Re: Smashes (was: Another combat factor)

Carl Edman (cedman@cedman.remote.Princeton.EDU)
Wed, 21 Sep 94 18:19:54 -0400

> > As N gets large, a larger and larger percentage of peasants start to
> > swing and fewer and fewer knights get a chance, so the stack's combat
> > effectiveness decreases.
>
> Decreases over what? It's not worse off than if it didn't have the
> peasants, is it? The whole point is to disadvantage large groups with
> respect to small ones. But it's never the case that adding a man will
> cause two to die.
>
> ("or is it?", he asks meekly)

Actually the original example isn't bad. If you do the math carefully,
you'll find that there are cases in which the 4:1 rule causes you to have
your loses _grow_ as your force grows. In other words there would be
situations in which you are either more likely to win or likely to suffer
smaller losses by giving away parts of your forces first.

Carl Edman


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