry charge.

Well, I've finally got M2TW so can test some of this myself....

Test
Me: 1 unit of Spanish Spear Militia:

• 76 men including general
• cannot form spear wall
• can form schiltrom
• has "bonus vs. cav".

vs.

AI: 1 unit of English Hobilars: 41 men including general

Using the flat grass map. Units appear directly facing each other.

AI hobilars always moved toward spears to attack them. Their procedure was to walk until about 100 yards away, then trot until about 50 yards away, and finally gallop the remaining distance. Apparently the AI uses the single right-click to charge :). After charging, the hobilars would stay in melee until they'd taken about 50% losses, at which point they'd withdraw about 100 yards, reform, and charge again.

I did various things with the spearmen:

1. Spears stand to receive charge in default starting formation.
On contact, the spears lose about 50% of their numbers and the hobilars about 25%. In the ensuing melee, the spears usually take minor losses and take out another 25% of the hobilars, which then rout.

2. Spears moving with flank to oncoming charge
The charge instantly destroys the spears, hobilars take minimal losses

3. Spears walking forward toward charge
This was caused by a single right-click on the hobilars, hoping the spears would charge the oncoming cav. Didn't work--they kept on walking. On contact, the spears lose about 50%, hobilars take no damage. In the melee, both sides take about equal numbers of losses until both are about 25% remaining. Eventually, the hobilars usually will withdraw, reform, and charge again, finishing off the spears, but very few hobilars will survive.

4. Spears charge the charging cav
The spears usually take about 75-80% losses on contact and route instantly, doing very little damage to the hobilars (about 10%).

5. Spears receive charge in shiltrom formation
Spears lose about 50% on contact, hobilars lose about 10%. The melee lasts until the hobilars are down to 50% left, by which time there are about 25% spearmen left. Then the hobilars withdraw, both sides reform, and the hobilars charge again, wiping out the spearmen with little or no loss.

6. Spears in 2-rank loose formation
The hobilars advance at a walk as usual toward the center of the spear line. However, when they get to the distance at which they usually start to trot, they instead come to a complete stop and stand there in a disordered blob for about 15 seconds. Then the hobilars reform into a square formation facing the spears at 100 yards range, and stand there forever without charging. So I eventually charged them with the spears, still in the loose 2-rank formation. The spears closed in to envelop the hobilars on both flanks, who just kept standing there while the spears moved in. In both the charge and the ensuing melee, a few more spearmen died than hobilars, but this meant that the hobilars were down to about 50% while the spearmen were still at 66%. The hobilars withdrew and both sides reformed, but the hobilars did so quicker and returned while the spearmen were still milling around. The spearmen were in 2 main blobs separated by the heap of corpses, and the hobilars ran mostly into the gap between them. Again, numerical losses were about equal, resulting in the hobilars routing when they reached 25% remaining, while the spearmen still had 50% remaining.

Observations

1. It seems much better for spearmen to be standing still than moving when the cav hits. That's realistic ~:thumb:

2. The shiltrom, supposedly a special anti-cav formation, is actually worse for the spearmen than remaining in their default formation :scared:

3. Putting spearmen in a 2-rank loose formation makes them completely proof against charges by hobilars because the cav just stops instead of charging. Once stopped, the spears can charge and see off the cav with the lightest losses of any situation. This is a bug :furious3:

Some nice tests by CaptainSolo showing that experience raises archers' kill rates:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...36&postcount=1

nice test

I have also noticed that the cav remained immobile after charging the flank of a loose formation of archers. It did not move anymore (seemingly it was not fighting either) despite my attempts to free it, and I got control of it again only when it got the charge of two enemy cavalries. After that it was, obviously, too late.

I think it is the same bug

Considerably skewed results of Peasants fighting Militia units and Sergeant Spearmen.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=73378

Peasants are winning where they should get pasted. Can't determine why this is happening, but it really shouldn't be happening.

If it is like this with Peasants vs Militia, I don't even want to know what is going on higher up. I'm pretty certain that the stats provided to us tell less of a tale than they should really.

I did a few more tests with spearmen. This time I faced off French and Spanish spear militias with identical stats across the board--the only apparent difference was the color of their tunics. But just to be safe, I switched roles between the 2 sides; this made no difference in the outcomes. The results are pretty interesting...

1. Charging vs. Stationary
This test consisted of one unit standing still and the other charging it directly from the front, with both in their default formations. The very interesting thing about this test is that the stationary unit ALWAYS won, by a fairly substantial margin. Usually, the losing unit routed with about 25% troops remaining, and the victor had about 35-45% remaining. This was caused by the attackers taking significantly more casualties on the initial impact than the defenders and thus having a head start on reaching rout-level casualties, because casuaties in the ensuing melee were about equal.

This raises the question, what happened to the charge bonus? You'd think that on impact, with defense ratings being the same, the charging unit would do more damage thanks to a higher effective attack rating. But in fact the opposite occurs, although there's nothing that says the defenders get a bonus.

I'm beginning to think that, at least for spearmen, the "charge bonus" is somehow used against itself due to a bug. Maybe the "bonus vs. cavalry", too. Perhaps they're actually added to the defender's attack rating instead of the attacker's. But whatever the problem is, it's consistent across spearmen attacking ANYTHING, both in tests and in battles. If you want to destroy a spear unit, have it charge something, even the rear of an occupied unit, especially cavalry. Many spearmen drop dead on contact, even when they should have the advantage.

But maybe this is just me. Before we add this to the bug list, maybe one of you all will test this yourself :).

The Uselessness of the Schiltrom Formation
All I can say is, NEVER use this formation under ANY circumstances. The results are ALWAYS worse for the spearmen, whatever they're fighting, than if they'd been in their default formation (not to mention loose formation).

In this test, I had 1 unit of spearmen in the schiltrom formation and the other charged in its default formation. In contrast to the results above, in this case, the attacker ALWAYS won. Handily. The attackers would take very little damage on impact compared to charging a default formation, and would then just butcher the defenders. The exchange rate was usually around 2:1 or more in favor of the attackers in the ensuing melee. In addition, the defenders would stay and fight until down to just 2 or 3 men before routing, leaving about 50% of the victorious attackers. But this all happened very quickly, so that it takes less time for the schiltrom to be totally wiped out than it does for defenders in default formation to see off their attackers.

This result matches up with my test in the previous post where cav had much less trouble with the schiltrom than with the default formation of spears. I'm therefore convinced that this is a bug. The schiltrom formation, supposedly a special thing for enhancing defence, instead assures the quick destruction of the unit while inflicting fewer casualties on the attacker. But again, I'd like somebody else to duplicate my findings before adding this to the bug list.

From watching the combat up close, I think I know what the problem is. The spearmen in the schiltrom just stand there facing outboard, only attack enemies directly in front of them, and those on the inside don't move forward to fill gaps in the outer ring. The attacking unit is usually bunched on around 1/2 of the schiltrom circle, and the defenders on the far side don't move to help the engaged side. Because the attackers in contact with the defenders form a arc with a larger radius, there can be more attackers engaged than defenders, so more defenders die. When defenders die, gaps open in their outer layer, into which attackers move, further increasing their superiority in numbers engaged, plus hitting some defenders in the flank now. Once the attackers have eaten away their side of the schiltrom, they start hitting the other side's defenders in the back. Of these, only a few turn around to fight, while the rest keep facing nobody.

Anyway, I'll say it again. Don't EVER use the schiltrom!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bullethead

IAnyway, I'll say it again. Don't EVER use the schiltrom!

---

Yeah In all my tests Schiltrom was at the max, just equal to a normal tight formation, but mostly worst.

You know whats worst than Schiltrom, Wedge it's in a whole new league.
Use it if you really want to kill your general.

You do know that the Schiltrom is for refusing cavalry...

Try to use it against cavalry.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kraxis

You do know that the Schiltrom is for refusing cavalry... Try to use it against cavalry.

---

I did, in my 1st series of tests with hobilars vs. spearmen. The results were completely consistent with my 2nd series of tests, when it was spear vs. spear. In both cases, the unit attacking the schiltrom takes much lower losses on initial contact than if it had hit spearmen in default formation, and then quickly butchers the schiltrom spearmen to a lower level of destruction than the same attacker would do to vs. a default spear formation. IOW, the schiltrom enhances spearman vulnerabilty, not defense, and it does so vs. both infantry and cav.

Not related to Schiltron, but I tried to observe some of my units that were "fighting to death", only to see them standing there getting killed, not fighting at all. Anybody noticed the same behaviour ?

I haven't really had that many of those situations, but I do know that when they are fighting to the death they do not move. Each man fights for himself. Also they tend to be a good deal more lethargic in combat, so perhaps that was it?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bullethead

I did, in my 1st series of tests with hobilars vs. spearmen. The results were completely consistent with my 2nd series of tests, when it was spear vs. spear. In both cases, the unit attacking the schiltrom takes much lower losses on initial contact than if it had hit spearmen in default formation, and then quickly butchers the schiltrom spearmen to a lower level of destruction than the same attacker would do to vs. a default spear formation. IOW, the schiltrom enhances spearman vulnerabilty, not defense, and it does so vs. both infantry and cav.

---

Well I didn't get much of chance to test it against infantry, but I can at least confirm that the schiltrom is useless against cavalry--I discovered this to my cost when assaulting a town. :shame:

It's not "research" but I found the schiltrom performed well to plug a bridge. I used stakes (backed by swordsmen) to funnell the exit to the bridge. To fill the gap on the road where you can't plant stakes, I placed 3 mercenary spearmen close together in schiltrom formation.

The Danes threw two near full stacks of good troops (mounted knights, dismounted FKs, those armoured pike-type militia etc) against that bridge and lost them all. By the end of the battle, I had lost only 2 spear units (had two spare).

Of course, the longbows helped. But still, I was impressed with the staying power of the schiltrom. They held up against both heavy cavalry and heavy infantry.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kraxis

You do know that the Schiltrom is for refusing cavalry...

Try to use it against cavalry.

---

I don’t think people here understand the word refuse. If you refuse the flank you fall back slightly, at an angle to the line (hopefully), in order to refuse the enemy *your* flank. Refusing something doesn’t mean killing something, it means denying something. Of course any curved formation is going to be bad for spears. A Schiltron is an excellent defensive formation because it has no flank or rear. A caveat is that I’ve never *seen* the formation before, just read the descriptions here.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vladimir

Of course any curved formation is going to be bad for spears. A Schiltron is an excellent defensive formation because it has no flank or rear. A caveat is that I’ve never *seen* the formation before, just read the descriptions here.

---

I think you've nailed part of the problem--there's a conflict between the general methods of M2TW's combat mechanics and the special needs of the schiltrom formation. the schiltrom obviously requires some special code to get the guys into the circle, but IMHO it also needs more special code to enable them to fight effectively in that circle.

In real life, the schiltrom was directly analogous to the Napoleanic square--an immobile, flankless porcupine for holding off the enemy, usually cavalry. Both worked because in real life horses would refuse to throw themsevles into all the pointy bits facing them. So the cav would stop and mill around the edges, reduced to slashing ineffectually with swords shorter than the spears they faced (for the schiltrom) or getting blown away by musketry from the inner ranks (the square). IOW, the protruding spears protected the schiltrom spearmen not only from the charge but from melee as well, but only if they stayed in their formation. Thus, they weren't going forward to poke the cav, and the cav wasn't able to approach within sword's reach, so that fights could go on indecisively for hours.

M2TW only partially models this. The schiltrom seems to do a fairly good job handling the charge part, with the cav stopping short and relatively few men on either side dying. But once the melee begins, the schiltrom is suicide. Instead of being kept at a distance, the cav is free to hack away at the spearmen, and because the spearmen are concerned only with maintaining their formation, the cav soon adds weight of numbers to its inherent stat advantages. And thus the schiltrom is quickly annihilated.

So, on the whole, the schiltrom has 2 of the 3 special code factors needed: it pretty well stops a charge, and the spearmen focus on staying in formation. However, the lack of the ability to stop melee attacks makes the schiltrom a death sentence for the spearmen unit. That, IMHO, needs to be fixed. Otherwise, the schiltrom is worse than useless.

It's interesting to compare the effects of the schiltrom vs. the spear wall (which I believe is a misnomer because "spear walls" can only be formed by pikemen, AFAIK). The "spear wall" does an excellent job of stopping both charges and melee attacks by cav. Horsemen remaining in front of the pikemen just stand there a hair's breadth from the points doing nothing but slowly side-stepping toward the pikemen's flank. When some cav do get around the flank and rear, pikemen there drop their pikes and use their swords, and do more than just hold their own against light cav. In fact, they do by far the most damage, because those in front keep the cav at a distance.

I did some experiments with the schiltrom and the results were mixed.

I had an entire army of feudal knights v armoured sgt's....similar levels of experience..

In some ways if the attacking cavalry have a heavy charge...and can disrupt the formation..they can inflict big loses of 60% almost ...very quickly. The AI did this a few times...mostly with charges from 3/4 units....the force of the charge broke the formation..and the A Sgt's got mangled quickly.

If they don't impact heavy enough..the cavalry suffer heavy losses..and will likely lose..(that is if they are closely balanced)....single unit cav charges are a disaster.

But then you could question if a charge would occur anyway..aka the points about horses stopping short..sometimes they do.

In standard formation the A sgt's didnt seem so vulnerable to rear attack as I expected...fending off one unit with ease. Hence you have to question to what advatage at present is there with the shiltrom formation. Limited at best. I repeated the results with lower ranking units and of course they were less effective...

I also played with Billmen...the standard billmen is pretty bad against cavalry..even with high experience. I had an army of 1200 wiped out and a pathetic 29 enemy downed....I expected to inflict more casualties than that!

Heavy billmen do somewhat better..but no get a bonus for fighting cavalry. This is in complete contrast to the historical facts. Billmen were effective fighting cavalry..the reason being the bill itself is a spear...with an axe blade and hook...perfect for dismounting even well armoured knights...this was shown throughout its use in the english army..

I agree their defence rating is too low...a low armour rating is acceptable..as they were in general not heavily armoured...but they should get the cav bonus...suffer moderate casualties with a frontal charge..but inflict much more damage to an attackig cavalry unit than the do at present.

Billmen were good all rounders...and this currently isnt reflected in the game's performance of them. They are only stats wise refelcted as good attackers....though even this doenst follow through in the game.

Barry... Billmen are bugged currently, as are other twohanded axemen. They simply don't engage in melee with cavalry. They just stand there and take the punishment, which for Billmen is rather suicidal as their defensive strength is abysmal.

After the patch they should hopefully work... but until then, just don't use them agianst cavalry (seems doubly punishing ot the English).

Well I pretty much got the bugged part...still would have expected at least some reasonable casualties on the cavs part just at the charge point!

29! I almost fell off my seat!

My "studies" (lol) on crossbowmen shootouts and swords fighting

Tried ( 3 round each ) French crossbowmen against HRE PAvise crossbowmen
( always 91 men each )

1) the french ( AI ) went loose which alway negate the advantage of pavise ( if they remain tight ) ... the french were about 10 men under when the Human controlled HRE pavise crossbowmen but they win because it seems that the AI have always more rounds than you ... i will not count that so its 3 HRE slight victories (just because of the first volley ) .
Is a DRAW , the pavise is countered by getting a loose formation

2) i put the pavise also in Loose formation , that give a +20 kills for the pavise ... that always win ...

3) giving a 3 bronze experience to the french help NOTHING , experience seems have nothing to do with shooting and thats is really BAD ...should be modded or patched .... surely count in hand to hand but come on ....

4) with 3 gold experience MAYBE they have a slight advantage but they act very strange , they always try to get very close , they routed the pavise once getting very close too but two times they got heavy casualties
So a 3 gold unit can be countered by a zero experience unit while shooting :thumbsdown:

5) giving armour and weapons bonus dont help ... i can agree on that , the crossbow is so powerful that wont be stopped by an heavier plate ...

6) tryed Dismounted MAA vs Dismounted MAA
the lessons : the charging unit win always ...except if the defende go in loose mode ... even if some of you dont i will tend to agree on that , the loose formation negate the advantage of the charge and allow to surround the enemy unit compensating the first losses BTW go on loose is a tactical disadvantage on the field cos expose the unit to multiple contacts and the morale will suffer alot ...
Amour and weapon improvement HELP alot , the stand the charge ALOT better ... EXPERIENCE also help not enourmosly but a 3 bronze experience unit will always beat a zero experience unit with an advantage of 7-15 knight

A link to a thread by Reapz that includes battlemap tests:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=73777

And a link to a thread with tests on gunpowder units by Whacker:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=73599

Interesting tests by Altien showing Genovese crossbow militia owning most other missile troops:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=73597

Regarding some rumours that the padded upgrade to units might in fact give them 4 points of armour (as per the findings in an unpacked file), I decided to test this out.

Sadly teh discussion was closed as people began to go off topic. So I can't it there, thus this is the secondbest place to do it.

"Ok, to see if the padded armour truly does give 4 points of armour I tested it out in custom.

Militia Pikemen (to get as many in a single unit as possible) against peasant archers (weakest possible missile to get the least chance of hurting the pikement too much) over 7 volleys (even the PA begins to edge closer around 7 volleys, which will spoil the test), over at least 5 rounds (did 8 with the bronze).

Here are the results.

After 7 volleys Peasant Archrs killed on average:

27,6 vanillla pikemen

23,1 bronze pikemen

18,4 silver pikemen (included silver to make certain that the difference from vanilla to bronze was larger)

The results speaks for themselves. We should have seen a considerably larger jump from vanilla to bronze, than bronze to silver (which is a single point if I'm not mistaken) if padding truly gave 4 points. However there is a larger jump from padding to light mail which shouldn't happen.

Two possible reasons for this in my mind.
Custom Battle uses the MP units. And perhaps there the upgrades are 1 point at a time to make sure it isn't too unbalanced with upgrades (though they only cost 30 a piece).
The other option is that there is no 4 point upgrade and what we see is a remnant from a time where there was."

Perhaps a stronger missile factor could be used to get more kills, and perhaps a stronger melee unit as well (Tercios perhaps). But I think these finds are enough for now.

A comment and observations on battle-testing:

In this thread we have been discussing and analyzing the mehcanics of cavalry charges and that led me to do some battle-testing that I posted in this thread. I was surprised by the results not just in their implications for cavalry tactics (for which I would refer you to the threads) but for the implications on the value and accuracy of battle-testing in general.

Econ21 suggested I post a summary here also. I particularly wanted to share the observation that the results of custom battles to test unit combat vary greatly even if the conditions are identical, when you repeat the test.

Here as an example are ten results from the identical unit combat scenario:

Mailed Cavalry vs. Noble Pikemen, both experience zero, no armor or attack bonus
Flat grassy plain
AI managed the Pikemen
I activated the cavalry attack with a double right click one time on the target
Then let the units do their thing:

Survivors (Knights/Pikes) - Victory or Loss

0/32 - Loss
21/13 - Victory
19/0 - Victory
18/0 - Victory
1/21 - Loss
13/0 - Victory
12/0 - Victory
1/25 - Loss
1/39 - Loss
22/0 - Victory

Now the spread of results here is from a victory with almost 60% of the knights surviving to crushing defeat with no survivors and 60% of the Pikemen surviving. If you just did one test and relied on the single result you could arrive at wildly inaccurate conclusions.

I saw this spread with every custom battle scenario I repeated ten times - some losses, some wins - despite the conditions being absolutely identical

So I would suggest that people be very wary of single test results and go as far as to say I don't think you can generalize conclusions without doing a series of identical tests until a trend is clear. I am not a statistician but I can see from the results above that if ten people did the above test once each, four people would conclude that Pikemen slaughter charging knights, a couple would conclude knights win but at the cost of most of the unit and the rest would conclude it is a fairly safe bet for the Knights to come out with a win and about half the unit surviving.

caveat emptor

Bullethead, try your scenario with spearmen walking away vs running away from the cav when it is about to or starts charging, as that changes them to pursue mode and then turn and attack the cav once they go melee onto your spears.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by econ21

And a link to a thread with tests on gunpowder units by Whacker:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=73599

---

Per Mr. econ's suggestion, I'll post a few summary items as I see them here for this thread's purpose. Testing wasn't nearly completed as much as I'd wanted to, got sidetracked and eventually gave up, as I'd like to wait for the first patch to see if some of my major gripes are fixed and give the game a fair chance. Incidentally, most of my tests were actually done on horse archers, then we were intending to move onto gunpowder units. Here goes:

1. I firmly believe in reading other's posts and from my own experience that the new "blobbing" of units is probably to blame for a large number of our issues and gripes, in terms of charging, movement, pathing, cohesion, etc.

2. Experience in chevrons does indeed increase the kill rate. It does NOT appear to affect anything else, such as quicker unit response to commands or cohesion at all.

3. Distance from target does *seem* to affect accuracy, but in my tests it does not affect kill rate. The "trail of dead bodies" as enemy pikemen moved towards my HA's was rather uniform at all distances. Thus more or less arrows may hit at closer or longer distances respectively, but it doesn't seem to affect the kill speeds.

4. For HA's, block vs 2 row formation doesn't seem to affect kill rates. If there are penalties for firing in deep ranks, my testing doesn't show it.

5. Moving HA's around most definitely DOES impact killing rates. Stationary has the most accuracy and best killing speeds. Walking is second, and still elicits decent kill rates. Running is terrible, and you'll hardly kill anything. If you can keep your unit together that is. The "blobbing" effect while running is horrid and I found it almost impossible at times to keep my unit in a cohesive formation.

6. From the little testing I DID do on gunpowder units, it does seem that 2 row formation works best, as opposed to a block formation.

That's all I can think of for now! :charge:

Yup, in experience, blobbing/collision AND automatic wait for all units in a group to get close before attacking (except when in pursuing-mode) is the root of all problems in M2TW.
Oh, and of course stopping because it "might" hit a stray unit from one of your own troops. In RTW they'd just run it over, which would make much more sense given that your archers can friendly fire too.

Link to thread comparing longbow units vs. crossbowmen and demonstrating strong effects from unit experience on missile combat outcome.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=74553

To comment on the earlier testing of peasant bows against upgrade armored pikes, I would like to see a test that compares two units that have as many men, but the other has no armor and the other has padded armor. I think there are units in the game for the test.

My idea is that you'd have to also compare how much the padded armor protects compared to no armor, when you are actually sure that the padded armor is there (via unit type) as opposed to padded armor via upgrade.

It could be that padded armor does not protect that well even if you compare unarmored vs. padded in arrow fire.'

The previous test did show that the armor has significant effect on the survivability of the pikemen in any case, even if it is upgrade armor.

Greetings

I've done this test, after getting curious about elephants from what I heard on the forum. I will do some more hopefully if I get time, but please if anyone else has time go right ahead and carry on the work. We're on the same team here.

Discussion thread is here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...t=73428&page=2

The reason for the test to find out simply what a good unit to kill them is and I suspect there are many units to kill them. As I almost always play Turks, I used Janissary Musketeers in this case, but I'm sure any Javelin armed unit would be fine too.

Point is if muskets kill these elephants they will kill any other elephants too.

Hope this helps.

Test against Timurid Elephant Artillery.

The results have convinced me I need go no further with this. I will however test vs Timurid Elephant Musketeers (or what's it they are called).

The limitations of these tests are:

1. Single unit type.
2. No other enemies to contend with on the field.
3. Terrain differences, although extremely minimal for gunpowder units.
4. Small sample size.
5. Ideal weather conditions enjoyed by both armies.
6. My somewhat skewed (by some standards) sense of humor. ~;)

The 2 test battles featured (drumroll!):

2 Janissary Musketeers
vs
1 Timurid Elephant Artillery

Test Conditions

• Palm Beach.
• (Gotta love the).... Sunset.
• Clear.
• Very Hard Difficulty.
• All units are experience 0.
• All units are armor upgrade 0.
• All units are weapons upgrade 0.
• Jannissaries deployed ranks 2 deep, loose formation, hold ground.
• Jannissaries fire on command, not auto fire.

THE RESULTS:

The enemy General is shot down!.
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/...hedK/eles1.jpg

His troops are shot down!.
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/...hedK/eles2.jpg

Some choose to retreat.
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/...hedK/eles3.jpg

They are hunted down.
Primarily for the ivory (which is legal trade in this scenario).
Secondly for marksmanship training vs large slow moving objects.
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/...hedK/eles4.jpg

Summary
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/...hedK/eles5.jpg

Conclusion
Please keep in mind the limitations of this test. I believe it will be harder against the musket elephants. With that unit I believe it will be necessary to draw their fire to another unit, perhaps the General, or another cavalry or infantry unit/s so that the firearms are free to aim and fire without distraction. This is achievable though not by all and though not under any circumstance. With the right leadership under the right circumstance it is achievable by all.

In this case the elephants were annihilated with NO survivors for the loss of ONE Janissary casualty (which may be healed in campaign). This shows clearly that against this unit a simple duo of Janissary Musketeers can do the job very well, when they work as intended without bugs.

Point is if muskets kill these elephants they should theoretically kill any other elephants too.

Salute !!!

I've made an interesting observation on shootouts between Peasant Archers and Pavise Xbow Militia. I would've thought that the Pavise would easily win because of their shield protection but when the Peasants shoot with fire arrows the pavise shields catch fire quite easily.
Perhaps someone would like to make some conclusive tests about it?

Got the 1.1 patch and so decided to re-test the cavalry charges on melee units (mostly spears) here is an example of one of those series of tests:

conditions:
Unit Scale-Large
Map- grassy flats
Whether- clear
Me with 1 unit of militia spearmen
Ai with 1 unit of Hobilares
After choosing desired formation I press start and dont give any commands to my unit.

Results.

Spears in default tight formation guard mode off. lost all five rounds
Spears in default tight formation guard mode on. lost all five rounds
Spears in Schiltrom formation guard mode off. lost 4 round won 1
Spears in 7 rank tight formation guard mode off. lost 4 rounds won 1

Spears in 2 rank loose formation guard mode off. won all 5 rounds.

So it still appears that the best formation to be in for receiving a cavalry charge with melee or spear units (not pikes) is in a 2 rank loose formation, I'm not even going to talk about the fact that a more expensive spear unit looses against Hobilars! ho I did...

On I side note my Dismounted Portuguese Knights are still Pants/Broken :furious3:

Edit: Unit Scale info

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by R'as al Ghul

I've made an interesting observation on shootouts between Peasant Archers and Pavise Xbow Militia. I would've thought that the Pavise would easily win because of their shield protection but when the Peasants shoot with fire arrows the pavise shields catch fire quite easily.
Perhaps someone would like to make some conclusive tests about it?

---

I Made some tests (3x w/fire on/ 3x w/ normal) and in my custom battles these were my results:

Large Scale in loose formation: with the fire mode off, my Peasant archers would be out of arrows with around 30-35 men left to the 60-65 remaining PvCbMl

Large Scale in loose formation: with the fire mode on, my Peasant archers would be with around 30-35 men left to the 60-65 remaining PvCbMl and still have half the ammo left seeing that fire mode fires more slowly.

That suggests that fire arrows kill more PaviseXBow than normal arrows, it just takes quite long. In fact you've only used half of your ammo for the same result (number of kills) and you still have ammo left for another enemy unit.
Was the Pavise-Xbow ammo empty after the second test?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by R'as al Ghul

That suggests that fire arrows kill more PaviseXBow than normal arrows, it just takes quite long. In fact you've only used half of your ammo for the same result (number of kills) and you still have ammo left for another enemy unit.
Was the Pavise-Xbow ammo empty after the second test?

---

Yes they still had about half the ammo left in the first test (fire), so they should still get a few extra kills.
In the (normal) test they ran out of arrows while leaving 60+- of the enemy

peasants are effective because they have 3 defence skill if you give them padded armor and extra wepon upgrade plus all three chevrons they will do very well in a melee. they would be just as effective with 1 chevron but you need the other two to give them morale boost i think from 1 to 7.

spearmen will probably have to be deployed 2 units spread thin one behind the other to recieve cavalry charges of course the first rank will be toast. in multiplayer games one would think that a frontal cavalry charge would smash an opponent using spearmen, weak cav and missile troops but if the missile troops are told to hold their ground when the cav charges them they will break but the stunned knights can then be attacked by the spearmen.

pikes can do more damage attacking cavalry in spear wall with guard mode on then they will by bracing. which will also negate the advantage of an opposing player trying to push his cavalry past you which currently allows them to roll off a braced formation.

A thread by Reapz on archery tests, particularly relating to the longbow vs crossbow comparison:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=74553

A thread on cavalry speeds, including tests by Dopp and data from CBR:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=78190