Tower accuracy

[The Dark Lord]

I'm wondering what everyone thinks about tower accuracy. A while ago they were too accurate so their accuracy was decreased. A few days back I played a game and almost emptied 3 towers with 1 militia and 2 lance carriers. In our tournament match vs Woloszek and Luki, Luki sneaked past ~3 towers with a single cavalry unit.
I could come up with more examples but what it comes down to is this: I think the towers' accuracy is now too low.
What do you think?

[Da Revolution]

The accuracy is quite low indeed, but for me its no problem. Although when one horse sneaks past 3 towers (which are build in a smart way) its not good i think.

[Krom]

Next version will have accuracy slightly increased. I would expect it to be something in between old and current one.

[stijn263]

Does the accuracy depend on where and in what direction the unit walks as seen from the tower?

In the original K&M, you could empty a tower using a single scout like this: (T = tower)

<-------- walking direction
..........
..........
..........
..........
...T.....

And if you wanted a clean and fast death, use a scout like this:
.........
.........
.........
T.<----- walking direction
.........
.........
.........

[The Dark Lord]

Next version will have accuracy slightly increased. I would expect it to be something in between old and current one.

I'm glad to hear that.

@stijn263
My favourite way of emptying a tower is using a cavalry unit walking in and out of range the whole time (so first 1 tile in range, then 1 tile out of tower's range).

[Jeronimo]

I agree with Dark Lord... and Krom
A performance between old and current would be better.
My brother whines me about towers. He shouts they are useless.

When FOOT unit is in movement:
In general... from every 5 stones, only 1-2 hit.
Woule be nice if... from every 5 stones, 3 hit.

[Lewin]

As Krom said tower accuracy has been increased quite a bit since the last build. The difficulty with balancing it is that most of the inaccuracy doesn't come from the random element we add, it comes from the fact that units change direction. If you change direction while the stone is in the air, it will almost certainly miss you because it's aiming to land where you would have been had you continued in a straight line. So we can't look at our code and say "on average 3 out of 5 stone will hit", instead we can say something like "if a unit is walking in a straight line, 4 out of 5 stones will hit" but that's pretty meaningless because units don't always walk in straight lines

Also please keep in mind that towers will miss fast moving units more often than slow moving ones, and slow moving units more often than stationary units. This provides an incentive to charge at towers with axefighters/militia (rather than walking) or to run cavalry at towers. It adds more tactics and variety IMO.

The best solution I can come up with is we try to get it "feeling" right to us in tests (which I've already done) and then during beta testing of the next release YOU guys tell us what you think of it, and from that we'll judge the community's view on the matter. We've done this in the past with stuff like archers accuracy, which most people seem to like now (except that some campaign missions are harder to win, which we're fixing separately)
So, when the announcement of beta testing comes out, contact us if you're not already on the mailing list and test it out for yourself so you can tell us what you think. It's just not possible for Krom and I to test balance issues thoroughly, you need to play real matches with real people and see how it goes.

[Thomas]

During beta testing I was in hope that the tower accuracy was increased to a value that was fairly ok for me. But I still think that when only 1 or 2 of 5 stones hit normal walking enemy units (no charged axe fighters or cavalry) this is still too less.

[Lewin]

During beta testing I was in hope that the tower accuracy was increased to a value that was fairly ok for me. But I still think that when only 1 or 2 of 5 stones hit normal walking enemy units (no charged axe fighters or cavalry) this is still too less.

I was aiming for 3-4 out of 5 stones to hit walking units, it seemed to be okay in my tests a while ago.

Could other people please write their experiences with towers in the release candidate here, or perform some tests and let us know what you think? If they're still too inaccurate we can increase their accuracy. Note: stationary units are more likely to be hit than moving ones, and fast moving ones even less likely to be hit. Moving vs stationary accuracy can be tweaked separately.
Thanks in advance

[Da Revolution]

The towers seem to hit way more now.

[Thomas]

As you said you can adjust the accuracy between moving and stationary targets separately - how accurate are towers towards stationary units exactly? I was always wondering that towers missed even those stationary units. Usually I would think that throwing a rock to a unit which doesn't move should hit it to almost 100% (or would this be way too strong, what do you think?). Anyway, I will test a little bit more according the tower accuracy during the beta.

[Luki]

The towers seem to hit way more now.

Agree. For me even hit lots better ;]

[Lewin]

As you said you can adjust the accuracy between moving and stationary targets separately - how accurate are towers towards stationary units exactly? I was always wondering that towers missed even those stationary units. Usually I would think that throwing a rock to a unit which doesn't move should hit it to almost 100% (or would this be way too strong, what do you think?). Anyway, I will test a little bit more according the tower accuracy during the beta.

Rocks will now hit units approximately 80% of the time, so about 1 out of 5 will miss. (I didn't check my calculation closely so it might not be exactly right)

It's not really possible to accurately calculate the chance to hit a moving target because there are too many factors, if the target changes direction while the rock is in the air it's more likely to miss, and that happens sometimes. It's only really possible to see it's effect by playing and testing it in-game. I'll be interested to hear the results of your tests

[Thomas]

All in all I'm really comfortable with the current tower accuracy. The only thing what still bothers me, is the fact that sometimes towers miss stationary units. I always think: "OK, you only have 5 stone per tower at maximum and then this stupid tower guy cannot even hit those few stationary units which try to kill my serfs ". I think stationary targets should be hit always.