Take Me to the River

[Straight Arrow]

When you cross a river in an attack, how is combat effected?


Does it effect frontage? If so, by how much?

[Straight Arrow]

All I could find so far is:

The Terrain key shows nothing under Effect on Attacker but says: the effect on a defender is a minor bonus if attacker crosses a minor river.

For major rivers, again there is nothing under Effect on Attacker, but it says the defender receives a major bonus if attacker crosses a major river/lake.


I also found River crossing/Amphibious landing listed under influences in Fire Combat.



Does anyone know the hard numbers?

[Captain_Orso]

When you attack while crossing a river or invading--landing off of ships--, during the first round of battle the defender fires at you while you do nothing but absorb the punishment. Once you've survived the first round of battle, you may fire back. IIRC during an invasion only light artillery may fight until some time which escapes me at the moment. It's simply not something you want to do if you can avoid it.

[ArmChairGeneral]

Also, if you have some threshold of MC (10%?) then you are considered to have a bridgehead/beachhead and can enter the region and fight without penalty.

[Cardinal Ape]

I'm trying to find some hard numbers, it is a bit tough.

I see the terrain folder has minor and major river crossings and beaches in it. I am not sure if or how these effect combat. Anyone know? They do have their own frontage values..

A wild guess is that the first round or two of battle is fought on these water based terrains and then moves to the normal terrain?

According to the minor river crossing file attacking infantry get a -25% chance to hit while defending infantry get a +20% percent chance to hit. The attacking infantry also receive a negative to their protection stat. The modifiers are different for each class of unit. Artillery is about the same as infantry. Cavalry get it worst, while irregulars are not affected much.

Despite the lacking of solid numbers, I think it safe to say that attacking across a river is very brutal on the offender and should be avoided whenever possible.

[Gray Fox]

FYI, this is the link that explains terrain effects on combat:

http://www.ageod.net/agewiki/Terrain_Effects_on_Combat

This also links to the AGEOD excel spreadsheet link page:

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?5358-Official-Files-for-modding

With the specific link listed for "CW2 Database", wherein is located the CW2_DB_Terrains1d file.

This excel spreadsheet contains the MinorR, MajorR and Beach files to which Cardinal Ape refers.

If I understand this correctly, from the Minor River sheet, the frontage is about half what one would expect on open terrain under good weather. The attacker gets a (x 0.75) offensive fire modifier and the defender a (x 1.2) modifier during the first round and so on.