Gunpowder experience needed

[Doug-Thompson]

I presume that cavalry gunners work best in two-rank-deep lines in loose formation, which allows them to move freely and fire a volley.

However, most cav archers work best in squares in loose formation.

So, which is it? Should cav gunners move around in lines or squares?

[Quillan]

Can't help you with that one, Doug. Byzantium suffers from an almost complete lack of gunpowder units, and the Spanish campaign is still before 1200 so gunpowder hasn't developed yet. Besides, I don't think the Spanish get mounted gunners of any type.

[Furious Mental]

With Reiters and Morrish camel gunners it seems to make no difference. Bit silly really.

[Doug-Thompson]

Bit silly really.

Ah. Just like HA, sounds like.

[Whacker]

Doug, my tests with HRE Reiters and Moorish Camel gunners vs Scottish Noble Pikemen (all 0 exp and armor on flat grassy plain, no weather) show that 2 ranks works best by a decent margin. When I put my cav in 2 line formation, they are able to kill the approaching unit much faster than when I put them in a block formation. I ran each test several times. On average, the Camel gunners could kill about 50 pikemen by the time I had to pull back as they neared my formation. In block formation, they could only kill maybe 20-30 before I had to pull back. I don't recall the numbers for the Reiters but it was similar. Further, I can also confirm that my gunners were far, far less accurate while moving. In summary, 2 line formation seems to elicit the best kill rates.

Cheers!

[Doug-Thompson]

Doug, my tests with HRE Reiters and Moorish Camel gunners vs Scottish Noble Pikemen (all 0 exp and armor on flat grassy plain, no weather) show that 2 ranks works best by a decent margin. When I put my cav in 2 line formation, they are able to kill the approaching unit much faster than when I put them in a block formation. I ran each test several times. On average, the Camel gunners could kill about 50 pikemen by the time I had to pull back as they neared my formation. In block formation, they could only kill maybe 20-30 before I had to pull back. I don't recall the numbers for the Reiters but it was similar.

Ah, results! Thanks, Whacker.

The whole "square vs. line" thing probably needs rechecking for HA, too. Well, I know what I'll be doing tonight instead of furthering my Egyptian campaign.

Further, I can also confirm that my gunners were far, far less accurate while moving. In summary, 2 line formation seems to elicit the best kill rates.

That whole issue needs to be quantified. A number of people have noticed that fire is less effective while units are moving, but by how much? Finding that out will require some bother. A big factor in that problem is: When a unit skirmishes away, it skirmishes a long way. I've found I get much better results when I hit "halt" when they're far enough away to be safe. They spend more time shooting that way and less running.

[Whacker]

That whole issue needs to be quantified. A number of people have noticed that fire is less effective while units are moving, but by how much? Finding that out will require some bother. A big factor in that problem is: When a unit skirmishes away, it skirmishes a long way. I've found I get much better results when I hit "halt" when they're far enough away to be safe. They spend more time shooting that way and less running.

As ordered. I shall perform more testing later this evening, and keep track of the exact numbers as best I can. I'll do it for both mounted gunpowder and archer units if you like. Any specific tests or variables other than what's been mentioned that you'd like me to pay attention to? How many test runs do you think would be good? I ran 5 each for the ones I did earlier.

[Doug-Thompson]

Great! I'll do some tests too and we'll compare notes.

Testing fire during movement will be a pain. Let's try this:

Mameluk HA vs. Scotish Noble Pikemen (well armored spear unit)

Deploy Archers in a loose-formation square and turn off "fire at will." Hit "run" and get in range of the unit.

Keep the HA moving by any means necessary. Just be ready to describe it. Keeping them at roughly the same range while firing upon the target from roughly a consistant angle (to avoid skewing the results by flanking fire, etc.).

As I said, this will be a pain.

Then repeat the battle, only keep them as still as possible, and as close to the same range as possible, stopping fire when you have to move.

This won't be easy.

After that, let's try the same thing with Reiter gunpowder cavalry instead of Mamaluks.

[Whacker]

OK Mr. Doogles, I'm going to do a huge battery of tests, it will include what you suggested but that's a bit further down the road. Due to the time involved, I'm knocking it down to 3 test runs each. From what I've ran so far, it seems that 3 runs will give a reasonably consistent picture. I'm going to post each group as I do them.

First batch, excuse the spelling, I typed this out as I went.

Test cases

Huge unit size, Medium difficulty, Grassy plain map, ensure no weather/rain (restart if needed), no upgrades unless specified, unit dimensions is (Rows x Columns). I generally let them get within about 2-3 horse distances before I move my units, I don't leave skirmish on. Noble pikemen chosen due to good armor, and the fact that the AI won't "run" them, thus allowing more time. Run each test 3 times.

-------------------------------

Group 1 - Egyptian Mameluk Horse Archers vs Scottish Noble Pikemen (81 vs 151)

Set A, stationary cavalry, tight formation, block formation, no experience, 7 x 12 formation (almost a square)

1. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, stationary. Position HA's back to allow pikemen to advance some before autofire engages. 129 still alive when I had to move back 1st time. 100 alive 2nd time I had to move back. 62 left alive when I had to move back 3rd time, and ran out of ammo. Ended conflict there.

2. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, stationary. Position HA's back to allow pikemen to advance some before autofire engages. 136 alive when moved back 1st time. 95 alive 2nd time moved back. 70 left alive 3rd time moved back. 64 left alive when I ran out of ammo and ended battle. Possible testing later.

3. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, stationary. Position HA's back to allow pikemen to advance some before autofire engages. 133 alive 1st time moved back. 104 left alive 2nd time pulled back. 75 left alive 3rd time pulled back. 67 alive with all ammo gone, game ended.

Notes. Side note, NP seem to get close, then when I move back they stop and brace until I hit them again with arrows, then resume moving forward. Note, speeding up time *might* have an effect on kill rates.. ??? Not being able to select weather is REALLY ANNOYING. Kill rates do not seem to improve with lower distance to target.

Full gold chevrons.

4. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, stationary. Full gold chevrons. Position HA's back to allow pikemen to advance some before autofire engages. 110 alive 1st time moved back. 61 alive 2nd time moved back. 24 left alive when I ran out of ammo.

5. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, stationary. Full gold chevrons. Position HA's back to allow pikemen to advance some before autofire engages. 112 alive 1st move back. 76 alive 2nd time moved back. 51 alive when I ran out of ammo, game ended.

6. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, stationary. Full gold chevrons. Position HA's back to allow pikemen to advance some before autofire engages. 115 alive 1st move back. 73 alive 2nd pullback. 34 left and I'm out of ammo. Game over, g'bye folks, thanks for playing.

Notes: It would seem higher chevrons also seem to increase rate of fire?

-------------------

[Whacker]

Huge unit size, Medium difficulty, Grassy plain map, ensure no weather/rain (restart if needed), no upgrades unless specified, unit dimensions is (Rows x Columns).

----------------------------

Group 1 - Egyptian Mameluk Horse Archers vs Scottish Noble Pikemen (81 vs 151)

Set B, walking cavalry, tight formation, block formation

Note - Walking. I am going to keep them moving in front of the enemy, using alt-click to maintain facing and formation. Will try to keep them within 15 degrees or so off center of the pikemen. Due to continued need to keep moving, the archers are going to be shooting from a large number of angles. I'm going to try and keep it so that I kind of do a semi zig-zag patter back and forth in front of them, to maintan distance, and let each "side" of the square shoot. This is going ot be tight formation, block formation.

Note - HOLY stupid AI batman! The pikemen will brace if in range and your cav is moving and they are within a certain range. They did this for all battles, and I was able to move with impunity and not be chased about 10-15 horse lengths in front of the braced pikemen. Using this I was able to keep my cav moving with a simple back and forth alt click movement outside of the pike ranges.

Note - If you get close enough, they'll come after you. I don't remember what the exact distance is, but it's probably about 5 horse lengths or so.

1. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, walking as stated above. 119 dead half ammo gone. 86 alive all ammo gone, battle ended.

2. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, walking as stated above. 120 alive half ammo gone. 92 alive ammo gone, durp dee dur.

3. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, walking as stated above. 109 dead half ammo gone. 73 alive all ammo gone.

Full gold Chevrons.

4. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, walking as stated above. 96 alive half ammo gone. 39 alive all ammo gone.

5. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, walking as stated above. 82 left alive half ammo gone. 27 alive all ammo gone.

6. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, walking as stated above. 85 alive half ammo gone. 30 alive all ammo gone.

Notes: Unit cohesion and maintaining that while moving is really starting to vex me, it can be hard to keep your guys in formation even walking. I think RTW is miles and miles better at this than M2TW.

----------------------------

[Whacker]

Huge unit size, Medium difficulty, Grassy plain map, ensure no weather/rain (restart if needed), no upgrades unless specified, unit dimensions is (Rows x Columns).


----------------------------


Set C, running cavalry, tight formation, block formation 7 x 12

Note - Running. I'm going keep them moving in front of the NPs with double-click actions, since single click = run. I'm counting on the same bracing action when I'm within range, and them not coming after me. Same back and forth movement as before.

Note - Well damn, that was aggravating. There seems to be a "magic zone" in which if you remain within a certain range, the pikemen will brace and not move. Get too far away or too close and they'll advance toward you. Unit cohesion in this game is utter garbage. I had to try and keep a kind of "circling" movement going whereby I doubleclicked to try and get them to circle in front of the NPs, almost a "whole unit cantabrian circle" if you will. They kept getting out of sync and out of friggin formation so much it was like having hot needles shoved in my eyes trying to control them. In fact, the more I think about it, I think there's a TON of "bugs" and "feature/balance/taste" issues that can be pinned on this new unit cohesion, or lack thereof. I think one of the devs called it "blobbing"... Well it stinks big time, whatever they did. [/RANT MODE OFF]

1. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, walking as stated above. 130 left half ammo gone. 106 left all ammo gone.

2. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, walking as stated above. 133 alive half ammo gone. 114 all ammo gone.

3. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, walking as stated above. 134 left half ammo gone. 115 left all ammo gone.

Full gold Chevrons.

4. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, walking as stated above. 107 alive, half ammo gone. 54 left, all ammo gone.

5. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, walking as stated above. 121 left alive, half ammo gone. 88 left alive, all ammo gone.

6. Tight formation, 7 x 12, fire at will on, skirmish off, walking as stated above. 118 left half ammo gone. 94 left alive all ammo gone.

Note: Did I mention unit cohesion in this game is miserable? High chevrons do not seem to affect response times to commands, or unit cohesion.

----------------------------

End of group 1 tests

[PaulTa]

My short attention span tonight wont allow me to read through all of the above posts, but I'll pitch in my two cents anyways and hope that it hasn't been addressed.

I'd assume that trajectory has something to do with the whole deal. Bows, for instance, have a high trajectory while guns, for instance, are generally aim and shoot. So as where Johnny standing behind jimmy with a bow might be able to land an arrow in X region, Johnny wouldn't be able to pull the same stunt with a gun without extensive training and practice.

[Whacker]

My short attention span tonight wont allow me to read through all of the above posts, but I'll pitch in my two cents anyways and hope that it hasn't been addressed.

I'd assume that trajectory has something to do with the whole deal. Bows, for instance, have a high trajectory while guns, for instance, are generally aim and shoot. So as where Johnny standing behind jimmy with a bow might be able to land an arrow in X region, Johnny wouldn't be able to pull the same stunt with a gun without extensive training and practice.

Good point. I think there's two things that prevent guns from doing as you suggested, "lobing" a shot into an area. These two factors are max range of the weapon, and the speed of the projectile. I *think* that there's just simply a max range that the projectile won't go beyond, which is defined by the range of the unit in the export_descr_units file. There's a little bit of play in here, when units are running away from the shooting group. If someone fires a shot *right* at the instant the unit in question goes out of max range, the projectile will still go a bit further than max range because the firing person is leading the shot.

Arrows are relatively slow and have a decent enough range and firing angle to allow this.

Bullets are very fast, long range, and I have no idea what the max/min angles are but the speed simply limits this.

That's my $0.02 USD.

Cheers!

[Il Duce]

Just outta curiosity, does Byzantium have access to Greek Fire???

[Musashi]

Yes. They have naptha thrower guys I think, and I know they have "fire ships", which are actually quite handy and kick noticable tail in naval battle.

[Temujin]

Yes. They have naptha thrower guys I think, and I know they have "fire ships", which are actually quite handy and kick noticable tail in naval battle.

Fireships, yes, but no naphta throwers in the Byzantine campaign that I could find.

[Doug-Thompson]

Whacker stuck to task much better than I did, but I think I've stumbled onto a couple of things.

I used grassy field, good weather, normal unit size, 41 Mamaluks vs. 75 Scottish nobles, no experience for either. I used loose formation and ran a zigzag pattern, running all the time in front of the Scots. This left 51 Scots alive.

Then I reloaded and moved the Mamaluks as little as possible — and discovered something I think is important.

Skirmish moves a unit too far. I'm not complaining about a bug, but I am saying that an HA player who hits the "halt" button soon after skirmish kicks in spends a far greater proportion of his time shooting while standing still than shooting on the move.

Let me put it this was: Only 19 Scots survived the second round.

Furthermore, I was also driven nuts by the unit cohesion issue -- so much so that I was got sidetracked from completing the shoots and started concentrating on that.

Tapping on the "c" hotkey — in essence, going from "open" to "close" and then back to "open" again before the unit really has time to reform — goes a very long way toward herding up the stragglers. You can do it for a whole group, too. I tried doing it when a straggler was caught in melee, but it's too late by then.

Don't wait between taps. Tap it twice as fast as you can.

Thoroughly sidetracked by now, I tried the same thing with Reiters on the Morocco map. Square or line formation seems to make no difference. Range, at least for accuracy, does. PaulTa seems to be on to something here.

[Whacker]

----------------------------

Group 2 - Egyptian Mameluk Horse Archers vs Scottish Noble Pikemen (81 vs 151)

Set A, stationary cavalry, tight formation, 2 row formation

1. Tight formation, 2 row formation, fire at will on, skirmish off, stationary. 128 alive 1st pullback. 95 left 2nd pullback. 67 alive 3rd pullback. 60 left all ammo gone.

2. Tight formation, 2 row formation, fire at will on, skirmish off, stationary. 128 left 1st pullback. 85 left 2nd pullback. 40 alive, all ammo gone.

3. Tight formation, 2 row formation, fire at will on, skirmish off, stationary. 121 alive 1st pullback. 94 alive 2nd pullback. 69 alive all ammo gone.

Full gold chevrons.

4. Tight formation, 2 row formation, fire at will on, skirmish off, stationary. Full gold chevrons. 104 alive 1st pullback. 69 alive 2nd pullback. 33 alive, all ammo gone.

5. Tight formation, 2 row formation, fire at will on, skirmish off, stationary. Full gold chevrons. 108 alive 1st pullback. 64 alive 2nd pullback. 26 alive all ammo gone.

6. Tight formation, 2 row formation, fire at will on, skirmish off, stationary. Full gold chevrons. 107 alive 1st pullback. 60 alive 2nd pullback. 35 alive all ammo gone.

----------------------------

[econ21]

Whacker, did you put this in the battle mechanics sticky? A synopsis would be good. I'll put in a link, which I guess is enough but for future reference it would be good if people doing interesting tests could use the sticky.