Military FAQ Part 1 - Casualties
Introduction
This post is concerned with the mechanism whereby units take casualties and how to understand the likely casualties your units will cause or take. The FAQ assumes that you have read the relevant section of the manual. The manual gives the raw statement about how combat work but this will leave most players with little appreciation of what this means in practice.
Combat consists of a series of combat resolutions extending over a significant period in days. There is a single combat resolution for each 5 day period which is then applied in each successive days.
Sneaky This has some interesting implications as it means that after day one you know what will happen in the next 4 days so you can actually break off from battle if the first day shows bad results.
The combat types are currently 5 days shock action followed by 5 days fire action and repeat. This has some important implications for battle analysis. In particular
. The number of fire days in a complete battle will almost always be less then the number of shock days and will certainly never be more
. Combat against defeated and retreating enemies will always be shock days only as they are pushed into new retreats before the first fire day occurs
How it works
Be cautious in reading and understanding this section. Inflicting casualties is not the only issue in battles and you need to be conscious of winning the battle as well. That is covered by the morale section and results in some significantly different conclusions.
Actual combat is resolved using the following formulae. The process is the same for fire days as it is for shock days, simply using fire factors instead of shock factors, so I will provide just the one general illustration.
On each day the game evaluates how many casualties each side inflicts on the other by the following
Attack+Dice+Terrain+Leader-Defence = score
Where
Attack = the attack rating of your unit
Dice = the periods dice roll (in the range 0-9)
Terrain = any terrain adjustments, these are applied to one side adjusting both attack and defence (see below)
Leader = a positive or negative adjustment reflecting the difference in capability between your leader and the enemy’s leader
Defence = the enemy target unit’s defence score.
One of the most important issues to understand in this formula is which parts affect both attack and defence and which only effect one of them. This is because anything affecting both can be considered as twice as significant.
Terrain, for example, affects both and therefore a –1 for terrain is worth 2 points and should be considered like a –2 on the dice rather than –1. (In actual fact it matches –1 on your dice roll PLUS +1 on the enemy dice roll).
Attack factors, Defence factors and the Dice roll only have a singular effect and therefore they only count for one point per point. Leader values and terrain effects are applied to both attack and defence and therefore their factors apply twice and should be evaluated as worth 2 points each. This makes high grade leaders
extremely powerful.
Having calculated a score this is then looked up on the following tables to obtain the number of casualties inflicted on the enemy. The process is…
1) Look up the casualties per 10,000 on the casualty table
2) Multiply by the relative strength of the attacking unit
3) Multiply by the tech level modifier for unit class and combat type (see below)
4) Subtract casualties
Note: I have used casualties per 10,000 so that the results are in whole numbers rather than fractions.
This table is at least very close to correct but I cannot be certain of exactness. The formula is
(score-1) x 3.5 for scores of 2 and above (the figure 3.5 proven correct within about 2%)
3.5 for a score of 1
2^(score-1) x 3.5 for scores below 1 (this amounts to halving the casualties for each point below one)
The figures in this table can be looked up in the game files but are not visible in game. The table is incomplete and only covers tech levels up to 35 (year 1735). Actual tech levels in the game extend to level 59 BUT this is dated 1825 and hence not typically reachable.
Worked examples
This is all a bit complex for most players so here are a few worked examples simply designed to illustrate the workings of these formulae. This are not intended to provide insight into particular combat situations.
1.
1 Latin Knight fighting 1 Latin Medieval Infantry, both at full strength at tech level 0
2 examples with different dice rolls
Knights: 1 attack + 5 dice = 6 => 5 x 3.5 x (Tech modifier) 4 = 70
Infantry: 0 attack + 5 dice = 5 => 4 x 3.5 x 0.5 = 7
Ouch
Knights: 1 attack + 0 dice = 1 => 1 x 3.5 x (Tech modifier) 4 = 14
Infantry: 0 attack + 9 dice = 9 => 8 x 3.5 x 0.5 = 14
Best possible result its same casualties
This nicely illustrates the situation at low tech-levels. The tech level modifier gives the cavalry an 8:1 advantage in causing casualties and this easily overwhelms all other factors.
1 Caroline infantry (5/4) fighting 1 Grenzer infantry (2/6), shock action
Caroline: 5 attack + 6 dice – 6 defence = 5 => 4 x 3.5 x 1 (Tech) = 14
Grenzer: 2 attack + 6 dice – 4 defence = 4 => 3 x 3.5 x 1 (Tech) = 10.5
Difference is quite limited and easily overwhelmed by the dice roll.
Now trying both of the above against 1 Latin Knight
Caroline: 5 attack + 7 dice – 0 defence = 12 => 11 x 3.5 x 1 (Tech) = 38.5
Knights: 1 attack + 7 dice – 4 defence = 4 => 3 x 3.5 x 4 = 42
Grenzer: 2 attack + 7 dice – 0 defence = 9 => 8 x 3.5 x 1 (Tech) = 28
Knights: 1 attack + 7 dice – 6 defence = 2 => 1 x 3.5 x 4 = 14
(dice roll of 7 chosen to keep on the linear part of the casualty tree)
The purpose of this example was to show that defence factors become more prominent when infantry fights cavalry than when they fight each other. See unit evaluation section for more details
Repeating the above with lower dice rolls allows us to look at calculations below the linear section of the table. Using 1 Knight versus 1 Grenzer
Knights: 1 attack + 9 dice – 4 defence = 6 => 5 x 3.5 x 4 = 70
Knights: 1 attack + 8 dice – 4 defence = 5 => 4 x 3.5 x 4 = 56
Knights: 1 attack + 7 dice – 4 defence = 4 => 3 x 3.5 x 4 = 42
Knights: 1 attack + 6dice – 4 defence = 3 => 2 x 3.5 x 4 = 28
Knights: 1 attack + 5 dice – 4 defence = 2 => 1 x 3.5 x 4 = 14
Knights: 1 attack + 4 dice – 4 defence = 1 => 1 x 3.5 x 4 = 14
Knights: 1 attack + 3 dice – 4 defence = 0 => 0.5 x 3.5 x 4 = 7
Knights: 1 attack + 2 dice – 4 defence = -1 => 0.25 x 3.5 x 4 = 3.5
Knights: 1 attack + 1 dice – 4 defence = -2 => 0.125 x 3.5 x 4 = 1.75
Knights: 1 attack + 0 dice – 4 defence = -3 => 0.0625 x 3.5 x 4 = 0.875
Grenzer: 2 attack + 9 dice – 0 defence = 11 => 10 x 3.5 x 1 (Tech) = 35
Grenzer: 2 attack + 7 dice – 0 defence = 9 => 8 x 3.5 x 1 (Tech) = 28
Grenzer: 2 attack + 3dice – 0 defence = 5 => 4 x 3.5 x 1 (Tech) = 14
Grenzer: 2 attack + 0dice – 0 defence = 2 => 1 x 3.5 x 1 (Tech) = 3.5
Notice how the more linear and closer spread of the Grenzer means that this combat is very strongly dependent on the cavalry dice role. An interesting side issue is that this combat can be dramatically affected by leadership. Give the infantry a level 6 leader against none for the cavalry and they are completely protected from the higher combat results. The cavalry will vary from ineffective to very moderate whilst the infantry will always achieve reasonable results.
Do it the other way round and the cavalry are shifted to spectacular results as against modest for the infantry.
This illustrates nicely that leadership is more significant for an effective tech level disadvantage in unit scores. It is
not an illustration that leaders are more significant for cavalry.