The MA Ulm issue.

[Maraxus]

Judging from the shortbow damage, you have not considered the random number. That's bringing a fault into the calculation (through it obviously makes the calculation a lot easier. - I'd say calculateable. I have no idea, how one can calculate the distributions of open ended d6s.)

I'f used Excel to calculate it and the result was as follows:

Damage per hit:

Prot 10 -- 12 -- 16
Shortbow -- 1.37 -- 0.593 -- 0.043
Longbow -- 3.35 -- 1.93 -- 0.353
Crossbow -- 5.1 -- 4.19 -- 2.59
Arbelest -- 9 -- 8 -- 6.04

Multiply this with the number of shots per interval of your choise.
...
Okay, I do and see, that the DRNs don't make to much diffrence. The open-endedness comes on top of this but should not chance that much more.

Well, at least, it shows, that at Protection 12, the Longbow is still quite en par with the crossbow but nobody can argue away the heavy loose in damage once Prot>Damage



Of course, this was in reswponse to CUnknown. Tuidjy has given more important points.
I would not value hits as high because routing enemies will often come back again but one should definitly not ignore this point, too.

Oh and of course one thing you can put into a formular even less well:
If you shoot fast enough, you will more likely catch the opponent in the ideal distance.

[CUnknown]

I'm sorry, Tuidjy, you're overcomplicating things and for all that not even calculating damage. All "hits" are not equal. It's better to keep it simple and leave out the random numbers, imo. Against 14 protection and over, the arbelest is the clear winner. Even against 12 protection, it is better than any other as has been shown.

Although for sure, the community isn't divided on the Ulm issue, I know and will admit that. It's just that the common knowledge is a little off in this case. People seem to think that Ulm is some outlier, as if it's horribly underpowered. The truth is that it's very similar in power to any other faction in the bottom tier or two (that is, like almost half the factions out there).

[Sombre]

Yeah how silly of him to overcomplicate things by using the same factors the game does to calculate damage. Let's just forget the game, it makes the math too complex.

Your argument that arbalests are hands down the best mundane missile weapon now appears to be "Arbalests do the most damage per hit". Great. I think we can safely say that this is no longer up for debate, because you're the only person arguing that Arbalests are the best and your argument doesn't deserve a sensible reply (you'd ignore or dismiss it anyway, judging by your response to Tuidjy).

I was going to run some ingame tests with crossbows and arbalests, behind a wall of Ulmish heavy infantry, vs various enemies to see which one was generally more useful. But now I can see there would be no point, because Arbalests do the most damage per hit. Heh.

[Tuidjy]

> All "hits" are not equal.

I know that, which is why I have divided them into kills and damaging hits, and
have displayed the average damage.

> It's better to keep it simple

We have computers so we can crunch the numbers. We have brains so we can
analyze results. This is simple.

> and leave out the random numbers, imo.

No, we should not, because the spread is very significant. I know that my
intuition misleads me when I think about open ended dice. I am pretty sure
yours is no better.

> Against 14 protection and over, the arbelest is the clear winner.

Did you bother reading what I wrote? How the Hell can you say that it is a
clear winner when pure numbers are ambivalent, everything else favors the
crossbow, and protection 14 units are not the what the arbalests will most likely
be shooting at, unless you count your own troops?!

> Even against 12 protection, it is better than any other as has been shown.

What has been shown? Against an enemy of infinite health and protection 12 the
freaking longbow has three times as many landing hits, and 54% chance of dealing
an average of 5.49 points of damage. The arbalest hits have a 89.3% chance to
deal an average of 9.39 points of damage. The hard numbers slightly (6%) favor
the longbow, and every single assumption, including the one about infinite
health, favors the arbalest! Math and English, do you read them?!

> It's just that the common knowledge is a little off in this case.

And you know this because the Pantocrator has spoken to you? Players that are
much better than you think otherwise, Ulm loses in duels no matter how well
you stack the deck in their favor, has no answer to heavy blesses or tramplers,
the numbers speak against them, no one has any suggestions for any late game...

But YOU know the common knowledge is off? I do not have a beef with
people who point out that MA C'tis and Agartha need help. But you keep talking
and talking, and have not advanced any arguments but bad math.

[Tuidjy]

I decided to test all this crap in game. Here's what I did.

80 Marignon crossbowmen,
80 Ulm crossbowmen,
80 Man longbowmen

vs

80 Tien Chi footmen (shields, low armour)
80 Tien Chi inperial footmen (armour 14)
20 Tien Chi footmen, 60 Tien Chi imperial footmen (footmen draw fire, IF flank)

I positioned the infantry as far back as possible, except for the last
combination, where I positioned them in a half way decent manner. Not in my
favorite arrangement for drawing ranged fire, mind you. I ran every combination
at least twice. The attachment is a setup which you can use to fight Man, Ulm,
Marignon and Tien Chi armies. I am too sick and sleepy to actually bother typing
it all, but basically, the longbowmen win all matchups against the infantry.
They lose to the arbalest guys, but that's because of armour, not shooting skill.

The regular crossbowmen consistently lost to the mixed squad, the guys with the
arbalests lost two and won two. They did very poorly (worse than crossbows)
while shooting, but managed to steal a victory in hand to hand. If Ulm
crossbowmen have a saving grace, it's that they are OK infantry.

Afterwards I ran a few fights with Ulm against tower guards... the tower guards
wipe the floor with any combination of the same gold cost of Ulm melee/ranged
infantry. If Ulm has arbalests, they break earlier - fewer fighters, and the
arbalests kill friends and foes indiscriminately.

Imperial guards beat Ulm even easier, and tie with tower guards - win some, lose
some. Marignon's men at arms slaugter Ulm as well... basically Ulm's 10 gold,
resource 30+ infantry loses to any gold 12-14, resource 24+ infantry, even if you
match them in cost, as opposed to numbers. By the way, heavy infantry with
shields destroys any unsupported ranged troops, but that's only normal.

Hell, try it for yourself. The mighty men of Ulm cannot beat anyone in hand to
hand combat. Their only excuse for infantry are the arbalest guys, whose only
saving grace is their heavy armour, that allows them to fight OK in hand to hand.
If they had a buckler and a crossbow instead of an arbalest, they would be quite
the soldiers... but obviously they are too dumb to understand what gear works.

[Burnsaber]

I took some time today to make some experiments regarding Ulmish Infantry. I wanted to test how they fare against the current heavy infatry favourite (Pricipe) mano'a'mano.

I bidded 20 Ulmish Black Steel troops with different weapons against 20 Pythium Pricipes. The Pricipes lost most of the fights (expect against shielded infantry), but when the Pricipes lost they inflicted heavy (7-9) casualties, and all Principes that fled, survived (expect a couple of cripples). Losses were usually 5-7 Blacksteels to 10-14 Priciples.

Then I made a bit more "realistic" test of 30 principes against 20 Blacksteel (due to resource cost you can build 1,5 principes for each blacksteel guy, gold cost is *much* less limitng factor when building troops than gold). It was brutal, not even Guardians had anything against Priciples in this case. The losses were usually 13-17 blacksteels to 8-12 Priciples.

So what does this mean? Ulmish Infantry doesn't *suck*, exactly (they have some results against *the heavy infatry*, but only when magic and resource complications are stripped) , but they're nothing too amazing either. Personally (I have nearly zero experience with Pythium/MA Ulm previously) from watching the fights, I'd take Principles over Blacksteels anyday -> They don't run away so easily, you can make more of them, they move faster, have javelins..

And I think that this is wrong. Ulmish infantry should be awesomely good and badass, since it's pretty much all they've got outside capitol. Not medicore, especially with their magic weakness. While I look at their stats I see base attack & defense 10, they're just your regular infantry in extremely heavy armor. I don't think that it would be at all unbalancing nor unthematic to give them some training bonuses. a mere +1 attack, +1 defense, -1 encumberance, +1-2 action points and +1-2 morale would proabably go a long way to make Ulmish infantry something to actually mention when talking about Ulm's strenghts.

And about Master Smths. CUunknown has a point. They don't excatly *suck* as mages. They're just not enough to give anykind of late-game power (and late-game power is the power you need to have to have chances at winning), taking a heavy-magic pretender can only take you so far. There have been many suggestion regarding twiddling with their randoms and I wholly support them.

Hmm, I just had another idea. How about giving them a slighly tweaked LA Ulm's fortune teller (without the blood pick, perhaps)? Ulmish people are a superstitious folk, afterall. It would allow a lot easier diversification.

[CUnknown]

Tuidjy, it's as if you've done your best to be misleading with the analysis you've chosen..

I know that, which is why I have divided them into kills and damaging hits, and
have displayed the average damage.

But why even bother dividing it up in this way, unless you're trying to obscure the fact that the arbelest does the most damage against a range of common protection values, even adjusted for rate of fire?

[KissBlade]

Principes are one of the best national flood troops in the game. Not to mention, they counter Ulm troops pretty solidly since their main strength is their high defense. Ulm troops are more or less used to be fast expander, walls for your indie archers/xbows/master smiths. Granted they aren't as uber as Principes, it's not too fair to match them like that.

[Ballbarian]

I by no means want to get into this discussion.
Just going to add my own simple opinion, and that is that MA Ulm does not suck.

They are one of my favorite nations and easy, early expansion is one of their strengths and not a weakness. I don't have much use for arbalests myself as I tend to recruit independent crossbow/bowmen instead and I have had no problem supplementing my beloved smiths with indy magi to good effect. My experience is limited to many single player games and a handful of multiplayer games which I am sure has shaded my own view just as each individuals view has been shaded by his/her own game experiences with them.

That is my two cents.

[Sombre]

On the other hand, principes use shortswords and javs, which aren't the best for overcoming Ulm's armour. There are plenty of other national troops which would mangle them more in a fight.