OK, so some peasants fight some guys who are 5x better... what do you think their chances should be?

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.

This is a statistical exercise only.  Yes, in the real world tactics would come into play, but these peasants bash first, ask questions later.

Also, all Knights, Heroes, and the monster are armed for Melee (no ranged attacks).  Peasants are using the same generic, basic weapon (clubs), and do not have a shield and are unarmored, although feel free to elaborate what having these items might do for their chances, should you so wish.

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.

Or as a sponge to soak up an enemy charge, allowing you to move your knights around for a flank charge. Unfortunately, such concepts and tactics don't exist in the Elemental universe.

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.

Depends what you mean by 5 times better.  5 times better to hit, 5 times better damage 5 times better defense and 5 times more HP should be 625 times better.

 My expectation/approxmation for a free fight would be

calculate attack*defense*Damage*armour*speed*HP*number of units*number of units for each side

subtract the smaller from the larger

calculate the number of units from the winning side that produces this reduced total. 

this assumes evrery one can get to everyone.

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.

Well, I agree with Redwind85 on that one. Problably that none of those figth will be a win for the peasant, but they will surely do some important dommage to the UBER monster and the 10 VS 1 Knigth because eventually, monster and knigth will fatigue and are not "god like" so they will take some hit. I suppose that, for the 10 VS 1 peasant VS knigth figth, probably 25% of the knigth will survive the figth.

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.

Exactly, also unarmed peasants would not attack armed knights. This is just stupid and game AI should account for this by forcing the unarmed peasents to retreat off map on round 1.

The historical reality is that the peasents would fight a guerilla type war, i.e. as in Robin Hood & the hundreds of other historical examples, and do everything in their power to avoid face-to-face battle with veteran troops ... instead an ambush & retreat approach against smaller units would be appropriate.

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.

In real life, 100 peasants (club,no armor, no shield) engaging in the open 100 knights (longsword, full chainmail, oak shield) would get themselves murdered to the last one, occasionally bruising a knight's muscles here and there (give them forks, and there will be some action !). I haven't much played latest version, but I was under the impresion it was more or less what happened ingame.

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.

You are confusing real life and a fantasy roleplay. In fantasy roleplay the peasants lose, in real life they are almost as likely to win as the knights depending on luck and terrain. Google agincourt you fool.

In games though, having equipment and training mean nothing in the face of bad luck is frustrating. Therefor these encounters are way more tilted to the heroes advantage, anything else just isn't fun.

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.

Agincourt saw no units of peasants =>club, no armor, no shield. Both countries used advanced weaponry (longbows aren't clubs, AFAIK), so I wonder what you're trying to demonstrate ? Full Chainmail offers a very good protection to clubs, plus having or not a shield in melee makes a huge difference, especially if you're using a short weapon you can't parry with. (well,to try and block a sword with a club will just get you some chopped fingers)

I'll take the example of Patay, to follow your rule of 'clever' example. Very demonstrative too. In the area of quickness => don't let your ennemy sit on his ass for two days, building his defense, and attack ASAP => crushing victory using only your vanguard.

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).

Those kinds of battles are noteworthy for the result.  99 times out of 100, the natives/peasants get crushed.

That said, this is a GAME.  You need it to be fun. 

I'd suggest towns have a militia based on their level, that is raised from the citizenry (lvl 1's would have none).  These guys would be peasants with clubs pretty much.

Your average peasant levy should have a spear and a concept of which end to point it at.

A knight in full plate should be able to slaughter peasants, but it should take him a while to do it. 

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.

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

“… The Zulus were equipped mainly with the traditional Assegai iron spears and cow hide shields,^[12] but also had a number of muskets and old rifles^[13] though they were not formally trained in their use …”

And from this site:

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

“ The host were generally partitioned into three levels: regiments, corps of several regiments, and "armies" or bigger formations, although the Zulu did not use these terms in the modern sense. Any grouping of men on a mission could collectively be called an impi, whether a raiding party of 100 or horde of 10,000. Numbers were not uniform, but dependent on a variety of factors including assignments by the king or the manpower mustered by various clan chiefs or localities. A regiment might be 400 or 4000 men. These were grouped into corps that took their name from the military kraals where they were mustered, or sometimes the dominant regiment of that locality. ”

“Shaka is often said to have been dissatisfied with the long throwing assegai, and credited with introducing a new variant of the weapon—the iklwa, a short stabbing spear, with a long, sword-like spearhead. It is said to have been named after the sounds made by its penetration into and withdrawal from the body. Shaka is also supposed to have introduced a larger, heavier shield made of cowhide and to have taught each warrior how to use the shield's left side to hook the enemy's shield to the right, exposing his ribs for a fatal spear stab. The throwing spear was not discarded but used as an initial missile weapon before close contact with the enemy, when the shorter stabbing spear was used in hand to hand combat.”

The correct characterization of the battle you quoted is a well led, highly motivated, mostly stone-age (they had a few captured rifles) military army against a badly led, modern (19^th century) military force (it was just one column of the British main colonial force that was sent there). This is not a peasant vs knight battle, it’s a battle of military forces of different time periods. In this case the modern military force was destroyed by the stone-age troops, this was due to 1) being vastly outnumbered 2) the high motivation and morale of the Zulus: who pressed on their attacks (they lost over 1000 troops assaulting rifles) despite losses. Only a well-trained & highly motivated military force would’ve had the ability to overcome their breaking points in this situation.

The fact is, you’re not going to find many examples of peasant armies vs armies of well trained soldiers. This is the best historical example of what you guys are looking for on this topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Peasants'_War

One quotation from the article:

“While the Württemberg band lost approximately 3000 peasants (numbers alternate from 2000 to 9000), the League lost no more than 40”

In short, the end result of peasants vs a military force is going to be a “massacre,” which is pretty much always the case with the few historical examples.

Historically, peasants are never used as armies on their own. Either one or two things usually happen:

1)     a small percentage of peasants will form either guerilla or partisan troops, who are no longer “peasants” by definition

2)     some local counties, states, etc will form “militias” who are then not peasants but (my loose description) inferiorly trained troops.

3)     Some nations will “conscript” peasants, or (militarily) untrained citizens, to fight as soldiers. Examples of this are numerous (typically nations in their death-throws resort to this, but not always), off the top of my head: Russia conscripted peasents during the early years of WWII into the Red Army, and continued later as they liberated towns/cities of their (formerly) occupied country. The Iranians resorted to the use of using their own children as human targets, scouts, cannon fodder during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Some African tribes will conscript children from tribes of different ethnic groups (recently saw this on a History Channel documentary on the blood diamonds). Once they’re armed & formed/integrated into military units, these peasants are no longer peasants but “conscripts.” What I would classify as low-quality troops with very low morale and minimal fighting capabilities.

My take on the subject is this: I understand that were talking about a fantasy setting, so it’s not going to be completely a “realism” issue. I think any damn dev should be able to do whatever the hell he wants. If he wants to make it possible to have a “veteran” peasant army that can take down everything from knights to dragons then he should certainly do that. It’s his game design after all. He should model his game the way *he* wants to and to hell with what everyone else thinks.

Personally, I wouldn’t model peasant armies in a game because it’s not realistic. I would make it possible (if we’re talking about a man-to-man scale) to fight townsfolk like in situations like barroom brawls, but certainly not peasant armies. I would make it possible (again on the man to man scale) to model small town mobs, vigilante groups, and deputized posses, but that’s about it. On a larger strategic scale (say divisional level or higher), I would make it possible to form a small number of guerilla, partisan, militia, or conscript troops/bands if the gameplay situation allowed for it.

By the way, tribes would fall under the exact same parameters as nations. Some large tribes would be more like a nation, like the Zulus, hence they could spawn veteran military units based upon the tribe’s capabilities. Some smaller tribes would have the ability to spawn guerilla bands, etc, like some of the smaller American Indian tribes. Typically the main difference between tribes and nations is going to be on the technology level (guns vs bows).

peas·ant  

n.

1. A member of the class constituted by small farmers and tenants, sharecroppers, and laborers on the land where they form the main labor force in agriculture.

2. A country person; a rustic.

3. An uncouth, crude, or ill-bred person; a boor.

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?

1) No peasants are left standing. Unless the game mechanics scale into the unbelievable (ie - calculate for heart attacks, diarrhea and so on).

2) No peasants survive, unless the knights purposefully do not kill them.

3) This is a tricky one. Ten peasants can easily overcome a single knight by simply rushing to their deaths. Factors such as faith and teamwork come into play. Are the knights using superior tactics? Such as fighting the peasants one on one in a bottleneck? Or are they surrounded and spread out amongst the peasants, in an open field? Assuming the knights make use of their military training, I'd say no peasants will live, and no knights will die - but there may be wounds suffered. However, this does not happen due to luck or any small chance the peasants have of hitting, but simply because the peasants represent an overwhelming number of enemies, and can use that to their advantage.

4) The beast, of course, kills them all. The only exception is if comedy or fantastic variables are present, such as one single peasant accidentally being lodged in the beast's windpipe when eaten, suffocating the beast. Not only does the monster survive, but it is not damaged at all.

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.