Rome Totalwar Combat calculations

**Swoosh So** · 03-19-2005, 12:52

I think the community needs access to these calculations, currently its very diffiicult to balance mods and adjust stats without having access to what a stat does, jerome is it possible that you would release these calcs to the community? some people have bought the strat guide but they arent in it, so at the moment its very difficult for modders to get a balance right.

**Simetrical** · 03-21-2005, 00:55

"Releasing the calcs" would require either releasing a large portion of the uncompiled source code for RTW, or spending a great deal of time and therefore money extracting the appropriate code and incorporating it into an entirely new program. The former will happen either when hell freezes over, or thirty years from now when some paper-pusher decides that it would be a free if meaningless PR gesture to release all of his employer's ancient and worthless code; the latter won't happen.

-Simetrical

**Swoosh So** · 03-21-2005, 10:36

thats funny we dident have to wait 30 years for mtw combat calculations....... these were known to the community and most community members knew the % chance of a kill per combat cycle. We knew for certain what ap did etc etc.

**Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe** · 03-21-2005, 17:44

I second Swoosh So request. There is no need to release any code to write down in simple (or even not so simple) mathematical terms the "to kill" formula.

There is a lot of potential in RTW, unfortunately not brought to completion in vanilla 1.2... And so far most mods have somehow failed to get it right, mostly because it is not known how the game really work.

Louis,

**Red Harvest** · 03-21-2005, 17:51

Simetrical,

Swoosh is right. The basic calcs were released for MTW. The same could be done for RTW if CA chooses. I see nothing to indicate the complexity would be that great. No doubt there are many modifiers. Jerome had an interesting post about defensive values in a Ludus Magna thread.

Now it will likely require a CA staffer a few hours of time to extract the info and put it into a coherent form for laymen. And this will doubtless produce further questions. However, in a moddable game, it seems logical to make things like this available. Information like this can facilitate bug finding too.

There are a lot of things that could benefit from even simple explanations. Effect of warcry, flaming arrows, rear attack, etc.

**Simetrical** · 03-22-2005, 05:23

I suspect that the combat system in RTW is a great deal more complex than that of MTW—the graphics engine plays a major part, for one, so things like "what effects do trees have on archery kill rates" depend on where individual units are standing and how individual trees are situated rather than some flat rate that can easily be calculated and generalized. However, I do agree that there may be some useful variables that could be easily released, such as what the probability is that a given hit will result in a knockdown, kill, etc.

-Simetrical