Tier 3 infantry loses to stack of peasants?

[skyhrg]

I don't understand why my tier 3 heavy infantry lose to just a blob of infantry in auto-calc?

It just seems to me that blobs of peasants are the way to go?

[Chompers]

Was the peasant army under a level 15 commander and they were all 3 star rank? Your soldiers can rank up, and their manpower is determined by a number of factors including Marshal skills, traditions, and local infrastructure. Low rank "elite" soldiers under a novice marshal in an area with no defensive bonuses can likely be smashed by a significantly experienced and well-led peasant army. You can make peasants real strong cheaply, but you can also make the higher tier soldiers much stronger using the same principles.

[Genosse Kommissar]

Not that I am aware of. Sounds like there is more at play here. Number of units and health status?

[skyhrg]

I don't understand what "manpower" is.

How is this a separate number from the stats?

[skyhrg]

Originally posted by Genosse Kommissar:

Not that I am aware of. Sounds like there is more at play here. Number of units and health status?

I think it was 1 full stack of full health heavy infantry under a level 15 marshall versus around 2 stacks of peasant + light?

I honestly thought the heavy infantry would do much better especially because they're so expensive.

This experience makes me think that getting multiple marshalls spammed with tier 2 units (costing 1 population) is the most efficient way to win a war?

[Genosse Kommissar]

That is strange but I must admit, I dont remember fighting with auto-resolve in such situations. If my army fights two I always lead them myself, just to minimize casualties. Peasants are easy to break. I try to surround enemy units with my own if possible. That way they are outnumbered locally and break faster.

[skyhrg]

Yeah, and I'm also seeing this:

My novice peasant has 620 manpower (400+220) but my novice light infantry has 460 (300+160).

What is manpower? And why is this happening? My marshall has lvl 3 iron fist, infantry tactics, and siegecraft.

[Genosse Kommissar]

I just saw a fresh lvl 3 templar infantery unit lose in a 1v1 against normal heavy infantery. Yeah sometimes the game does weird things.

[Genosse Kommissar]

Originally posted by skyhrg:

Yeah, and I'm also seeing this:

My novice peasant has 620 manpower (400+220) but my novice light infantry has 460 (300+160).

What is manpower? And why is this happening? My marshall has lvl 3 iron fist, infantry tactics, and siegecraft.

Manpower should be the number of men in a unit. But you have to divide them by 10 for real time battles I think. 400 men on the political map are 40 men in a real time battle. They did this to avoid silly army numbers like in KoH1 where you saw marshals with armies of "320" units.

Some things may increase their combat strenght, that is why you see 400+220 = 620 = 62 in a real time battle. Atleast that is what I think right now.

[Hanzo]

Originally posted by Genosse Kommissar:

I just saw a fresh lvl 3 templar infantery unit lose in a 1v1 against normal heavy infantery. Yeah sometimes the game does weird things.

I almost never did a controlled battle here. But KoH1 hast such thing as stamina. So when your troops are fight, then you have some advantage from it. Like units without stamina were easier to kill. So this game also has a stamina and it could have similar mechanics

[Genosse Kommissar]

I dont know what went wrong there but it does not matter, I just played the battle a second time and no one was lost.

[DNLH]

Higher tier unit won't win if completely outnumbered, 1 stack v 2 stacks would almost always be a loss in auto. Heavier units are better than the light ones (when on same rank, at least), but not twice as good.

To some extent, yeah, you can do well with a stack of experienced light units, but they'll never be as good as armies full of experienced heavy units. The latter is not something you should rush for, becuase they are quite expensive, but from mid-game on the cost of them should become more and more irrelevant, so there's no point to not choose them over lighter units (unless some specific regional light unit, like Janissaries or Jinetes).

As for the manpower, by default Peasants have 400, foot soldiers have 300 and cavalry has 200, all the manpower boosts (Marshal level, province Levies, Traditions, Pagan beliefs) in the game are percentage-based, so in raw numbers Peasants benefit the most from them. That doesn't mean they're the solution to all problems, ranged units - or even better, Horse Archers - can nullify that numbers advantage in the opening salvos of battle. I had an auto-battle with two stacks of Mongol Horse Archers against two stacks of light units + garrison, all-in-all 8k versus 10k, showing slightly one-sided against me and the battle ended with total wipe of my enemies and barely 1,5k lost on my side.

[skyhrg]

Originally posted by DNLH:

Higher tier unit won't win if completely outnumbered, 1 stack v 2 stacks would almost always be a loss in auto. Heavier units are better than the light ones (when on same rank, at least), but not twice as good.

To some extent, yeah, you can do well with a stack of experienced light units, but they'll never be as good as armies full of experienced heavy units. The latter is not something you should rush for, becuase they are quite expensive, but from mid-game on the cost of them should become more and more irrelevant, so there's no point to not choose them over lighter units (unless some specific regional light unit, like Janissaries or Jinetes).

As for the manpower, by default Peasants have 400, foot soldiers have 300 and cavalry has 200, all the manpower boosts (Marshal level, province Levies, Traditions, Pagan beliefs) in the game are percentage-based, so in raw numbers Peasants benefit the most from them. That doesn't mean they're the solution to all problems, ranged units - or even better, Horse Archers - can nullify that numbers advantage in the opening salvos of battle. I had an auto-battle with two stacks of Mongol Horse Archers against two stacks of light units + garrison, all-in-all 8k versus 10k, showing slightly one-sided against me and the battle ended with total wipe of my enemies and barely 1,5k lost on my side.

Good to know!
How does the auto-battle system work with the different unit types like range, spear, cavalry, siege, etc.?

[DNLH]

It's hard for me to tell anything for sure, I didn't dig through files, so it's all just from my observations.

Ranged units definitely tend to cause the most damage early on, but the longer the battle takes the lesser impact they have (would be curious to see if it takes into account ammo count, it sure does seem like it does). Still, I saw them taking out 1-2k before receiving any noticeable damage in 2v2 battles with my both stacks being something like 2-3 infantry/cavalry + 5-6 ranged (either heavy archers, crossbowmen or one of the elite units), and on a flipside I had overall higher losses when trying to skip the ranged units in favour of elite heavies (feudal knights + flemish pikemen as Flanders), so they seem definitely worth it no matter what (unless you're a steppe warlord, then just spam horse archers).

As for the other types, there's a 'Countering Factor' rating if you mouse over the bar that shows the odds and it has some effect in scenarios like spears vs cavalry, but it seems like it's not as harsh as it can be in manual battle, where even heavy cavalry can have rough time against light spears.

Siege units - frankly, I don't think they have any noticeable impact outside of siege battles, but Marshals with Siegecraft, Skill and Tradition, and Trebuchets can melt the enemy walls, so there's that. At the same time part of the reason why (elite, steppe) Horse Archers are OP is because while being largely ineffective against the walls, they melt the garrison instead and barely receive any losses in return.

[MarVerine]

Quick question, were the enemy stacks rebels or a faction? Plus you can see how many men are in the troop just hover over them and you can see their fighting stats.

You can see units stats of your enemy by just hovering over the units in the battle window.