I have always tried to keep my cooperative units together when playing, but much for faith in the manual, since noticing the effect of each of the multiple variables that affect combat in the middle of a game is difficult. This test may change my behaviour (very sadly, in fact). I was doing these tests to measure the influence of each variable, in order to complement my multipliers reference chart, but came across the fact that cooperation may be useless, and what is worse, may have an inverted effect (I mean cooperation in combat; not the movement and supply effect).
Perhaps I have used a not very appropriate setup, since the units I used have very simple composition, but I don't think the effect should be based on strict conditions.
The first three lines show attacker with better odds than on the other cases. This is the only situation in which cooperative units seem to get slightly better results. In fact I wouldn't even say better, but different.
The next two sets of attack show no advantage for cooperative units.
Ok, i could live with no combat advantage for cooperative units, since they still got the supply and movement advantages, but in the last three lines I show the results for defending with different levels of cooperation. I though: if we don't have advantage to cooperative attacks, maybe for defense. Well, the numbers show a HUGE advantage for uncooperative defense. In fact, I didn't even need the results to notice it while running the combats. I have run them 26 times; not as much as my previous test, but due to the relative redundant character of those comparisons and the consistent results, I don't think more is needed.
Ok, in this case I really would like someone showing me I'm wrong; I would really like to see cooperation working well, since this is an important tool to make players try to keep their formation units together.
