About the surgery skill. . .

[Lethandis]

Does your surgery skill apply only to your troops? Or also to the "allies" that join your cause? The reason I ask this, is because I think it should only apply to your troops. If I can only save X% of the casualties from dying, I want to be damned sure that it's my knights, who've I've spent loads of money and time training through the crucible of battle to get where they are. . .not the rag-tag caravan troops or peasants that I happen to be stuck fighting beside (aggrivating enough that the fact that there happens to be some schmuck farmer on the field means I can't bring my full cavalry unit, can't I just tell the farmers "run for it, we'll handle this!").

I had my suspicions that the game was not only applying my surgery skill to my allies, but favoring them compared to my troops. I figured this could be the heat of battle, so I made a soft game (one where you can save and reload), and tried an expirament. I trained up my unit of 12 Sword Sisters, 15 Hired Blades, and 10 swadian knights, and joined a battle with 20 black hunters (10 black hunters and 10/11 black knights) fighting 15 farmers and 10 peasant women. Then, I stood on a hill and watched. I won't describe the whole scene, but here's a snippet from the combat log:

Peasant Woman knocked unconcious by Black Knight
Peasant Woman Knocked unconcious by Black Hunter
Farmer Knocked unconcious by Black Knight
Sword Sister killed by Black Hunter
Hired Blade killed by Black Hunter
Peasant Woman knocked unconcious by Black Hunter
Farmer knocked unconcious by Black Knight
Swadian Knight killed by Black Knight
Sword Sister killed by Black Knight
Peasant Woman killed by Black Hunter (OMFG!)
Peasant Woman knocked unconcious by Black Knight
Hired Blade killed by Black Hunter

See a strange pattern forming? I waited until all of my side was down, 1, count her, 1, Peasant Woman, was killed, ALL of the other AI team's allied troops were simply "knocked unconcious" mine? killed to a man. My surgery score? 5. I reloaded the game and tried the battle again, this time, 2 dead farmers, all but one of mine dead. Reloaded a third time, 1 farmer and one peasant woman dead, all of mine dead. I reloaded and went and found some Steppe Bandits attacking a caravan. My side won, barely, casualties? 1 dead caravan guard, 21 dead of my cavalry. Went and found mountain bandits attacking farmers. 4 dead farmers, 12 dead cavalry.

Honestly, I wasn't sure whether to put this in the bugs forum or the suggestions forum, so I just picked the one that 90% of my other posts are. Please. . .fix this.

EDIT:

Note, this ratio goes away when I fight alone, but if there are allies on the field, 95-100% of the casualties are mine, every time.

 

[Ivan Bajlo]

Note, this ratio goes away when I fight alone, but if there are allies on the field, 95-100% of the casualties are mine, every time.

Darn, I felt something was fishy, I kept pumping up my surgery skill and getting weird results.

That is way I like to put bunch of peasants in my party front line - team work is essential - gives enemy more targets!

 

[Flaming Eyes]

I have that skill on 8 and my party rules. No one even thinks about fighting me, including the war parties that flee as rats. When one of my soldiers falls, the 95% is knocked down.

 

[Lethandis]

Yes, my main game, my healing skill is either 8 or 9, but it isn't a save without quitting game, so I didn't want to do the expirament with it. As I said, my surgery skill seems to work fine when I fight alone, but when I have an allied AI party fighting as well, it only seems to help them, and my soldiers pay for it.

 

[Bearhugger]

im not sure if it has an impact on the knockdown/kill chance if not all of the hitpoints are lost due to one damage type (lethal/bash, forgot the correct names...there is swing and thrust, which is deadly and the 3rd one which knocks unconscious, get me?).
so for example if a peasant loses 59 of his 61 hitpoints due to sword slashes and only the final hit is caused by a big fat evil hamm0r. is the peasant knocked unconscious in 100% of the cases then (given surgery is 0)?
what if its the other way round?

apart from that it COULD be a bug (the situation you described), maybe also post it in the bug forum (though im not sure if armagan wants to know about all bugs... )

 

[Daimyo]

Dark hunters and knights all use piercing (morningstar) or slashing (swords/axes) weapons, so your soldiers cannot be knocked unconscious because of damage, it's all due to surgery skill.
I've noticed something odd in this skill too, but I think you should post your experiment on the bug forum, this really seems a sort of "priority" bug when choosing who goes ko and who dies.

 

[mfberg]

The refugees were probably knocked unconsious by charging horses. There are usually a couple of warhorses and sometimes even a charger in the black hunter groups. With their charge the horse becomes a main weapon of the dark knights especially against peasants with very low armor. Your men were actively in combat and being hit by the swords, axes and morning stars carried by the dark hunter group, the war horses weren't damaging your guys much, but knocking the refugees on their keisters.

mfberg