RANGED ATTACKS! - Secret Stats Warhammer 2 

"...by blowing up some dwarfs." Aaaaand another Book of Grudges entry for Zerkovich.

"Your favorite ranged units. *No dwarves.*" *Angry writing in a book.*

Never thought I would hear someone utter 'How many trolls can it penetrate?'

Skaven Jezzail soldier: "My skaven lord! We should each aim at a separate soldier in front of us so we can kill them all at once!" Lord: "Nonsense! We should all fire at that one man-thing at the very edge of the platoon just so we can be 100% sure we'll hit him yes-yes."

6:08 the commentary style description of the cannon's ass-shots were golden

You should test the mortars again against a stationary far target, as the dwarves approach the target areas approach the same value, where as far away the areas are massively different

Was just about to work on homework, perfect timing :)

For the lack of difference between accuracy buffed units and non-accuracy buffed units, it's simply because the difference becomes much less significant the closer the ennemy unit gets. Higher accuracy means the unit will remain accurate at longer distances, but when the ennemy units get close enough, the advantages of higher accuracy drop drastically. In your test against the dwarf units, for example, if the dwarf units had remained at long distance instead of closing in, the upgraded mortar would've performed better, but since they were getting closer and closer, the accuracy difference shrank rapidly, leading to this result. So accuracy bonuses are much more effective if you're planning on shooting on targets that remain quite far away, like ballistas or eagle bolt throwers brought to snipe ennemy artillery, on these the accuracy upgrade will be a plus, but the value of the accuracy bonus will become insignificant when shooting at close targets

14:00 outrider plugging the archer in the back of the head

6:58 Skyhawks (Yvresse Mistwalker Unit): *Looks around nervously* "Yeah penetrating arrows would just be absurd haha..."

"Tsss, I have hundreds of hours on this game. This video is obviously useless for me" Pressing alt with artillery allow you were to shoot AND you have a circle which represents accuracy... "Dawn you Zerkovich, once again you learn me something usefull than I never notice despite the fact that it was before my eyes all this time !" (That and the others info, great video as usual)

I suspect that accuracy can be a bit of a double edged sword at the highest end of it. My recent Wood Elf campaign I noticed that quite often all of the Waywatchers within a single unit would shoot a single soldier in the enemy unit that I targeted, wasting most of the shots. Obviously if you're too inaccurate you won't hit anything, but without the spread the targeting algorithm they use can stack shots on a single guy and waste damage output.

I've put almost 2000 hours into this game and I learned A LOT from this video. Great job Z!

I recently discovered that you can put your handgunners behind your Frontline in a chequered pattern so that they can keep firing while not being attacked since the AI units get caught on the Frontline units despite the massive gaps.

Super useful info. Here, have some timestamps: 0:00 - introduction 0:20 - missile unit types overview 1:28 - range weapon damage 2:53 - explosive damage 4:24 - penetration cap 7:13 - range 10:05 - calibration distance demonstration (artillery) 11:09 - calibration distance demonstration ("infantry") 14:05 - accuracy and marksmenship bonus 17:16 - accuracy testing 20:10 - shields 21:35 - projectile types 22:58 - bonus versus large 23:15 - high ground 23:32 - unit angling

That edge trick is super cheeky. This will come in handy.

"No arrow is gonna go through one man and into a second one is it now, that would be ridiculous." Legolas: and I took that personally

Dude I piratically learned how to play TWW on your channel. You still kick out the best vids to help new and older players. I salute you for your awesome work man. I'm not new to the Total War Franchise yet I still learn more from your channel than I've learned in all the tutorials I've been through playing the Total War franchise. Again, awesome work man. Congrats.

14:05 Loved it, that the bowmen got shot in the back by friendly fire right on the word "safety" -- nice one

12:40 This doesn't look like a fun experiment to be CHOSEN into

@Zerkovich another amazing Secret Stats video, thank you for these! I missed this when it came out, just came across it while doing some research, so glad I did!

Another one of Zerk´s awesome tutorials!! Mate, the work you put on these videos... its freakin awesome. I always enjoy and learn a lot of things, thx for so much work for da community, you rock dude!

Literally just started a wood elves campaign!! Perfect timing

Man I realy love your videos, your a saint for giving us all those minute details tips and explanations ! Thanks a lot for your work ! Here is one of my discovery in WH 3 : I did some testing and found out that missiles get negated by physical resistance (PR) along with missile resistance (MR). The catch though is with magic missiles, they DON'T get negated by PR but they DO get negated by MR. Which actualy gives meaning to them, since MR negates ALL missiles, they still get benefits against PR. So here you go focusing an enemy who has high physical resistance (like a ghost units) will shread them when using magical arrows, while regular arrows will do very low damage to them.

This was one of the most interesting video I've seen so far. Thanks for the amazing content!

You an press Alt to manually target the artillery? thats amazing ....

Can't believe it took this long for this video to be made. Thank you, that was so fucking necessary!

Zerkovich - pretty much the only Total War peep I watch/listen to these days. Great vid dude, thanks!

These sorts of advanced videos are what I'm most excited about. Keep it up, and don't forget about us experienced viewers!

That last bit of info was very helpful. Thanks Z

Great video. I've poured many 1000s of hours into TotalWar since the first Shogun came out, and there were still nuances in this vid I was unaware of - well done and thanks!

Thanks Zerk, love this kind of mechanic videos!!!

Chevrons on ranged is probably pretty useful in campaign and in sieges where you can maintain a degree of range with the AI. Might be worth testing static ranged targets, though again that's going to be pretty rare in skirmish.

Amazing video. Well explained and well demonstrated.

Interesting! I'm playing savage orcs right now and I couldn't help but wonder what the point of ranged units with "poor accuracy" was (orc archers)... I guess I just need to use them at closer range for them to get value, which fits the theme as a bonus

Always love it when I see a long WH II video from you in my feed

Absolutely stellar video mate, helped explain things very well, I'm off to cheese with some dwarfen guns now

Always bringing good info, thanks Zerkovich.

Thanks Zerk. Your videos really help beginners like me.

You have to take into consideration overkill with units that are highly accurate. Overall, you will get more shots off with an upgraded ranged unit, but the chance of overkill is higher. So picking the correct targets is all that more important if the investment to upgrade them is made. It also is worth while to note that this allows you to switch and do more reliable spread out damage to an opponents army (with artillary). If you compare jezzails or rattling gun RoR to standard the RoR are SIGNIFICANTLY better at killing single entities than their nonupgraded counter parts. It is also noteworthy that with jezzails you are wasting ammunition on unit that has more than 65 models or so because of the amount of overkill.

Awesome video man! Love the analysis

That accuracy buff info is game changing.

Awesome video! Clearly explained and demonstrated! Got yourself a sub : )

Good content, learned alot from these videos, thanks man, keep it up

Very good guide, here´s some support

This video is incredibly helpful. Thank you.

Great video. That's a lot of useful knowledge!

That's some sweet old game science. What we've really all been waiting for!

Great video mate, hundreds of hours and I've never noticed the expertise bonus playing such a large part of accuracy. Always assumed it impacted on damage and reload speed the most.

I heard somewhere before (do not remember where), that units with better accuracy are more accurate at shooting area where the target was at the moment of projectile going out of the shooting unit model not at the moment of hitting the target. So units with higher accuracy will be very effective vs standing targets, but a lot less accurate against moving targets.

Long video but I just learned a lot of things! Great job 👍👍

Génial d'apprendre de nouvelles techniques comme ça !

Excellent video. Subbed.

About Dwarf blowing : maybe you can't really see the differences between unranked and ranked shooters because the weapons land zone is mostly always smaller than the target unit, and the target is slow... You should try with a smaller & faster target, Minotaurs for example

I've been playing this game for years, but I always learn something from Z's videos

Awesome info!

About 1000 hours in the game and this man teaching me things I never knew. Calibration and how to see it? Honestly never had a clue.

great video, never knew how those mechanics worked before.

I appreciate this. I knew a lot of it, but specifically the accuracy section I always wondered about. I also didnt know the specifics of what counted as what type of weapon i figured shields worked on globadiers, but I guess not.

oh, there is the information. Zerkovich never disappointed

Great informative video.

this correlation between better results at close range for range troops has actually been present in all TW games that Im aware of since at least M2TW. Same as fighting better downhill (including extending effective shooting range), bonuses for light infantry in forests etc.

Accuracy is less important the more models there are in a unit so there is like a catchup mechanic inherent in the accuracy test. More of the explosive damage will go to waste the fewer units there are or the thinner the unit is. Nice video 10/10 unironically loved it

damn, this is something I came across discovered on my own as I was playing but didn't quite sure what it means, nice work

Great job, thank you. 👏

Great video, thanks.

I love Darkelves, i suck at using Darkshards/Shades. This helped a lot thanks

I swear this game can be deep if you go searching

'Blowing up some dwarfs' well that's definitely going in the book. In bold.

Great info! Thanks, man =).

Very interesting info, thanks for the research. I'm not sure it would affect the result, but to reduce randomness, I think you should use a no-armour unit as target (f.ex. savage orcs). If you are making a follow-up, it would be very interesting to see how accuracy affects different missile types in different scenarios.

Love the content bro.

That angle trick is cheeky. Minimize models exposed to maximize ammo wasted by overkills. It's even worse with some breath attacks or magic missiles that end up clipping a few models instead of smacking a unit.

Huh, never realized that range units would target the closest model. Seems like it might be abusable if running a melee unit at enemy range. A slight angle to keep the shield block chance, and make them target a corner. Similar to tacking when sailing. Excellent video as always

Great video!

I never thought I'd say this but that rectal bleeding was hilarious

.."the poor fella". Great video!

as funny and as informative as always

Zerkovich: "No arrow would go through more than one infantry unit, that would just be ridiculous." Alith Anar: *grins evilly*

This series is immensely helpful and cool, this is something i think that was supposed to be covered by CA in some manner at least. I understand that it might bee too much to cover in tutorials and blogposts, but goddamn it, you should at least give some info to players how your game actually works in some official way. That being said, keep up the good work man!

So all accuracy buffs do is make units better at significant range. Very interesting! I didn't know this and often used Warlock Engineers to boost the max range of cannons and weapon teams, I didn't know that the accuracy boost is most effective when you're buffing units you're planning to shoot at max range

gj, like always. thx 😄👍

Nice video!. Regarding accuracy, is it possible that its more helpful when trying to shoot single entities as opposed to a stack of infantry, since missing 1 dwarf warrior means a good chance itll land on another in the stack?

Very very informative! But what I saw in your experiments and you didn't mentioned is, that there is certain number of shots that land in the exact spot of the attack. That implies, that there is also a garantied number of shot in a volley that will hit no matter the calibration stat. The jazzail experiment couldn't show differences, because the missing shots hit the unit next or behind the targeted one, a hero as target would have given more results I guess.

6:34 yo my boy in the front was already falling over and still took another cannon ball stuck straight to his face xD

Holy shit man, these videos are amazing. Most excellent sir

for the focusing on forward edge of the unit part at the end... I'd guess that it is because the angle is so deep that the penetration was actually clipping more units than the only slightly tilted, but that would imply that arrows do actually punch through... OR, perhaps because the ones that miss their 'intended' target have more chances to hit his buddy to the rear of him?

I've been watching you for a little while now and your videos are incredibly informative. On that note I have a question about cavalry charges and flanking. If you notice enemy cavalry attempting to flank an infantry unit that is committed in battle, would it help to have your infantry turn and countercharges the enemy cav? Also, does it make sense to have your infantry without charge defences charge enemy cavalry instead of bracing for impact? In older games like medieval 2 this was definitely the case.

5:21 A solid croch shot from a bloody artillery's unit. RIP troll and all the possible future generations. That shot easily deserves a 10 turn debuff of +100% increase in training time for trolls on the enemy faction.

Watching trolls go flying is hilarious.

The buffs to accuracy probably would show more impact if the battles stay at a longer range, which for pretty much every battle won't be the case.

While all this info is appreciated, I have the ask, how the hell did he find all this?

good work

it is worth noting that in the chevron accuracy test with the Jezzails the upgraded ones killed more models than the un upgraded ones despite the actual damage done being pretty much the same. At least for the test shown.

"No arrow is going to go through one man and into a second one, is it now? That would be a little bit ridiculous." *legolas has entered the chat* Gunner/Archer heroes and lords definitely penetrate infantry with their arrows, though. Had no idea about a lot of the other stuff, great info!

Thnx man

For the test with shooting at a angled enemy, I wonder how the missiles would work end on - shooting down the line. I wonder if the issue with the more angled enemy was that it was starting to approach firing down the line, so missiles would have more chances to hit and would have less chance of 'overkill' , where multiple archers fire at the same enemy.

you're a genius, crikey

Wow, the last part is the only thing I didn't know. I know it happens but now I also know why. Which also means that I can draw some implications from it. If you want to mitigate the enemy being slightly angled to you, instead of having your ranged units in a square formation you should spread them out as much as possible so the distance between the flanks is bigger which will lead to them targeting the opposing unit more evenly.

i noticed at 22:49, normal ushabti great bow arrows can't pierce through more than 1 infantry model, even if they're on the less tanky side. For smaller infantry(goblins, skaven, humans, elves, undead), it would be nice for their arrows to be able to penetrate through at least 2 models. Against tankier infantry(orcs, chosen, temple guard), great bows should only be able to kill 1 per projectile.