Is this game supposed to be realistic ?

[-72-]

Each turn represents 15 minutes. Yet, in this window of time, units do ridiculously low damage to each other, such as two units of 400 harquebusiers firing at each other resulting in only 15 losses ! Some foot units walks only 400 meters on normal terrain, which I calculated means they walk at a pathetic speed of 0,4 m/s ! Granted, moving in formation can be hard, but there should be at least an option to relax the formation and order the men to do this thing called "running" or "haste".

But what baffles me the most are the losses resulting from muskets and artillery fire. You would think a 15 minutes barrage from a battery of several cannons against blocks of pikemen would do some serious damage... Nope, just 30 losses and 1 170 survivors !

I tried editing the .pdt files, but it is so complicated and contrived that you might as well learn C++ and write your own game. Because each scenario has its own .pdt, and each .pdt is just a series of numbers that the official Notes do a very bad job of describing. What. The. Hell.

Actually the 'official notes' do a pretty decent job of explaining things - but you know, sorta ... where to start ....

I'm going for artillery. Artillery in this time period, as well as immediately after was solely solid shot (no cannister, no grapeshot ... nothing like that existed.). Rate of fire was extremely low and I guess technically speaking the artillery arm might not even technically been manned by soldiers but rather tradesmen. But again the point being ... solid shot - not shells, nothing is exploding back then - more or less you got really big rocks being shot slowly.

Pikemen doing damage - you know that's an interesting one, in that the most impact that pike units had in this period was one of shock - you'd drive an opposing unit away before they hit.

Muskets (and arquebuses -since you are going to be finding more of those) - imo are rated with too great a range. I find it difficult to buy that a musket of the period would be shot at 400 meters.

Movement- well this is movement as an army - not what a guy can manage as a pace in hiking a field - completely different things. You also are trying to keep some pretty compact formations due to command control (they wouldn't just start running at the other side -not and maintain any sort of formation ...).

In all fairness, though I will have to point out that I am not going to go digging through my own source material and cite where I got this from (and I did not have anything to do with ratings in REN).

The question that I have is - do you really need to rate each individual battle as a PDT, nevermind what is in the game files?

Personally I couldn't care less about field tests of weapons -it is more about how did armies fight then - and if a musket could hit anything 1 out of ten times or whatever at 400 meters -it still doesn't mean that armies shot at each other at 400 meters back then in reality. That one is a bit of a debate -I guess you know what side I come down on that discussion... in favour of how the armies fought.