Casualty ratio in RS1.5a

[pcaravel]

I know this issue has been randomly addressed in some other threads but I think it deserves a separate thread.

I play battles in Hard and the casualty ratio of my republican roman armies is about 10%-15% when fighting Gauls and Lusitanians, but 20% or more when fighting Greeks and Carthaginians who have phalanxes. I play historically and use equal numbers of Hastati and Principes. Recently, I've started using more Velites and mercenary Peltasts and things got a bit better.

What do you guys think? What is the casualty ratio of your armies. Please state your battle difficulty level and phase of military reforms.

[Xavier Dragnesi]

Well of course it will be different. Look at it this way. Gauls and Lusitanians were always inferior in military discipline, armour, weapons and all sort of other things compared to Romans (except for when the Romans were still a fledgling city). You are sure to have less casualty rates with them.

But the Greeks and Carthaginians, that's a different matter. Both of those civilisations were older than Rome, they both had civilised military training, weapons and strategies, so definitely, you will lose more men against them. The only thing that makes gives the Gauls and advantage is usually the amount of troops, but in games like this, that can usually be negated.

[Coldcall]

I play on VH and casualty rates vary depending on how smart the AI behaves during each battle. But if Im defending bridges its ridiculously low. I can wipe out 4000 men of whatever faction with as low as a 2-5% loss.

In open ground I would say my casualty rate is between 10-20%.

However sometimes the AI pulls a tactic that i think is really excellent. Im not sure it knows what its doing but it seems to understand that running onto masses of flying pila is not so smart. The best tactic they employ against Romans are when they look like they are charging your front lines of cohort, but then stop just at that distance where the pila wont have such an effect, and they allow the pila to be thrown at them from a far away distance. They wait til the pila have been thrown then charge again. Thats quite a smart tactic because much of the damage caused by Romans happens during the pila throwing stage. Especially against lightly armoured enemies.

Also if the enemy has good heavy cavalry and they pick gaps in your front line they can do quite a bit of damage by flanking or trying to get to your missile units. Ive been caught unawares a few times and paid with heavy casualties.

[Brusilov]

It depends upon the types of units that the Gallic tribes deploy. Even playing as Rome I find the Armoured Warrior, Belgae Milnah Swordsman and Celt Elite Warrior a handful.

I've found that the Gallic Tribes start using these units fairly early into the campaign - they do still use lighter units as well.

So far I've only found that the Germanic Tribes are more likely to deploy light troops rather than Germanic Cherusci (for instance).

The Iberians don't tend to be alive when I get to that part of the world - they've usually been taken out by a combination of the Gallic Tribes and Carthage.

I play on 'H' battle difficulty (for Rome) with 1 turn recruitment and using the Alexander executable.

[Ian Altano]

So far I've only found that the Germanic Tribes are more likely to deploy light troops rather than Germanic Cherusci (for instance).

I once played a campaign where I took Crete and Rhodes, and let the AI do what they wanted. Germania zerg rushed the entire upper half of the map using (according to my spies) stacks with 1/2 or sometimes even 3/4 cherusci! But that was in 1.10a.

So just to say, it sometimes happens that the AI spams elite troops (fear them when they do)!

The hardest factions to fight -as romans- I think are the eastern factions, who horse-arch the cr@p out of your units before you can even touch them!
Oh how I hate mounted archers....

[Caius Antonius]

You mean the pink pest ? Yeah..they can do a real mess..

[Brusilov]

I once played a campaign where I took Crete and Rhodes, and let the AI do what they wanted. Germania zerg rushed the entire upper half of the map using (according to my spies) stacks with 1/2 or sometimes even 3/4 cherusci! But that was in 1.10a.

So just to say, it sometimes happens that the AI spams elite troops (fear them when they do)!

The hardest factions to fight -as romans- I think are the eastern factions, who horse-arch the cr@p out of your units before you can even touch them!
Oh how I hate mounted archers....

As I posted the only time that I've encountered the Germanic Tribes is when they had some armoured warriors and some axemen but not anything else 'heavy'.

Well, your army needs to be flexible in it's composition. A typical army that does well against the Greek (or Gallic) factions will not do as well against Eastern Horse Archer armies.

In many games that I have played I've found replacing some heavy infantry and heavy cavalry with missile and light cavalry does wonders. I've found slingers to be very effective against HAs. If you don't have access to slingers then use archers (it's probably best to have a mix of them anyway).

Some archers have better range than others. Playing as Macedon I find the Mercenary Barbarian Archer out ranges the Greek Archer by a fair bit (same level ground as well).

You should try and manouver the HAs into a corner of the map - not always easy. If they are set on skirmish mode you can attempt to shephard them into the corner with some other quick moving units (that are not set on skirmish mode).

[Kubelwagen]

One thing I've noticed in RS that I love is that routing units sometimes "get their stuff together" and reform. RS battles are the best in any mod (imo) because the battles feel pretty realistic. Lines hold and break where they should, for the most part. I won't say there aren't some imbalances because sometimes I've been frustrated at Iberian tenacity...

Most of my kills come from routing units, as was the case in this era of history. I used to play with the house rule of ending the battle as soon as it gave me the option to, but this really just hurts the AI more. It doesn't retrain so its stacks would be half full.

[Wolfstorm]

The gauls are very stupid. Im playing in hard difficulty. I was blocking a bridge to Cordoba, my troops facing west, the gauls on the other side (they are holding the city at the moment). There was a shallow to the right of me in the river, and I moved some troops there, letting my phalanxes to cover the bridge. The gauls dont moved a single unit to the shallow, concentrating in the bridge. Result: 772 gauls killed, and just ONE macedonian killed. Yes, you read it: ONE. Now I dont known, if its because they were gauls, and routed easily due to lack of discipline, or because the AI is really that stupid. I guess, if it where Carthague, they had moved some troops to the shallow.
My plan was just to get the hellenistic cities in Spain, not go to the interior of the peninsula, so I positioned phalanxes on rivers, and guess what? Five or more river battles per turn. I surely dont play it, I use the auto_win command. But, even with the auto_win Im losing a lot of my men, when I known that, if I were to play each one of these battles (a very boring procedure in my opinion, since the gauls are throwing those swordsmen one after the other, and my spy detected lots of full stacks of these units to the north of Massilia), I had not to have such losses. That is, even with auto_win, the AI is stupid.

[Coldcall]

Wolfstorm

I think Gauls probably do poorly against good defensive units like Phalanx. Hoplite, Spears etc as they will charge at anything no matter what the odds. Very brave but not so smart :-)

[Caius Antonius]

By default, 'barbarian' factions tend to break and flee a lot faster than the 'civilized' nations. But that depends, for the AI is using light naked troops, that if shaken just a bit they rout. I've had that on my Getae campaign, I got crushed by some free people that had some phalanx units and I had falxmen, spearmen and axemen..all naked lol.

On the other side, the elite barbarian soldiers sometimes won't rout at all. The Dii Warriors seem to fight to the finish no matter if they're surrounded, which gives my other troops time to back them up.

[Astaroth]

I find Phalanx nations very annoying to fight since they almost never break.

You need to outnumber them at least 3-1, surround/flank them and even if theyre only militia phalanx you will have to hack them to pieces (read: kill roughly 50-80% of the unit) until they finally run...

That means often relatively high casualities (read: ~20% of my guys dead if both are are about equal). But not always, the average would be around 10-15% casualities.

In vanilla tho I often/usually went 5-10% vs 95-100%

[Coldcall]

I find Phalanx nations very annoying to fight since they almost never break.

You need to outnumber them at least 3-1, surround/flank them and even if theyre only militia phalanx you will have to hack them to pieces (read: kill roughly 50-80% of the unit) until they finally run...

That means often relatively high casualities (read: ~20% of my guys dead if both are are about equal). But not always, the average would be around 10-15% casualities.

In vanilla tho I often/usually went 5-10% vs 95-100%

Sunlight,

Yes but Vanilla is ridiculously easy and no challenge. Defeating a phalanx stack equal in size to your own and only suffering 10-20% casualties is a pretty good outcome.

However, i do not think you need to outnumber a phalanx army 3-1 even in RS. If you are facing phalanx/hoplites use the following formation:

11111111
1 A A 1
H H

1's being your main cohorts whether Principes or named legion. Put an extra cohort just behind each flank, archers in the the middle but behind your line, and then horse behind your flanking units.

This formation gives you the width to immediately start flanking their phalanx line when they meet your first line of cohorts. Put your first line on "fire at will" and they should take out approx 20% of the initial push with their pila. But once they've fired off their pila, let your cohorts sit there and defend, not attack. Use the extra cohorts at the side to run forward so they get past the line of battle then turn into the nearest phalanx. This way you roll up their line and should win the battle if you keep rolling inwards from both flanks so they eventually meet in the middle.

Your horse should do the same but make them charge the rear, withdraw and charge the rear again. Dont allow them to stay in melee with phalanx or Hoplites. You want to use cavalry against hoplites as shock and awe, not to melee too much otherwise the odds start going against them.

Also dont waste foot soldiers by letting them chase down the routing phalanx/hoplites. As soon as the phalanx they were facing peels off to run away, get that cohort to turn into the next phalanx which might still be engaging your front line.

Use only horse to chase down routers.

This works for me every time against Phalanx/hoplites armies, and i suffer between 5-15% casualties.

Hope that helps.

[Coldcall]

oops, it formatted the formation wrong.

the cohort and horse behind your main line needs to be right on the flanks, but just behind.

[Astaroth]

Yeah well as I said winning isnt so much a problem however it seems to be pretty timeconsuming.

When I outnumber a unit of weak militia hoplites 2-1 or more, flank and surround it, it should break immediately imo..

[Coldcall]

Yeah well as I said winning isnt so much a problem however it seems to be pretty timeconsuming.

When I outnumber a unit of weak militia hoplites 2-1 or more, flank and surround it, it should break immediately imo..

In reality these battles went on for hours at a time so 20/25 mins ingame battles are pretty quick in my opinion. Personally I like it that enemies do not rout as easily as in Vanilla. I gave up on Vanilla after about 3-4 days because it was so easy to expand even on VH/VH.

[pcaravel]

@Coldcall
The problem with this strategy is that the factions that use phalanxes, such as the Makedonians, usually have high quality cavalry too in their stacks. Hetairoi can make your maneuver behind the phalanx line quite dangerous!

[Coldcall]

@Coldcall
The problem with this strategy is that the factions that use phalanxes, such as the Makedonians, usually have high quality cavalry too in their stacks. Hetairoi can make your maneuver behind the phalanx line quite dangerous!

I never find their cavalry too difficult to deal with. If I have triarri available i just stick them on the flanks as well and have them chase Heavy cavalry, or sucker their horse into traps. Also pila waves work nicely against heavy cavalry and usually makes them withdraw which thengives your own cavalry some space behind the enemy front line.

Also, if i have archers i get them to start peppering the Heavy Cavalry once they've knocked out most of the enemy peltasts. They do not like it up em :-)

[Brusilov]

@Coldcall
The problem with this strategy is that the factions that use phalanxes, such as the Makedonians, usually have high quality cavalry too in their stacks. Hetairoi can make your maneuver behind the phalanx line quite dangerous!

Yes, the Macedonians (and Greeks) have some very nice cavalry. It's a matter of dealing with them before you attack the phalanx.

If you are outnumbered cavalry-wise attempt to lure them (or some of them) towards your lines and hit them with missile units. Javelins or arrows will do fine against cavalry. I guess if you have pila or javelin units nearby use them as well (so don't leave this on fire at will mode until you need to).

Quite often they will charge at your cavalry units - so make sure you don't use your units while they are anything more than 'warmed up'. Obviously, light cavalry are better for this as they will be able to outpace the heavier cavalry chasing the.

If you can isolate a smaller number of cavalry you can attack them - make sure you have some infantry nearby and use these to hit cavalry that are already engaged. Combined arms operations!

[Astaroth]

Well the thing is I like conquering/maintaining a growing Empire.

It just seems a bit annoying for me if the battles are so long yet so unimportant - why should I bother fighting a tedious neverending battle if I could use the same time to just build up 5 stacks quikly and auto-resolve my way to victory?

I play battles if they are decisive and can be quik but hard fought. If its just a hack-the-phalanx-to-pieces contest it does get annoying for me at least

Just an example: its very satisfying if I beat 2 full stacks after each other in like 10-15 mins (MAX) each. Then I think the time is nicely "invested".

But if I have to waste 30 mins to hack some rebel phalangites to pieces that just wont §$%§$§$ rout it does get annoying =P