Militia vs recruits strength

[bishopnator]

Hello all the settlers ;-) I tried to use simulator for simulating one battle from the current event matches (European Match) and I get strange results. So there is a camp (EM 4th) with 120 Fullbacks. According to simulator the best attack is with 200 cavalry + 50 recruits and the looses should be 36 recruits. I tried it and it matched. Then with simulator I wanted to compare looses if I send there 50 militia instead of 50 recruits and for my biiiiiiig surprise there was no difference in number of fallen settlers - again 36. The battle is the same in both cases - first 200 cavalry destroy 48 fallbacks, then the recruits or militia destroy some fallbacks (but after the attack, less than 48 remains) and the cavalry kill the rest. So if I use a simple maths there, it should be really a difference in number of killed settlers: recruit has 40 hit points, militia 60 hitpoint. So for each 3 killed recruits, 2 militia should be killed instead of 3. So I expected something around 24 killed militia. From the result of the battle, militia has absolutely no meaning to train! Could someone explain me this behavior? Also with soldiers something is not exactly as expected according to their hit points - according to the simulator in this battle 23 would be killed. But according to math, only 16 should be killed. They have more than twice hit points than recruits so the looses should be halved, but they aren't. So very is the logic in this? It seems, that it is completely useless to lead the battle without simulator - I wanted some fun also from battling and I wanted to calculate the best attack composition by my self, but something is weird with the number there. Or there are some very important information missing in the description of the units.

[Andreen]

Your math only applys when the enemy has splash attack. When it doesn't an enemy who has 60 dmg will only kill 1R/M no matter if you have 1hp, 40 or 60hp left..

[bishopnator]

Ok, and what if the enemy has dmg lower than HP of my settler - consider Fullback -> dmg 25-35 with probability 80%. So it means that one Fullback kills recruit/militia with probability of 80% without considering the life of the units? I think exactly this logic I am missing there.. and for splash damage units, the probability is ignored?

[Andreen]

No, let me show you example instead, here's a fight where Fullbacks hits on R:

Fullback (#1) verursacht 35 Schaden an Recruit (#1) (5HP)

Fullback (#2) verursacht 35 Schaden an Recruit (#1) (-30HP)

Fullback (#3) verursacht 35 Schaden an Recruit (#2) (5HP)

Fullback (#4) verursacht 35 Schaden an Recruit (#2) (-30HP)





As you can see, R with a HP of 40 dies from 2 Fullbacks. So after 1 Fullback has attacked, the R has 5HP left and dies to the second Fullback that only, effectively, deals 5HP of damage. Then it starts over again on R #2.


Heres one where Fullbacks attack Militia:

Fullback (#1) verursacht 35 Schaden an Militia (#1) (25HP)

Fullback (#2) verursacht 25 Schaden an Militia (#1) (0HP)

Fullback (#3) verursacht 35 Schaden an Militia (#2) (25HP)

Fullback (#4) verursacht 35 Schaden an Militia (#2) (-10HP)

As you can see here, the extra HP on the militia does not help it survive longer, it still takes 2 Fullbacks to kill 1 Militia.

The conclusion here is that it's very effective to use R as the meat shield here since they waste alot of damage on taking out a 5HP Recruit.
It's very uneffective to use M since the fullbacks waste allmost no damage on a "overkill". (Also consider M is 4x as expensive as R)




On the other side you need 2R to kill 1 fullback in one round but only 1M to kill 1 fullback. So you need less M to kill them all but the exact same amount of R will die from their attacks as if you have M.

This is the reason why everyone uses R as a meat shield and other units to deal the damage, everything comes down to 2 separate questions: How can I in the cheapest possible way deal with the losses I'm forced to take? (90% of the time is R)
and
How can I deal the max amount of damage and preferably do it faster then my opponent (Fast strike etc)? (Cav, xbows, cannoneers etc)

I could explain Splash damage aswell but instead of me copying more stuff from the battle sim go to it yourself and experiment around with different units.

Heres a link to the best combat sim: http://settlersonlinesimulator.com/dso_kampfsimulator/en/

And the details I've showed you can be found if you expand the "Example simulation". I hope this explains it for you

[bishopnator]

thx a lot - this explains everything ;-) actually I am using 2 simulators - one you sent me and another from http://www.settlersonlinetools.com/en/combat_simulator/ which I found better if I don't have enough units (it is able to calculate the best army against another army with your limitations and I found better results as the currently best on the simulator which you sent me). But I never thought about some logic in this :) this is the biggest disadvantage of the simulators ;-) But anyway it was first time when I used militia instead of recruits - I employed all my settlers to militia instead of recruits (as I upgraded iron sword weaponsmith to lvl 5) and it seems it is completely useless :-( So I was really big surprise to me - now I see the logic .. and don't understand developers why they made something like this .. exactly as you mentioned - the militia is 4x more expensive as recruit but it doesn't give so big compensation - I wanted to use them as meat shield why I don't have enough noble residences and I wanted to reduce the looses on the amount of units ignoring spent resources on training).

Anyway thx again ;-)

[Andreen]

Good to hear it and use the sim you prefer of course. M has its uses but more rarely and def. not against Fullbacks. Hasmirs guides has some situations where using M instead of R as the meatshield comes out as about the same in resource loss if you want to check them out.

[antwhite]

does same apply for recruits vs soldiers?

[Nogbad]

Can't believe any of the decent simulators would have given you that result.
That setup would probably work against 120 midfielders, but definitely not fullbacks.
Are you sure you put the right unit into the simulator?
Fullbacks are very strong, cavalry just don't cut it against them with their low damage.