Useless or redundant units?

[Graeme Dice]

Archonsod said:
They're also one of the few Pangea units that can go toe to toe with other national troops and have a fighting chance.

The other unit would be centaur warriors, who have fantastically better stats and allow you to take a sloth scale instead of the production scale that minotaur warriors require.

In the first instance, it prevents them being swarmed and mobbed by smaller units. It's always nice to see a bunch of smaller units scattered by a charge of war minotaurs, and often the inability of the smaller units to mob up and reduce the defence of the war minotaurs is incredibly useful.

I'm not sure what you are talking about here. Trampling units get swarmed even more often than non-trampling units, because they move right into the middle of packs of enemy units and get mobbed on the next turn.

[Evil Dave]

This discussion prompted me to test how useless light units were against heavy ones. They’re not. In fact, at least one light unit is better than at least one heavy one for either equivalent resources or equivalent gold.

I tested one light unit against two heavy ones (separately, of course ):

Code:

---

		lt spearmen	hvy spearmen	swordsmen

resources	  7		11		18

protection	  7		10		13

encumbrance	  4		 5		 6

defense	         13		12		13

move	         2/11		1/10		1/9

---

MR and precision don’t matter for these tests. All of them had ten hit points, morale, strength, and attack skill, and they all cost ten gold.

I initially tested light vs. heavy spearmen at equal resource cost. This yields ratios of 11 light units for 7 heavy ones. I tried both 22 vs 14 and 44 vs 28. I’d thought that on a resource basis, the light and heavy units would be about equal, so I prepared elaborate tests: grouping each side into one or two units and varying which side gets the first hits. For each variation, I ran 20 battles using Dom3. (I didn’t think Saber Cherry’s most excellent combat simulator would work with the new rules.) Actually, I ran 30 of each, in case random events fiddled with the battlefield -- during testing, a “celebrant of the faith” showed up to help one side.

None of it mattered. At equal resource costs, the light spearmen slaughtered the heavy ones. Of each of 30-run sets, the light units would win 28 or 29. There’s about 50% more of them on the battlefield, so they get about 50% more hits every round. The three points of armor the heavy guys had didn’t help them, and it lowered their defence by a point. And once the heavies broke, the lighter guys would chase them down and kill them. Very few survivors made it off the field.

I then ran equal gold costs (equal numbers) of light vs. heavy spearmen, but only one set of trials: one group on each side, heavies hit first, 28 to a side. That helped the heavy troops a lot: they were winning about 100% more battles: three of the 30, losing the other 27. I think the light guys did so much better because the extra point of defence is simply more useful than the three points of armor.

Time to bring up reinforcements. Equal resource costs of light spearmen vs swordsmen, one group on each side, 36 vs 14. The swordsmen were anilhilated. They lost all their battles. It’s hard fighting worse than 2:1 odds.

At equal gold costs, the situation was reversed. The swordsmen won 28 of 30 battles. Not only do they have the same skill as the light spearmen, they’ve got a lot more armor. OTOH, some light spearmen were able to run away from each battle.

So, I’d have to say the light troops aren’t as hopeless as we’d thought.

Caveats: Yeah, I didn’t test very many kinds of units. And they are “generic” independents; there are more cost-effective choices for both indies (heavy amazons and light tribesmen) and national units. Nor did I look at guys with missiles. Maybe I’ll do that next weekend. I’m not even gonna *try* to figure out what effect magic has on this...

[Endoperez]

Independents in general are rather weak in armor department. Try that same test against national spear-wielders. Like MA Man's spearmen. Prot 13 isn't heavy. It's between light and heavy.