Missile fire effectiveness question

[slippybee]

Hi

quick question.


I understand missile fire into the enemy's back is more effective than from the front. I remember from the Rome Tutorial that missile fire into the enemy's right side is more effective than into the left side (due to the absence of shield protection).

Did this get carried over into MTW2 ?

Thanks

[Marshal Murat]

Firing at the back usually does render benefits.
However, the shield question is a little bit more tricky. I haven't read alot of the code, but I would IMAGINE that it doesn't matter as much as it did. Could someone else comment on this?

[dopp]

Seems to still be the case, except that fewer units have shields now. It also seems to apply in melee when you get surrounded by enemies, which is why despite their high combined defense values many units with shields die as fast as units of equal armor but without shields.

[katank]

Yes, shield issue still applies. Naturally, from the back is best. If you can, try to surround them with missile units. This is best done with horse archers. The effect is very noticeable too. They get absolutely shredded from the right side and rear. Even a single units of Turkomans can devastate a mailed knight unit if they just ride past the right side shooting.

[PureFodder]

Direct fire into the enemies spine will do the most damage when they hit, but if you fire from the sides you will score more hits from enfilade fire.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...light=enfilade

Personally I go for back right for the optimum firing angle.

[Doug-Thompson]

Thanks for the recommendation, PureFodder.

Katank, as usual, give the short and correct answer. I, as usual, provide the long and windy cut and paste:

Enemy weak spots to missiles are, in priority order:

a. From the back.
b. On the enemy’s “weapon hand,” his right flank. This matters less with units that have no shield, like peasants, but most units have shields.
c. The other side, “shield side.”
d. In front, from the “weapon” or right end. If you are in the enemy’s “2 o’clock” position, you get at least some of the raking effect.
e. In front, “shield” end.
f. Dead ahead.

(See the link to enfilade fire)

Overlapping fire from different directions is so deadly because shields can only face one direction at a time. Even shieldless, unarmored units present a smaller target when facing you. This is particularly true of horses and camels. This level of detail is apparently present in the game. Give units more than one direction to face. You will find that horses and camels make particularly inviting targets from the side.

[slippybee]

Hi

thanks for all your replies.

This is another example of either ;

the brilliant levels of detail that the Devs dont advertise properly and therefore dont get credit for or

my complete half-@rsed approach to reading the manual / Read Me's

Thanks

[katank]

Oh, and if you become a horse archer nut like me, you might find yourself low on ammo for a long battle (they have weaker missile attack than foot archers, less ammo 25 vs. 30, and 2/3 of the men).

Hence, while surrounding the enemy, order the ones that are in relatively ineffective firing positions like d, e, and f from Doug's system to not fire and merely sit there. Once the shooting HAs run out, switch their roles of bait and shooter. This is a great way to optimize and conserve ammo for maximal number of kills.

[Doug-Thompson]

Re: HA ammo supply.

Ammo for missile cavalry is more of a concern in MTW2 than it ever was in RTW, mainly because of better-armored targets. It's not a real danger or a game breaker, but it is annoying to have to melee units that should have been killed with arrows.

I also find myself turning off "fire are will" on my enveloping units until they are in position. This is especially true of javelin cavalry, which only get eight shots and fire on the move. They'll unload into a bunch of peasants if you're not careful. I also leave fire at will off while the HA are running, switching it on when they get where I want or can walk. This lets them fire with improved accuracy compared to firing while running.

Ammo's not so much of a problem for foot missile units because those don't fire on the move. I normally leave "fire at will" on continuously for foot units until there's a friendly fire problem. Sometimes I even put them on "defend" so they won't move and will keep firing.

[Spark]

I believe the shield bonus is applied to shots hitting anywhere a 90 degree arc from the unit's front to the unit's right. Defense "skill" bonus gets ignored by missle fire, and armor counts all around. Some units have high armor and no shield, some have lower armor plus shield, so depending on which angle you're shooting them from, pick your targets accordingly.

[Spark]

Sorry, I meant from the unit's front to the unit's left (the shield side) (apparently you can't edit your posts or make another post right after - talk about stupid limitations :| )

[Blademun]

Yeah, it IS a stupid limitation. The limitation is that junior members can't edit their posts period. Which is dumb.

But enough bashing the mods. I gotta admit I had no clue about this shield stuff. I stopped playing the TW series after MTW because Roman Era = No Fun for me. So this shield stuff is pretty new to me. I knew about the enfilade however. This game just got more complicated...

[RTKBarrett]

This should help u mate...

[Spark]

Thanks for posting that, Barrett.

This brings me to another question, if a unit does not carry a shield (e.g. two-handed infantry), does the "skill" defense rating get taken into account against all hits in a 180 degree arc in front of the soldier, or does it still only take into account that 90 degree arc to his right (with his left getting a 0 from shield)?

[RTKBarrett]

Thats a very gd question Spark... I would have thought however *hopingly* that they made it so that a 180 degree arc is put into effect for two handed units... After all, that seems the common sense route?

[Spark]

It would also explain how two-hander units with relatively low defense can hold up so well against sword+shield infantry. "skill" defense is often higher than "shield" defense, so the two-handers would be better protected everywhere except from the front (assuming in the absence of shield, that skill applies in 180 degrees).

[Musashi]

Personally if I'm going to flank, I enfilade from both sides... That way they can't afford to turn to face either or they start getting hit in the back. And if they do turn, I can charge the melee troops... Who will now be on a flank.

[katank]

You should certainly flank both sides. The AI got smarter and now turn to refuse flanks. However, just having horse archers sit there is enough threat. You can tell just a few of them to fire for maximal efficiency.

[Ars Moriendi]

d. In front, from the “weapon” or right end. If you are in the enemy’s “2 o’clock” position, you get at least some of the raking effect.

Does this mean : when facing the enemy, fireing slightly to the right is more effective ? like this :

 EEE EEE EEE EEE EEE
     /   /   /   /
    /   /   /   /
   /   /   /   /
  /   /   /   /
AAA AAA AAA AAA AAA

A=archers E=enemy

I'm asking this because sometimes you can't flank with your archers (no ha's - only slow foot archers, enemy has cav and you don't etc.). Many times it's too risky, takes too long or I just don't bother.

[katank]

Any benefit you gain from that is marginal. Better to simply focus fire on high value targets. When the two melee forces clash, run some archers out to the flanks to fire down the enemy flank. If you can, fire into their back with flame. It's highly effective.

If you don't have cavalry and they do, then you are at a distinct disadvantage. Try very hard to avoid this situation. Protect the archers flanking with your flanking infantry force (you do have those, don't you? If not, then it will be an attrition fest which will not generate that great of a kill ratio).

[Doug-Thompson]

Like Katank says, you are talking about option "d" in a series that ends with "f." You will get much better results by some attempt at flanking.

You are talking about a fair amount of micro, too, issuing fire commands for each unit instead of "fire at will." Still, slight improvement beats none at all.

Your question was:

When facing the enemy, fireing slightly to the right is more effective ?

[edited revision]

After thinking about it, the "Fire at Will" automation may be a long way from perfect, but it does a decent job of finding vulnerabilities. It finds the "softest" targets and fires at those. Therefore, I think that if the AI finds a unit that leaves an opening on its right side, the AI will probably exploit it.

However, this means that the unit of peasants dead ahead of your archers may get the arrows you want sent to the dismounted knights right next to them. Therefore, if crossbowmen on the left of your line are in range of both, you'd probably do what Ars Moriendi proposes anyway. This is especially true if the intended target is cavalry. Horses are long critters, and their big, vulnerable sides are apparently accounted for in the game mechanics. At least that's been my experience since I accidentally discovers that missile cav running alongside enemy cavalry units dealt a lot more death than units chasing them.

Also, where you deploy your archers makes a big difference on how many opportunities they get.

Tonight, I'm going to try Ars Moriendi's idea and also try putting big squares of foot archers on opposite ends of an infantry line but still behind the melee troops. Let's see if they can create some crossfire against enemy troops in the middle. Hopefully, they won't wipe out the line infantry in front of them.

[Foz]

This is especially true if the intended target is cavalry. Horses are long critters, and their big, vulnerable sides are apparently accounted for in the game mechanics. At least that's been my experience since I accidentally discovers that missile cav running alongside enemy cavalry units dealt a lot more death than units chasing them.

Wanted to clarify this point, and relate it to the problems of the bugged unit animations for 2-handers. Basically, from the behavior of archers shooting at cav (noting that it varies in effect based on the horse's cross-section at any given moment) and the fact that 2-handers with bugged animations are completely ineffective in combat, we can surmise something about the game engine: that it is in fact modeling the entire battle in a physics engine, and determining hits based on battlefield objects intersecting. To clarify, this means the game actively tracks the flights of arrows, the swords of swordsmen, and various other in-game weapons, and determines when to check for hits by figuring out when a damage-dealing object has intersected a man or horse.

Various observations can be made to back up this theory:

1. Missiles can impact men other than they are intended for, even in units that are not being targeted.
2. Archers are more effective shooting into the broad side of a horse.
3. Various bugged units are made worthless by the animation bugs.

#3 immediately tells us that something more complicated than unit-to-unit or even man-to-man calculations must be going on. If either of those were the case, animations could not affect combat at all, and the animation-bugged units would perform perfectly normally while only looking wrong. In short, this point means the animations are actually USED in determining combat results.

#2 Could be explained away by modeling cross-sections from maybe 8 directions, and approximating incoming fire as from one of those 8 directions. However, it's actually just as easy to determine weapons intersecting targets, since in order to depict the battle graphically at all, the game already must be utilizing various elements that represent the arrows and men involved in combat. With that framework already in place (i.e. the battle already exists on a coordinate grid for the purposes of graphics) it's a logical step to use it to determine battle results.

#1 solidifies the point even more. There's no reasonable way to determine who (if anyone) has been hit by a flying arrow except to actively calculate if it intersects anyone. The fact that a stray arrow is capable of killing anyone at all that it contacts indicates that the mechanic is again not stat driven, but modeled as realistically as possible via the actual arrow flight path. Archers even adjust their fire to avoid walls and other blocking terrain elements, further suggesting that the game is treating the arrows as if they are physical projectiles which can be obstructed by anything and everything that might get in their way.

So what does this mean to all of us? Well, primarily, it means that what you see on the battlefield, and what makes sense to you intuitively, is what you get. If you move a unit into your archer's line of fire, the archers adjust the fire over them, or your unit gets shot if the friendly fire is unavoidable. It means that a whole lot of work that we never see has gone into the battle system for this game, and as a result the underlying battle mechanics are a step above the simpler systems usually employed in this genre. In short, it means we have a more natural and realistic field in which to wage medieval wars than games so far have typically been able to deliver

[dopp]

Urgh, that same physics engine in RTW was responsible for my archers shooting their OWN FRONT RANK in the back of the head for a really long time...

[Doug-Thompson]

That exchange was a telling little vinette on the whole forum.

Some of us (the foz 4) are always excited by the potential shown. The rest (dopp) are always disappointed when the latest version of TW doesn't live up to it.

Anyway, I tried my little experiment, and found that putting the unit in big squares or lines made no difference -- because the approching enemy infantry would always veer to the right. That way, their shields covered the the fire from the right and from the front.

This was exactly the effect RTW struggled so much with in phalanxes. It's a pretty logical response.

So, veteran infantry players who have seen this all the time, how do you exploit it?

[dopp]

You might want to be careful about categorizing people so broadly; there is a difference between people on a rant about how the game sux and those who point out where and how the game can be improved.

[Doug-Thompson]

You might want to be careful about categorizing people so broadly; there is a difference between people on a rant about how the game sux and those who point out where and how the game can be improved.

You're right. I remember complaining of being categorized myself a few times. Sorry for the broad brush.

[dopp]

No problem.

I've noticed several complaints about the very high fire arcs of M2TW not quite matching the firing animations, especially for crossbows and such. I think that it's necessary to prevent a repeat of the RTW friendly fire bug.

I thought missile units stopped firing on their own when the enemy routed. I have relatively few friendly fire incidents these days, but then I use gunners mostly.

[Ars Moriendi]

@Katank & Doug-Thompson :
thanks for the tips, guys. I always felt I'm a little "raw" when it comes to using my archers, just letting them fire at whatever's in front of them then pulling them back behind the line and forgetting they exist. Discussions like this make me appreciate the finer points in the M2TW battle engine.

-----

@the_foz_4 :
Your theory is probably true when it comes to missiles, but I doubt, however, that frame-by-frame collision detection computations come into play in hand-to-hand combat. They're necessary in missile fights because you cannot know in advance if the arrow trajectory will connect to its predicted impact point (target moves, obstacle gets in the way, etc.). But in h2h, the attacker and defender are connected already, all you need to do is roll the results based on att/def ratings and display the animations accordingly.
About the bugged units : it is my impression that the animations themselves are okay, it's the AI triggering the attack that is queer. The effectiveness of units is of course lower if the animations take more time (delaying the next roll / combat round).
But I'm straying off-topic here, let's get back to archers :).

[katank]

You are quite welcome. Don't be afraid to pitch archers into melee. Due to the nerfing of spearmen, peasant archers can actually beat spear militia in a melee. Certainly don't be afraid to use them in a flanking capacity. Fire arrows are also darn useful.

I believe someone did a test with 2h units and concluded that triggers against cav are removed. DEKs would not attack cavalry nearby, thus not scoring any kills. However, once an enemy spear unit was mixed into the enemy cav, the DEKs went into action and attacked, killing cav along with spears in their frenzy. Hence, this also supports the idea that physics and collision detection comes into play, not merely rolls. After all, the spears were the intended target, not the cav.

[dopp]

You can see this when a unit upslope tries to swing at a unit downslope and constantly misses.