BattleMaster Community
BattleMaster => Helpline => Topic started by: Dante Silverfire on January 13, 2012, 12:07:36 PM
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First of all, I was just looking over one of my characters who has a captain leadership bonus of +15 and I got to wondering what that actually means if anything. I feel like it was vaguely told to me before what it kind of does but didn't receive much of an answer and have forgotten since then either way.
So can anyone tell me what game mechanics wise this does to help your unit? (Are we allowed to know, or is this another hidden mechanic?)
Like how does it affect my unit in battle, and is it really worth trying to keep up a good captain.
Secondly, I thought I'd include a poll to see what the highest bonuses everyone has from captains at this point are. Merely as an interesting side point to get an idea. If you have a really high number at least comment on your vote to let us know what it is.
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It improves their performance in combat, by how much though I'm not sure anyone has really crunched the numbers. To do so you would probably also need to track your leadership skill carefully, since it also affects combat performance, but most importantly there are several random parameters which apparently can greatly effect combat, which make quantifying the other effects from observation extremely difficult.
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It's not supposed to be top-secret. I basically adds to your own leadership skill. There's a few other effects as well, I think.
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My current best is only a 4. In the past I have had it as high as 13 or 14...
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My highest was an 8... but that's ages ago. I often change unit types when other types become better to use so I never have captain with an exceptionally high skill. My highest now is a 5 but he started as a 4...
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It's not supposed to be top-secret. I basically adds to your own leadership skill. There's a few other effects as well, I think.
But what does your own leadership skill do?
The only useful thing I know that leadership skill does is allow Marshals to choose more marshal settings. For some reason though, I think that this bonus may not count for that effect?
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But what does your own leadership skill do?
Various things, including combat bonus, but I can't remember the exact details without looking it up.
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I suppose it minimizes panicked flight and stuff like that. Perhaps morale penalties in certain circumstances as well (civil work, training)
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can always just replace it with words instead of numbers. doesn't mean much either way in the giant scheme of thing. i mean... obviously it does something, but the number itself doesn't mean much, unless you know all the formulae, etc
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can always just replace it with words instead of numbers. doesn't mean much either way in the giant scheme of thing. i mean... obviously it does something, but the number itself doesn't mean much, unless you know all the formulae, etc
Yeah. I wouldn't mind some kind of ranking system or honorific titles. Maybe something could be devised on ranks within the military, for each unit type separately. The RP idea would be that your realm's academy grants your captain a higher title when he levels up?
Or a more basic idea could be implemented, where the captain gets an adjective/perk that changes when he gets a higher level... The +X system is kind of ..abstract and mechanical.
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eh. a simple descriptive green/experienced/veteran or some such will do.
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I have one at 10 and the other at 11. I once had a 19 -archer- but I changed the unit type. Wish we had an option to transfer our captain over but doubt that will happen.
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I have one at 10 and the other at 11. I once had a 19 -archer- but I changed the unit type. Wish we had an option to transfer our captain over but doubt that will happen.
How good would an archer captain be on a horse? :P
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I have one at 10 and the other at 11. I once had a 19 -archer- but I changed the unit type. Wish we had an option to transfer our captain over but doubt that will happen.
It absolutely will never happen. The captain was introduced as an incentive to keep your unit around even if it's badly beaten up, instead of dumping and re-recruiting at the earliest convenient opportunity.
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How good would an archer captain be on a horse? :P
Well assuming he was a very good archer, you'd have the best horse archers this side of Mongolia...
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Well assuming he was a very good archer, you'd have the best horse archers this side of Mongolia...
I'm pretty sure average archery skills quickly diminish once you get on a horse :p certainly if you still need to learn how to ride:)
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Not necessarily.
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There are a few tricks involved in horse archery, such as exactly when in the horses stride to let loose the arrow. You also need to learn to compensate for your own momentum when aiming. If a skilled archer was also a skilled rider, which is definitively not a given, then it is possible that with some retraining they could make a good horse archer. It is highly unlikely that a good archer could simply sit upon a horse and suddenly be capable though.
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There are a few tricks involved in horse archery, such as exactly when in the horses stride to let loose the arrow. You also need to learn to compensate for your own momentum when aiming. If a skilled archer was also a skilled rider, which is definitively not a given, then it is possible that with some retraining they could make a good horse archer. It is highly unlikely that a good archer could simply sit upon a horse and suddenly be capable though.
Speaking of horse archers, wouldn't it be awesome if you could get horse archer SF? (They start at the front line but as the enemy gets closer they constantly fall back a row shooting arrows the whole time, before retreating at the back without casualties.
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Speaking of horse archers, wouldn't it be awesome if you could get horse archer SF? (They start at the front line but as the enemy gets closer they constantly fall back a row shooting arrows the whole time, before retreating at the back without casualties.
Did Europeans extensively use horse archers?
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Speaking of horse archers, wouldn't it be awesome if you could get horse archer SF? (They start at the front line but as the enemy gets closer they constantly fall back a row shooting arrows the whole time, before retreating at the back without casualties.
That's not how real world horse archers worked.
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That's not how real world horse archers worked.
One of the background post by Longmane had a good description of Horse Archers fighting Foot Archers. It should help dispel the idea that Horse Archers were some how untouchable.
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That's not how real world horse archers worked.
I understand that. However, real battles were also 2-d and not 1-d but it is more difficult to make any change in that regard than we would want.
I know one report of mongolian horse archers would ride in circles near the lines of enemy troops with each archer firing when they were closest to the enemy in the circle, giving them time to prepare another shot as they rode around. Horse archers were notorious for abusing enemy lines while staying highly mobile. They were hard to pursue and did not operate alone, but with the aid of other forces that would then have more freedom of movement as the horse archers distracted the enemy.
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I understand that. However, real battles were also 2-d and not 1-d but it is more difficult to make any change in that regard than we would want.
I know one report of mongolian horse archers would ride in circles near the lines of enemy troops with each archer firing when they were closest to the enemy in the circle, giving them time to prepare another shot as they rode around. Horse archers were notorious for abusing enemy lines while staying highly mobile. They were hard to pursue and did not operate alone, but with the aid of other forces that would then have more freedom of movement as the horse archers distracted the enemy.
The issue would be "no casualties" element. What other unit type can reasonably expect to take no casualties in a large battle. As written every realm would simply make sure to take Horse Archer elements, which would then end up in some running duel with each other.
In RL Horse Archers would come under attack from the enemies archers. Their fast movement made them hard to hit, but then the return fire also caused them issues, as they had to maintain speed to avoid it, which affected their own aim.
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The issue would be "no casualties" element. What other unit type can reasonably expect to take no casualties in a large battle. As written every realm would simply make sure to take Horse Archer elements, which would then end up in some running duel with each other.
In RL Horse Archers would come under attack from the enemies archers. Their fast movement made them hard to hit, but then the return fire also caused them issues, as they had to maintain speed to avoid it, which affected their own aim.
Its not a serious suggestion, just thought it'd be cool to have a single unit of them. If they were freely available it'd be very bad for game balance.