I bet you don't believe this: cavalry charge is broken.

[HeresiarchQin]

First off, this thread is exactly the same as the on I posted in .COM. But I know here have more people who do care about bugs and actually will do some research on them, so I decided to post it here too, in case the original thread in .com sunk to the bottom. Here's the link to it: http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...ID=23928.topic

I've always surprised by how useless Companions are. They have a huge 16 charge bonus but their charge attack simply doesn't show any significance difference from, say, Round Shield Cavalry, who have a pathetic charge bonus of 2 for a cavalry. So I did some tests and I was shocked by the results.

At first I did some custom battles, used one group of Silver Shield Legionaries to pin down one group of Urban Cohort and then let one group of Companion to charge the Urban Cohort from the rear. I did the same test several times, either with the SS Legion + Companion combo and the Legionaries + Praetorian Cav combo. The results were disappointing: despite that the Companion's charge bonus is 7 points higher than the Praetorian, and minus the 2 extra normal damage the Praetorian have, the Companion's full charge damage is still 5 points higher, the Urban almost always suffer the same damage from either the Companions or the Praetorian. Sometimes it's even worse, the Companions could kill less in the first charge.

After that I did the same test with various cavalries, like the Round Shield, Macedonian, Light Lancers, Cataphracts, Sacred Band and so on. Except for the Cataphracts who did kill more Urbans in one hit thanks to their huge mass, all the other cavalry did more or less the same damage with each shock, despite how much differences their stats are.

Then I did another test. This time, first, I edited the Sacred Band Cavalry's charge bonus to 1, and kept the Companion's stats the same, and used them to charge one group of falxmen. The results were frusting beyond believe: the Sacred Band Cavalry with virtually no charge bonus at all can reduce the falxmen's number from 81 to 45 to 55 in the first clash, while the Companion's with the 16 charge bonus could kill only about 20 to 30 in the first charge!

Here I hope everyone with some patience, after reading this lot, can do some similar tests and see if the cavalry charge is broken or not. It's simply unacceptable that Companions with 16 charge does the same or even LESS damage than the Round Shield Cavalry. And please post any result you've got here.

In my opinion, if this is indeed a bug, then it's quite a serious one.

So now, go testing! Go go go! Please...

[Maltz]

First thanks for the comprehensive research work. Perhaps charge bonus is calcaculated against the defense (armor, shield) points...? (just guessing) This way, as long as the charge bonus is greater than the defense points (no armor/shield in the back), then the damage is done, and the kill number is determined by another set of formula excluding the charge bonus.

I would think of a follow-up study by charging the horses directly into the face of different infantry non-pike units (ranging from no defense to iron walls) and see the effect...

[hrvojej]

If I'm not mistaken, charge bonus factors in the calculation to see whether the hit landed. That is, it enhances the attack value to put it in simple terms. However, whether the hit landed and whether the hit killed are two separate things, the latter being linked to the lethality stat.

If the killing chance is low, you wouldn't necessarily see too much difference between the high charge and low charge units in a few tests. So, for example, if there was a 20% chance that each blow that lands also kills, that would mean that even if all blows land, killing would still be fairly low and feel random.

Now, to assert these claims for sure, one would have to do the proper stats procedure with proper sample sizes and blah blah, but it would of course be way easier if we could actually stop assuming and get info from the devs about combat calculations. But since it seems that won't happen, your guess is as good as mine (unless one of us actually gets to work and does several dozens of boring test runs, that is).

[Red Harvest]

Arg! The charge bonus is not broken. I've done my own tests of it today. It works. Your test is not apples to apples.

[The Stranger]

yeah it works fine on my comp, are you using a mod. 80 cataphracts vs 160 poeni infantry, casualties from 1st impact are 2C vs 36P. 80 Companions vs 160 poeni infantry, 4C vs 32P. don't see your problem. but 80 round shield vs 160 warband
is 6RC vs 10W

[player1]

Well, charge definetly works, otherwise I would not use Lancers for Macedonians.