Just did a bunch of testing... I took a bunch of screens for verification, but I didnt go through putting them on photobucket and all that... If you guys really want to see them I can post them.
So the first thing I found was no big suprise. If we land a stack of 20 Rifles and 10 Cannons, they will wipe us out in 2 turns. The first runs they will hit us with all their cats and as many Muskets and Maces as they can, which will kill most of our units and leave the rest severely wounded. If we dont retreat, the remaining units will die the nest turn.
The second thing I found out was also no big suprise. 20 Rifles and 10 Cannons is nowhere near enough to defeat what they have on MHI. We could do some serious damage, but in the end, our troops will be too wounded to finish the job, and we will have to retreat or be destroyed... This means we are locked in to the STRIKE plan. We absolutely wont have enough troops to take MHI with brute force, or by landing half our army to die to sacrifice to Catapults, followed by the other half to try to take the island.
The third thing was actually a surprise... and a bit of a disapointment. 2 Catapults are usually enough to wound a Rifle to the point where a Musket can kill it... about 50% of the time. The rest of the time, the Rifle will kill 3 and sometimes even 4 Cats before it drops below 9 strength, but usually the first catapult drops the Rifle to 12 str and the secong drops it to 7 str.
But that is irrelevant, because one on one, there is no collateral damage at all, so Merlot wouldnt use it cats 1 on 1. Muskets, as I suspected are better Rifle killers. Muskets wound Rifles severely at a solid 2 to 1 exchange. Sacrificing 1 musket will drop a Rifle to 1 str or less, making it easy to kill with a second unit. So if we land 6 Rifles we will kill 6 Muskets and thats all. So we have to wait for the STRIKE to kill off half their army or our invasion will fail. After that we can just land our whole stack and take the punishment from the Catapults.
So the first thing I found was no big suprise. If we land a stack of 20 Rifles and 10 Cannons, they will wipe us out in 2 turns. The first runs they will hit us with all their cats and as many Muskets and Maces as they can, which will kill most of our units and leave the rest severely wounded. If we dont retreat, the remaining units will die the nest turn.
The second thing I found out was also no big suprise. 20 Rifles and 10 Cannons is nowhere near enough to defeat what they have on MHI. We could do some serious damage, but in the end, our troops will be too wounded to finish the job, and we will have to retreat or be destroyed... This means we are locked in to the STRIKE plan. We absolutely wont have enough troops to take MHI with brute force, or by landing half our army to die to sacrifice to Catapults, followed by the other half to try to take the island.
The third thing was actually a surprise... and a bit of a disapointment. 2 Catapults are usually enough to wound a Rifle to the point where a Musket can kill it... about 50% of the time. The rest of the time, the Rifle will kill 3 and sometimes even 4 Cats before it drops below 9 strength, but usually the first catapult drops the Rifle to 12 str and the secong drops it to 7 str.
But that is irrelevant, because one on one, there is no collateral damage at all, so Merlot wouldnt use it cats 1 on 1. Muskets, as I suspected are better Rifle killers. Muskets wound Rifles severely at a solid 2 to 1 exchange. Sacrificing 1 musket will drop a Rifle to 1 str or less, making it easy to kill with a second unit. So if we land 6 Rifles we will kill 6 Muskets and thats all. So we have to wait for the STRIKE to kill off half their army or our invasion will fail. After that we can just land our whole stack and take the punishment from the Catapults.