Way too random for me

[cfaulkner]

Been playing this for a few days now, one observation I have. I feel the casualties from combat and missile fire are too random.

Being a tabletop gamer for many years, I am used to having probability tables to determine casualties in a given situation. A die roll could modify it, but you knew ABOUT what you could expect.

I see nothing like that happening in the game. Guns at long range can put 20-25 hits on a Tercio unit, but firing on the same unit as it gets closer ...0,3,0. I could understand if it happens once in a while,(as if there was a small chance of misfire, say 10% or something), but this seems to happen all the time. What is the reason for guns to have such a huge disparity in the amount of hits they give?

Small arms fire is slightly better, but even then I don't see where things like cover come into play. Firing at a unit behind works I get 10-12 hits, it fires back and gives me 2-3 in the open... and these are similar type units.

Same holds true for melee. Two units of fairly equal strength and experience, no advantage either side, and one unit will take 30 hits, the other 4-5. I've actually had a unit that had a great advantage,(uphill and behind works), take 50 hits from melee and give 12 back. What type of "Die roll" is used for the randomness??

It makes no sense to me.

[jomni]

Did you try to simulate these situations several times in a controlled environment like the editor? You could then see how dispersed the probabilities are.

[rbodleyscott]

Artillery casualties are deliberately very random - they were a chancy weapon in the 16th and 17th centuries, mostly manned by civilian contractors. (Battalion guns are less random).

Close combat and shooting random - between 50% and 150% of the average casualties, with a bell curve distribution, so tending towards the average. The absolute extreme would be for one unit to cause 50% of its average casualties, and the other 150% of its average casualties, but due to the bell-curve random factor, that will be fairly rare. However, the game needs to allow such events to happen occasionally, because it is the only way it can take into account the various sudden unexpected events that do occur in real warfare (e.g. loss of officers, confused orders, troops shooting too soon, troops shooting later than the enemy and having their volley disrupted by the enemy's, and so on).

Note, however, that equal advantage does not necessarily mean equal average casualties. For example each cavalryman is "worth" about 1.5 infantrymen, so on equal advantage cavalry will take lower average casualties than infantry. Huge units tend to take more casualties than smaller ones if everything else is equal, which it may be at impact, before the extra numbers can be brought to bear, although those casualties have less effect on their morale than they would on a smaller unit. It is % casualties in a turn that affect morale more than absolute casualties. Morale is much more important in this game than casualties, especially for huge units, who have many spare men standing idle in rear ranks (but making the unit a better target).

Cover is of course taken into account in shooting - but so is arc of fire, disruption, number of shooters in the unit, any of which may account for the disparity you mention, also range, movement by the shooting unit (including turns) etc. Some otherwise similar units have a significantly lower proportion of "shot" than others. Also salvo do not shoot as well as standard musket at close range, because they are saving their fire for a salvo immediately preceding a charge (which is taken into account in the impact close combat factors).

Complex games can seem more random than they in fact are until you are completely familiar with the non-random factors modifying the chances - i.e. much of the apparent disparity may be due to modifiers rather than randomness. I suggest turning on Detailed Tooltips in the advanced options menu to see more of what is going on under the hood.

[cfaulkner]

I have been using the detailed tooltips from day one. Still cannot seem to see much regularity in whats happening.

I accept the reasoning behind the Arty randomness,(I confess I'm not all that familiar with the era),They will occasionally hit with some power but are unreliable. I'm more puzzled by melee results, some of which seem very unlikely in any given period.Also, it's not the odds of winning or losing a melee that I find odd... it's the casualties.

Screen_00000000-2.jpg (66.27 KiB) Viewed 3507 times

Here I had a detatched musketeer charge a detatched musketeer that was in the woods.Same size units,same training level, yet the unit defending the wood took 22 casualties and fell back while I took only 4.

Screen_00000002-1.jpg (119.63 KiB) Viewed 3507 times

For this one I allowed a Hussar unit to get charged by a better trained Kurassier unit much larger than itself.With the enemy having a "Massive" advantage over me, we took very few casualties and continued the melee.In the following round of melee they took fewer casualties,(6 to his 5),by the third round of melee I took 16 casualties to his 4 and fell back, (which to me seems like it should happen at the initial charge). Even then,My Hussars fell back in good order,no disruption.

I'm not saying that results like this should never happen, but I feel they should be the exception.(Am I wrong?) I would like to know why results like this happen as often as they do. IMO 8 times out of 10 those Kurassiers should have run rough-shod right through my Hussars giving me 15-20 casualties, yet in the game it seems to me like casualties are just applied randomly..

[rbodleyscott]

I have been using the detailed tooltips from day one. Still cannot seem to see much regularity in whats happening.

I accept the reasoning behind the Arty randomness,(I confess I'm not all that familiar with the era),They will occasionally hit with some power but are unreliable. I'm more puzzled by melee results, some of which seem very unlikely in any given period.Also, it's not the odds of winning or losing a melee that I find odd... it's the casualties.

Screen_00000000-2.jpg

Here I had a detatched musketeer charge a detatched musketeer that was in the woods.Same size units,same training level, yet the unit defending the wood took 22 casualties and fell back while I took only 4.

The game does not give a POA for defending the wood, so the combat started exactly even.

When the combat is resolved, the average combat "score" achieved by each unit is modified from its average score (calculated from all the various factors affecting the combat, and in this case equal for both sides) by the bell-curved 50%-150% random modifier for each unit. The result of the combat (win, draw, loss) is determined from the modified scores. It is these scores that determine the result, not the casualties, although they are related, as below.

The casualties are calculated afterwards from the scores, without any further random element. However, a side that loses a combat has the casualties calculated from the scores doubled compared with a side who wins or draws a combat. This is based on the historical fact that in the era of close combat casualties on both sides tended to be very low until one side started losing, and then the losing side suffered more casualties. Winning and losing a close-combat was more of a morale thing than depending on casualties. This is a different dynamic from later eras where the fire-fight was everything, rates of fire were much higher, and both sides tended to suffer high casualties.

So the random element of the casualties in your example has the winners losing 4 and the losers losing 11 before the doubling effect of losing is taken into account. So I suspect that the average casualties would have been around 7 before the random factor was applied.

As I say, don't get too hung up on relative casualties, it is which side that wins the combat and the resulting cohesion test on the loser that matters, not so much the casualties - which tend to be fairly low anyway relative to the size of the units (Around 250 men in your example). This game is primarily a morale based system, not a casualties based system.

Screen_00000002-1.jpg

For this one I allowed a Hussar unit to get charged by a better trained Kurassier unit much larger than itself.With the enemy having a "Massive" advantage over me, we took very few casualties and continued the melee.In the following round of melee they took fewer casualties,(6 to his 5),by the third round of melee I took 16 casualties to his 4 and fell back, (which to me seems like it should happen at the initial charge). Even then,My Hussars fell back in good order,no disruption

The adjective describing advantage is calculated from the chance of winning the combat relative to the chance of losing it. In between there is a range of results in which neither side win the combat. When the combat is indecisive, casualties will be fairly even and low on both sides, for the historical reasons cited above.

Losing a combat does not cause automatic disruption, it cause a cohesion test. If the unit passes the cohesion test, it does not disrupt. The cohesion test is based on a bell-curved random factor with a number of modifiers. The modifiers have a very significant effect on the chance of failing. See http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =735499412

However, ultimately it is a pass or fail test, so inevitably there will seem to be some randomness, but the probabilities of passing or failing are significantly affected by the situational modifiers, as you can see from Max Damage's results.

[cfaulkner]

I appreciate your taking the time to try to explain this. I guess it's just not for me.

[MaxDamage]

Look at that

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.c ... 67D309287/

However this is a really fun part of the game. A small chance for a miracle to happen! I like this very much.

[stockwellpete]

Look at that

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.c ... 67D309287/

However this is a really fun part of the game. A small chance for a miracle to happen! I like this very much.

Yes, I like this aspect of the game too. Compared to FOG PC the casualty outcomes from melee and firing in this game are much more realistic. As you have shown you can get the occasional surprise outcome, but if the game didn't have these from time to time then it wouldn't be so exciting. I suppose that the quite frequent "zero" hits you get with artillery are a mixture of just plain misses and some misfires (even guns exploding). I am not sure what the misfire rate for artillery was in this period was but I assume it was not negligible.

[rbodleyscott]

Compared to FOG PC the casualty outcomes from melee and firing in this game are much more realistic.

FOG PC directly replicates the tabletop FOGAM hit system, rolling "dice" for "hits". Because multiple dice are thrown for each unit, this tends to even out most of the time, but does allow the extreme case where the disadvantaged unit "hits" with every dice and the advantaged unit "misses" with every dice. So you get occasional cases where a unit of light javelinmen (rolling 2 dice requiring 5s to "hit") actually wins a round of combat against Roman legionaries (rolling 4 dice requiring 3s to "hit") in open terrain.

We therefore abandoned the direct replication of the tabletop mechanisms for Pike and Shot, and instead replicated the overall results mathematically. This allowed us to damp down the range of randomness to a bell-curved 50%-150% of the average "hits", instead of a more steeply bell-curved 0%-300% in FOG PC. This means that in Pike and Shot (or FOG2) the aforementioned light javelinmen would have a tiny chance of drawing the round of combat, and no chance at all of winning it. We could have damped it down further if we had chosen to do so, but we feel that this would have been detrimental to the realism of the simulation. In real warfare things don't always go as expected.

It is a question of getting the right balance between randomness and determinism. We feel that we have achieved this balance in Pike and Shot, but of course not everybody will agree.