Assuming the peasant isn't armed, then I would expect them all to die.

3) Looking for revenge for their fallen comrades (will they ever learn?), 100 more peasants gang up on just 10 of the same 10th level heroes above (ten 10 on 1 fights).  How many HEROES are left standing at the end of the fight? 1? All?  None?  some number in between?

 

Depends how clever the peasants are. And if any of the heroes have their backs covered. Assuming the heroes aren't standing in the middle of a wide open space, and the peasants aren't armed, then most should survive.

But, there's still a chance that the peasants can win. The knight might get an eyelash or some grit in his eye. Or trips over a rabbit hole and sprains his ankle. Or the hero has a bad hangover that day. Or one of the peasants is actually the long lost heir to the throne and is favoured by the gods.

Also, the peasants would probably run away rather than fight. And then employ guerilla tactics. And while this isn't an explicit game mechanic, you can assume it is represented abstractly in the combat mechanics, giving the peasants a slightly greater chance than they otherwise would of had.

1) Maybe one knight will die, at most. Actually, if the peasants have the initiative and tactical advantage, make that a few from ganging up 10 or 20 on 1. But not more,

Make those peasants light infantry instead, and it should change drastically (you should start seeing a few casualties in the knights' ranks.)

2) 0 heroes die.

3) At most 1 hero dies through bad luck

4) The monster slaughters the peasants and steals their salted pork.

Peasants should only be effective at destabilizing light infantry and irregulars.

The monster would tear them all to bits - their puny weapons are unable to affect this monster of monsters!

looking at this with thwe peasants vs the knights - the knights would get wounded maybe - but would triumph against the peasants.

if on the other hand there was a thing like overwhelming a foe knocking him to the ground then the peasants would cause major carnage vs the knights 

the monster would still be fine in that regard and gnash all the peasants.

I'm trying not to mean anything specific.  I suppose that the 'aggregate' of their stats would equate to being 5 times at tough.  15 attack strength vs 3, with 0x5 defense still means 0 defense, which makes things a little weird.  the point of this exercise is to indicate how much of a chance the lowliest unit (peasant) should get, once game mechanics are balanced a little better.  Or, to think of this another way, you have 8 units with 12 peasants each, with 4 other peasants in your stack (total 100 peasants).  Uber Monster is across the field.  Should he win every time, or do we want those 100 peasants to have a slim chance of beating him?  Or maybe with THAT many peasants, does it become a tough fight for the monster?

This is why I didn't list stats for Uber Monster (other than he's 20th level), because then you fall into the 'well according to the game mechanics...' trap.    Think of Uber Monster as the baddest monster in the game.

Also, assume both units (peasant, opponent) are standing next to each other and trading blows, with all available action points going to attack/counterattack.  this is simply a 'well, if they are just trading blows, this is what should happen' exercise.

I remember a couple of people posting about not bothering to get weapons skills a while back, because a grouped unit of 8 or 12 peasants was already overkill at that time.  Should a unit of 12 peasants EVER strike fear into an undamaged 10th level melee hero? Should a stack of 12 5th level melee units with fairly good equipment fear a stack of 12 peasants at all?  If the 5th level unit goes toe to toe repeatedly with one peasant, out of 100 combats does he win 100 out of 100 times?  Or should a peasant win occasionally?

This exercise is soley to gauge your expectations.  All things being equal, chances should probably be about even that either unit wins (which you then use tactics, etc. to skew the odds in your favor while the opponent perhaps does the same).  But if things are NOT equal, and since peasants/other units aren't allowed to rereat in combat unless a hero is present, then what?

Feel free to use other examples: say a 2nd level soldier with a 4 attack finds himself fighting a 4th level soldier with double his attack and defense values - what does being double the lesser guy in everything mean in your mind for the lesser guy's chances?  Does the lesser guy wins 1 out of every 4 times? 1 out of 8?  1 out of 16? Never?

I just like picking on those poor peasants... plus they make a nice baseline to start from.

Good exercise.

I read a lot on the subject and I am a passionate wargamer.

Personally I believe that the real difference between knights and peasants would not be in the way they are armed but in their morale. So truth is that almost none of those fights would take place, and certainly not to the last man because the peasants would run pretty soon.

For the sake of giving a hypotetical numeric quantification of the idea, let's say if the peasants are less in number than the knights they would start running, so as soon as the knights have taken a numeric advantage the fight would end with the enemy breaking.

If the peasants fight a single monster things would be different. The Romans run the first time they saw elephants, so how could that work?

I believe in the Warhammer battle system the rule is that if a certain % of the unit dies during a specific turn, there is a great morale decrease, which means the unit would break.

But then again talking about peasants fighting to the last man is ridiculous. Morale is the main element in realistic wargames.

There are some good points here so far.

Personally, I would say that this kind of thing would work better if it was determined by a combination of DnD and 4x combat tactics. Meaning, something along the lines of successful hit on a maximum dice roll, and a failed defense on a minimum dice roll. This could even work with the current mechanics by rolling against dodge to hit, and then damage Vs defense to see if any harm is inflicted. In some situations, the lucky hit might also have to be a critical hit to do any damage at all. That's the DnD part, and would be a good representation of riadsala's notion of a hero having something in their eye or spraining their ankle, or the peasant being favoured by the Gods.

Then you'd need to add flanking that results in an automatic reduction to the flanked unit's dodge ability per additional flanking unit. Flanking would only really work if all of the flanking units were attacking the same enemy unit. Since you can't have simultaneous attacks in Elemental, it would simply have to be that if two or more units are in melee attack range of an enemy unit, then that unit is considered flanked. Flanking shouldn't give a bonus to attack to the flanking units, unless a unit ability is implemented that gives them the prowess to fight well in concert. The reason for this is that two people who aren't trained in fighting together against the same opponent will often get in each other's way rather than provide a tactical advantage. Say flanking again - "flanking".

This way, you give weaker units all the opportunity they need to get lucky, and give some weight to the saying that there is strength in numbers. It would also make mass producing cheaper units a little more viable as a combat strategy. With the Orcs/Goblins MOD implemented, it would play to that army type as well.

Black-Knight makes a good point about morale as well, and it should definately be a factor. Goldmos mentioned something about fatigue. If there was some measure of that, then a single uber monster would eventually suffer some statistical penalty after attacking and defending against so many units. Fatigue could probably be calculated according to constitution, with a higher CON stat making fatigue less of a problem.

OK, now that there have been some responses, here are mine:

1) I'd say at the end of the combat there are 10 or so peasants standing amongst around 90 5th Level Knights.

2) At the end, there may be a peasant or two left, amongst 98-99 10th Level Heroes

3) I'm thinking 7 of the 10 heroes are probably still standing, with only a few peasants (4-8).  The last peasant or two got the drop on the unlucky hero in those other three fights.

4) I'm thinking the Uber Monster wins 75% of the time.  The other 25% of the time, the sheer number of attacks (and associated luck) should mean his doom.

My reasoning for these responses is that I think, no matter how 'tough' a unit/hero/creature is, there should always be a chance (albiet a small one) that he/she/it might lose.  I don't think luck should dominate a combat, but players should occasionally face a reversal that makes them think twice about the fight they are in.  I also think that not all peasants are created equal, so there will be a few that the army, etc. might have overlooked that actually have some skill in combat, or are just realy tough (aka Ahrnold the Farmer). 

Since units are abstracted, having a luck mechanic in place is a way for the game to show these anomolies.  Note that the surviving peasants would very likely level up one or more levels after these fights, which is an abstract way to show that they are the tougher variety (i.e. not just cannon fodder).

What might be cool is if these 'lucky' survivors that just won against great/impossible odds received an additional bonus (+ to Str, etc.), to make them special.  But since we can't upgrade units (yet) in Elemental, keeping track of individual unit stats is kind of pointless.  Otherwise, I'd probably send these guys in for guard training, and give them better equipment/pay as a reward for their heroism.

Otherwise, peasants, etc. should probably have variable stats, a game mechanic that would just add unnecessary complexity to the game.

There is a fair difference between a group of peasants and agincourt where english longbowmen were supported by a smaller yet highly armoured core of knights in their center. So agincourt is only a good example if your talking about terrain as the mud did play a role.

OK, since we are citing battles now...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana

To be fair, the British were outnumbered 10 to 1...

I could also argue that a well swung club might snap a neck or two, regardless of the armor protection... plus if the armored guy trips or something, that's an opening the lesser armed 'clubber' can exploit.  That being said, I'd think the guys in the chainmail versus the unarmored guys with the clubs should win most of the time, if numbers are fairly equal and terrain isn't a factor.  Some SCA'ers might disagree with me though (they like to show how to exploit weaknesses, it makes them feel macho).

This is a rather bad example. Firearms did not become a battlefield superiority weapons until the invention of a machine gun or at least a multi-shot rifle.

Before that riflemen were merely superior bowmen and they were always very prone to slaughter in close quaters. In XVIII and XIX century the battlefield tactics was all about preventing those close quaters and only cavalry was fast enough to get to the infantry before being stopped by bullets. Then it was slaughter.

Zulu did not have cavalry but they had more people that a breach rifle could kill before the Zulu line reached the British. In close quaters to this very day a Roman Legion would wipe out soldiers of any army in the world. We just got very good at making out death blow delivery remotly. Should you run out of bullets, the melee training of modern armies is vastly inferior to that of the ancient legionists, or middle-age knights.

Exactly! Can 100 peasants simultaneously attack? theoretically it is possible i suppose but unlikely & an uber moster swinging only his massive arm would take out how many peasants?  Are they point guards or linebacker size? Tree huggers? Capitalists? This exercise begs to employ the elements of the Art of War---which so many AI's--this one included is not able to mildly duplicate.

Excellent point cpl rk---no doubt you enjoyed Tanks giving on the military channel 11-25?

The Zulu’s were not a *peasant* army they were a well trained military army, a military army. From your post:

Yup. Like the Samurai, the Spartans, etc. The original question was interesting enough but there are so many variables present given ANY battle---Masada, Charge of the light Brigade, the Alamo, the French v. Vietnamese, Russia v Afghanistan, Rome v. a dozen inferior Opfor yet victory achieved in the midst of seemingly insuperable odds. Again--back to the basics--the ART of War. Cpl rk points out the crucial factor of morale, purpose etc---all Sun Tzuian precepts and FAR too complex for most AI's....IMO.

A peasant who can't reap wheat won't prevail in battle with a pitchfork but a peasant whose sole purpose has been to use that pitchfork to bear fruit, keep other peasants off the only pretty chick peasant in the village and skewer his enemy for the last millennium? Big diff. Like a gang of crips v. Naval Seals---peewee football v. NFL---no contest---no matter the numerical odds. Like Twain said---paraphrase actually---"it's all about the training, Yo."

Almost any non-trained personnel on a battlefield is going to run. If that person has any motivation to kill the opposing forces it will still be weighed against the value of their own life and 99% of the time their going to run. A person needs to be trained or brainwashed to respond correctly on the battlefield. It is a very rare occurance that normal "peasants" form themselves into viable paramilitary units and then its typically guerilla hit and run type forces. Peasants in the context of this game should just be renamed to militia, this is a semantics issue.

Agincourt your looking at two factors: mud and crowd dynamics. The french wearing metal boots essentially had suction cups on their feet and ankles trogging through some thick mud and the english longbowmen, who also acted as light infantry (as most bowmen did) had cloth and leather shoes and had enough displacement not to sink in the mud. Now compound that with the funnelling effect of the narrow open field the french charged into, and bodkin arrowheads, and you get a massacre. Battlefield forensics showed that alot of the french actually drowned in the mud after collapsing from exhaustion fighting the compression of their own forces and running nearly 1/2 a mile, in mud that went past their ankles, through the corridor. What Agincourt shows is that in the right terrain and weather conditions light infantry's mobility can decimate heavily armored warriors.