Honour level and unit appearance

[EatYerGreens]

Hi all, STW1.11 again...

would you believe that after all these years I've only just realised that the honour level of a unit is reflected in the number of banners the unit carries?
Naturally, this includes the bonus from the general. All units have one large flag (the commander?) which doesn't count, so it's only the smaller ones.

I've often wondered why an ememy Ashigaru unit will sometimes face up to a full unit of my Samurai attacking them while others will run at the sight of a cadre of sams but, taking the honour level into account and the flags being there to be seen, it starts to make sense.

Having seen them on my own units I'll now take it into account when deciding what enemy units to point my archers at, what to engage and what to avoid when my forces are no match.

I also wondered why honours gained in battle seemed to bear no relation to numbers of casualties inflicted. You could have one unit (size 60) kill 80-plus and get no honour and another kill just a dozen but get 1, even 2 honour. Initially, I believed it was to do with how many units they had succeeded in routing but even this didn't correlate as you could win a battle but get no honour bonuses at all.

Tying this together with the honour flags, it becomes clear that your units gain honour when they've cut down an enemy unit to its last man (or two or three). Or, if not that, then maybe a lucky kill of one of its flag carriers? (I've seen archer units gain 1 or 2 honour in a single battle, even when they've not engaged in melee).

In the battle logs, you can see records of kills/killed on a man-by-man basis (including friendly kills, if they're archers) and maybe there's an honour score associated with this, with the best of them becoming the flag-carriers? The honour level for the unit seems to be some sort of average, so killing one of their better individual fighters can be enough to bring their average down to the next lower level.

Apologies if this is old news to the rest of you but I thought it might be worth a mention. I've no idea if it's equally applicable to later versions, MTW or RTW.

As usual, your comments are welcome.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

well the individual soldiers gain honor based on how many men they kill, it gets progressivly harder the higher honor they are, not sure if they get more points for killing a high honor man. The # represented is average honor of unit, it can be a decimal.

[hoom]

There's definitely a bonus for killing high honour.
You can kill loads of ashigaru & not gain honour, but kill a Taisho or Daimyo & your unit almost always goes up an honour.
Similarly, you can kill hundreds of routing samurai with cavalry & gain no honour because killing people who are running is less honourable than killing them in man to man combat.

[EatYerGreens]

Hi hoom,

There's definitely a bonus for killing high honour.
You can kill loads of ashigaru & not gain honour, but kill a Taisho or Daimyo & your unit almost always goes up an honour.
Similarly, you can kill hundreds of routing samurai with cavalry & gain no honour because killing people who are running is less honourable than killing them in man to man combat.

Well, I've often wondered if there was an element of honour being 'transferred' to one of your units when they've succeeded in defeating a unit of higher honour - say by means of attacking downhill, or charge bonus and things like that.

It could just as easily be due to successful kills of the high-honour individuals in the enemy unit, transferring honour to individuals in your unit. If you've managed to mob the enemy Taisho unit with a pair of your own, he makes a stand and gets killed, then I'm pretty sure that would work too.

[Oaty]

The one I always loved was when a 60 man unit lost a man to a stray arrow..... and boom they gain 1 honour. Thanks guys ..... thanks for killing that loooooooooser. Do'nt know if I've seen it happen in MTW but it had me messed up in STW in the battle report. OK they lost 1 guy and killed none and yet they gained honor....... something is'nt making sense here, then I found out each man in a unit had his own unique stats and then it made sense. It probably has occurred in MTW but since I knew why it happened I probably do'nt even notice it anymore

[EatYerGreens]

The one I always loved was when a 60 man unit lost a man to a stray arrow..... and boom they gain 1 honour. Thanks guys ..... thanks for killing that loooooooooser. Do'nt know if I've seen it happen in MTW but it had me messed up in STW in the battle report. OK they lost 1 guy and killed none and yet they gained honor....... something is'nt making sense here, then I found out each man in a unit had his own unique stats and then it made sense. It probably has occurred in MTW but since I knew why it happened I probably do'nt even notice it anymore

Strange. I can't see how the loss of one individual would work that way, unless maybe he had negative honour - which is something I've not encoutered in a battle stat file. (I don't spend much time examining battle stats anyway, so this isn't surprising).

The only ways I can imagine an individual getting negative honour would be if it was a Taisho unit and he'd lost more battles than he'd won, or if it was an archer unit and this one had clocked up a fair number of friendly kills

Another way might be that, where the unit's average is 1.4999, the prog rounds it down to H1. You lose one man and the average goes to 1.5001, which the prog now rounds up, to H2.

Let's see. How about a unit which has had some battle experience and casualties but has been merged with other cadres to make a unit of 60.
Before 3xH4; 5xH3; 12xH2; 38xH1 2xH0. 60 men, Average honour 1.48333
After 3xH4; 5xH3; 12xH2; 38xH1 1xH0. 59 men, Average honour 1.50847


Also, watch out for units run by 'character' generals and heirs. It's largely diguised by the general's honour bonus boosting the level for the whole unit but look at something like Uesugi Kenshin as unit commander of a bunch of archers. They might be all H0 or H1 but he's in there at something like H6!!
1xH6 + 59xH1, total 65, average 1.0833, rounded to H1, then add General's bonus.

So the disproportionately high honour for the 'name' general isn't so great as to elevate the entire unit's honour by another notch but it's high enough to ensure that the leader will survive just about any melee situation, short of a direct encounter with your Daimyo and his Hatamoto HCs. Assuming your D's honour level is a match, that is.

[EatYerGreens]

Hi Sasaki,

well the individual soldiers gain honor based on how many men they kill, it gets progressivly harder the higher honor they are, not sure if they get more points for killing a high honor man. The # represented is average honor of unit, it can be a decimal.

I've never seen it shown with a decimal point. Do you mean you see that when you inspect the unit's record in the battle log file? I shall have to go and look at that for myself.

If I recall correctly, the log will show something like
kills honour
0 0
1 1

for each individual and I think it then progresses in much the same way as a general's rank goes with number of (net) victories, or Ninja/Shinobi honour goes with number of kills/captures they've made.

kills honour
0 0
1 1
2 2
4 3
8 4
16 5
32 6

The general's bonus of +1 or +2 therefore doubles or quadruples the kills score and makes the unit something to be feared.