Unit Combat and Charging; Intuition vs. Testing vs. Animation

[econ21]

Reapz - have you posted in the sticky on researching battlemap mechanics?
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=72168
It might be good to have a summary of your points there.

[JeffBag]

The disproportionate number of kills from the mailed knights is mainly because they are charging into the flanks of the pikemen as well. Had they charged into a solid line of pikes they would all have died.

[FactionHeir]

The casualties healed is a random variable so you'd want to subtract that from your final unit count to get better results.

Also, try doing a few t-tests to see whether your results (after subtraction) are actually statistically relevant...

[Ulstan]

Conceptually, I have no problem with the idea that knights who walk slowly at a unit of pikes in a wider formation and chip away slowly at the flanks and where opportunities present itself fare much better than a tight mass of knights who rush pell mell head into the waiting mass of spear tips.

Now, if you're not at risk of being impaled, (say, vs sword infantry or archers)the tight charging formation should do more damage than the loose 'walk slowly up to the enemy' formation.

[RomoR]

In my post in the battlemap sticky the horse charges where against spears and not pikes, pikes seem to have hidden bonuses that counter a charge with heavy damage, did you make the same tests with spears or any other melee unit, in any case my tests were more focused on the receiving bit of charges as the player with a melee unit but if I recall correctly I ran a series of 5 tests of mailed knights charging in a loose formation against spears and they did not do better than a tight charge.