Combat for the newbie

[Lord Vader]

Not that I'm the most qualified person to write this, but as a newly graduated newbie I thought I ought to share what I've learned so far. If any of the board's elder statesmen (women?) catch anything that isn't true please don't hesitate to correct me.

1. Combat is NOT purely random. Read Huzics' FAQ

2. Read Huzics' FAQ again, especially the part about the game-engine in depth. Trust me on this one.

3. A technological edge of 1-2 levels on an enemy doesn't really mean diddly. Don't get me wrong, it helps, but it's very subtle and you still need to use your armies properly. If you insist on sending a huge army of cavalry to attack a mountainous province across a river your advanced tech is not going to help you.

4. Land Tech is NOT as simple as it seems. Each advance has a specific function in growing your military power and it usually only helps one branch at a time (infantry, cavalry artillery) so while you may have a tech advantage in one you may not in the other. To see what these tech advances do go into your EU/DB/directory and open Land.csv. To understand what the numbers mean, read Huzics' FAQ (do you sense a pattern?)

5. Terrain matters. Plains and desert are tailor made for masses of cavalry (shock phase). Forests, marsh and mountains are made for infantry grunts backed up by lots of cannon (fire phase). They also favor the defender.

6. When the combat screen shows up, PAUSE. Take careful note of the fire phase numbers for you and the opposing army. If your number is less, you are at a disadvantage. If they also have more cavalry than you, chances are they have an advantage in the shock phase too (barring an appropriately skilled leader for your side). This means you will probably lose. These numbers also don't take into account terrain so if you're going into bad terrain it's even worse. If the odds aren't good, RETREAT. Yes, even though the manual doesn't do a very good job of stating it, you can still move your army out of the battle before it gets hammered to pieces (only took me six games to figure that out).

7. This one I'm not sure on, maybe Hartmann or Huzics can elaborate, but your nation's army has a default stat for fire, shock, and siege. It may be a good idea to build your armies around your military's strength. For example, Brandenburg's default is 1 maneuver,(if anyone can tell me what this does I'd be grateful. I think it means taking less casualties) 3 fire, 0 shock 0 siege. I would take this to mean Brandenburg's infantry and cannon kick arse, but their cavalry ain't worth all that much. Therefore if playing them it may behoove you to stick to the rough terrain to neutralize the enemy's cavalry and attacking open spaces only if you have a distinct cav advantage.

8. Tailor your leader's army to him. Check your leader's fire shock and siege stats. Don't give him a load of cav if his shock is the lowest stat.

9. Infantry absorbs the bulk of your casualties. Not having enough means risking a morale breakdown. Even on the open spaces you still need the grunts to take the dive so the pretty boys on the hossies can do their job.

10. Even doing all you can do, there's still going to be times when the AI's 5,000 men kicks the snot out of your 30,000 man juggernaut. All you can do is maximize your chances of success.

11. Read Huzics' FAQ.

[BiB]

The manover thingy decreases attrition.

[Cobos]

And as reducing atttrition is very important when you want to besiege a mountain province or other province that has a very low enemy supply value, the conquistadors come in handy there...They actually reduces the attrition with 4x their move score....I.e. a 4 move conq. will in Europe and RoTW reduce atttrition by 16! This is also why Cortes which is 6,6,5,1 ! is also useful in Europe. His shock and fire gets reduced to 0 but with his 6 in manouveer and 1 in siege he can sit and besiege nasty provinces as Switzerland during wintertime and still not loose too many men... Just be sure you don't get an opposing army on your hand because then he really really suck All this apply to Europe of course in the RoTW he is simply the best !!

Cobos

[Huszics]

Originally posted by BiB
The manover thingy decreases attrition.

For naval leaders it also matters for deciding who has the favor of the wind during a battle.

For the rest of it LV, I think you got how the system works. I even think I will stick this entire thread to the top of the forum for the benefit of all newbies. Great work in summarizing it all up =)

[Grenadier]

Originally posted by BiB
The manover thingy decreases attrition.

Is that all it does (in land combat)? It doesn´t matter for the actual battle?

[Huszics]

Originally posted by Grenadier

Is that all it does (in land combat)? It doesn´t matter for the actual battle?

It didn't in the BG, so probably no. However don't underestimate the penalty of attrition before even getting to the fight.

[yves]

I read many posts in relation to combat, how it works, how it seems that much too often a small force quicks the arse of a large force...

From what I have seen (with one GC as Portugal), the combat mechanisms are quite close to what they are in the boardgame. I have played quite a few Grand Campaigns with the boardgame and am quite knowlegeable in that field. Most of what I say below is true in the boargame ; much of it is likely to have gone into the computer game.

LEADERS

- leaders stats :
MOVEMENT : reduces attrition (and that's all, folks!, except at sea where this also gives a better 'chance at getting the wind')
SHOCK : increases your die roll (see Huszic FAQ) in the shock phase
FIRE : increases your die roll (see Huszic FAQ) in the fire phase
SIEGE : increases your chances to capture a fortress
when two leaders are against each other, there is no penalty for having a bad leader but there is a bonus (equal to the difference between the leader's stats) for the good leader.

- leaders can get killed (hey, historical!!!). In the boargame, a leader had about a 2% chance of dying for each combat phase (fire, shock, fire, shock...).

- First thing I know is that you don't really need to have a good leader ; but you don't go and try to kick the arse of a good opponent leader : even with a pretty small army, he'll get your morale down in no time.

- This of course depends on luck : if you have a good leader, don't count on him to beat a larger opponent down through morale loss. If you're a bit unlucky (or lucky, depending on your side), a large force can be lucky enough to wipe out an opponent force even if led be a good leader.

- don't gamble with your leaders : they are your insurance policy against big baddies who would eat you alive (unless you have countless of them, as France under Louis XIV). If Frederic II comes knocking at your door, you had better have kept somebody in reserve or you're going to have a hard time...

- Assaults with leaders are usually stupid because you just might end up losing a good leader in an unnecessary battle (unless you are in a hurry to sue for peace and need a province fast as a bargaining chip).

TECHNOLOGY

- The effects of technology translate into better firepower and/or shock power to your troops, or better morale. It also gives you a slightly better fighing column (see Huszik FAQ).
Better morale just means you'll hold your ground longer and gives you the possibility to outlast your opponent.
Better shock power just means you'll inflict higher damage in the shock phase. Very good with cavalry in good terrain...
Better firepower just means you'll inflict higher damage in the fire phase. Very good with infantery and cannon. Beware that cavalry firepower is quite lousy...
Usually, the difference in technology is not significant (other European fellow are close to you). The only field were technology is a killer is morale. In particular, early in the game your morale rating can be up to 50% higher than your opponent. This is very significant.

SIEGE

- Never assault unless/before you have a breach in the walls : you'll lose in no time, even with overwhelming forces because the level of the fortress is substracted from your die roll. When your max combat result is 8 (see Huszik FAQ), you can usually only win by eliminating all opponents in the fortress : you'd better have a very large army to achieve that before being demoralized yourself !

- Bring Artillery to speed up the siege. The ratios are not the same than in the boardgame or so it seems, so I rely on others guess : 30 cannons to 1 level of fortification for best effect.

- Also note that leaders have a siege value (Vauban springs to mind) ; bring these to a siege for best effect : they are tremendously efficient.

- Unless you really are in a hurry, you should always consider keeping the siege on and not assaulting. I almost never assault (too risky/expensive). In the boardgame, it was not so as at some time your army would retreat and thus you would consider assaulting sometimes. Here, you have no such restriction : just keep a trickle of reinforcements to keep the siege going on.

- Bad terrain DO affect siege. The presence of a port do affect siege. All of this is cumulative : don't be surprised if a port in mountains holds quite long (Ragusa ?). Blockading eliminates the port penalty.

- Conversely, if one of your city with a port is besieged, you can bring in reinforcements directly in the province by sea.

LAND COMBAT

- The combat alternates fire phase and shock phase. Beware that some leaders are very good for one phase and quite bad for the other. Furthermore, your army strength is not the same during the shock phase and the fire phase. In particular, at the beginning of the game, you won't inflict serious damage during the fire phase.

- Cannons are good during the fire phase, infantery less so, and cavalry sucks.
Cavalry rocks during the shock phase, infantery is OK and cannons are worthless.

- Consequence : An army with much cavalry will win the day early in the game, and often lose at the end... your armies must be well balanced, and that balance changes during the game depending on the technology level. Furthermore, all countries do not have the same costs for all armies, so the best balance at a given date is not the same for all countries (I love that) !!! Note that this is historical, as in the late middle age, countries would attempt to field large cavalry armies while at the time of the french revolution, infantry would be the bulk of a modern army. All of this applies only to the amount of real damage you do (as opposed to morale damage).

- A large army can lose a fight against a small army (historical), even repeatedly. This is all a matter of luck, because there are two ways to win (lose) a battle : destroy the enemy (sheer fire/shock power), or morale loss ; they are somewhat but not completely related to each other. In particular, a small army will not inflict serious damage on any other army, but the amount of morale damage is independant of army size (at least in the boardgame). You can observe this effect in particular in naval battles with one ship on each side : one will ultimately lose, but it will rarely get sunk ; all the damage inflicted is, in that case, morale damage.

- The combat table in the boargame (likely the same in the computer game) is such that in many combats, you have only 60% or 70% chance of inflicting ANY damage : this explains why sometimes a lone ship can defeat a very large force.

- Early in the game (or later against natives), there may be a window of opportunity when you battle opponents with no firearms. While your firearms are notoriously bad at inflicting real damage, they are good at dispiriting your opponents. If your opponent has no firearm, you get the fire phase for free to inflict morale damage.

- Cavalry forces are very useful (at least in the boardgame) when your opponent is in panic : they (and only they) pursue the enemy at no risk to cut him to pieces (=enemy losses, no losses to you). Furthermore, in the boargame (no sure for the computer game), losses at that time are heavily applied against artillery (expensive for everybody).

- Cavalry forces are also very useful to get a (small : +1) combat bonus if you achieve a 2:1 superiority in cavalry on the opponent. Note that such a bonus may be small, but can translate, with a lucky roll, in a high morale loss to the opponent.

- Beware the terrain : bad terrain usually substracts from your own die roll. The net effect is that in bad terrain you'll inflict slightly less damage on the opponent and a lot less morale damage : you're thus likely to lose the battle on morale. Furthermore, in most bad terrain, your cavalry is of little use unless, perhaps, you are the defender.

NAVAL COMBAT

- works in exactly the same way as land combat, but your firepower is much better.

- at the beginning of a battle, one fleet will usually 'get the wind', which gives it a +1 bonus on all rolls. Leaders help here (movement stat).

- don't go in the mediterranean or baltic with 'warships' early during the game : you'll get them hacked to piece by hosts of cheap galleys !! The same goes with transports. Actually, galleys will hold the mediterranean for at least half of the game. The drawback for galleys is that they are stuck in the sea they are in (unless you want to face tremendous attrition). The second drawback for galleys is that technology does nothing for them : they'll slowly become outdated and are quite worthless at the end of the game.

LOSING THE BATTLE

- In the boargame at least (not sure it has made the computer game), losing the battle also meant a very high attrition rate for retreating (sometimes more than half your remaining army).

- In the boardgame at least, it was always better to decide to quit the battle before your morale got to 0 (panic) : an orderly retreat meant less loss/attrition. I don't know whether this has gone into the computer game.

ATTRITION

- Attrition is definitely not the way you want to lose your forces : you want to lose them against an opposing force !

- Always check the support ability of the province you are going into. Add to this twice your leader movement stat (four time for conquistadors) : any army greater than that will face attrition loss.
Check the support ability of your own provinces, and divide your forces as needed : because your forces are home doesn't mean they don't suffer attrition.

- Always make sure you have a supply line before going into combat, and keep it open.



I hope some of you will find this post useful.
I can say lots of other things more about the boardgame.

(this post has been updated once)

[Savant]

and comparison to the boardgame. It's made me think a little more about the mix of forces I assemble and how I might use them.

We may just dedicate the next battlefield victory to your advice.

[Lord Vader]

Fantastic! I think Huszics should put your post at the top of this thread... (Hell, I printed the puppy out)

[Hartmann]

Great job, yves & Lord Vader! Even after all this time playing the game I learned some new things from this thread.

Hartmann

[Huszics]

Originally posted by Lord Vader
Fantastic! I think Huszics should put your post at the top of this thread... (Hell, I printed the puppy out)

Sorry can't do, not without reposting everything in a new thread (and then the original creator cannot access them any more). Anyway, people interested will probably read beyond the first post I hope =)

I also think is't greate. That's why I moved the post to this thread to begin with, so that it wouldn't get lost =)

[Rob Roy]

There's mention of not assaulting a fortress in a siege before you have a breach in the wall - but how do you know that you have a breach?

RoB

[yves]

Originally posted by Rob Roy
There's mention of not assaulting a fortress in a siege before you have a breach in the wall - but how do you know that you have a breach?

RoB

For my part, I'd say that this happens when you actually see a hole in the wall surrounding the city (it a small V-shaped breach). But I can't know for sure.

In the boardgame, a siege lasts several 'impulses'. At every impulse, you roll a die and apply modifiers. Th
The possible results are :
- nothing happens
- the siege has some effect, and a figure called 'usure' (in french) rises by 1 to 3
- you get a breach, which also increases 'usure' by 2
- the city surrenders

Modifiers are, on the defender side :
- the fortress level (+1 to +6),
- bad terrain such as marsh (not sure) or mountains (+2),
[Moderator edit: Bad terrain is all non plain both in CG & BG]
- unblockaded port (+2)

on the attacker side :
- leader siege rating (+0 to +4),
- 'enough' artillery (don't know the ratio in the computer game 10:1 perhaps) : +1
[Moderator edit: 20:1]
- 'more than enough artillery' (30:1 perhaps in the computer game) : +3
- current 'usure'
[Moderator edit: No cannons at all -1]


The result for a breach doesn't happen automatically, and it would often happen that a city surrendered without it's walls being breached. I believe that the figures you have in the computer game are,

on the left : leader siege rating + artillery bonus
on the rigth : fortress bonus - current 'usure'

but it would be good to make some experiments... Anybody who can give more hindsights is welcome !
[Moderator edit: Seems entirely correct IME except the parts where I've made notes]


Anyway, the purpose of this post is just to say that since 'breach' is not an automatic result in the boargameand because there is a distinct siege image depicting a breached wall, there is reason to believe that a breach is not equivalent to a negative figure on the right of the siege screen.

[khurjan]

thanx for the influx of all that information

[John_Keats]

Just got the game. I've got an idiot/moron question of my own, which, somehow, even through searching and reading FAQs and whatnot has not been answered; maybe I just got a bug in my first GC using England, but is there something you need to do to get your allies to honor their alliances? I started a war with Spain and nobody did anything to help me who were in my alliance. I didn't have a cassu belli. Is there something that I'm missing in the diplomacy area that I can press to ask my allies to honor their alliance? Or do they do it automatically when you declare war, and when I declared war on Spain they either didn't honor them or there was a bug...? Or perhaps alliances only work defensively/when you have a cassus belli? (I don't think this is true, but...). I can't believe I don't know the answer to this...

[Huszics]

Originally posted by John_Keats
Just got the game. I've got an idiot/moron question of my own, which, somehow, even through searching and reading FAQs and whatnot has not been answered; maybe I just got a bug in my first GC using England, but is there something you need to do to get your allies to honor their alliances? I started a war with Spain and nobody did anything to help me who were in my alliance. I didn't have a cassu belli. Is there something that I'm missing in the diplomacy area that I can press to ask my allies to honor their alliance? Or do they do it automatically when you declare war, and when I declared war on Spain they either didn't honor them or there was a bug...? Or perhaps alliances only work defensively/when you have a cassus belli? (I don't think this is true, but...). I can't believe I don't know the answer to this...

You actually have to ASK them to join (otherwise they figure you have decided that you can handle the enemies on your own).

Look for a small flagg in the upper right corner after you DOW or get DOWed upon.

[Prince Rupert]

Originally posted by yves

...Always check the support ability of the province you are going into. Add to this twice your leader movement stat (four time for conquistadors) : any army greater than that will face attrition loss.
Check the support ability of your own provinces, and divide your forces as needed : because your forces are home doesn't mean they don't suffer attrition.

This thread has been very informative, but this is the one area I seem to be having a problem figuring out. How (or where) is the 'support ability' of a province listed, and what is it listed as?

[Crook]

I find this information interesting, but it seems to me those fire and shock values are irrelevant.
Why does morale determine everything?

Why a tiny force (7k) of rebels with 1(!!) cannon inflict more damage on morale of my 30K army with 30 cannons? This is actually pretty consistent, I replayed the battle about 20 times, in about 15 it happened.

Why in a sea battle, I sink 5(!) enemy ships, don't lose a single one, yet lose a battle? Apparently, my sailors got really scared looking at the results of this massacre, and pooped in their pants. Yeah, right! Like that can happen.

Overall, I think the comabt is weakest part ofthe game, as numbers don't really mean a thing, otherwise I wouldn't see such a consistency of those weird results.

[Grenadier]

Originally posted by Prince Rupert
How (or where) is the 'support ability' of a province listed, and what is it listed as?

You just click on an enemy province, and the support ability (or whatever it's called in English) is shown in the window to the left, along with some other info (province income, population etc). In your own provinces, you click on the church in the province window to show the support ability (among other things).

[Huszics]

Why does morale determine everything?

Becurse it did (and still does) in reality ...

Why in a sea battle, I sink 5(!) enemy ships, don't lose a single one, yet lose a battle? Apparently, my sailors got really scared looking at the results of this massacre, and pooped in their pants. Yeah, right! Like that can happen.

There could be a million and one reasons. Mayby most of your fleet is pretty much banged up and in no shape to continue the fight ? Cannos out of ammo ? The admiral ship might be ablaze etc etc.

Overall, I think the comabt is weakest part ofthe game, as numbers don't really mean a thing ...

Which is exactly what makes the game much more realistic then most others. Hisorically 'numbers don't really mean a thing' is a VERY accurate description.