Bang per buck: Melee cavalry

[Doug-Thompson]

@Miracle

It would take somebody better at math than me to fully critique your formula, but at least the variables show real reasoning behind them and are all out in the open.

Time permitting, I'll calculate some values with your formula and we'll see what we get.

@ninjahboy

Thanks.

@Caliburn
Hey, I'm a big HA fan too (click my signature pix for the link, if you haven't seen it already). However, I don't plan to get to them for a while.

Of course, if somebody want to beat me to it ... (wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.)

[Shahed]

That's a good attempt, miracle.
If you can do this for all units and make a website out of it, hats off.

It's time to get Yas in here.

Personally I think you can never arrive at the perfect and complete formula, specially given the criteria in the initial suggestion (terrain etc).

[Doug-Thompson]

It's time to get Yas in here.

No argument there.

Personally I think you can never arrive at the perfect and complete formula, specially given the criteria in the initial suggestion (terrain etc).

We're going to wind up with more than one number here, I'm betting:

Charge value, melee value, melee value against a unit with armor-piercing attack, resistance to missiles, and so forth.

[Doug-Thompson]

For now, I'm going to use the normal cavalry speed calculated by CBR of 525 meters a minute as 1. that would make the multiplier for a fast cavalry unit 1.14 and a slow one 0.79.

[Edited P.S.: I've come around to Miracle's way of thinking about speed. I greatly affects attrition rates in a campaign and is a serious tactical consideration in battles. All other things being equal, a slow unit is going to lose more when defeated and not capture or kill as many when victorious. The opposite is true for fast ones. Even against another fast unit, time of exposure while running for the map edge is reduced.]

OK. Let's try this for Arab Cavalry, step by step. The only purpose of this exercise is to see if I have the steps right:

1. Total Charge = 9+4 = 13
2. Secondary attack, which I presume does not include the charge bonus, is 9
3. Total Defense is 13
4. Speed multiplier is 1
5. Morale is 5, so applying the factoring makes the multiplier 3.34
6. Mass is heavy horse, giving a multiplier of 1.75
7. No AP bonus, so no multiplier
8. Not hardy, making the multiplier 0.9
9. Trained -- no penalty
10. Upgradable armor -- can go all the way to Heavy Mail. Add 5.1 to Total Defense.

I may dispute this one. I think separate values should be given for each armor upgrade, but we'll go with it for now.

11. No Desert bonus -- This one I am going to leave out. I think a separate number for desert combat should be included, especially since the heat penalty should be accounted for within that.

12. The unit is Muslim. Therefore, add 0.5 to Total Charge, Secondary Attack and Total Defense. (Explanation, please?)

13. Jousting list (Explanation, please) No modifier.
14. Fortress-level Swordsman (Explanation, please, although I remember this being debated earlier in the thread and may look it up myself.)

The modified value for Total Charge is 13.5
The modified value for Secondary attack is 9.5
The modified value for Total Defense is 13.5

I'm going to use my figure for cost, but with the understanding that the topic is wide open to debate: [Recruitment cost +(9*upkeep cost)]/10. In this case, that's [510+(9*175)]/10 = 208.5

[Edited P.S.: This is basically a reflection of attrition rates, and could vary widely from player to player and situation to situation. Players who don't have a lot of finesse in their tactics or anybody caught in a series of tough situations would be better off with an expensive, hard-to-kill unit than a good value one.]

======

13.5 * 9.5 * 13.5 *3.34 * 1.75 / 208.5 = 48.53

Now, if I have the mechanics right, I can put that formula into a spreadsheet (Bless you, R'as al Guhl, for using Excel). Then we can see if there are any absurd aberrations.

[Shahed]

Good work ! Would be interesting to see how this turns out.

[Doug-Thompson]

Man, this is a bigger bear to wrestle than I thought. However, progress is being made.

I came around again to Miracle's way of thinking when I tried to leave out the anti-armor bonus. Then I ran across the Danish Armored Clergy, for example. Not only do they have an anti-armor bonus for their secondary attack, but they have the same bonus for their primary attack because the only weapon they carry is a mace.

This unit isn't the fastest peasant-killer out there, but if you leave out the anti-armor capability you skew the deadliness of that unit very badly, and that's just the most extreme example.

So I'm adding anti-armor bonuses in, adding three points to attacks that have it. Notice that means the Armored Clergy get a lot of points added, but I still think its more accurate than just leaving it out.

[Foz]

Personally I think you can never arrive at the perfect and complete formula, specially given the criteria in the initial suggestion (terrain etc).

I definitely agree. One big problem with the concept is that the value of a unit is dependent on what you are using it for. Not only can most units perform in various roles (and not all players will utilize all possibilities for any given unit), but tactics comes into play as well. For instance if one favors HA tactics and the associated micro management, it could certainly be said that for him HAs likely have the best bang for buck. However if one is not inclined to use them, does not use them particularly well, or has stronger gameplay in other facets, then immediately the "bang per buck" of a HA unit is diminished. A good rating system across units with different possible roles is simply not going to happen because there is no common ground to base the "bang" part on, as each player's "bang" from each unit varies with their play skill and style.

As a further illustration of the role difference of units, consider two heavy cavalry examples. On the one hand there is the Mailed Knight - the other, the Norse War Cleric (listed as Armored Clergy). They both fall in the 7s category by the first method (OP), however most of the time I'd say Norse War Clerics are considerably better to have. They trade in the formed charge mechanic to instead get an AP melee attack, and 5 points more defense. That pretty much makes them a premier cav unit for survivability. That in turn means they are ideal as mobile flankers, and also for city fighting since they have stats that benefit them most in protracted melee. Mailed Knights on the other hand would be more of a hit and run type unit, as protracted melee gets very dangerous to them. Similarly they are at their worst in city streets, where crowding and tight corners usually break up any charge attempts. How can a rating system overcome such role differences? I don't believe it really can, since the matter is so subjective. I would instead recommend that a fair equation be determined for each tactical unit class - something like Light Cav, Heavy Cav, Light Ranged, Heavy Ranged. Instead of being by weight for ranged cav, I really intend the difference to be whether or not they are good for melee combat as well as ranged, since that is really where the tactical difference lies - Heavy should be understood to be melee-usable and include that as part of the rating, where Light Ranged would only include ranged combat related stats. I really do think an apples-to-apples comparison is the only way to get good information out of this idea, as the apples-to-oranges comparisons I was discussing earlier will always be tainted by which of the two each player likes more in the first place.

As an extension of that, then we won't have simply developed some kind of ranking of cavalry in general - we'll have ranked the cavalry from most to least bang for buck in each different tactical category, which could then actually help players decide on new factions to play based on what tactics are best suited to their style or preference.