Slitherine

Disclaimers: this is not a complaint or criticism, just a report of something that really surprised me. I am very bad with cavalry armies. With infantry, I am learning, but still have a long way to go.

If you're playing the Ancients tourney, you've seen the Round 5 map by now. There's this high hill in the middle, with 8 squares of rough on top, and difficult slopes all around. I decided to go hard for the hill.

As the Umayyad, I took all the Light Infantry available, and lined up the 5 Light Javelins in front, since they are my only lights with a Close Combat bonus. The Visigoths move first, so my opponent's lights were there ahead of me, though in lesser numbers. I charged his two Light Javelins with two of mine, though the odds were very poor, just to tie him up in close combat and cancel his ZOCs. With a third Light Javelins unit, I slipped past and charged a unit of his Light Archers on the hilltop. And it wound up like this -
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2794908098
What happened was that my Muslim Light Javelinmen, the ones under the cursor, charged his Light Archers, that you can see three squares north of them. The Archers retreated, the Javelinmen followed and then charged his Shieldwall, threw it back, and Fragmented it. Yes, my opponent has been intemperate enough to advance his Visigothic Shieldwall, which are Heavy Foot Defensive Spearmen, onto that Difficult Slope square, where I suppose they were severely disordered. But to say I was surprised would be an understatement.

To be clear, his Shieldwall unit was not Disrupted. It went from Steady to Fragmented in that one charge combat. I did not know that was possible.

It's all in the POAs (someone correct me if my calculations are off):

Javelinmen: +100 POA for foot light spear, plus whatever the height advantage was: if <=75 height difference, +25 POA, if >=100 height difference, +100 POA
Assume conservatively +25 for height advantage, so total POAs = +125

Defensive spearmen on difficult slope: Loses the +100 POA for defensive spear since it is severely disordered on this terrain. Even though they are "Protected" versus the javelinmens' "Unprotected", armor levels are not considered on impact, only in melee. Both units are "Average", so no quality difference there. No generals with either unit.

Net POA advantage for the javelinmen is +125.

Now throw in the direct effect of being "Severely Disordered", which is -44% ("Moderately Disordered" is -22%), and the defensive spearmen in this terrain are very disadvantaged - which is why your javelinmen charged them.

So the defensive spearmen lost the impact, now the cohesion test (CT):

CTs are done with two virtual six-sided dice; to pass the check the unit has to roll "6" or better (after modifiers are applied.)

The spearmen are -1 CT for being severely disordered.

Another -1 CT for losing significantly more casualties in close combat this turn than they inflicted.

Another -1 CT (possibly), if they suffered significant (about >5% of original strength) close combat casualties this turn.

So they have either -2 or -3 CT modifiers to their roll.

If the modified roll is less than "6", the unit drops one cohesion level. If the modified roll is less than 3, the unit drops two cohesion levels.

The defensive spearmen must have rolled a "4" or lower (in the -2 CT case) or "5" or lower (in the -3 CT situation) to drop from "Steady" to "Fragmented."

Moral of the story: Don't move units into terrain that severely (or even moderately) disorders them if there are any enemy units (especially light foot, particularly javelinmen) within charge range, unless you absolutely have to.

P.S. Since you're the player with the javelinmen, see if you can't repeat the process on those other enemy defensive spearmen (if they don't back off the difficult slope)

Also, with some playing time, you'll get the feel of good and bad situations, you won't have to do all the calculations above (besides, the tooltips give you the calculations - I know this was an unplanned attack that turned out well.)

ray552 wrote: ↑Sat Apr 16, 2022 4:24 am It's all in the POAs (someone correct me if my calculations are off):

Javelinmen: +100 POA for foot light spear, plus whatever the height advantage was: if <=75 height difference, +25 POA, if >=100 height difference, +100 POA
Assume conservatively +25 for height advantage, so total POAs = +125

Defensive spearmen on difficult slope: Loses the +100 POA for defensive spear since it is severely disordered on this terrain. Even though they are "Protected" versus the javelinmens' "Unprotected", armor levels are not considered on impact, only in melee. Both units are "Average", so no quality difference there. No generals with either unit.

Net POA advantage for the javelinmen is +125.

Based on the picture, the javelinmen have 100 POA from height (Top of a rough hill is height 300, difficult slope is 150, flat at 0). So, the javelinmen have +200 POA.