Well, let me see....
Hopefully a moderator can get involved and clarify my thinking too. It may help me to learn as I walk through this. To start us off:
You know the obvious: Your alliance friend lost because of low morale not because of superior fighting strength. He had a 5-to-1 advantage in swords against his opponent. The one low point was Lancers: Your friend had an almost 5:1 inferior position.
Now; Cavalry takes Swordsmen, and Swordsmen takes Archers, and Archers take Spearmen. Someone will post the numbers. I do not have a memory for numbers.
That should be the answer to the field battle and the loss to morale. Your friend faced a superior cavalry force 5:1 and destroyed about 66% of it. Well, at least the take home spoils won't be as good as they might be otherwise with a robust cavalry to load up...... (My troops have just returned with a 200K haul based on cavalry.)
Moderator: I am a noob too. I would like to know how to create the Cavalry flanking manoeuver seen in foxdj's original post! Can I do it? Is it a product of some RESEARCH I should do? Or is it left to chance and the battle computer without any input from me? The next thing to look at is the damage done to the fortress. Compare the fortress hit points to the damage per round of the invader. I am not a fan of battering rams myself but each battering ram does 2,000 damage per round. How does the fortress hold up under that kind of damage every round?
And archers in the fortress, apart from killing those below, affect morale. Again, numbers are not my thing but someone else can comment on them. As the field battle demonstrates, morale is important. This time, without the cavalry in support, the advantage would be to the defender if the presence of archers were overwhelming. (I would have loaded up more archers in the fortress and had none on the battle field.)
Would more archers have saved your friend? Well, the invader had 87 morale going into the siege and the siege lasted 5 rounds (thanks to the battering rams no doubt). So the answer is no.
The garrison faced an attacker with 65 morale..... I would not like to face that high a level of morale in an attacker at that stage.
Without the numbers, my answers are a little vague and general. But, in general, I think my assessment is right. When you use the battle calculator, open up the battle breakdowns. (A noob training film/ppt would be really useful in explaining this by deconstructing a battle, IMHO) Open up the breakdowns by
clicking on
Field battle - Winner:
Fortress siege - Winner:
Battle against the garrison - Winner:
Your friend relied on a show of strength as a deterent rather being prepared for battle to wear down the enemy morale. As a result the invader's morale remained high. On a plus, your friend weakened the invader so you can go pay him a call and bring some horses to haul the gold back home.
Sorry I am 2 hours later on the reply than when I started. Still, it's worth the post, IMHO.
ASIDE NOTE (but a good one): By posting the battle as you did, you give everyone in the realm an unfair advantage against the invader. We can see his name an infer his/her troop strength as well as the gold on hand from the battle. That is why posting as you did is not allowed. I understand your reason to have a practical exercise to comprehend the lesson to be learned. But post battle calculations that keep the players anonymous.
Here is your anonymous battle calculation based upon the numbers in your post: http://www22.imperiaonline.org/imperia/game_v4a/_addons/dokladi/?path=webcalc/25/2009_03_08/25130786_1655608Your friend can tell you these numbers exactly but I estimate:
Fortress 3
Fortification 3
Plains