posted 01-18-22 01:14 ET (US)
The "Attack category" and the looting system in Emperor is a big mystery, and everything I can find online is super vague on the exact mechanics. So I went ahead and did a systematic study to figure out just what they are exactly.
Methodology: I created an open play city at very easy with dense neighbors. I created a self-sufficient city with an elite housing block so I can build forts. Once the city was ready, I ordered all warehouses/trading posts/mills to NOT ACCEPT anything, and created a cluster of 7-8 warehouses in the middle to accept everything. This way any/all loot will go to these warehouses, and I can quickly and accurately record exactly what I looted.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hdrnDi7Cf92Hl1gtKW-zxMzvQGOZ3DYA/view?usp=sharing
Here is the save file for the city, if anyone else wants to play with it to explore various other military mechanics, feel free to do so.
I would invade a city, record the results, load, change a few parameters, and invade again, so the study is very systematic. All my raw data is here, so if anyone wants to dig through, you may do so:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aEzmaKx-mxUGWDbMylWdNwAF8sWd_zbqqgesIEkL9Bo/edit?usp=sharing
The parameters I looked are: Target City, Attack Category, Fierceness, Tribute Type, Tribute Severity, Heroes, and Types of Troops.
What doesn't effect anything: The fierceness, heroes added, tribute type, and tribute severity seems to have no impact on results, so I mostly ignored these parameters halfway through the study. Whether you win or lose the battle also has no impact on loot amount. So if you lose, you still get the loot.
Key finding 1: Loot Type is determined by the city and Attack category: The materials you loot is always the things that specific city produces + Weapons. "Military" category will loot weapons, "Food Supply" will loot food, "Industry" will loot industrial products, and "Rampage" will loot Food + Industry.
So for example, the target city is Yangzhou, which produces Tea, Salt, Rice, and Carved Jade. I send 3 Infantry units to conquer it. Depending on what I select as the Attack category, loot will change.
Military: 48 weapons
Infrastructure: No Loot
Industry: 24 Carved Jade
Housing: No Loot
Food supply: 48 Rice, 64 Salt
Rampage: 24 Rice, 32 Salt, 32 Carved Jade
Key finding 2: The unit composition you send also determines loot amount, and whether you get loot or not.
Infantry/Archers consistently loot more than cavalry.
Catapults do not loot at all. In fact, whenever an army includes catapult units, that entire army does not loot at all.
Loot amount seems additive. 3 infantry loots 24 Carved Jade, 3 Archers loots 24 Carved Jade. When you send them together, you get 48 Carved Jade.
Certain mixture of units don't seem to loot, even when individual units do. 3 infantry loots 48 Weapons, 3 cavalry loots 24 Weapons. However, 3 Infantry and 3 Cavalry send together loots no weapons. The weird thing is, there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to this, as some cities, this combination is still able to loot. It seems city-specific on which combinations work, and which doesn't.
In general, single-composition armies of infantry/archer/cavalry can loot. However, there seems to be some exceptions. For example, infantry did not loot anything when attacking Jiangling, despite being able to loot from all other cities. In general, if you want to incorporate looting in your playstyle, I suggest using archers-only armies, as they seem to almost always loot.
Other observations.:
Loot amount does not seem to be correlated with how much that city produces. I honestly have no idea what determines the loot amount, but it is very repeatable and seems to be a set number. Maybe set at the beginning of a game?
Silk, Hemp and Tea always get looted at weird, non-whole number amounts. Weapons will always looted at 2400 or 4800 or some multiple of 100. But Silk is something like 2914, or 3113, that isn't divisible by 100. Very strange.
Rampage option loots less food than the Food Supply option, but loots more industrial products than Industry option.
Number of Weapons looted seems always consistent across cities, while other materials varies city-to-city.
Things I didn't look at.
I didn't look at how different loot amount is if the target city becomes wealthier over time.
I didn't look at other different heroes, only tried Guan Di a few times and didn't see any impact.
Didn't look at any other impacts aside from loot amount, like diplomatic relationships. For example, Infrastructure/Housing does not give me any loot, but I didn't look into if there were any other impacts elsewhere in my city
Didn't look at larger troop numbers. Would 12 infantry units still be able to loot?
Here is the save file for the city, if anyone else wants to play with it to explore various other military mechanics, feel free to do so.
I would invade a city, record the results, load, change a few parameters, and invade again, so the study is very systematic. All my raw data is here, so if anyone wants to dig through, you may do so:
The parameters I looked are: Target City, Attack Category, Fierceness, Tribute Type, Tribute Severity, Heroes, and Types of Troops.
So for example, the target city is Yangzhou, which produces Tea, Salt, Rice, and Carved Jade. I send 3 Infantry units to conquer it. Depending on what I select as the Attack category, loot will change.
Military: 48 weapons
Infrastructure: No Loot
Industry: 24 Carved Jade
Housing: No Loot
Food supply: 48 Rice, 64 Salt
Rampage: 24 Rice, 32 Salt, 32 Carved Jade
Infantry/Archers consistently loot more than cavalry.
Catapults do not loot at all. In fact, whenever an army includes catapult units, that entire army does not loot at all.
Loot amount seems additive. 3 infantry loots 24 Carved Jade, 3 Archers loots 24 Carved Jade. When you send them together, you get 48 Carved Jade.
Certain mixture of units don't seem to loot, even when individual units do. 3 infantry loots 48 Weapons, 3 cavalry loots 24 Weapons. However, 3 Infantry and 3 Cavalry send together loots no weapons. The weird thing is, there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to this, as some cities, this combination is still able to loot. It seems city-specific on which combinations work, and which doesn't.
In general, single-composition armies of infantry/archer/cavalry can loot. However, there seems to be some exceptions. For example, infantry did not loot anything when attacking Jiangling, despite being able to loot from all other cities. In general, if you want to incorporate looting in your playstyle, I suggest using archers-only armies, as they seem to almost always loot.
Loot amount does not seem to be correlated with how much that city produces. I honestly have no idea what determines the loot amount, but it is very repeatable and seems to be a set number. Maybe set at the beginning of a game?
Silk, Hemp and Tea always get looted at weird, non-whole number amounts. Weapons will always looted at 2400 or 4800 or some multiple of 100. But Silk is something like 2914, or 3113, that isn't divisible by 100. Very strange.
Rampage option loots less food than the Food Supply option, but loots more industrial products than Industry option.
Number of Weapons looted seems always consistent across cities, while other materials varies city-to-city.
I didn't look at how different loot amount is if the target city becomes wealthier over time.
I didn't look at other different heroes, only tried Guan Di a few times and didn't see any impact.
Didn't look at any other impacts aside from loot amount, like diplomatic relationships. For example, Infrastructure/Housing does not give me any loot, but I didn't look into if there were any other impacts elsewhere in my city
Didn't look at larger troop numbers. Would 12 infantry units still be able to loot?
[This message has been edited by UrsanTemplar (edited 01-18-2022 @ 01:33 AM).]
