How big is the light infantry bonus in forests?

While I cannot answer the specific question, do bear in mind that there are factors outside the base stats that may be in play. Cost to recruit and replace, availability of upgrades (both in towns and in diplomacy), different available specials skills every fifth level, etc. Looking at the two statlines, surely heavy infantry will win out in terms of utility, but some of the other assorted factors may bring the LI's up in overall value.

Light infantry usually always faster than heavy infantry and can move quickly and attack flanking infantry. But you are right that heavy infantry is better in almost every way. I usually keep about two units of light infantry, and two units of spearmen to fight in woods and defend my archers.

Even in the forest or rain my light infantry seem to lose more percentage wise than heavy.

paincakes said:

Even in the forest or rain my light infantry seem to lose more percentage wise than heavy.

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I think that's realistic enough, because better equipped knight stays better equipped in a forest as well. I guess point of LI is more about speed.

Milten said:

I think that's realistic enough, because better equipped knight stays better equipped in a forest as well. I guess point of LI is more about speed.

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Id add that in Horde formation they can move more quickly around the battlefield and can be used to give a 2:1 ratio against any on going battle. I usually use my heavies to take the brunt of the attack and where possible move the LI up and around any ongoing battles and have them join in from the rear.

Calvary are far better at mobility. Light Infantry is cheap, that's really all there is to it. You might get some use out of them if you have a leader with good +LI boosts with stacked LI provinces.

Clegane76 said:

While I cannot answer the specific question, do bear in mind that there are factors outside the base stats that may be in play.

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If it's anything like the first, the two most important elements of combat is morale and exhaustion, neither of which are there in the base stats. Generally it came down to the general. The LI took a bit of a beating at first, but if they could be persuaded to stay in the fight they tended to win once the HI either broke or became exhausted. All things being equal obviously.

Haven't had a chance to play the second much, but I doubt it will have changed that much.

It's not like the first. There is no morale or stamina. There's "will to fight" which is supposed to be like the two combined but I've never seen it drop significantly. All fights require killing every last man on the opposing side and usually that last man after a very long fight still has decent "will to fight." At least from what I've seen so far. It's also scaling, 0 will is -40% damage, but half will is -20%, so it's not like dropping them to 0 suddenly turns the tide because if somehow the fight lasted that long your units would be pretty low too.

I did some testing in the scenario of 1on1 fights on both challenging and nightmare difficulty. I understand that 1on1 isn't really what the game is about but I think it helps somewhat.

Nightmare: Stats on units are as they should be. I was seeing a huge cut in HP on the challenging difficulty so if you are playing on challenging mode or lower then it seems unit composition matters little, light infantry can match heavy in the open field for example.

On my nightmare tests Heartwood Protectors do pretty well in their tier (won vs other heavy units in the forests pretty easily) but the Deepwood Veterans seemed to lose to everything no matter the circumstances. The formorian heavy infantry are just killer though and beat every other foot unit anywhere easily.

Light Infantry get decimated by archers and can't win 1 on 1 melee with an archer unit if they took a lot of fire. For this reason I think they are terrible flankers because it's too risky to expose them to archers or even magic. One or two spells on light infantry destroys their ability to stand up against anything due to the huge will to fight loss from casualties. Heavy doesn't seem to lose as much due to a bigger HP pool but it can still be devastating.

For flanking I'd go with Calvary and would only build a few of the very best light infantry units if their attack stat isn't too far from the heavy units. I haven't seen all the tiers but the -100 difference in attack on light infantry is too much to go up against heavy in the forest. Light also lacks the triangle formation which gives a huge increase on the units attack stat.

Wish I could test with the 50% attack speed bonus and poison bonus, because I think with those on light they become worthwhile. I wonder if pumping lights will to fight works better out in the end to, because they take more casualties then any other unit.

I've been thinking about this too. It looks to me like Light Infantry are worse than Heavy Infantry under all circumstances, even in horde formation in a forest. Yeah, the LI gets a bonus. But its a bonus that simply makes them LESS WORSE than the heavy infantry. You're still better off with heavy infantry.

To make light infantry worthwhile they need to be able to beat heavy infantry or cavalry in forest battles, otherwise you are wasting a slot with them.

Had some fun with mass light infantry during storm (casted by Morgana) or night (casted by roman champion guy) on forest heavy battlefields. Used the cheap deepwood line, had 3rd hero with surgon and medic promotions (from wife)+ bonuses from provinces too so i didin;t realy care about loses A nice "evil" change of pace and preaty efective. Springborn are good protectors (extra armor and forest bonus) for my archers since they have the ranger promotion and fire from forest in my "standard" army.

I looked the values up

Light Infantery: erdo=movef:-15.00;damagef:-15.00;defensebonus:-15;
erdo means forest
If nehezgyalogos means heavy infantery
erdo=movef:-30.00;damagef:-30.00;defensebonus:-30;

This would imply both get negative modifiers by forest, but the heavy infantery gets impacted more

Hahahahaha, so light infantry (whose values start significantly lower than heavy infantry) actually get a 15% penalty in forest? Good stuff.

Surely that should be a 15% bonus?

Well, they get punished less hard than other units (cavalry has even worse punishments I think 25% for light cavalery but did not look for heavy cav). So Light infantery will perform stronger in woods.

Edit: ok, I looked it up. Heavy cav: erdo=movef:-40.00;damagef:-30.00;defensebonus:-30;
Light Cav: erdo=movef:-25.00;damagef:-20.00;defensebonus:-20;

No, they won't perform stronger than heavy infantry in woods, they'll simply perform LESS WORSE. You're still better off with heavy infantry in the woods. Consider a heavy infantry with melee strength 135 and a light infantry with 90 fighting in woods. The 30% and 15% penalties result in strengths of 94 and 76.5. So the heavy infantry is still significantly stronger even before you take into account that it has far more hit points and defense.

Unless you have no money to afford heavy infantry I don't see why you would use light, except perhaps some morality units with special skills like forest teleport or whatever.

Yeah, sorry, I meant stronger than if they would fight the same fight on open field.

I did an experiment and had a unit of deepwood veterans fight a unit of... uh... the tier 2 heavy infantry in a forest, both in horde formation (obviously). The heavy infantry completely destroyed the light infantry unit while suffering 16 casualties. 16.

Light infantry gets slaughtered in the open... and it gets slaughtered almost as badly in the forest where it is supposed to have an advantage. It gets slaughtered in the rough terrain. It gets slaughtered in the scrubland. So what's the point of bothering with it?

dual wield swords duh...:ninja:

Maybe I'm beating a dead horse here but it just doesn't make sense. The manual says forests are ideal terrain for light infantry since heavy infantry is at "a huge disadvantage". Does a heavy infantry unit completely wiping out a light infantry unit of the same tier while suffering about 20% casualties sound like it is at a huge disadvantage? Light infantry should be able to defeat other unit types in the forest or else there is no reason to use them at all.