Multiplayer game discussion

[Puzz3D]

You have to watch the whole replay to get the true picture. For example what is missing above is that those monks stayed fighting in the center long past the events above, taking a whopping 281 heads between the four units.

They did separate out into a line later. The 281 kills is average for 4 WM if we say that each player on a 3 man team needs about 720 kills if they expect to win. A unit costing 1000 would need 80 kills to be cost effective, although that depends upon the monetary value of those kills.

total kills / total cost = 720 / 9000 = 0.08 kills/cost on average

[TosaInu]

They did separate out into a line later. The 281 kills is average for 4 WM if we say that each player on a 3 man team needs about 720 kills if they expect to win. A unit costing 1000 would need 80 kills to be cost effective, although that depends upon the monetary value of those kills.

total kills / total cost = 720 / 9000 = 0.08 kills/cost on average

Hello Puzz3D,

It depends a lot what they kill indeed.

A 1,000 koku monk could keep several enemy units busy, while say a cost effective nod is erasing sprites. The monk isn't thrown away when it means the nod could do much more than expected.

I could use an anvil army with mainly ni and ys and put all units on hold. I'ld probably not get more than 300 kills and still be on the winning team.

[Puzz3D]

A 1,000 koku monk could keep several enemy units busy, while say a cost effective nod is erasing sprites. The monk isn't thrown away when it means the nod could do much more than expected.

Yes, and you see 2 light blue WM holding off 6 attacking WM. The 4 green WM performed about as you would expect in head-to-head fighting based on their cost which is proportional to their combat power. It was raining and their were no enemy archers shooting them. They were helped by the 2 YC and 1 ND flanking the center group.

I

could use an anvil army with mainly ni and ys and put all units on hold. I'ld probably not get more than 300 kills and still be on the winning team.

Only if your two teamates combined for 1800+ kills.

[Noir]

I did that in occasions where the unit in question is decimated (say YC confronting 2 spears) and there is a viable retreat for them to fall back and so rally.

I was doing this at extreme cases only, until i discovered that the withdraw option is just as effective in disengaging without pienalising the surrounding units.

Noir

[TosaInu]

Only if your two teamates combined for 1800+ kills.

Isn't the army engaged with the anvil wearing itself down then? There's fatigue and morale, not just attrition.

[Puzz3D]

Isn't the army engaged with the anvil wearing itself down then? There's fatigue and morale, not just attrition.

Lowered fatigue and morale are temporary factors. Of 16 3v3 battles fought in Aug, Sept and Oct, the winning team's total kills were over 2100. In the other 2, the winning team had 2011 and 1924 total kills.

[Tomisama]

They did separate out into a line later. The 281 kills is average for 4 WM if we say that each player on a 3 man team needs about 720 kills if they expect to win. A unit costing 1000 would need 80 kills to be cost effective, although that depends upon the monetary value of those kills.

total kills / total cost = 720 / 9000 = 0.08 kills/cost on average

I wish we had some actual counters to be able to better judge where we are numerically in the battle. Or would that be to much like pinball…lol

But seriously, using the red/green bar indicator in a multi-partner game, is there any way to tell how well you might be doing against the needed kills to support your allies? Or is the representation just a vague, general indicator as I have always thought?

Do you use it to judge anything, or just basically ignore it?

A routed unit disengages immediately. The unit gets morale back when it leaves the vicinity (75 meters) of enemy units, and you can infuse +8 morale with the Rally key. The main problem with intentionally routing units is that friendly units get a morale penalty when in the vicinity (75 meters) of a routing unit. This can trigger a chain rout if you do it at the wrong time.

Good to know. Thanks!

And how big are the map squares in meters? And the ranges of our guns and arrows again, if you would be so kind?

Alzheimer’s kicking in here

[CBR]

I generally use the bar as an indicator of how well Im doing during the missile/skirmishing phase.

Map tiles are 40x40 meters and guns/bows have a range of 100 meters (hatamoto 120 meters)


CBR

[Puzz3D]

I wish we had some actual counters to be able to better judge where we are numerically in the battle. Or would that be to much like pinball…lol

But seriously, using the red/green bar indicator in a multi-partner game, is there any way to tell how well you might be doing against the needed kills to support your allies? Or is the representation just a vague, general indicator as I have always thought?

Do you use it to judge anything, or just basically ignore it?

I ignore the red/green casualtiy indicator, and I'm not suggesting that players track kills during a battle. Play the battle intuitively utilizing good tactics as much as possible. After the battle, individual unit kills can be analyzed to identify those units that underperformed. You can then go back to the replay to see why those units underperformed, and perhaps make adjustments in how you utilize those unit types.

In the example battle I posted, the 2 red WM performed very poorly with 22 and 33 kills. Not shown is that after the blue units in the center broke, the 2 red WM advanced deep into the enemy lines, and were surrounded and routed. In fact, the entire red army underperformed achieving only 490 kills which was the lowest total by far in that battle.

[Puzz3D]

Some typical results of WM matchups. Both units charging in engage-at-will.

unit vs unit....men remaining when the second unit routs:

WM vs YA.....56 vs 44 in 6 sec
WM vs YS.....52 vs 15 in 30 sec
WM vs ND.....50 vs 10 in 24 sec
WM vs NI......41 vs 19 in 73 sec

[R'as al Ghul]

So, you're saying that when you want to have anything left after charging WM, it's best to attack with YA?

Just kidding, I'm learning a lot here.

[Puzz3D]

So, you're saying that when you want to have anything left after charging WM, it's best to attack with YA?

Maybe you could use it to lure a WM out into the open or away from the battle.

[R'as al Ghul]

unit vs unit....men remaining when the second unit routs:

WM vs YA.....56 vs 44 in 6 sec
WM vs YS.....52 vs 15 in 30 sec
WM vs ND.....50 vs 10 in 24 sec
WM vs NI......41 vs 19 in 73 sec

Yuuki,

do you have similar stats for other unit matchups?
I'm asking because I'd like to get a better feeling for how long certain units can hold and how much time I have to bring another unit to the flank or rear.

R'as

[Nikodil]

Hmm, anyone tried to calculate these kind of battle values?
I.e. given unit X vs unit Y:
- what's the expected kill ratio X / Y at time T
This theoretical value would disregard morale effects but still would be useful for balancing and army building.

[CBR]

Hmm, anyone tried to calculate these kind of battle values?
I.e. given unit X vs unit Y:
- what's the expected kill ratio X / Y at time T
This theoretical value would disregard morale effects but still would be useful for balancing and army building.

Dont think any of us have focused too much on actual time to defeat units. But one can simply add attack and defense and the combined number represents the overall combat power of a unit. Then there is charge value with a rule of thumb of 4-5 in charge equals 1 extra in attack. Each point in difference multiplies the kills with 1.2

If we just look at the basic attack+defense stat for infantry units we get the following:

Teppo -11
YA -2
SA +0
YS +2
ND +3
NI +6
WM +7

If we forget about a winning units beginning to outnumber the losing unit and getting more and more 2 or 3 on 1 duels we can get some basic idea about how much stronger a unit is by using: 1.2^difference

Example: WM v YA would be 1.2^9=5.15 which means that around 5 YA are killed for every WM killed.

Now as you can see the ND only has one extra point over YS but they do have a charge of 8 which would be worth around 1.5 to 2 extra points. That just shows how important it is to charge properly with ND to really gain an advantage of YS.

edit: and then remember the effects of fatigue:

quite tired -2
very tired -4
exhausted -6
totally exhausted -9

It doesnt take much to offset the balance between the different units.


CBR

[Puzz3D]

do you have similar stats for other unit matchups?
I'm asking because I'd like to get a better feeling for how long certain units can hold and how much time I have to bring another unit to the flank or rear.

Krypta and I did some tests on STW and Sam Wars back in March 2005. We matched a WM vs NI in hold formation to check length of fight and margin of victory in a head to head fight.

In STW, the WM beat the NI in 1 minute and 22 seconds. The WM had 37 men left, and the NI routed at 12 men.

In SW, the WM beat the NI in 1 minute and 13 seconds. The WM had 41 men left, and the NI routed at 19 men.

To check the flanking we matched two YS vs one WM. The YS are side by side and the WM attacks one which is in hold formation while the other YS, in engage at will, moves forward and makes a couple of turns to flank from behind. The timing starts when the WM makes contact with the blocking YS.

In STW, the two YS beat the WM in about 20 seconds. The blocking YS had 38 men left, and the flanking YS had 49 men left. The WM routed at 24 men.

In SW, the two YS beat the WM in 55 seconds. The blocking YS had 27 men left and the flanking YS had 33 men left. The WM routed at 9 men. It took 20 seconds for the flanking YS to make the maneuver and contact the rear of the WM. In STW, the WM has already been defeated 20 seconds after contact with the blocking YS.

We also tested two no-dachi vs one WM, and two WM vs one HC. In both cases the double unit won easily, but they win faster in STW and by a larger margin than in Sam Wars. This might be due to the faster turning rate of the men in STW which appears to be quite a bit faster than the turning rate in Sam Wars. We don't have any control over the turning rate in Sam Wars.

Two units of the same type do win in Sam Wars as they do in STW, but it took longer to make the turning maneuvers and longer to defeat the flanked unit after contact in SW. However, we can see from WM vs NI tests that the kill rate is about the same for STW and SW, and the front/back ratio of survivors in the YS test is the same at about 80% for STW and SW. The WM did fight down to 9 men in SW, but only 24 men in STW. That may be why it took longer to resolve the combat in the SW test after both YS were in contact with the WM.


Note: The WM vs NI result I posted previously in this thread is for NI in hold formation. I'll have to repeat that test for NI in engage-at-will.