Interesting way to gain valour

**p_nutter** · 06-07-2005, 21:59

(Nigel Graystoke's spearmen, 5th line down)

Long after this minor battle was forgotten, historians discovered a letter which was sent back to England:

"Dear Mrs Smith,
I regret that it is my duty to inform you that your husband John was killed in battle with our vile enemies the Holy Roman Empire. Frankly, he was a complete idiot, and I always felt he was holding our unit back, even though I was careful to station him in the 4th rank where he could not do any harm. Upon his death our unit increased in valour by 1 - that's how bad he was. You will not be receiving a widow's pension as I decided to give the money to the careless archer who did us all a favour by shooting him in the back of the head.

Yours etc, Nigel Graystoke"

**Procrustes** · 06-07-2005, 22:58

Interesting. Perhaps the lone casualty was the unit leader, and he had some bad vice? (Drinker or something.) You might be able to tell if you still have the battle text (log) file.

Either way, you should slip the archer that got him a bonus.

**ichi** · 06-08-2005, 01:13

nice job using archers, I'll reference this thread if we ever get one of those Vanilla archers are worthless threads.

ichi

**Martok** · 06-08-2005, 07:31

That was hilarious. I laughed for almost five minutes straight after reading "Mrs. Smith's" letter.

**Blacknek** · 06-08-2005, 09:49

Nice read p_nutter !

Mrs. Smith will be utterly sorry for such an useless offspring

Also, sharp eyes !

This little "1" in the middle of a wood of "0" would never had caught my eye after a battle. You must check your statistics carefully...

**el_slapper** · 06-08-2005, 14:12

I do second Ichi's statement. Your mastery of archery is second to none(especially with crappy vanilla archers)

. What tactics were used?

That being said, I've seen a fresh unit raise by one with one kill. That was the enemy sultan..... looking at the logs, the billman that killed him went from valour 0 to valour 6. Others did remain at zero. Makes you wonder how valour is really computed

**antisocialmunky** · 06-08-2005, 17:46

Unit leader is the center 1st rank unit so it wasn't him. The guys in the back don't kill too many things unlee they're getting a lanced by flanking knights in which case they turn into a spear-ma-bob. Valour is calculated per man and average per unit so if you lose most of the guys with low kills in a unit, then it'll have a tendency to climb. Retraining usually lowers it since you get 0 kill units, joining experienced units tend to keep the valour from going down.

I'm sure we've all had battled with 9 star Jedi Kataphraktoi or a King's RK unit and they lost all but the unit leader and his valour jumps by 6.

Kings, emps, and royalty in general give an automatic amount of value to the unit that killed him.

**Patron** · 06-08-2005, 18:43

Archers don't play a critical role, they just take out 50 or so enemy units, before being forced to flee and do nothing for the rest of the battle.

**p_nutter** · 06-08-2005, 20:05

Originally Posted by el_slapper

I do second Ichi's statement. Your mastery of archery is second to none(especially with crappy vanilla archers)

. What tactics were used?

Archery tactics:

Height advantage helps a lot. In this battle, I was able to put my archers in the ideal position: about 3/4 of the way up a hill, firing at the enemy at the bottom of the hill (AI is really dumb sometimes - when you are defending, the enemy has to come to you or lose, but I was attacking in this battle!). If archers are right at the top of the hill, they get a penalty because they can't see the target, so I put them a bit lower down.

Arrows are limited, so use them wisely. Don't fire at maximum range - wait until the enemy is closer (archers on "fire at will" are pretty good at choosing the right distance to start shooting). Although sometimes it's useful to fire a few volleys at max range, because it can provoke the entire army into coming closer.
I changed targets a lot in this battle, always shooting at a large, unarmoured unit which was not moving.

Also, look at the units in this battle. The enemy army was very similar in size and composition to mine. That's because the year is something like 1110 and good units haven't been invented yet. Most of the 350 archer kills are spearmen and peasants. (Maybe that's why a group of archers can kill 90 men and not get any valour

) Once the feudal MAA and knights start showing up, archers are not so great. But I'll have longbows in 1205

Once I was out of arrows, I just grabbed every non-archer unit and sent them charging down the hill. The enemy routed before I hit them!

**antisocialmunky** · 06-09-2005, 01:09

It's great to see units so depleted by arrow storms that they rout when they get 10 meters away from your lines.

**Budwise** · 06-14-2005, 12:15

Funny letter but my question is...

Why the hell would you pay attention to a detail like that? Unless you change the Winning song to the Viking one like me and Headbang to it when you win a very big victory, how did you even see it.

**edyzmedieval** · 06-14-2005, 15:28

I agree with Martok... I laughed for 10 min after I read the letter.

But anyays, it's a bug..

You can't expect TW games to be perfect!!! Nobody is perfect!!!