Question about difficulty levels in 1.01

Solaristics · Post by **Solaristics** » Thu Nov 19, 2009 5:19 pm

I was playing Tunis 255BC as Romans with the AI strongly favoured using v1.01. I like the changes to the difficultly levels, as it adds more tension to the battles, but looking at the battle results, I'm surprised how fragile the AI cohesion is given the casualties it takes, i.e.

Side/Initial army/casualties/break points/initial army score

Cathaginians/25100/9781 (39%)/42/42
Romans/28500/8125 (29%)/18/19

I noticed this in v1.0 too, playing this and other scenarios on different sides: AI casualties seem to generate a lot more break points. While I like the adjusted initial army score as an idea, buffing the AI's cohesion a little could make for a really good single player experience.

Solaristics · Post by **Solaristics** » Thu Nov 19, 2009 8:28 pm

I just played the scenario again but from the other side.

Cathaginians (me)/25100/4747 (19%) 22/22
Romans 28500/7749 (27%) 25/35 [strongly favoured]

Lost my first game, which is cool

. Not sure what conclusions to draw about army and player cohesiveness here. I guess it depends how casualties are spread amongst the units, and how many the more brittle units take compared to the tougher ones. The f'n obvious I suppose, but you never know how these things are modelled in games.

Any way, much more fun now with the v1.01 adjustments to difficulty. Cheers!

Tpek · Post by **Tpek** » Thu Nov 19, 2009 8:33 pm

The break points have no relation to the number of casualties.

Instead, every Fragmented unit is worth 1 BP, and every destroyed or routed unit is worth 2.

Units that rally and lose the Fragmented/Routed status, also decrease back the Break Points.

Solaristics · Post by **Solaristics** » Thu Nov 19, 2009 8:52 pm

[quote="Tpek"]The break points have no relation to the number of casualties. [quote]

Thanks, but I understand that. But I expect there is some correlation, loose or otherwise, to a unit taking casualties and its losing cohesiveness.

Tpek · Post by **Tpek** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 2:32 am

Constans wrote:
Tpek wrote:The break points have no relation to the number of casualties.

Thanks, but I understand that. But I expect there is some correlation, loose or otherwise, to a unit taking casualties and its losing cohesiveness.

The relation is in the fact that more casualties to a unit increase the chance of it breaking. After all, a unit tends to receive cohesion hits when taking casualties. Plus every unit has an auto-route when a certain casualty limit is reached.

Not to mention that Fragmented&Routed units take more casualties in fighting.

Solaristics · Post by **Solaristics** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 10:19 pm

Tpek wrote: The relation is in the fact that more casualties to a unit increase the chance of it breaking.

Sure, but I'm looking for something more specific. The cohesion loss per casualty percentage point for the Cathaginians is 1.08 and 1.16 and for the Romans 0.62 and 0.93 (based on the above data). I'm wondering what drives the specific ratios, e.g. are some units/nations cohesion more resiliant to casualities than others?

Post by **IainMcNeil** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 11:13 pm

Resilience to casualties is totally related to quality - low quality armies will take less casualties per break oint. Also, casualties vary with unit size. E>g. a dead elephant is 1 casualty and so is a dead skirmisher. It is 5% of an elephant unit and .2% of a skirmisher unit.