Height Advantage

[Darius]

I thought he said he had the height advantage...why would he be attacking uphill? Not to mention in some situations you dont really have a choice, some maps are almost just entirely on what appears to be on one side of a mountain, and if the defender has their back to the mountain, then any way you attack from will be from uphill.

So far I've noticed several advantages that having the high ground confers. For one, when you're on the defense, your enemy is forced to come to you, and they will have to come uphill, which seems to make them get tired much more sooner than had it been on flat ground. Also, youll notice that your soldiers gain a bonus to their attack (and possibly defense) values depending on the degree of the slope, the closer to 90 degrees (cliff face) you are, the more extreme your bonus, and the closer it is to 180 (flatlands) the smaller the bonus is. That would be to simulate that the soldier with the high ground would be able to strike at the enemies upper body and head, forcing the enemy to hold their shield up higher than usual and the enemy would be forced to make lower attacks that are more easily parried.

I'm not sure if I get any range advantage for my missile units, but I do know that it does give them some advantages, some obvious, some less noticeable but there nonetheless. All missile attacks seem to be more deadly compared to similar attacks on flat ground, and far superior to attacks from lower ground. A less noticeable yet surprisingly helpful advantage is granted when you have a more extreme height advantage. Normally when you place your missile units behind your lines, they end up shooting your men in the backs by accident. Should you have them set back a little bit, they will be above your men enough that they will be firing OVER your men. This way you can even have slingers BEHIND your men that can shoot at the enemy, WITHOUT trying to attack THROUGH your men.

All that combined means that if you have a large enough height advantage, you can destroy a larger, more experienced, and far more expensive army with relative ease.

[Red Harvest]

Man, this combat engine and AI are REALLY screwed up. I just got the most ridiculous set of results I have ever seen. I tried setting Poeni to primary (spear) attack of 50,50 then 50, 1. I set secondary (sword) to 1,1 horse mount effect to +1.

First, I chose the alpine map and tried Roman cav with Poeni AI. This starts with the cav in a hole, so I lured the Poeni downslope, then charged past them so that they had to turn and face me with roles reversed. What do you think they did? With 50 attack/50 charge for spears and 1 attack/1 charge for sword...they charged up using swords!!! DAMNIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No, they wouldn't even use phalanx.

So I reversed sides and let them be cav...while I took the spears. Does the AI come tearing down slope at me? Noooooo... It slowly works its way down and only begins a charge when the spear tips strike (whether or not the phalanx was stationary or in motion.)

I tried this with both 50,50, and 50,1 for primary (I thought that maybe the high charge was the cause of the bizarre behaviour so I lowered it.) I am beginning to come to the conclusion that this is the worst AI I have ever played against. I am trying to think of one that is worse on the battlefield at the moment and I am drawing a blank. However, it might be because anything with worse AI I wouldn't have played for more than an hour or two before writing it off.

Regarding elevation effect on phalanx attack, I couldn't quantify more from this test except to say that elevation is having some impact on the phalanx. However, the spears can kill from downslope. I think the problem is that in those situations where the player is charged by cav or charges with cav vs. the phalanx, the phalanx attack is being muted so badly that no kills are happening. The mass effects I have discussed in other threads then result in the cav mauling the phalanx badly, because it is getting its charge, plus attack, plus some elevation effect.