Strategus equipment maths

[TheGriffin88]

Hello all,

This is directed at anyone who buys equipment for major battles.

How do you do your equipment maths?

For instance armour does not seem to be much of a problem but ideally you would not want archers in heavy armour near the end or your front-line melee troops in light armour.

Arrows or Ladders seem to be to be an equally hard thing to calculate. Some maps chew up ladders quicker than others because there may be no safe points to place them. Arrows of course your counting on a certain percentage of archers using 2 or 3 arrows (depending on bow / circumstances).

Now I have already been in a number of battles where a lack of foresight regarding the amount of equipment needed has lost people battles.

So my question: How do you do your maths?

Some examples:
1. Just grab a lot of everything and end up potentially wasting materials.
2. Estimate a percentage of troops
3. Estimate and force a percentage of troops. For example you may take 4 archers for every 6 melee. Or 5 shielders per rest. etc etc
4. Guestimate equip levels

Do you find equipment often determines who you sign up for battles or not?


Hopefully this topic could generate some conversation about sensible equipment buying and even some general numbers for 100/500/1000 etc ticket battles.


---By the way I am aware many may not want to speak about this considering it potentially part of their own advantage against others. However it may serve to help those newer to strategus.---

All the best,

Griffin.

[Rubicon]

We are using a excel file with, sorted items (fit to our RP), ratio for amount of troops and also for different kind of fights (siege/field) etc ..

Not hard at all but it's kinda boring to do and the main problem is if the price of items is modified your files is outdated :/

(Can't put screens, classified !)

[Gheritarish le Loki]

Always bring more arrows than needed!!

[Keshian]

Best way - practice a lot, you eventually just get a feel for the numbers and since its not an exact science there is plenty of room for error up or down without hurting you at all.

[SPQR]

Guesstimate the percentage of each class based on experience, and buy accordingly. Then buy a little extra of everything for people who take multiple weapons.

[TheGriffin88]

Do you fit your mercenaries to fill the percentage of each class you needed, or recruit and hope you get a general percentage needed. Or give higher priority to shielders/archers/cav as required?

[SPQR]

For LLJK we usually hire clanmates and friends first, then look at our list and hire the rest according to what we're lacking. So we may look at the list, decide we need more archers, and then hire based on that. Different clans have a different tenancies toward certain classes so you just gotta be aware of your clans make up. For instance LLJK has a lot of cavalry players, so we often don't hire many cav mercenaries otherwise we'd be swamped in them.

[Keshian]

Do you fit your mercenaries to fill the percentage of each class you needed, or recruit and hope you get a general percentage needed. Or give higher priority to shielders/archers/cav as required?

The biggest clans set the ratios because they have enough people to do so.  Most moderate to small size clans have tot ake what they can get and accept a skilled player no matter what his class.  But after you geta  feel for it you can get a general sense of how much extra in each category you need, and like Is aid there si always room for error as people can pick up items off the ground, they can start using a long spear with 1 wpf and still be very effective, they can spawn with extra bolts and give them to dedciated xbowmen, etc.

[PhantomZero]

For my battles I buy enough equipment so that each soldier has about 10 gold worth of equipment. Then I hire the worst players in the game, it doesn't really matter their class.

The key part to this plan is to just have the battle whenever your enemy is asleep, and hope they miss the reinforcement window or just dont bother showing up.

Also, it helps to have triple the number of tickets, but quadruple would work best.

[Keshian]

For my battles I buy enough equipment so that each soldier has about 10 gold worth of equipment. Then I hire the worst players in the game, it doesn't really matter their class.

The key part to this plan is to just have the battle whenever your enemy is asleep, and hope they miss the reinforcement window or just dont bother showing up.

Also, it helps to have triple the number of tickets, but quadruple would work best.

Best advice I've seen yet.

[Braeden]

Personally, if the battle is likely to be lost (if I don't have 2x the tickets) I aim to buy a lot more sparingly than if I'm reasonably sure of victory.  I also buy more wildly if I can't afford to lose a fight, or if I just don't care if I lose equipment.  I'd also much rather let 200 extra arrows fall into the hands of the enemy than run out of arrows.

For me, though, the key is to get your players signed up as far in advance as possible, then purchase to their specifications.  I am not a fan of the recent "hire whoever shows up on TS 30 minutes before the battle" trend.  I'd rather get my equipment around the players I know are coming, their classes and their demands.

Overbuy on low requirement shields.

This is all last strategus information, I haven't run a major battle in a long time, but I think it generally holds.  I would also say that getting the most expensive stuff for melee is not nearly as important as ensuring your ranged weapons have equipment.  Buy battle axes and longbows over longswords and short bows.  Its simply how things work in Strategus.  In the end, player skill, ranged firepower, and ticket number will trump armor and nice 2h weapons every day.

[KaMiKaZe_JoE]

From my extremely limited experience--buy extra polearms and shields. Polearms are extremely versatile weapons, and as a cavalry player I can assure you that even the presence of a handful in my enemy's ranks is enough to dissuade me from charging (unless its a Huey/suicidal charge). Even with 1 wpf, a player can be effective with a polearm if he or she sticks with teammates.

Hense my 100 pitchforks.

[ArchonAlarion]

I have a noobish question. How does item selection work exactly? If I have one plated charger, does that mean only one will be present for the entire battle or does it mean that only one player on my team can have one at a time? Is the selection first come first serve or what? Thanks.

[Erasmas]

If you buy  one plated charger, it means you have one plated charger. The first guy that selects it form eq menu will get it. Then it is gone form eq menu. If some slick pikemen kills your plated charger - it is dead and no longer available.

In other words - you may run out of stuff, if you buy insufficient amounts. At the end of some battles people run naked and grab weapons from ground. 

EDIT - I also know that there were battles where no eq was bought for one team, and that team won anyway 

[ArchonAlarion]

ok cool thanks. So how does ammo work? In cRPG if you buy a stack of bodkin arrows (for instance), you can duplicate that item in the equip screen, right? In strategus if I have a singular stack of arrows can someone select it and then create multiples of it in their equip screen or is 1 stack 1 stack?