It must be unpredictable by nature. It is war. I have lost soldiers fighting looters. I've even been downed myself. It is not unbalanced, because you don't lose the battle to looters ever, and the majority of the time you do it, you wont lose anyone at all. But now and then a looter gets lucky with a sharpened broom and pokes someone in the eye. The unpredictability is the most important part - if there was no risk, it would be boring and unrealistic.
And units dying in combat is not something that shouldn't happen.
And yeah. I haven't mistaken this thread for the straw man convention. I've made a fairly accurate judgement.
I disagree. I've a force of 182 men, including 40 knights, 50 archers, and the rest sergeant foot soldiers. It's all top tier troops vs looters. I attack a looter group of 15. Approx 15% of battles result in a loss of a knight or more strangely, a sharpshooter.
If you play this scenario manually, they never even get close enough to throw a rock - they die to the sharpshooters. That's 3 sharpshooters per looter... so how do they even get close enough.
Your explanation is unnecessary. It'd be better for a clear dev explanation as to what the mechanic is so we can appreciate the risk of pressing resolve rather than voodoo hand waving made up "maybe they threw a rock, it hit a tree, the branch fell down on the knights head while he was shaving and accidentally cut his face off with the razor".
As it is, half the time, just open the battle screen, set the knights to charge, and browse the internet for 2 mins. Great. Or do nothing and let the sharpshooters pick them off and wait for the remainder to run away. Riveting stuff.
(to be clear, it's obviously not game breaking or heart breaking, it's just bloomin weird and annoying).
*edit*
Last battle, 170 men vs 4 looters.
38 Cavalry, 48 sharpshooters, 86 sergeants vs 4 looters.
1 dead sergeant.
Actual battlefield battle against 20 looters, all dead from sharpshooters before throwing a stone. They can't even get close enough to engage.
No, simulations are absolutely fine and accurate. How does it work? It'd have to be all 4 vs 1 to stand a chance.
No more using the simulation; just enter battle, send the knights, browse internet. I'm sure that's what Taleworlds want the simulation to be treated as. A joke.