Quote Originally Posted by Empirate
M:TW was supposed to have all the good things you have been talking about, right? It was supposed to be predictable and provide a deep multiplayer experience.
In some custom battle tests I found M:TW to be just as random as you make R:TW out to be. Pitting Chivalric Sergeants against Saracen Infantry (two units with equal stats) produced massively one-sided results: four out of five times the CSs won, with about sixty men left in the unit while the Saracens had only 25 or so left. The one time the Saracens won, they had only slightly more men than the CSs (whose general happened to die).
That's not the result I get with CS vs CS in MTW/VI v2.01 custom battle using 100 man units on Steppe map, arid climate.

I used 3 CS vs 3 CS. These units are in hold formation by default. The formation was two CS in front with the general's unit behind them. The AI engaged my two front CS with two CS, and then sent its general's unit into the fray of one of the CS. I did the same, but I followed the fight between the other two CS who were fighting 1 on 1. I don't like to use the general's unit in tests because the general gets 6 hit points and can skew the results.

The fight I followed lasted about 5 minutes. At no time did either unit get ahead by more than 5 men, and this happened only briefly for a couple of seconds. A couple of times one unit got ahead by 4 men for a few seconds. The two units tracked losses very closely oscillating between +3 men to -3 men from 100 men all the way down to 44 men at which point the enemy unit routed with 47 men. In fact, at 50 men the two units were equal, although one unit arrived at 50 while the other was still at 52. My unit gained a +1 valor battlefield upgrade. I don't know at what point that happened, but that's probably why my unit didn't rout despite higher losses. I can check the replay later to see when it got that battlefield upgrade.

Overall results for the 300 men vs 300 men were 151 kills vs 139 losses. I got more kills, but lost because my general routed. This rout happened shortly after the two single CS units resolved their fight with my unit routing the enemy unit despite my unit suffering slightly more losses: 44 men vs 47 enemy men. I estimate the battle lasted 5 minutes, but I can time it later since I saved the replay. By this time my units were very tired.

This is very good tracking of losses under equal conditions, and much better than I observered in my RTW tests.