Effects of Attack Value

[atheotes]

I think the game uses collision models to determine hits (as opposed to kills) at some level/extent. I have never seen anyone die from arrows unless they were hit... and not all times the arrows hit do the soldiers die.

Kobal's theory would be easier to implement though it doesnt explain the 2-hander bug and their general ineffectiveness.

[pike master]

just after a cav charge you will see many soldiers fall who are not close enough to have gotten injured.

the front row of pikemen fall regardless if any sword and shield infantry get past the pikes.

[Husar]

I agree mostly with Kobal, the only thing that might have a 3D collision model are missiles(a fast unit that starts moving after a shot was fired can evade it).
And the twohander animation really is a block animation, I have never seen a twohander actually push another guy back. Since 1.2 most twohanders also seem to use only one stabbing animation against cavalry, making them more effective, however, their often really low attack stats are what makes them ineffective since the shield bug was fixed. I increased all twohander and halberd attack stats to numbers between 15 and 24 or so and that makes them quite lethal, giving german zweihanders more defense(that melee-only stat) seemed to show a lot more blocking animations which leads me to think the animations are the result of calculations, which is also the only thing that makes sense. Most onehanded units do in fact have a very high defense, which also explains their effectiveness, for a guy with 10 attack it can take a while until he gets a kill against 21 defense, however, if you give that guy 23 attack...
This was obvious to me when twohanded knights with hammers would always lose against their sword and shield counterparts, if the twohander has only 5 attack to break 21 defense while the sword guy has 13 attack to break the 6 defense of the twohander, the result should be obvious. This was a bit different before the shield bug was fixed and animations do apparently play into attack speed(faster animations = more attacks per minute possible) but if one tweaks the stats accordingly, there is no need to edit any animations IMO.(that's with 1.2 where the twohander animations are fixed).

Let me underline my point with a quote from a CA dev as given in this interesting interview:

The second area would be balancing, and that's purely because we shipped a game with 21 factions and close to 400 units. That's a ludicrous amount of stats to tune, and so more time would translate to better results. It's something we've examined again with Kingdoms.

[Kobal2fr]

I agree mostly with Kobal, the only thing that might have a 3D collision model are missiles(a fast unit that starts moving after a shot was fired can evade it).

Hollywood deception . Or : what the eyes see is not what the numbers crucnh. The "to hit" roll is made first, factoring the fact that the target is moving or static, tight or loose etc..., then if Archer A got a hit, his arrow will be displayed as striking true, no matter what the target does in the meantime.

It's a pretty easy thing to ascertain : if a missile unit is ordered to shoot at another unit that's on the very edge of its range, and said target moves away before the shooter has finished his animation, the animation will go through and shoot, and hit/miss, even though the target might well be very much out of range by then (it's even easier to see with javelins shooting at cavalry). Same goes for targets who run behind walls/hills between the start of an missile unit's cycle and the time they actually launch the arrows/bolts/bullets/javelins/tallywhackers.

[Didz]

It's a pretty easy thing to ascertain : if a missile unit is ordered to shoot at another unit that's on the very edge of its range, and said target moves away before the shooter has finished his animation, the animation will go through and shoot, and hit/miss, even though the target might well be very much out of range by then (it's even easier to see with javelins shooting at cavalry). Same goes for targets who run behind walls/hills between the start of an missile unit's cycle and the time they actually launch the arrows/bolts/bullets/javelins/tallywhackers.

I can see the logic of what you are saying, but I'm not convinced its entirely true.

The reason I have doubts is quite simply the fact that collateral damage is done by missile fire.

Logic would suggest that if hits were determined in advance of the firing animation then they would be calculated on the selected target unit and consequently the missiles that hit would fly straight and true to those men from the target unit which were pre-determined to be hit.

But they don't....

If you happen to be pursuing that unit frequently you see your own men go down because the target unit moved out of the field of fire and your cavalry ran straight into it.

Likewise, frequently you see men falling in other units alongside or behind the target unit which one would not expect to have been included.

Indeed with musketry fire, certainly in STW bridge battles, it was possible to see men drop in units hundreds of yards beyond the target unit, who are presumably being hit by spent balls fired at the unit crossing the bridge.

So, if what you say is true, the calculation of hits from missile fire would have to be pretty sophisticated to work out the odds of collateral damage to units who at the time of firing may not actually be in the field of fire but are predicted to move into it during the flight of the missile.

A classic test for instance would be to target a cannon at a unit and then just before the cannon fires move a friendly unit in front of it. If the hits were determined prior to the cannon firing then the ball ought to fly straight through the intervening unit and hit the target it was destined to hit. On the other hand if the ball ploughs through your hapless test unit it must be doing so because of collision detection as it could not possibly have predicted that you were going to be dumb enough to move that unit prior to you actually moving it.

Again in STW it was actually possible for archers to shoot the archer in front of them in the back if you got the unit badly deployed on a reverse slope, which seems to be a very unlikely scenario if the hits were being precalculated.

As far as melee combat is concerned I'm less certain.

Personally, I watch a lot of close up melee combat as I like looking for the 'funny's' that sometimes occur like the guy getting kicked in the balls.

So, far I've never noticed anyone go down with no logical reason for doing so. What I have noticed is that frequently the blow that kills them doesn't seem to connect perfectly, but I just put this down to the fact that every character in the game must have a collision zone which extends like an aura around the figure itself and that this coupled with animation lag sometimes results in the animation being triggered and not completing before the figures become seperated. Thus a sword strike appears to hit thin air but the target still goes down, that doesn't necessaily mean that the blow was not triggered by a collision, merely that the animation failed to keep pace with the result.

[Husar]

Well Didz, there is a certain collision detection working of course, but once a decision for an attack is made, the result will be calculated and then the animation will be played. That does not mean that the animation decides whether an attack is calculated or not. Also noone attacks an anemy who is currently doing a finishing move because he is excluded from the routine which determines who to attack next, once he is finished, they will start attacking him. To test this further, giving someone a defense value of 30 might be a good idea to see how often they will defend against a blow, might test that now.

[Kobal2fr]

Yup, I thought about that during a boring (but missile heavy) battle. I think you have noticed as well as I did that archers ordered to fire at a unit behind another unit will often do much more damage to the front unit than to the back one. But if you order them to fire at the front one, they'll do less damage to them than when they were firing at the unit behind them.

So there's probably some form of collision going on after the shot is made, you're right. Just, not between a missile unit and its target, in this case I believe it's all attack rolls.

Or maybe a check is made at the location of a failed arrow's landing point ? In fact, I had dreamed up the exact same test you did : order crossbows to fire, and move knights right in front of them before they actually fire. If the knights get shot to pieces, then there's collision.

Oh, and STW/MTW is not the same engine at all, so what applied may not be valid still.


EDIT : oh, and as to the original issue, I just did a test the results of which... puzzled me. I used billmen (whose animation set is "known" to suck) vs. Noble Swordsmen (the "overpowered" DFK anim). I first gave the billmen enough armor to have the same overall defense as the swords, but kept their attack/charge value which is much higher, even without factoring AP in. The upped billmen promptly trounced the knights, who were reduced to 45 on the charge. During the protracted melee, while the knights attacked on the whole more often, the billmen very often just took the hits, flinched, and attacked right back.
But I figured the result was flawed by the charge. So I did another test, this time putting their armor back to 0, and upping defense all the way to "Noble Swordsmen Total Defense". This time I let the knights charge and the billmen brace. They took a heavy hit on the charge, but then evened the score during the melee, and beat the knights in the end (higher attack and AP, remember ?). Again, the swordsmen attacked more often on the whole, but this time most of their attacks were parried/deflected by the billmen using the butt of their weapon to do so.

OK, I know two tests alone are not conclusive but... I wonder if this whole "some animations are better than others" idea isn't plain ol' wrong. I know it's generally accepted as being true, but it also dates back to the days when the shield bug roamed unknown... Hmmm...Mebbe it's just the big discrepancy in defense values that make 2handers suck this bad in long melees...

[phonicsmonkey]

On the other hand if the ball ploughs through your hapless test unit it must be doing so because of collision detection as it could not possibly have predicted that you were going to be dumb enough to move that unit prior to you actually moving it.

I am dumb enough. I once charged three units of hospitallers through a line of my own culverins just as they were firing - OUCH

I have also charged my general at an enemy unit just as three volleys of my own javelins were landing - bye bye general

not sure if there's any explanation for friendly fire unless there's a collision model at work for missiles...of course this proves nothing for melee

has anyone ever seen a soldier kill one of his own with a misplaced pike jab or reckless sword swing? I haven't...again however this proves nothing, as collision might only be possible, in melee, with hostiles

[Mad Mac]

[QUOTE][OK, I know two tests alone are not conclusive but... I wonder if this whole "some animations are better than others" idea isn't plain ol' wrong. I know it's generally accepted as being true, but it also dates back to the days when the shield bug roamed unknown... Hmmm...Mebbe it's just the big discrepancy in defense values that make 2handers suck this bad in long melees.../QUOTE]

Those are some veeeeery interesting test results. Especially the idea that blocking animations are possibly tied to defense actually kicking in and parrying attacks. And it does make a fair bit of sense, as even a good two hander typically has less overall defense than a basic armoured sarge with no upgrades. Units like that are going to drop like flies.

Still, two-handers are known to improve in peformance with faster animations, so I think attack speed is going to be an issue, regardless.

[FactionHeir]

Two things that I found peculiar with current animations / hidden rolls.

1. Note that if an AI unit routs on the walls, you can have the entire wall packed with fast swordsmen and hardly any of them will ever hit the routers who run through them.

2. When you walk a unit slowly in one direction and enemy routers run in the same direction against your unit, many of them die even though none of your units are facing them or even making any attempt at an attack animation. They just bump into the back of your unit and perish.

Those two need to be explained before a conclusion can be drawn on animation vs rolls.

[gardibolt]

I am dumb enough. I once charged three units of hospitallers through a line of my own culverins just as they were firing - OUCH

I remember getting impatient with how long it was taking to blow down a tower with a bombard in a siege so I started heading a siege tower towards the wall.

Bad move. The siege tower moved faster than I thought/the bombard took longer than I thought to kill the tower and the siege tower (plus most of the men pushing it) got blown up instead.