A forummer by the name of Lord Amon has recently rediscovered something that I believe most of us thought was done away with... height bonuses in battle. Turns out this isn't something AoE-exclusive, but is just as real in AoM and our current community of supremacy players should take note.

(Pasted from archived thread in archived forum)

ExCalibur recently discovered that ranged units on higher elevation recieved a damage bonus vs those on lower elevation. Interested, I decided to look through TT's data files to see how much of a bonus this was and what units benefited from it.

A search of the proto file revealed that the damage bonus was due to a parameter, aptly named 'HeightBonusMultiplier', and that it was set at 1.25x damage for all of the following units:

Archers, Heroes, and Infantry
Heroes are not SPC unless stated

Slingers
Throwing Axemen
Pharaohs
Secondary Pharaohs
Peltasts
Toxotes
Priests
Chariot Archers
Arci
Hero Arci
Turmae
Hero Turmae
Gastraphetes
Chiron
Oddyseus
Hyppolyta
Regenlief (SPC)

Buildings

Fortresses
Towers
Town Centers
Citadels
Palaces
Hill Forts
Migdol Strongholds
Bandit Migdols

Myth Units

Trolls
Centaurs
Medusae
Sentinels
Satyrs
Lampades

Siege

Siege Towers


After, discovering this, I decided to test whether the damage done was greater when the height difference was greater.

The test results showed that once the difference in height was above a (then unknown) value, units affected by the parameter would recieve the 1.25x damage bonus. It did not matter how much or how little it was above that height difference, the damage bonus remained constant.

The Test

Notes

The Difference between the min and max height in the editor is 20 meters - to quote from gamex.cfg in gamesettings2.bar in the startup folder of AoM -

// Terrain editing height limits
terrainMinHeight=-5.0
terrainMaxHeight=15.0

Using the 'Move Map Up' button in the Map Elevation menu in Reyk's New Editor raises the ground up by 1m. I counted how many times it takes to raise the height from the min to the max and then divided it by the height difference. It took 20 clicks to do this. 20/20 = 1 so it raises it by 1m every time.

Method and Results

What I Did

The test involved a modified proto file for convenience. The modifications were as follows:

Toxotes HP Changed to 10000

Toxotes Attack was changed to 1000

Toxotes Hack, Pierce, and Crush armour were reduced to 0

These changes were so that the toxote would not receive inconvenient amounts of damage such as 6.34.

After modifying the protox file I proceeded to experiment with changing the height, keeping 1 of the toxotes on the ground at the minimum elevation, and raising the other one a little each time until I got to the point where the toxote was dealing 1250 damage each hit, instead of 1000. After raising the elevation to a high level to see if the damage increased as the height difference increased, I discovered that it made no difference.

To find out the value of the minimum height difference I lowered the elevation back to the level where the toxote only just received the damage bonus. I Then raised it 1m at a time (using the Move Map Up tool) until the height difference between the two levels started to decrease. I counted the number of times taken once the difference was decreasing for it to level out, and found that it was 4. Since 4 * 1m = 4m I was able to work out the height difference required.

So therefore the above units do 1.25x damage when attacking a unit that are 4m or more lower than themselves .

Suitable variations in height can be found on most maps, noticably Acropolis, Anatolia, and Ghost Lake. Only very flat maps, possibly Mediterranean, will not have them.

Notes

A Zeus or Poseidon Toxote can defeat an equally upgraded Hades Toxote 1 on 1 making use of this damage bonus

Siege Towers are the only siege weapon in the game to benefit from being on higher elevation

Throwing Axemen are the only infantry in the game to benefit from being on higher elevation

4m is slightly higher than a Sentry Tower, to give some impression how high you must be.

4m



Overall this is a potentially battle-winning bonus, so try to use it wherever realistically possible.

EDIT - few errors and such fixed


(I'm not one to repost threads, I'll usually just post a reply to unarchive it, but the forum no longer existed. Original link : http://aom.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=11,17957,0,20)

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[This message has been edited by CeaseDaFire (edited 09-20-2015 @ 03:38 PM).]