AGEOD Forums

This has been discussed in other threads, but has discussed elements that are not those that I want. What I want to know is how does one evaluate the a-priori probability of victory given the information available? Obviously terrain, weather, morale, experience, fatigue, frontage and the types of units are going to affect the result. But the question is how does one use this knowledge to evaluate the probability of success? Sometimes a 5000 army with an inferior general can beat the crap out of a 10,000 army, and the victory screens do not give any information on WHY? I understand that war is somewhat unpredictable. In other words, say I have a 20,000-man well-balanced army about to attack a similar army (or a 10,000-man army). Can I evaluate the probability of victory without going through a spreadsheet (the manual has tables)?

Another question: in this game, is it useful to use cavalry to scout around to find enemy unit locations and strength as for example the Confederates did in the US Civil War? Or did the Romans keep the cavalry with the legions?

for the cavalry:

Romans had own scouting and vanguard detachments, sometimes over 3 days ahead of the troops. real Roman cav. was only given until the first half of the -80 years, afterwards it was nearly completely substituted with allied cav.
In game you can use cav and mercenary cav. for screening and scouting but they are prone to be pursued and destroyed.

for the victories:
NO. not as you would expect it.

a.) as in other games before its possible to build stacks of high PWR /menpower with poor troops and they will not win.

b.) its possible to have huge numbers of men but only if frontage allows it and the combat takes many rounds the Romans will loose due to the high national moral penalty (1000 Romans (their high VP) equal -1 NM). but for that you need to be reallly good with a large army in defensive posture in good defensive terrain and have luck too

these moral losses one the one side and having the enemy rooted (most of the time the non-romans) are the main points of the battle resolution.
you can inflict huge losses, but still run away afterwards
with the inferior forces, however, you can always win by war of attrition and suddendeath (moral)


c.) the message what is a victory and what a loss in the battle resolution screen, was announced to be corrected with the next patch. magnitudes were a problem

Regarding the Cav. I find that the scouting abilities of all troops in the game to be really lacking. You don't have any good information about the size of anyone your fighting. With that said, Cav are of limited scouting use. As the turns are 30 days, you can 5-10 regions, and so can you enemy. Thus it is possible that 2 armies could meet that were 20 regions away at the start of the turn.

I find they are very good at other things, like capturing enemy lands, allowing you to punish/enslave regions/cities behind enemy lines. Or capturing supply columns. Nothing stops an offensive into your lands like capturing all your enemies supply wagons.