STW stats were pretty low. MTW stats seemed normal to me. RTW stats seem seriously high. Yes/no?

v0 Chiv Knights in MTW had att/def of 5/5, didn't they? So why do the elite cavs in RTW have stats like 9/21, or 12/22? Why did the numbers go up so much? Is there a reason I'm not seeing, other than to have higher numbers?

Anyone know?

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CA said the formulae used for combat have changed beyond almost all recognition,. Hence a high RTW stat does not necessarily mean high compared to MTW. Kind of comparing 3cm to 1inch. However, I wonder if this is not wholly true and some of the "fast combat" people have complained off may be due to a higher variance in attack and defence stats?

Having more variance in stats might seem to be a good thing, in allowing more variety but personally I thought the gradations seen in MTW were historically reasonable - trying to cut things finer starts to stretch creduility.

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No wonder RTW is broken so badly. What was the reason for changing the formula on top of dumbing down the terrain and heigh effects and other things they did to simplify RTW?

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I think it was done to attract a more mainstream and therefore larger market.

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The brother of my girlfriend went to China to research what could be done to lessen the amount of failures caused by a certain machine. Besides mechanical problems there was also the human factor.
There was a person who assigned to control the settings of the machine and it was noticed that the amount of failures increased each time there was a shift. Apparently the person "banged" a few times on the machine just to make sure that he was needed. After all if he didn't adjust settings then why was he employed? The fact that the machine ran fine before banging on it didn't matter. After a few hours the person had found more optimal settings (probably the original) and then the new shift began.



One advantage I can come up with is the smaller impact of weapon/armour upgrades. Or did they multiply that by 2 too?

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Actually they did. Although weapon and armour upgrades only show a +1 increase in attack and defense values on unit info, tests show its actually 2 points. But missile attack seems to be only increased by +1 for each weapon upgrade.


CBR

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In RTW the lowest quality unit (the peasants) has been set to 1/1 in attack/defense while MTW had them at -2/-4.

We dont know how the combat formula works but Im guessing that one point in STW/MTW has about the same value as two points in RTW (based on how much valor/experience upgrades cost as well as cavalry charge values and overall spread)

The killing speed has also been changed so when a unit had same attack as defense in STW/MTW you now need about 8-9 points more in defense to get same killing speed in RTW.

So with the peasants used as "base", as each point only counting as half and a need for higher defense values for the higher quality units you get that big difference compared to STW/MTW.

If we look at the difference between MTW peasants and chiv knights, thats 16 combat points. Difference between RTW peasants and Preatorian cavalry thats 32 combat points. Twice as much

I would have preferred peasants to stay with negative values as well as the spread we had in MTW as there is no real need for added details as that just gonna make remembering stats more difficult for us poor humans while the PC doesnt care I guess. But Im just a MTW lover of course


CBR

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I was thinking you'd be the one to respond logically m8. I suppose my question was answered in tandem with the speed of the game. With a higher "velocity" the stats had to be changed as well. If you were, for instance, to play RTW with STW-type stats, I wonder how it would feel. Probably far far too quick, if my logic is correct. So yes...

Me too. I suppose if you think about it though, basic stats of 1/1 do make more sense. How could you be completely negative at attacking someone? If anything you'd be "zero" at it...having no skill whatsoever. So, stats of 1/1 make a lot more sense to me.


Kocmoc would be spinning in his grave right now. Erm...wait...

So basically like Puzz said, dumbing it down so the masses can cope with the gameplay. But, those of us with years of experience in this exact same type of game don't view it in the same way...so what...were they creating a new type of game? Well of course. But, why wouldn't you BUILD on your previous success, rather than discard it? If there are certain parts of the equation that have been previously tested and proven to have positive results, why not include them?

I know this was covered in many threads before....but this thread has followed a logical progression to this point for me so....

IIRC each weapon upgrade is +1 attack (with the added bonus of having +1 missle attack for units that fire them). Also its only +1 defense for armour upgrades...but doesn't that equate into more??? Or did that stop with MTW as well? For instance, a unit would be slower and less receptive to arrow fire with armour upgrades in MTW...however the unit would tire quicker, iirc. What does the increased armour do in RTW? There are units with seriously high armour that benefit from it, and units that seem to more than benefit from armour piercing abilities.

Will this be balanced?

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You'd be able to come from great distances to assist fighting units, and the ranged weapons would seem very weak.


Not really. The combat equation is continuous through zero. There is no discontinuity at zero. The difference factor = attack - defense + bonus, and has a range of -20 to +20. The df plugs into an equation that calculates the chance to kill and that maps to a range of 0.05% to 72.84%. So, there is no negative chance to kill.

Smaller steps in the combat factor is good in theory because you can balance things to a finer degree. I always thought the 20% step size in STW and MTW was too large especially in view of the range of the battlefield upgrades. We had a long thread at one time where Mitch posted that highly experienced units in the real world are only about 1.5x better than green units. In STW and MTW it was common to have units boosted by much more than that by upgrades. A boost of 4 honor or 4 valor makes a unit 4x better. In RTW, a boost of 4 experience is only going to make a unit 2x better if the steps are half the size.


Is he dead?



Go back a year and look at the "Fatigue is too high" thread. That wasn't started by newbies. A lot of vets wanted less fatigue, and now they have it in RTW. Mike Simpson said in an interview why the games are not being developed in series. They can stay ahead of the competition better by having two development teams that work on two games in parallel. RTW gameplay will evolve, but players had better think about the consequences of changes they ask for because some of the things asked for in the past and implimented by CA didn't result in better gameplay.


Just remember that the F1 screen in STW never showed the correct upgraded unit stats.

Samurai Wars for STWmod is balanced as are some other mods for MTW/VI. No official stat has ever been particularly well balanced.

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No, was kidding. I don't want to start any rumors. I just was commenting on the decrease in effect from terrain and height. He always hated that it was changed so much.

Ok, that makes more sense to me then. And yeah I do remember that fatigue thread. I suppose its a hard thing to find the correct balance. Well thats pretty obvious actually, but its hard to find the correct balance in more than one aspect of the game...both stats and gameplay.

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That sounds interesting - any hints on how to find the thread? Or would it be so long ago it is lost? I wonder what kind of evidence could bear on this.
When MTW came out, I used to wonder if differences in armour - reflected in the the raw unit stats, not the strange armour upgrades - had too much effect but it was very hard to find any quantitative evidence one way or the other.

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CBR has the reference that Mitch used, and he'll post about that. When I said 1.5x better, I got confused with the hill bonus. It wasn't combat efficience that Mitch was talking about. It was the average size of the hill bonus in historical battles.

I did quantitative kill measurements on armor values from 1 to 8 in STW and MTW, and the kills from arrows were linearly related to the armor value. If the armor value is doubled, the kills are cut in half. An archer could get a maximum of about 80 kills on an armor 1 infantry unit and that would drop to about 10 at armor 8.

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