Knights and Merchants.net Forum

I was doing some research on KaM the other day, and I found something quite interesting. This entire topic is under the assumption that the stat differences between soldiers is the same in the Remake as it was in KaM (although how damage is calculated is different, I believe). If it is different then forget it

Okay, I'll start off with this: Mostly, the attack margin between primitive units and iron units isn't very large, numerically speaking. E.g. Militia, Scouts, and Axefighters all have 35% attack, whereas Swordfighters and Knights have 55% attack. Lance carriers have 25% attack and Pikemen have 35% attack.
However, this ends when you reach bowmen and crossbowmen. Bowmen have 35% attack, but crossbowmen have 100% attack! The margin of difference is huge! Much more than twice that of the difference between axes and swords. I was wondering if this really makes sense. It would be a good explanation as to why crossbowmen are favored so much.

So what do you people think of this?

I think Uncle Ben is right.

Well i dont understand it reall either.

Swordmen are more expensive like xbows but xbows are the powerfullst army.(well not directly, Xbows hasnt chance against same knights, but in the background of the fight, i mean )

However maybe its like in reality. If they are standing 50 xbows AND THEY WILL SHOT CORRECTLY, the soldiers are normaly death, but if it is really this argumente it also doesnt make sense,because bowmen are too weak than.

And i think that Ben is right, that this is the main reason,why in multiplayer they arent "normal" fights like in real, but only xbows(and lances/pikes) Normaly.


And what Pike has the same attack like axefighters? "Swrodtroops" haven´t any bonus for pikes/lances/rebells, have they?

Ben, can you tell me, howmuch Attack has a Barbarian?


pawel95

This is my suspicion. Better to spend all your iron on crossbowmen since they are so much better than all other units. Sadly, the TSK manual doesn't include barbarians :/ However, it is clear that they have more than knights, as they have 4 swords on their icon, whereas knights and swordfighters only have 3.
Lewin or Krom could tell you how much attack they have in the Remake.

Ahh ok maybe because they were the Mystic Army only in TSK 8 and TSK9 (+Tsk20) i love them
Well, i only ask because i read somewhere that they are the most powefull army BUT are really weak against xbows and archers. So we could compare also this 2 types. Maybe the xbows are so powerfull,that barbarians are much weaker than in TSK/TPR. Its only sometimes my feeling in multiplayer battle,that the barbarians are weaker than in TPR
(so not they themselves are weaker, but because of balance from xbows)


pawel95

I think barbarians have less attack than crossbowmen. They have the most attack of any infantry unit; though.
I think that they were given armor in TPR, making them a little more effective against arrows.

Bowmen's attack rate: 60
Xbowmen's attack rate: 120
Barbarians / Warriors' attack rate: 75

Since Warriors and Barbarians both have 4 hp and 2 defense, so I think they aren't that weak against arrows. Maybe they seem to be in TPR, but there (as you surely know) archers are alive supermen. Hm, bowmen amazed me some day before. I was playing mission7 of Ben's campaign, where my bowmen killed a knight with 8 arrows. And a single archer killed a pike with 3 arrows. So forget about TPR if you are thinking of improvements for the Remake.

Still playing my campaign?

So the stats are different? I thought that the hit rate and hp were the only things changed.

We haven't changed any unit statistics in the Remake, they are the same as TPR. Archers are not the same because nobody knows how the fighting system worked with archers, and we added predictive aiming so we made up our own system for archers.

The stats in the manual and on Wikipedia don't reflect what goes on in the code. In the code attack strength is like Bence wrote (note that they are not percentages either and they are allowed to go over 100). You can't really compare the attack strength of archers to other units because arrows have a chance to miss which is separate to the attack strength (they are more likely to miss moving targets too).

We're planning to give archers some small buff to make them more useful. It could be attack strength or rate of fire or something like that.

Archers instead of 35% make 50% please =) Then they will have meaning.

There are no percentages in the attack strengths, they are just numbers. Also bowmen currently have attack 60, crossbowmen have attack 120.

To make it clear.. As Lewin told me some day:

There is an attack rate of each troop, e.g. xbowmen's is 120. To calculate the chance of damage (if the arrow hits the target, or if melee combat is going on):
Attack rate / Target's defense, e.g. if a xbow shoots at a militia, it's: 120 / 1 = 120% of damaging, but the arrows can miss, so it isn't that percentage. (Best is Rogue vs Xbow, there IS 120% chance of damaging, and in that case even chance of killing, so it's sure )
Another example: A Barbarian fights a Knight.
Barbarians have an attack rate of 75, and a defense of 2, Knights have an attack rate of 55, and 3 defense. So:
Chance of a Barb damaging a Knight: 75/3=25%
Chance of a Knight damaging a Barb: 55/2=22,5% (It's really random who wins 1 on 1, and there you can see the point that barbs are really op )

Anyway I'm not an expert at it, so better ask the devs

P.S.: Yeah Ben, I'm stuck at mission10, this attack at 0:33 is a bit fast.. I'll have to try it again later.

Maybe I'm wrong but wasn't the attack rate the frequency of the attack?

I used percentage because that's what the TSK manual uses.

Anyway, I wasn't really comparing bowmen and crossbowmen to other troops. I was stating how crossbowmen are about 3 times stronger than bowmen, while swordfighters are only almost twice as good a axefighters.

Yes, you are, since every troop strikes at the same speed (I mean melee)

P.S.: As I know xD