Very odd discovery

[Oaty]

I've found out why cavalry can quite often beat a phalanx unit head on. Part of the problem is it can take cavalry forever to lose thier charg bonus. Where on the other hand infantry lose thier charge bonus rather quickly most of the times. When I tested this bug it becomes quite obvious when you use infantry

First to make this bug obvious take some infantry and give them an attack and charge bonus of 50. Now make sure it's line is slightly shorter than the phalanx so as not to wrap the phalanx in the beginning. Now charge the phalanx head on and watch most of the frontline of the phalanx drop dead. Even though the spears held them back, it appears that if a spear hits a charging unit it has a chance to be killed even though the charging unit is not in range. Now once the charge is dead the phalanx works properly against the infantry taking just about all of thier casualties on the flank.

Now I went with vanilla units to ensure this bug is occuring unmodded. I used urban cohorts against militia hoplites on default unit size. I ranged 3-6 kills each time I charged and made sure my line was shorter as not to hit them on the flanks from the charge. I also used Carthage sacred band out of phalanx formation with nearly the same results. I then used Gaulic chosen swordsmen with nearly the same results.

Then I decide to use testudo on a phalanx head on. This was devastating and killing 6-10 units each time. What caused this was it took a while for the cohorts to lose thier charge.

So the tests caused 8-25 percent of the unit being destroyed from a head on charge even though they were not in range to make a kill.

Again to emphasize the phalanx works properly once the charge is lost.

But since it can take a while for cavalry to lose thier charge plus its' near impossible to watch the effects since it occurs so fast with them getting entangled but using infantry on the test makes this bug obvious.

Anyways I'll try posting a screenshot or 2 to show the effects of the charge, that is if they came out.

[Oaty]

Ok only 1 screenshot came out anyone know what program I can use to convert it from tga to jpeg. I forgot to turn fraps on. Or I can email someone the pick to be converted if they so desire.

[Productivity]

Irfanview will do it Oaty.

[Oaty]

Got it converted, I had infanview and didn't know it did that. So got a differnt program and it's converted



As you can see in the pic a whole line of Macedonian royal pikemen got decimated without any dead Romans nearby wich shows how they are dieing without being in range of getting attacked

[Colovion]

holy crap

[cruix]

this thread probably would be more at home in the Ludus Magna. Very very interesting work indeed!

[Oaty]

I guess I should explain the pic better. I was using Roma infantry auxillia with the minumum delay set to 50 against unmodded Macedonian Royal Pikemen. Also a charge and attack of 50 give nearly the same results, pikemen were being killed even though they were untouched.

What happened was in the initial charge nearly the whole front line of pikemen fell dead. After that though the auxillia even with there superior stats were routed because they were taking on a phalanx head on. The second auxillia came in and finished the job.

Giving unnatural stats emphasizes the bug, but still show up with plain vanilla RTW units.

Also the test with Urban cohorts shows another bug where you can get a prolonged charge bonus by using testudo to attack

[caesar44]

?????????????????one of the biggest bugs

[The Stranger]

shite!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.........i never noticed it but it is true. just like horse pushing back phalanx (normal pike phalanx) for 5 meters. creating ta formation that looks like this \_/

[Gaius Drakan]

Indeed, these bugs are problems. Have you also noticed the bug that enables Hoplites with their short spears, to defeat the Macedonian Pikemen Phalangites, with their huge spears

[The Stranger]

i think it is the same bug

[ToranagaSama]

Very nice work!

Oh, where does it end with this game?

[antisocialmunky]

I believe there was a whole thread that talked about how effective testudo was in splitting non-elite phalanxes in half. Now we know why.

Good job.

[JeromeGrasdyke]

Good spot. We're looking into it, and hopefully there will be a fix for it in BI.

[Intrepid Sidekick]

Charge effects and bonuses did have problems but these have been largely resolved.
We're having a look at the Testudo behavior though, as that seems rather odd.

BTW ramping scores up to 50 will produce some very peculiar results.
The calculations for charges were never intended to deal with such large figures.

With BI you should find that original RTW phalanxes are a lot more sturdy against head on cavalry and infantry charges.

As a side note AFAIK "minimum delay" only has an effect on the fire rate for missile units. Are you saying this has a proven effect on hand to hand combat too?

Intrepid Sidekick
#C.A. Staff#

[The Stranger]

is the testudo formation still in BI.....8-)

[IceTorque]

As a side note AFAIK "minimum delay" only has an effect on the fire rate for missile units. Are you saying this has a proven effect on hand to hand combat too?#

0 ,1 beats 25 ,1 for melee but no difference in rate of fire for ranged units.

[Productivity]

BTW ramping scores up to 50 will produce some very peculiar results.
The calculations for charges were never intended to deal with such large figures.

That may be true, but I fail to see why it should produce strange results here. The non phalanx, charging unit is killing the phalanx without even getting into contact with it. Surely regardless of the values, that is an issue?

[antisocialmunky]

When does a unit lose it's charge bonus? When it reaches a full stop after charging is started?

If that's true, you could try and ramp up the pushback stat to see if that helps stop a unit to get rid of the charge. That would resolve the phalanx's cavalry weakness and reduce the amount of dead from impact with a speeding Legionaire. The non-touching killing wouldn't be an issue if it weren't so obvious. It would balance out the fact that phalanxes can unphalanx and turn really quickly and unrealistically.

[Mongoose]

Charge effects and bonuses did have problems but these have been largely resolved.
We're having a look at the Testudo behavior though, as that seems rather odd.

BTW ramping scores up to 50 will produce some very peculiar results.
The calculations for charges were never intended to deal with such large figures.

With BI you should find that original RTW phalanxes are a lot more sturdy against head on cavalry and infantry charges.

As a side note AFAIK "minimum delay" only has an effect on the fire rate for missile units. Are you saying this has a proven effect on hand to hand combat too?

Intrepid Sidekick
#C.A. Staff#

Wow, that great! i was worried you guys would say something along the lines of "It's a feature, not a bug"


It's nice to see this kind of thing getting fixed in the XPAC

[Puzz3D]

It's very encouraging that two CA programmers took note of this, and responded so quickly. Nice find Oaty especially after we thought all the major issues were identified. I have seen men die in non-charging melee when the man striking at him was not close enough for his weapon to reach the man. I don't know what to make of it, but it doesn't seem to happen too often.

[pezhetairoi]

I've seen it in zoom-ins, but never thought it enough of a problem. I guess it's just representative of the occasional guy that got through that the animation failed to show.

[Oaty]

@ Intrepid sidekick

As a side note AFAIK "minimum delay" only has an effect on the fire rate for missile units. Are you saying this has a proven effect on hand to hand combat too?

stat_pri 5,5, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, spear, 25, 1

stat_pri 5,5, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, spear, 25, 50

I changed the very last value wich was a 1 to a 50 to get the emphasized results

Caligulas unit editor says that stat is the min delay, but from my current understanding may be wrong. Sorry for the confusion on that part.

[Nelson]

You da man, oaty!

[pezhetairoi]

*filled with admiration* But, yes, I take issue with the spear vs long pike bug. I tried giving meagre eastern infantry spears, and put them up against standard phalanx pikemen and they beat the phalanx pikemen just by fighting on a gentle slope. How?!

[Red Harvest]

Good spot Oaty.

Can't say that I'm surprised as the units have always been rather deadly at the first contact of a charge even when it appeared they should be at a distance. What you have found confirms some of it.

Hope they have fixed a lot with BI.

[sapi]

wow - important find oaty - maybe this is part of the over-dominance of cavalry that mtw fans noticed early after rome came out....

[Intrepid Sidekick]

Hi there,

We have taken a closer look at this and it seems there were some issues with how frontal attacks interacted with the special case code relating to phalanxes.
We think we have got a nice fix for this.
You may find that attacks to the front facing of phalanx units may be a tad more painful to the attacking unit and that flanking or attacking from the rear will become more important.

Think this slipped under our radar as BI's focus isn't on Phalanx warfare.

Thanks to Oaty for spending his time looking at this issue and bringing it to our attention.

Intrepid Sidekick
C.A. Staff

[Wishazu]

Sweet, nice one for bringing this up Oaty, and thanks for fixing it CA :) i cant wait to see them in action now.

[edyzmedieval]

This determined me to buy BI pronto when it appears on the market.....