Killathon.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Let's set the scene. Two mighty seleucid armies, numbering over 3400+ men head to the North, to the mighty wastes of prippet to capture a town.

The army mostly consists of East Mediterranean mercs, Bedouin camels and horses and various other mercs picked up while trekking through the desolate tundra. Included in this jumble of an army are two elephant units and two Sarmatians. The town has a garrison of 1,997 angry Barbarians, ready to defend their homeland. The main Seleucid army consists of 2700+ happy Greeks, Turks, Israelis and who kows what else, ready to take this smudge on the map of the world.

Upon reaching the town, the Elephants and Sarmatians are first into battle. It is a mighty battle, during which both units of Sarmatians take heavy casualties. The elephants meanwhile only suffer two casualties as they plough through the crowds of Barbarian scum.

As the battle draws to a close, the last few Falxmen are wiped out as they are surrounded by camels, elephants, sarmatians and Cicilian pirates, while being rained upon with arrows from Cretan archers. And how many people did each unit kill, i hear you ask?

[Mooks]

Wow nice numbers, mind posting some pics on how big the units are :)

[professorspatula]

Nice.

But if you want a real killathon, set up a custom battle of a unit of Urban Cohort versus a village of Roman peasants - as many as your PC can handle. On defense mode, the Urban Cohorts are undefeatable and barely tire. One unit can probably kill 10,000 or more.

[The Stranger]

OMFG thats hilarious...i once beefed a unit up i killed 10000 loosing 10 or sumthing

what bugs me on MC's pic is that after killing 1000 units the sarmatians only gained one experience...thats not enough in my eyes

[x-dANGEr]

With no offence, that's kinda easy to get. In normal scale, I can usually get 300 kills with a 'good' HA unit. Or a Cata unit. HA is too fast and can chase routers fast, while Catas.. They just break the enemies' skulls :D

[The Stranger]

btw

2 clibarnii Immortals from BI (ca 100 men) can kill 10000 heavy troopers, theyll be wiped out after but they can rule entire battlefields

[Conqueror]

I actually had a bridge fight against a small Sassanid army, which was led by their faction leader. They were besieging Antioch, which had a full peasant garrison. I attacked them with a small army of Legio Lanciarii and archers. I let the computer control the peasant reinforcements. The Sassanids attacked across the bridge, all of their normal units which were mostly levies and mercenary rabble were killed and routed, but the faction leader (extra large Immortals unit) destroyed my spearmen and archers. Then he stood still and I watched as the 3000 reinforcements under AI control ran at him and he killed them all. That was the most embarrasing defeat I've ever suffered in RTW/BI

[antisocialmunky]

I wish you got more xp for that stuff though.

[professorspatula]

OMFG thats hilarious...i once beefed a unit up i killed 10000 loosing 10 or sumthing

what bugs me on MC's pic is that after killing 1000 units the sarmatians only gained one experience...thats not enough in my eyes

Actually I think there's some distortion on experience gained in battles when the unit also has casualties healed.

Here's another Elites versus Peasants battle I set up after my previous post.



When the battle had finished, all the units involved lost experience they'd gained in battle. For example, my Infantry Auxilia had 4 experience prior to the end of the battle, but only 2 when the results screen comes up. There was only 21 of them left and an average of 4 experience between each man. Another 17 were healed, but it appears the healed units don't get 4 experience, they possibly get whatever experience they had before they died. Possibly even 0 experience, or whatever they had when the battle started (again 0). This brings the overall average experience level down to 2 for the unit.

This happens to every other unit involved in the battle. They've all lost experience when the healed men returned to the unit. It's possible in MC's pic that the unit had gained 2 experience, but after the 13 men recovered, their lack of experience brought the overall unit experience gained down to 1. In any case, you don't often get much experience for killing routers, and even in this screeny, 3 experience for killing almost 3000 men isn't much.

[The Stranger]

i think its a bug then

has it been reported...spatula could you have a closer look at that...only if yur interested and have time ofcourse

[professorspatula]

If it's a case that healed men return to the unit with the same experience they had prior to getting knocked out, then I don't think it's a bug. If the healed men have less experience than they started with, then that might be a deliberate gameplay mechanic, or indeed an oversight. It might explain why in some very rare cases people have reported units losing experience after a battle even when the unit has been involved in very little fighting. It sounds like a lot of effort to fathom it all out to be honest.

[Watchman]

I've on occasion seen a case where an unit gains, say, one chevron during the battle, but in the "end scrolls" doesn't - but for example recoups 16 wounded casualties. Methinks it's just a case of the "returning" men affecting the unit-wide exp average just enough to drop it back under the threshold. The unit in question often gains the "level" in the next fight from about merely looking at the enemy too...

Bandit-hunting with bodyguard units is a good way to see this happen every now and then, I've noticed.

[Revenant69]

Amazing pics professorspatula
I myself have also noticed the irregularities with gaining exp. It happened many times, unfortunately I didn't keep screenshot evidence. Essentially what happened to me is that, say a unit of Equites or HA gains two chevrons during the battle, but then loses some men and so the unit's exp becomes 1 chevron instead of two. That all makes sense as the dead soldiers subtract from the unit's experience. However, when some of those dead soldiers get healed, unit's exp still remained 1.

My guess is that the healing is somewhat broken. It'd be interesting to see the mechanics behind the healing of wounded/dead soldiers. It'd be interesting to also experiment with Chirugeon (sp?) ancillary as he raises the number of healed ppl.

[antisocialmunky]

You should post a thread in Ludus Magna about this 'Healing Amnesia.'

[antisocialmunky]

*delete please*

[NodachiSam]

Nice.

But if you want a real killathon, set up a custom battle of a unit of Urban Cohort versus a village of Roman peasants - as many as your PC can handle. On defense mode, the Urban Cohorts are undefeatable and barely tire. One unit can probably kill 10,000 or more.

Wow that reminds me of the battle where Bautica /bootica(?) led a rebellion against the 10 000 hardened Romans with 80 000- 100 000 of what were essentially peasants. The Brits partied the night before assuming victories while the Romans held a good position and steamrolled. The death totals were something like 400 romans to 50 000 Brits. Even with Roman victory propoganda taken into account it is still pretty impressive.

[Ludens]

Wow that reminds me of the battle where Bautica /bootica(?) led a rebellion against the 10 000 hardened Romans with 80 000- 100 000 of what were essentially peasants. The Brits partied the night before assuming victories while the Romans held a good position and steamrolled. The death totals were something like 400 romans to 50 000 Brits. Even with Roman victory propoganda taken into account it is still pretty impressive.

You are refering to the battle of Watling Street, where Boudicca (later writers sometimes called her Boadicea) led somewhere between 100.000 or 200.000 Celts against 10.000 Romans legionaries led by Suetonius Paulinus. However, I think a large part of that 100.000 would have been non-combatants. On the other hand, those that did fight were not peasants. Briton-Celtic society was very warlike so many would have seen battle before and all would have had basic training in arms. There would have been plenty of well-equiped Briton nobles as well.

Just before the battle the IX Hispania legion (perhaps 5.000 men) was ambushed and annihilated, proving that the Briton army was more than a peasant-horde.

[fallen851]

Yep the Romans won the battle because they place themselves in a horseshoe-like clearing that was surrounded by the forest on three sides, and the Celts didn't enter the forest, going directly into the bottleneck against the Romans.

Once the Celt lines had broken, non-combatants watching in the rear hampered the retreat, hence the massive death toll. The Romans didn't spare anyone.

They also used chariots if I remember correctly, and I'm sure these weren't helping during the retreat.