One of our players, his name is ‘squatched’, had an unexpected event happen today. A very small group of zombies (11 humans I believe) was shambling across the land. Our player sent a General Human unit, with a Dragonhelm Knight as his follower. So the Strength needed to win was meaty and sizable.
What he (and the rest of us) did not expect was the loss of both his general and the knight.
So we went back and replayed the tutorial and noticed this:
Okay. That makes sense… but it left us wondering… How were the Casualties calculated? We get that it was a fight of 11 vs. 2 (Even though the 2 had a much much higher strength) So what determined the casualties?
I guess what we’re curious about is how can we calculate… I guess “The odds” for future fights with zombies.
If you check the combat log, you can see how combat is calculated.
Bigger number wins.
The % the smaller number is compared to the big, is the % chance each unit has to die.
So say you have 1 dragon of 2000 STR against a horde of zombies of 1000 STR. The Dragon wins, all zombies are killed. But 1000 is 50% of 2000 (1000/2000 = 1/2). So the dragon has a 50% chance of dying. So even though you won, the dragon is a coin flip away from being killed as well because of combat. (If this happens I believe it will leave a corpse that needs to be burnt. I’m not sure and would need Jay to say.)
Now say you have 200 troops with a total of 2000 STR against the same 1000 STR zombie. 50% of each troop to be killed. After the combat, you should have around 100 troops left. 120 or so if lucky, 80 or so if unlucky.
That’s why it’s very important to have a very high number when fighting zombies, to keep the % chance of losing members really low.
It’s starting to make sense (a friend pointed out the combat tab that shows this data, something I didn’t even know existed, worth considering adding to the tutorial). Still, feels really crappy to lose two high powered units where either one was enough to wipe out the horde alone =/.
The odd thing in the example given, is that it would have been better to just send 1 unit (which would have defeated the 11 units solo), and saved the other unit back at a settlement. Instead of sending both and losing both.
Kind of. Just remember that the more units you send, the less chance of you losing any unit since you have more STR going into the fight.
If it’s a 100 STR zombie and you have 2x 101 STR units, you can send in both to make it 49.5% chance that each unit will die, 24.5% chance that both will die.
If you send in just 1 unit, then it will be 99% chance that the single unit will die.
There have been times when I was thinking WTF when my hero died when leading a big army into battle. It sux to lose a hero, especially where there was only a 20% chance or so.
I was thinking of adding a built in “Armour” stat to the big melee heros so that they can roll an additional save if they are killed.
So for example, if their armour was 20%, they would roll the first save based on the respective army sizes, but if they fail they could roll again and try and get less that 20.
I have personally experienced this and so did the person this post is for. If the units win the battle but all die from the casualty percentage, there are no bodies that need burned.
Hi Jay, I’m playing with SpySat and Squatched (amongst some others) and I think the fragility of heros is one of the biggest issues. The way combats are calculated is great except for that. I think over all heroes should be tougher to kill.
A couple of solutions;
All heroes get an extra roll (not great but much better).
Heroes are the last to die, pooling casualties and subtracting from all regular units first, then heros last.
I was also thinking of having some rule where rank and file troops could just take the hit for the heroes, but that doesn’t work if you are building stacks of just heroes.
Either “there is no luck when determining the winner of combat” as the tutorial states, or luck does indeed play a role as Jay’s embedded tweet states.
Maybe the tutorial text should be updated if luck is now a factor?
If 1) a mortal unit with superior strength 2) dies based on luck and turns into a zombie unit the next day (that is located in the same place as the zombie unit) then 3) I assert that the zombies won the battle even if the original zombie unit is defeated. If that is true, I assert that luck plays a role in which side wins.
Are you talking about a different scenario than the one I describe, or do we disagree on what constitutes a victory?
I haven’t experienced this situation, but if you read above people have said that if you win the battle, you don’t leave graves which turn into zombies.
No matter how you look at it, you win the battle, but you had bad luck and lost troops to the battle from injuries.
Win = completely destroy the enemy. No luck involved.
Luck is only used after the battle to determine how many remaining forces you have. You can also have bad luck and lose all troops, but that doesn’t mean you lost the battle, you still wiped out the whole enemy zombie army.