Testing ship stats

**Iskandar** · February 22, 2009, 02:59 PM

I was made aware by dvk901 and SquidSK from the RS team that the action points number for characters (i.e.admirals, generals and agents - spies and diplomats) affect the outcome of naval battles. If the value is higher than the default 80 there is a chance that the losing fleet will sink, no matter how much crew it has left. So I decided that I should have a closer look into the naval engagements. I did some tests concerning basic ship stats, but I'm still fuzzy on how exactly action points and crew numbers relate to sinking an enemy fleet after a successful battle. There are a lot of correlations I want to test but given that I can't afford time to that regularly I'll just post here the results. Here's the first batch, I'll update that if and when I do more tests.

Setup:

Difficulty is H/H - what I usually play these days, plus it seems reasonable to balance this for hard campaign difficulty (which is what affects the autocalculated battles, not the battle difficulty). Unit size setting is Huge - I want later to balance the crew numbers for ExRm and this setting is usually associated with the most realistic numbers.

I've done most of the tests so far with action points 120. The previous number was the standard 80. 120 seems to me a reasonable increase, allowing for example a cruise from Rome to Emporion for 2 turns (barely). In fact, I would go even further and suggest a value of 140. This also affects agents and generals - I doubt anyone will object to agents having more movement, and as far as generals go - this affects only them, not the armies they're with. A small general bodyguard unit travelling form southern Italy to Gaul in 2 turns and the army taking 3 or 4 turns is realistic - small group of horsemen travel much faster than an army; I don't think that would compromise the gameplay.

Based on Aradan's EDU guide, I experimented with different values for the attributes crew size, attack, armour, defense skill which are the only ones that seem to affect naval battles. So far, the majority of the tests is done with 2 ships per fleet, each of 100 crew.

What I did was basically manipulate to my liking the roman fleet at Capua and the carthaginian one off of Lilybeum, start a campaign as Rome and attack the carthaginian fleet. I did 10 runs per test case for the most part.

(this might be updated over time)
Data:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

I still want to see a more clear relation between crew numbers, action points and sinking fleets. Or whether different action points values have an effect on casualties while keeping the att/arm/def constant. But, for now, there's another thing I want to address.

Balancing the stats for ExRM:

The naval engagements in RTW are very symbolic - they can't represent a fleet of 120 triremes, nor differences in ramming, boarding, artillery fire. I think, however, that the most realistic approach is to use crew numbers as a way of differentiation between ship types and continue form there (remember, we'll be using higher action points value, so most battles would end up with one of the fleet sinking). I will try to read up more on the subject, but here are some preliminary numbers I pulled on short notice:

trireme - 170 oarsmen, 20 crew, 18 - 40 marines
quinquereme - 300 oarsmen, 50 crew, 120 marines
deceres - 572 oarsmen, 30(?) crew, 250 marines

(BTW - are deceres discontinued in ExRm? They were in existence in our time period, even though in very limited numbers. I'd like them available for certain factions at least)

Given the maximum number of 240 men per unit, I think it's reasonable to associate the marine body with the in-game crew number.

There are some other things that are important to be reflected - triremes and quinquereme were the mainstay of ancient fleets of this time period, with the latter being costly and decreasing in proportion to the former over time. The main forms of attack were ramming, boarding and artillery fire, with the latter being not that decisive due to technical limitations. Triremes were still able to defeat larger vessels (which had armour against ramming), especially when having the advantage in numbers. The corvus turned effectively the sea battle into a land one, so it was great tool to facilitate attack and defense (I think I'll reflect it only through defense bonus in-game, though). On the downside, it made the ship extremely vulnerable to roguh weather (if we could represent that...) and was probably discontinued after the second punic war. Ramming was primarily used by lighter vessels, whereas larger ones were clumsier and prefered boarding.

The last test setups with attack 30, armour 5 and defense 15 are indicative of where I am going right now. Maneuverability would be reflected in attack and defense skill, artilery in attack, corvus will induce higher defense value (adding attack as well will be too much IMO), heavier ship classes will have more armour but less maneuverability. I think for a fleet of 4 triremes against 2 quinqueremes a benchmark of 6:4 or 7:3 victories is reasonable. And about action points - I'd recommend at least 120, with my personal preference for even 140.

Quinn, everybody, let me know what is your opinion.

p.s. If someone does more tests, please post them in this thread and I'll integrate them into this first post. Or if I'm late in responding an admin can do that.

p.p.s This thread has two purposes - to gather and analyze more information about naval battles and to discuss ship stats and balancing for ExRm. Feel free to post on either.

p.p.p.s Here's the txt file with the test results for better viewing. The clipboard did away with some intervals.

**Caligula Caesar** · February 23, 2009, 06:56 AM

I would remove corvus quinquiremes, because they were only used during the first Punic war, and (afaik) cost Rome at least one, maybe even two fleets, and thousands of men. But the Romans shouldn't be able to recruit strong ships until Marius' reforms, except for from Greek and Punic AoRs. The Romans weren't good sailors and used Greeks to man ships after the 1st Punic War.

**Quinn Inuit** · February 23, 2009, 09:49 PM

Very interesting research. Have you played around with changing hp or stat_mental?

I like your ideas thus far. What're deceres, though? I'm not really familiar with period naval combat.

**Iskandar** · February 24, 2009, 01:41 AM

Here's a little something about polyremes. The number giving the name of the ship was the number of rows of men per side. So deceres probably had 3 rows of oars with 4 man per top oar and 3 men per middle and bottom oar (or 4-4-2). They were used as late as the battle of Actium. The unit is there, in the EDU, but it seems no faction can recruit it. I think at least the Ptolemies, Rome, Seleucid and probably Macedon should be able to build deceres. Perhaps Pergamon too, if it grows into a large kingdom in-game.

As far as other stats go, I did some minor testing a while ago, when I first started playing with naval combat. I don't remember which exactly, but it seemed to agree with Aradan's EDU guide concerning naval battles. I thought it best not to argue with the master...

I have a bunch of exams coming up, but I'm itching to do some balancing now and then. What value for action points would you like me to use? You can perhaps try some - 100, 120, 140 - and play for a couple of turns and then tell me which one you think is best.

BTW, did you saw that the RTR VII team will make their map public?

@Caligula Caesar
True about the corvus, but taking it out would reduce the fun factor IMO. I disagree about the "strong" ships. If by these you mean heavy class ships like the quinquereme - the Romans used them in the First Punic War already. IIIRC there was even one time, when the Republic was so pressed for more numbers that the citizens voluntarily funded a new fleet in a gigantic effort. As far as crew goes - the Romans never liked the sea much but the shift to more "auxilia" sailors happened in the late Republic/early Empire. I don't think any of this warrants restricting Romans to biremes and triremes.

**Caligula Caesar** · February 24, 2009, 11:15 AM

I didn't say restrict them to not using quinquiremes and deceres, but rather have them only able to recruit them from settlements with large Greek or Punic populations, at least until Marius. The Romans weren't particularly good sailors.

However, now that I think about it, they could build and man big fleets without local sailors, but they didn't perform very well in battle. So perhaps the Carthaginian and Greek factions should get naval bonuses, unless the Romans are recruiting their ships from aor_greek or aor_punic (and pehaps a few others; I'm not sure), at which point they also get those bonuses.

**Quinn Inuit** · February 24, 2009, 09:58 PM

Caligula Caesar: That's an interesting idea. We can't give ships XP bonuses, though. That causes a rare CTD where the building where a ship w/an XP bonus is being built is upgraded. We can only handle that via recruitment.

Iskander:
I'm certainly up for adding the deceres back in.

As for MP, how about 120? IIRC, you tried 140 and that caused problems.
Also, I seem to recall that giving ships more MP required all units to get more MP. How can we work around that? I'd rather not give more MP to regular units.

I'm already inquiring about the RTR VII map.

**Iskandar** · February 25, 2009, 02:07 AM

Originally Posted by Quinn Inuit

Caligula Caesar: That's an interesting idea. We can't give ships XP bonuses, though. That causes a rare CTD where the building where a ship w/an XP bonus is being built is upgraded. We can only handle that via recruitment.

Iskander:
I'm certainly up for adding the deceres back in.

As for MP, how about 120? IIRC, you tried 140 and that caused problems.
Also, I seem to recall that giving ships more MP required all units to get more MP. How can we work around that? I'd rather not give more MP to regular units.

I'm already inquiring about the RTR VII map.

I don't remember having problems with 140. RS is running on 260, for example, although they need that for their bigger map.

These are actually "starting_action_points" and affect only characters - it's in descr_character.txt after all.

These are: generals, admirals, spies, diplomats, assassins and whatever future creations you decide to mod in as characters.

I think it is reasonable to be able to reach Iberia form Rome by sea in less than 2 full turns. All the other characters also deserve higher movement range per turn, considering that a single person or a small group of riders could cover great distances in short times. I suspect that you think this increase might apply to regular units - this is not true. Only the generals get higher movement, and an army's range is determined by its slowest regular unit, regardless whether there is general in the stack or not.

About deceres - OK, I'll use some of the exsting models to balance their stats as well. I want to read some more before doing that though or making suggestion which factions should be able to produce them.

Originally Posted by Caligula Caesar

I didn't say restrict them to not using quinquiremes and deceres, but rather have them only able to recruit them from settlements with large Greek or Punic populations, at least until Marius. The Romans weren't particularly good sailors.

However, now that I think about it, they could build and man big fleets without local sailors, but they didn't perform very well in battle. So perhaps the Carthaginian and Greek factions should get naval bonuses, unless the Romans are recruiting their ships from aor_greek or aor_punic (and pehaps a few others; I'm not sure), at which point they also get those bonuses.

I think you're oversimplifying. While it is true that the Romans never took with great pleasure to sea, in the course of the First Punic War they managed to go from 10-20 ships to more than 200 at any time, gathered maritime experience and in the end beat soundly the Carthaginians in a couple of naval battles. It was these battles that crippled the Carthaginian naval power, rendered them unable to send reinforcements to Sicily and made them sue for peace. A few wiki-links:
First Punic War
Battle of Mylae
Battle of Cape Ecnomus
Battle of Drepana
Battle of Aegetes Islands
What the Romans lacked in experience and ingenuity, they compensated for with tenacity, just like they did in land engagements. It should be noted that by the time of the First Punic War, Rome controlled only Italy. Without reading more on the subject I'd suppose that the percentage of sailors form Magna Greccia was high, but that does not diminish the achievement of all the other italians. I also suspect that Rome "outsorced" its navy recruitment to subordinate nations which were more "sea-loving" as soon as it could. However, given the historical reality, I don't think restricting them to AOR recruitment is accurate. I like the small bonus idea but as Quinn pointed out, this may cause bugs.

**Quinn Inuit** · February 25, 2009, 09:21 PM

Oh, I see. As long as it won't affect armies, I'm fine with the additional MP. (Sorry, I've never messed with MP before.)

I'd love to be able to give those units a bonus, but I can't figure out a way to do it without triggering the CTD or giving all units recruited in a city the bonus.

**Caligula Caesar** · February 26, 2009, 01:43 PM

You could make them different units with the same name. The only problem is, they wouldn't be retrainable in other cities.

**pannonian** · February 26, 2009, 04:50 PM

If a unit is trainable with n XP, a unit with less experience can be retrained in the city as per a weapon and armour upgrade, and emerge with n XP. So if all ports can train biremes, but Athens can train biremes with 2 XP, one can move a fleet of biremes with 0 XP to Athens and upgrade them, and they'll be upgraded to 2 XP (but anything with more than that number of XP will be unaffected). MNM does this, with provinces with a naval tradition being able to train ships with higher XP.