Battle Simulation

Originally posted by ferenginar
I read somewhere that the unit with the highest defence strength defends, is this true?

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Yes

Originally posted by ferenginar
This is important because in recent tests a rilfeman fortifed behind city walls defended in preference to an unfortified marine.
the base defence values are 4 and 5 repsectively, this means that for the rifleman to defend then fortification behind city walls is cumulative and not superceded.

A similar test with the same units in a fortress had the marine defending each time, indicating that in this case fortification was superceded by the fortress.

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Assuming neither (or both) were veterans, you would be right. I don't recall the exact conditions of all the testing, but most (or all?) involved one type of unit defending. Mixes were avoided so that one would end with 300 cavalry vs tank battles, or some such combo. I'm curious if the fortified status triggers the primary defender, but not the actual defense value. Test away!

Originally posted by ferenginar
This would seem to make sense as attacks by "Ignores city walls units", eg howitzer can better be defended by fortifying units within the city, but is not necessary in a fortress because the ignores city walls does not effect fortresses.( Or does it?)

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No, the flag only negates the city improvement.

Originally posted by ferenginar
Either way it seems that i am going to have to conduct extensive tests to confirm the expected statistical outcome.

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Great, let me know the results and conditions.

Originally posted by Sodak

Excellent point. I've never tested a move=2, hp=1, fp=2 unit. Test it and let me know what you discover!

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OK, You asked for it!

Determining the Effect of High Firepower on “Pikeman” Bonus.

Hypothesis
“Pikeman bonus” is still in effect when firepower of units is greater than 1

Test setup
Units Involved – from Zweiter Weltkreig (a.k.a. ZWK) scenario by Kobayashi.
AA Battery – Attack 16, Defense 11*, Move 1, HP 1, FP 2
Panzer II – Attack 15, Defense 10, Move 3, HP 1, FP 2
Panzer III – Attack 20, Defense 16, Move 2, HP 1, FP 2

The AA batteries all had Veteran status, so their modified defense strength without the pikeman bonus was 11 * 1.5 = 16.5

25% of the Panzer III units involved in the test had veteran status, and thus had a modified attack value of 20*1.5% = 30

Test Procedure
Execute multiple attacks by Panzer II and Panzer III units against unfortified Veteran AA Batteries on terrain with no defense modification.

Expected results
If the pikeman bonus is in effect, it should multiply the defense strength of the AA battery giving a modified defense value of 16.5 *1.5 =24.75

The Panzer II unit is provided as a control. It has a movement of 3 and thus should not invoke the pikeman bonus. Its attack of 15 is just slightly less than the modified defense value of the Veteran AA Batteries. Expect the Panzer II to lose slightly more than 50% of time, thus verifying the 16.5 modified defense of the Veteran AA Battery. Furthermore, if the Pikeman bonus is not applied to units with firepower > 1, then the Panzer III should win significantly more than the Panzer II.

The Panzer III attack value of 20 is quite a bit less than the 24.75 Modified defense of an AA Battery if the pikeman bonus is in effect. Expect the Panzer III to lose the majority of battles against the Veteran AA Batteries with Pikeman Bonus.

The Veteran Panzer III, with it’s modified attack value of 30 should win a large majority of battles against the AA battery, even with the Pikeman bonus.

On the contrary, if the AA Battery Pikeman bonus is negated by the firepower of 2, the Panzer III attack of 20 is significantly higher than the AA Battery defense of 16.5 and the Panzer III would be expected to win the majority of battles.

Actual Results
(Red/Yellow/Green refers to color of Hit-point bar of victor after battle is complete)
Panzer II vs. AA Battery (Veteran)
27 tests - Panzer wins 12 (Red 7, Yellow 2, Green 3) , AA Battery wins 15 (Red 8, yellow 3, Green 4)

Panzer III vs. AA Battery (Veteran)
24 tests - Panzer wins 3 (all three red) AA wins 21 (Red 10, Yellow 3, Green 8)

Panzer III (Veteran) vs. AA Battery (Veteran)
8 Tests - Panzer wins 4 (Red 2, Green 2), AA wins 4 (Red 2, Yellow 1, Green 1)

Conclusion
The hypothesis was in large part proven true by the findings. The fact that the Attack 20/Move 2 Panzer III loses most of the time, and significantly more than the attack 15/Move 3 Panzer II supports the hypothesis that the Firepower 2 does NOT negate the Pikeman Bonus against Move 2 HP 1 units.

Anomolies
A couple aspects of the result were different from what was expected but not in such a way to negate the general findings. The non-veteran Panzer III (attack 20) was woefully ineffective against the Vet AA battery with pikeman (defense 24.75). I was surprised at how often it was defeated. Conversely, I was a bit surprised that the Veteran Panzer III (attack 30) which had nearly the same percentage advantage against the AA Battery (~21%) as the AA Battery had against the non-vet P-III (~23%), was only victorious in half its battles. It is almost as if the Pikeman bonus is greater than the assumed 1.5x but perhaps less than 2x

It is quite possible these anomalies are the result of the small sample size. In particular, the sample of only 8 veteran Panzer III tests is quite small. I am not entirely sure when or if values are rounded when determining attack and defense strength, so my assumptions on the modified values may also be incorrect. Finally, the High firepower/Low hit point approach used in this scenario is specifically designed to give high variability in battle outcome so further tests are probably warranted both to further attempt to confirm the original hypothesis and to investigate these anomalies.

Anyway, it appears that Firepower >1 does not negate the Pikeman bonus.

I suggest you to give a high hitpoint values (I think 140 is the max.) to units via the rules.txt . Then the fortuity is low and one or two tests give you a perfect information.
And remaining hitpoints can be checked by the cheat mode.

Originally posted by SlowThinker
I suggest you to give a high hitpoint values (I think 140 is the max.) to units via the rules.txt . Then the fortuity is low and one or two tests give you a perfect information.
And remaining hitpoints can be checked by the cheat mode.

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Unfortunately, I am pretty sure that others have determined hitpoints greater than 1 do negate the pikeman bonus, so for this test, that probably won't work.

Predicted results:

(without pikeman bonus)
PanzerII vs vet AA - win 38%
PanzerIII vs vet AA - win 70%
vet PanzerIII vs vet AA - win 92%

(with pikeman bonus)
PanzerII vs vet AA - win 10%
PanzerIII vs vet AA - win 27%
vet PanzerIII vs vet AA - win 70%

Your sample size is too small, but the trend looks to follow your supposition that fp=2 does not affect the pikeman bonus. You could easily test it in cheat mode. Just use the scenario's rules.txt for a standard game, cheat a pile of AAs and tanks onto adjacent squares, and blast away. (Put the AAs in an unwalled city so they don't all get killed as a stack, of course.)

Good tests! If you test a big pile of them, compare the numbers to what is statistically predicted. Thanks for looking into this!

BTW, thru the course of testing, it was clear that there was no rounding of numbers during combat.

Originally posted by TimTheEnchanter
Unfortunately, I am pretty sure that others have determined hitpoints greater than 1 do negate the pikeman bonus, so for this test, that probably won't work.

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I am sorry, sometimes I forget to think.

The game is programmed to use the movement=2 as the trigger to invoke the Pikeman bonus. Said another way, the way the game recognizes a mounted unit is by checking for movement=2. If Move=2, the Unit=Mounted and Pikeman bonus used. It's actually done with a matrix value in programed equation, not an IF-THEN statement. To my knowledge, a double check is simply not performed (though I don't have the source code), and the results of a large enough sample size should confirm it.

I read somewhere that the unit with the highest defence strength defends, is this true?

This is important because in recent tests a rilfeman fortifed behind city walls defended in preference to an unfortified marine.
the base defence values are 4 and 5 repsectively, this means that for the rifleman to defend then fortification behind city walls is cumulative and not superceded.

A similar test with the same units in a fortress had the marine defending each time, indicating that in this case fortification was superceded by the fortress.

This would seem to make sense as attacks by "Ignores city walls units", eg howitzer can better be defended by fortifying units within the city, but is not necessary in a fortress because the ignores city walls does not effect fortresses.( Or does it?)

Either way it seems that i am going to have to conduct extensive tests to confirm the expected statistical outcome.

Click to expand...

Extensive tests have shown conclusively (IHMO) that fortification behind city walls has no effect on the outcome unless attacked by an 'ignores city walls' unit.

VB version of battle sim coming soon, though it is quite a big file 2Meg unzippped, because of the extensive use of graphics. I may have to post version without diplomat / Spy routines if it gets much bigger.

Ferenginar