Qm said

[Xietor]

The fact is tramplers were given the low morale because they were not intended to fight to the death. In a way, adding high morale low cost infantry units to their group severely undermines the risk of having them turn on your own army. And it takes no great general to mix the units either.

Rather than raise their cost, and have them continue to fight to the death, I would think the more logical solution is to allow them to rout after they have received substantial damage, and trample their own troops.

That is the double edged sword of using the tramplers. No, I do not think you should be able to just raise the cost and continue to have 72 hp tramplers that fight to the death.

[quantum_mechani]

The main issue, as KO says, is not so much the infantry mixed with small numbers of elephants, it's the elephant hordes so huge they don't even need the moral boost. It's true, the equivalent gold cost in knights could probably easily stop them, but they can't be massed anywhere near as fast, especially with the base game barding costs.

[krpeters]

Thoughts on elephants & morale:

An easy way (for the programmers) to eliminate the "combining infantry with elephants" bug would be to weight a squad's morale by each unit's (original) hp. So it would take 7 heavy infantry to balance out one elephant's low morale... at which point the whole advantage of using elephants (high attack, low resource) would be eliminated.

Regarding the huge effectiveness of an elephant rush... I've used this strategy often, it does seem unfair that smaller squads get pasted. Keep in mind, though, that the effectiveness depends on concentration. If that 50 elephant squad breaks off into two 25 elephant squads, a moderate (100) sized light-infantry contingent can take them. So when you see the elephants coming, get out of their way, then charge into the enemy's territory (how many 50 elephant squads can he have?) and force him to chase you.

Alternatively, the problem of so many elephants in a single squad could be addressed by changing the squad rules limiting units in a squad by hp. A rating "50" commander would be able to lead 500 hp-units of troops -- 62 vaetti, or 7 elephants. Forcing the elephants into many squads could disorganize them sufficiently. (How is a single commander herding 50 elephants in the first place???!!!)

[MaxWilson]

Why would Ulm be trying to beat an army of tramplers in the field? I play SP, but my understanding was that there were numerous situations in MP where you have to go up against an army that you can't defeat in the field, and that a critical mass of tramplers is just one of them. I'm thinking of an E9N9 Niefel rush in particular. Is it not typical in that case to fight a delaying action instead, trying to raid around his forces and hit him in the pocket book? Giants and elephant hordes cost lots of upkeep, especially in the critical masses under discussion here. Ulm is ideally suited for this kind of stealthy warfare, and going toe-to-toe seems like a bad plan. It's exactly what the tramplers would want you to do.

Edit: actually, this is exactly how I would handle this situation in SP, so maybe the SP/MP distinction isn't relevant here. It's just that, while I enjoy tactical puzzles in SP, I'm hesitant to suggest that the solutions are relevant to MP.

-Max

[quantum_mechani]

MaxWilson said:
Why would Ulm be trying to beat an army of tramplers in the field? I play SP, but my understanding was that there were numerous situations in MP where you have to go up against an army that you can't defeat in the field, and that a critical mass of tramplers is just one of them. I'm thinking of an E9N9 Niefel rush in particular. Is it not typical in that case to fight a delaying action instead, trying to raid around his forces and hit him in the pocket book? Giants and elephant hordes cost lots of upkeep, especially in the critical masses under discussion here. Ulm is ideally suited for this kind of stealthy warfare, and going toe-to-toe seems like a bad plan. It's exactly what the tramplers would want you to do.

Edit: actually, this is exactly how I would handle this situation in SP, so maybe the SP/MP distinction isn't relevant here. It's just that, while I enjoy tactical puzzles in SP, I'm hesitant to suggest that the solutions are relevant to MP.

-Max

Raiding to avoid confrontation with a superior army is a very powerful tool, but it isn't a cure-all. In the early game, your mages at the capital need to be at least enough deterrent that the enemy doesn't simply beeline right there and take it. With Ulm vs early elephant horde, this usually isn't the case.

What I would like to see for elephants is periodic squad numbers/average morale value independent morale checks. If whenever an elephant hit it had a chance to trigger such a morale check for the whole squad, that would greatly reduce the incentive for giant mega-squads. It could be an ability like any other (called panic or something) and could probably be thematic with some other units too.

[Zath]

The training of war horses and elephants have historically been focused on suppressing the natural instincts of these animals to flee when struck by weapons or startled by noise and large crowds. Training an animal to trample opponents is especially difficult, since they must charge through what they perceive as solid obstacles. All the above factors can be modeled in game with a similar mechanism to repel: force tramplers to pass a morale check for each square they trample, and make them attack with their normal weapon if they fail this check. The difficulty of this morale check can be adjusted based on any number of factors that the designers find suitable. For example, the mechanism could be setup as:

Trample Roll = Morale - 1 per every 20% HP loss on unit
Fear Roll = 5 + 1 per every 6 hostile size points in adjacent squares

If Trample Roll > Fear Roll, then trampling succeeds, otherwise attack with normal weapon and end turn. What qualifies as "adjacent squares" must be further defined of course, but just using the 8 immediately adjacent squares may well suffice. A system like this would make some roleplaying sense, and it should mitigate the problem of trampling rushers without completely negating the effectiveness of these units in a combined arms battle. Swarms of cheap infantry could be used to freeze tramplers in place and whittle them down slowly. This can be countered by using archers or shock infantry to cut through the chaff, which will in turn be vulnerable to other counter-counters, etc. etc.

[MaxWilson]

Mod +1.

-Max

[Chris_Byler]

I think the best fix would be to adjust the rules for mixed squads so that the cowards in the squad can break before the braver troops.

Instead of having the squad share morale and break as a whole, it could have partial breaks where everyone with morale less than X panics and runs. The braver members of the squad continue fighting, until they take enough casualties for the squad's "rout number" to exceed their morale as well. If there were troops with drastically different morale (like mammoths and wingless), half breaks would be pretty common. Fear, standards that only cover part of the squad, and Battle Fright could also cause part of a squad to flee while other parts fight on.

That would make combining cowardly tramplers + brave other troops dangerous - the tramplers might break first and trample their braver comrades on their way off the battlefield. Cowards would remain cowardly even when surrounded by braver allies - it takes something like a standard or Sermon of Courage to really improve their morale.

That might require enough changes to the morale system to make it more of a Dom4 thing than something that could be done in a patch, though.


In the short term maybe elephants just need to cost more resources. They may not wear much equipment, but the effort involved in catching or breeding an elephant and then training it for war is far from trivial in its own right (*much* harder than doing the same for a horse). A high resource cost would make it difficult to accumulate elephants quickly, especially without productivity. Training a large force of elephants would take years.

And really, how likely is it that the people of a sloth-3 province are going to bother to take the trouble to raise and train even one elephant, let alone several? That would be far too much work.

[OmikronWarrior]

Hmmm... This discussion interests me. I think I have a "solution" thats going to make a lot of sense with out ripping apart the game (like adding animal command would). I'm going to work on the math, but it basically involves adding some morale checks modified by weapon length and HP.

[OmikronWarrior]

Alright, I must have gone through a dozen different schemes of various complexities (some requiring four seperate moral checks before doing some attack vs. defense checks). I finally settled on the simplest. First, what my criteria were.

A) It had to make sense "realistically".
B) It couldn't create any new abilities, attributes, etc.
C) It had to be simpler than the mechanics governing missles.
D) It would have to employee similar mechanics to those already used by the game.
E) It had to be readily available to any nation thematically.

For A, the obvious solution to being charged by giant creatures would be long pointy sticks that the creature would have to impale itself on to get to you. Hence, weapon length vs. trampler morale became the dominant theme. As for D, I noticed that while the game has "repel" checks for normal attacks, it has nothing of the sort for trample attacks. This doesn't make sense. Therefore, in order for a unit to trample a square, it must pass the following morale check:

(Trampler Morale)+(Trampler Size)+DRN-(Trampler Fatigue)/10

vs.

(Modified Sum of Weapon Length in Attacked Square)+DRN

The "Sum of Weapon Length" is modified the same way presicion is, all points over 10 are doubled. Note that the moral check is based on the INDIVIDUAL trampler's morale, and no survivor bonus is applied, just a fatigue penalty. Which makes sense, the more tired you are the more daunting the task of avoiding a wall of spikes becomes.

What happens next is simple. If the trampler fails the morale check the unit will simply attack normally with whatever weapon it has (trunk, spear, whatever). If it succeeds it now is vulnerable to "attacks of opportunity", much like a normal soldier who succeeds their morale check vs. a longer weapon. Each unit in the square gets a free attack against the trampler (whose defense is reduce by 2 each time it defends against such an attack) which can cause at most an amount of damage equal to the weapon's length (which symbolizes the creature impaling itself on the long weapon). Plus, each such attack will cause a fatigue hit.



The baseline in my head was a squad of 3 spearment (total weapon length 12) should have a "reasonable" chance to parry a low morale elephant, while 3 phalanxes each with length six weapons should stop all but the most determined trampler cold. Meanwhile, isolated and short length weapon fighters should rarely be able to repel even the most uncertain of tramplers.

The match ups.

Mammoth vs. 3 spearmen: The Mammoth has morale 10 and size 6, while the spearmen have modified weapon lengths of 14. Assuming no fatigue, the Mammoth will trample the spearmen 62% of the time. It's enough to blunt a trampler's charge and give the defendants a fighting chance against an amassed Mammoth horde beelining for the capital.

Indie Elephants vs. 3 Spearment: The difference between indie elephants and Mammoths is the elephants have a morale of 8. This means they'll only successfully trample the spearmen 46% of the time.

Indi Elephant vs. Isolate Phalanx (WL6) or 3 short swordsmen (WL2x3)

The Elephant would roll 14 vs 6. A plus 8 difference means it will trample the units 86% of the time. That almost identical to the current situation.

Mammoth vs. 3 Phalanxes (WL6x3)

The Mammoth would still have 16, but 6 times 3 is 18, which would be modified to 26. Thats a deficiet of 10 which only gives the Mammoth a 3% chance of actually trampling.

Finally, SC vs. 3 Phalanxes

I'm assuming a size 6 Commander with 30 morale tries to trample the best anti-trample defense available. Its 36 vs. 26, and the commander will successfully trample 95% of the time. Fortunately, such units don't grow on trees.

Thoughts? Exploits? Understandable?