Odd yet interesting find regarding missile units

[Foz]

Couple of points: Long, thin formations are still harder to hit from the front because of the significant number of "overs and unders."

Is this factual? My experience has been that my archers miss as badly in the left-right direction as they do short-long, giving them a circular kill zone centered on the enemy unit's center. If they do in fact miss as often in the left-right direction, then unit formation should have little effect. The increased overs and unders you note, however, may be due to the fact that you can make the unit more shallow in the extreme case than you can make it slim width-wise in that extreme case: i.e. a 2-deep line still leaves more miss room than does a 4-wide line with identical kill-zone circles centered on them, so this likely accounts for long lines taking fire better.

Second, I'm beginning to suspect that the "box" is more resistant to melee units. It appears to have a "herd" effect.

If a unit is in a long, thin formation, every unit is on the outside edge. All of them are vulnerable to attack by melee.

Now, put two units of 60 archers each, six ranks deep and a total of 20 files wide. Only 48 of them are on the outside edge. The other 72 are on the inside, where they can't be immediately reached by melee units. Sixty percent of them can't be immediately attacked.

If you are indicating they actually fare better (take less casualties and inflict more), then I'm guessing it's not the case since no matter how many archers are engaging currently with the enemy melee unit, they should still kill and die with the same per-man chances. What the box should do, however, is keep less archers engaged with less enemy melee units at the same time. So while the survivability of the archers is no better in that they will still be killed by the melee unit while taking down the same number of the enemy as they would in a thin line, one important thing did change - it will take the encounter considerably longer to be over as you've limited the number of active participants (and so your presumably outclassed archers will die at a proportionately slower rate), and thus your other units have considerably more time to engage the enemy flanks and rear, decisively winning the battle.

So in all melee situations it seems you need to mind formation: if your troops have the edge, you want long thin lines so the maximum number of troops are engaged at once, and the battle ends quickly, before the enemy can make a tactical reaction. If your troops are outmatched, you want a less wide formation to keep less of your troops engaged at once, thus dragging out the engagement so you can make a tactical play and save as much of your engaged unit as possible. You can of course do different things like box up a superior unit to extend the engagement and slaughter the enemy even more effectively with a flank/rear cav charge, but I wanted to point out the most straightforward and easy-to-see benefits and implications of the formations first and foremost, just to illustrate my point.

[Vuk]

So can you have your unit of archers target a particular man in the enemy unit?

[Doug-Thompson]

Just ancedotally, long and thin formations don't seem to wrap around shorter lines in melee as well as they used to. Ends seem to dangle a whole lot more.

@the_foz_4

That's right. Individually, archers chances are no better. It just takes longer to kill them all.

As for the "overs and unders," I forgot something very important: A shallow formation helps most when the unit is moving. Since archers can't fire when they move, you are right. The difference between two units firing at each other while standing still is not that significant.

[Whacker]

A shallow formation helps most when the unit is moving.

Only forward and backward, yes, I found that also. Turning, absolutely not. The unit rotation in v1.1 seems to take a note from the old STW/MTW unit movement dynamics, in that the units while "wheel" and somewhat rotate in place to face in the new direction, then start running again. This is much much quicker in block formation than in long thin lines, as there's less rotation time.

With muskets and arquebusiers, the front rank is all that fires, yes. But, they pretty much fire as soon as the back rank finishes reloading. Because of the larger number of men moving in the wide formation, and the resulting hangups as men get stuck on obstacles and other men, the narrow formation is probably finishing first and getting a higher rate of fire as a result. Rate of fire seems higher to me in a 4 rank formation than in a 2 rank line, from using my Spanish musketeers.

Oddly enough, I noticed the same thing except that they didn't rotate when on the walls. Only the men in the gaps between crenelations fire, and they do NOT rotate with the units behind them. The guys in front will stay in front, and they are the only ones who shoot. /shrug If you ask me there's a LOT that could be improved there in terms game code and mechanics.

[Doug-Thompson]

@whacker

Sorry for the confusion. A shallow formation helps most in avoiding missile fire while moving. Most shots will fly over a two-man line that is moving toward the firing unit.

[Whacker]

@whacker

Sorry for the confusion. A shallow formation helps most in avoiding missile fire while moving. Most shots will fly over a two-man line that is moving toward the firing unit.

Ah, now I get you, sorry I misunderstood. I also agree here, BUT with the caveat that this "hidden bonus" decreases in a linear manner as proximity to the attacking missile units decreases. The simple reason being that the trajectory decreases and the chance of an arrow arcing over or under the target along with it. I must say though, it is interesting that in the numerous tests I did in our previous thread using the Islamic HA's vs NP's, that the kill rate seemed to be pretty constant from maximum range all the way down to melee range. I inferred this mainly by the uniform trail of bodies from the attacking unit leading up to mine, the only time it thinned out was when I was retreating to gain some firing distance again... The exception to the "hidden bonus avoidance" rule seems to be archers shooting from walls, which seems to have it's own problems right now...

[Foz]

So can you have your unit of archers target a particular man in the enemy unit?

Not as far as I've seen. Every time I click the enemy unit to attack it, the red arrow appears right where I clicked, but the archers seem to always fire at the enemy unit's center, which I previously explained is correct behavior if they're trying to maximize their chance to kill enemies. So, can't really fault them for that, though I can see the appeal for instance of wanting to target the enemy general to try for a cheap swing in momentum. It's probably for the best that we can't do so, though.