How the Combat System Works

[Puzz3D]

What are the relationships between distance, speed of travel, or level of activity, and exhaustion levels?

Fatigue is calculated on an individual man basis, and then averaged over the whole unit. A unit in hold formation with only some of its men fighting will fatigue slower than one in engage-at-will where typically most of the men are fighting. The combat and morale penalties for each fatigue state are applied to the whole unit. There are different fatigue rates for standing, marching, marching quickly, marching very quickly (charging), fighting and shooting. There is a recovery rate that increases for lower fatigue states. The recovery rate equals the standing fatigue rate in the quite tired (2 bar) range. Armor increases these fatigue rates in adverse conditions such as desert, rain storms and snow storms. In these conditions, the recovery rate won't be enough to get a standing unit back up to quite tired (2 bar) level.

There are two components to fatigue: a non-recoverable component and a recoverable one. Non-recoverable fatigue is associated with "standing" and affects all unit types equally. Recoverable fatigue is associated with walking, running, charging, fighting and shooting. It affects all units equally in good weather, but in stormy weather fatigue increases with armor. Off hand, I don't remember if snow covered ground on an otherwise fine day affects any of these fatigue rates. Cold by itself doesn't do anything as far as I remember.

The fatigue rate for standing changes with weather condition, but comes to equilibrium in the quite tired fatigue level regardless of weather. This standing fatigue represents a ceiling which can never be exceeded during a battle, and you can never recover from it.

Fine day:
All units ---> quite fresh at 19:45 min
All units ---> quite tired at 39:30 min

Heavy rain:
All units ---> quite fresh at 9:40 min
All units ---> quite tired at 25:40 min

The fatigue rates for walking, running, charging, fighting and shooting are all different and higher than the fatigue rate for standing, and there is a recovery rate applied which increases as the fatigue level gets worse. If you stop the activity causing the fatigue, the unit will eventually recover back to the limit that the standing fatigue imposes. Slower units incur more fatigue getting somewhere because it takes them longer to get there. Likewise, moving up an incline results in greater fatigue because units slow down and take longer to get to the top. A few numbers from tests I have done in stw and mtw (fatigue rates are the same in both games except for running cav which has 10% less fatigue rate in mtw) are:

fine day, fresh unit:
quite fresh at 4:40 min of walking
quite tired at 11:15 min of walking
very tired at 30:45 min of walking
quite fresh at 0:55 sec of running
quite tired at 2:00 min of running
very tired at 3:45 min of running

I think the recovery rate in the very tired range is about equal to the walking fatigue rate, and in the exhausted range it exceedes the walking fatigue rate. It also appears to me that running fatigue rate is about 5 times the walking fatigue rate. You should be able to get back to quite tired in arid climate where it doesn't rain, but it will take quite a while of standing motionless. Even then, you won't be very far into quite tired, and will drop back to very tired fairly quickly once you start moving again. I don't have any numbers for fighting and shooting fatigue rates.

I was very surprised to see standing fatigue be the same for all units in the test I ran in heavy rain because I remember running some tests in STW where armor made a difference in standing fatigue and the final fatigue level.

I did a multiplayer fatigue test in MTW back in May 2003:

Steppe06 (large map with a 1000 x 1000 meter playable area), arid, fine day. Two spearmen units each set at the back of their zone. One (attacker) marches to just outside archer range (100 meters) of the other unit (defender) and stops.

It took 6 minutes to march 600 meters at 1.68 m/s (speed 6) from the starting point to 100 meters away from the other unit. The attacker was "quite fresh" when it got there, and the defender was "fresh". After 3 minutes the attacker recovered to "fresh". After another 10 minutes both attacker and defender dropped to "quite fresh" at the same time. This shows that the fatigue rates are the same for attacker and defender. After another 20 min both attacker and defender dropped to "quite tired". I didn't go further because I know from my custom tests that the units won't drop below "quite tired" in dry weather. This multiplayer test was consistent with custom battle tests that I've run.