I always find these sorts of things quite interesting to get a sense of people’s biases vs reality. Essentially I’ve set up a set of simulations pitching certain unit types against each other and am interested to see who you think would win?
Unless stated otherwise assume it is post-imp all upgrades, tests were conducted with 2 AI’s vs each other in the scenario editor i.e. no micro:
Just wanted to add that the one that surprised me the most is the longbow v skirm as I had always assumed skirms were hard counters. I guess that extra point of damage makes a huge difference! This has interesting implications for civs without a strong knight line (or eagles) who then don’t really have an obvious answer for dealing with Britaind ( I think Saracens being a good example).
Thanks for asking, they were generated via the Scenario editor with 2 ais set to attack move against each other at close range. Then repeated it 3-10 times to see if the result was consistent.
Doesn’t mean the result will be accurate. You’ve watched too much Mike empires (i hate his videos for the misconceptions they create, doing more damage than good)
Ok guys. This isn’t how skirms (or even pikes) counter their targets
They do it COST EFFECTIVELY. 22 skirms cost nothing by that stage nevermind the bottle neck on LBs.
Watch some survivalist videos. You need to learn how to use skirms. You shouldn’t just a move them, you need to use some to micro down the archers
The repetition was more to get a sense of whether they are evenly matched or not. As in the fights tend to have a lot of variance due to pathing so unless its extremely overwhelming you need to run it a few times to see if you get a consistent outcome.
My take on the weakness of Mike’s videos is that they are often matches of units that require intensive micro vs units that need near no micro (archers vs knights/infantry being the main example). I picked specific match ups here with the intent of minimising any bias / issues from this. Please let me know which ones you think are unrepresentative of the outcomes that would be observed in practice so I can try and adjust; I would have assumed it would be the Mangudai but considering they won both rounds there’s nothing else to gain from additional micro testing.
There wasn’t meant to be a goal here of showing equal numbers / equal resources, the idea was to propose very specific match ups and ask people to guess on who they think would win given this scenario.
Did you make the units play with their respective civilization? eg. Mangudai as Mongols and Longbows as Britons. Very surprised by the results of both units and that might be the explanation.
Saracens have siege rams which Britons struggle against (and maybe onagers)
Yer, I was super conscious to check that multiple times !
I was curious about skirms so I did some more testing with both the scenario editor and the online battle simulator (which seems to be surprisingly accurate for the units whose stats are still up-to-date). And got the following efficiencies for skirms (assuming 100 wood = 100 food = 100 gold).
Unit
Efficiency
Skirms vs Rattens
1.238
Skirms vs generic Arbalests
1.572
Skirms vs generic heavy cavalry archers
1.383
Skirms vs Longbows
1.202
That would mean to beat 50 longbows (value = 3750 resources) you would need 52 skirmishers (value = 3125 resources).
Though I must admit I am suprised that Longbows are better than Rattens, I am wondering if this is due to longbows having shorter frame delays meaning less time is wasted when re-targeting ? (or potentially I’ve just made a mistake in the simulation setups…)
I cannot reproduce your result. I try to put a 1v1 fight between Elite Mangudai and Tatars Heavy
Cavalry Archer. The fight is in here
The result is clearly that Tatars Heavy Cavalry Archer win. I just want to ask given that two equal skill players control 20 Elite Mangudai and 20 Tatars Heavy Cavalry Archer. How can the player with Elite Mangudai win?
Most likely just a combination of longbows higher atk and range.
Maybe his Mangudai have the last archer armor?
But Mangudai have higher ROF and lower Damage per hit which is kinda an advantage for bigger scale battles.
I understand higher ROF will result in less overkill in bigger scale. However I try 20 vs 20 many time with long distance move attack or short distance move attacak or patro or stand ground but the result are the same.
For me it looks also an issue with target selection, it looks like the tatars HCA don’t focus fire in the beginning but have different targets.
Then ofc mangudai snowball once they have higher numbers.
But i’m not sure it looks in general as if the mangudai just dish out way more damage and i don’t see why.
Mangudai should deal 5 damage per hit and the hca 7. Mangudai should atk faster, but the hca should overall have still the higher dps.
no, the HCA are fine, they take 16 shots. 80/5
It’s probably just a mix of several little factors. I think the Mangudai need just about 1 more shot to kill a HCA which is not much and some targeting/overkill/delay stuff can surely flip that to the other side.
it’s 16 shots vs 12 but about 15-20 % faster.