I don't see how spearmen can compete with that even if they have buffs.
At elite a spearmen should have 3 swords, 3 ranged from focus magic, 2 hp, +2 to Hit in melee, 1 in ranged (assuming magic weapons) and +1 To Defend. Also 3 shields.
8 of these should be 2120 attack, 1696 ranged, 3584 defense.
Assuming your casting skill is 6*15 = 90, you get a total of 1620 defense from magic, and we can ignore the attack from sorcery as the division by 6 isn't removed in your version yet. The percentage bonus is as much as you calculated, so roughly an extra 300 making the starting armies
2120 M, 2000 R, ~5000 D
against
~15000 M, 0 R and 10000 D
there is no way you can be winning this.
Do you have a save file for this battle? I might be able to track where things go wrong using the dosbox debugger.
I can give you the impossible game I'm playing. I dont have that exact fight, but the entire game has been strategic combat only, and I've just started to explore Myrror, so there should be some delightful nodes that can be crushed. I'm not home now, so it'll be a few hours.
Also, shouldn't lucky give +1 to hit with ranged? (Plus alchemy retort for magic weapons. Its 1408 and I think I only got an alchemists guild in my capital in the last year, and I've never built a settler, in any of my 25+ cities).
(May 8th, 2017, 09:37)Nelphine Wrote: I can give you the impossible game I'm playing. I dont have that exact fight, but the entire game has been strategic combat only, and I've just started to explore Myrror, so there should be some delightful nodes that can be crushed. I'm not home now, so it'll be a few hours.
Also, shouldn't lucky give +1 to hit with ranged? (Plus alchemy retort for magic weapons. Its 1408 and I think I only got an alchemists guild in my capital in the last year, and I've never built a settler, in any of my 25+ cities).
lucky, yes but magic weapons don't affect magic ranged attacks (I don't remember if focus magic is an exception for that though. Might be.)
So, just for the other number: 2000 ranged attack should result in ~1100 damage during the ranged turns? Plus there is the trireme with endurance and flight (another... ~750 defense, and another.. ~200 attack);
So then the combat going into the melee turns is: 2320 M + 5750 D vs 13650 (lower than the initial 15000 due to lost defense) M + 8900 D?
Is it possible the increased defense from life/sorcery/nature magic is also increasing attack rating due to the percentage change? (I don't know how the formula is set up) although that wouldn't be a big enough change to account for the result.
(May 8th, 2017, 11:02)Nelphine Wrote: So, just for the other number: 2000 ranged attack should result in ~1100 damage during the ranged turns? Plus there is the trireme with endurance and flight (another... ~750 defense, and another.. ~200 attack);
So then the combat going into the melee turns is: 2320 M + 5750 D vs 13650 (lower than the initial 15000 due to lost defense) M + 8900 D?
Is it possible the increased defense from life/sorcery/nature magic is also increasing attack rating due to the percentage change? (I don't know how the formula is set up) although that wouldn't be a big enough change to account for the result.
At my new draconian city of Minnlow on Myrror, there is a Sorcery node 2 squares to the east and 1 square south. This node has 3 sky drakes and 6 nagas. Not as strong as the great drakes/chimera, but still, a decent strategic combat value. In the city of Minnlow I have one of my death stacks (trireme with endurance and flight, 7 halfling spearmen with focus magic, one halfling swordsman with focus magic.) They will crush the node with no problem. (I could actually use just the halflings, take the node, then pick them up with the trireme and take the lair too, but that isn't the point of this. Also, my casting skill is a little higher - I'm up to 150 combat skill.)
Also, in this game, in an amusing turn of events, I am getting almost 6 overland casting skill per turn (NOT including any gains from finishing amplifying towers), due to my high power income. (Which is somewhere above 3 base casting skill).
Obviously this game shouldn't be seen as a typical example, but at the same time, extreme AI could easily reach this level of power income. Do we really want that high casting skill?
(May 8th, 2017, 20:17)Nelphine Wrote: @Seravy:
My save file.
At my new draconian city of Minnlow on Myrror, there is a Sorcery node 2 squares to the east and 1 square south. This node has 3 sky drakes and 6 nagas. Not as strong as the great drakes/chimera, but still, a decent strategic combat value. In the city of Minnlow I have one of my death stacks (trireme with endurance and flight, 7 halfling spearmen with focus magic, one halfling swordsman with focus magic.) They will crush the node with no problem. (I could actually use just the halflings, take the node, then pick them up with the trireme and take the lair too, but that isn't the point of this. Also, my casting skill is a little higher - I'm up to 150 combat skill.)
Also, in this game, in an amusing turn of events, I am getting almost 6 overland casting skill per turn (NOT including any gains from finishing amplifying towers), due to my high power income. (Which is somewhere above 3 base casting skill).
Obviously this game shouldn't be seen as a typical example, but at the same time, extreme AI could easily reach this level of power income. Do we really want that high casting skill?
Your casting skill is 268 but your examples used 90.
I reduced it to 90 and I'm losing 2 out of 3 battles.
Considering Sky Drake is weaker - 3 of them are only 4800 DEF and 5400 ATK with Nagas added it's about 7K Def and 6K ATK, your 2.5k/2k/5.5k army winning half the battles seems about right. Note that my version does have stronger direct damage from the Sorcery books.
With skill at 268 I was winning 6 out of 7.
Either way I need to find a stronger node - this one is only about half as strong as the great drakes you mention....or not, I can change this one to have those monsters.
Surprise, against the Great Drakes I win every single time, so despite their higher power, it seems easier to defeat. Bug for sure, I wonder what kind.
All right, let's see what numbers I can see if I insert the spying code.
First off, the units themselves.
Great Drake
36 melee
35 breath
7 defense (should be 10???)
13 Resistance (should be 16???)
1 figure, 35 HP
0 To Hit (!!!!!)
Chimera
same problem, they lost 3 DEF and RES for some reason.
The stats on your units are correct.
Spells cast in battle : Darkness (should have no effect on either side, assuming an Eternal Night?)
City enchantments : All of them set to a random value. This seems uninitialized.
So the bug here is this : The monsters are affected by a Chaos Ward and are really weak.
(turn 0, before spell effects)
Attacker's DEF = 5741 , this sounds correct Attackers Ranged = 8648 WTF?
Attacker's ATK = 4837, sounds high to me
Attacker's total HP = 144 (correct)
Defender's DEF = 7612 (low because of WARD effect)
Defender's ATK = 6543 (Ward!)
Defender's total HP = 233 (correct)
Skill, attacker 66 (yea the rest of the skill is overland only from heroes)
Skill per turn attacker 11
ATK bonus for attacker = 41 (this is per 5 MP spent, not total, wrong, the /6 is still applied - I only changed it for the defender!)
ATK % bonus = 0 (this looks wrong? Oh! It's a sorcery node so Life books have no effect!)
DEF bonus = 50 (This one is correct)
...so I see two problems here, one, city enchantments are not cleared to zero for strategic combat, and two somehow the ranged of your army is way too high.
Going through the ranged calculation, the ranged for one such spearmen should be 281.
...and here is the bug. The bonus for "fairy touch" is applied when the unit does not have the ability instead of when it has it.
Wait, the game I gave you, I had 150 casting skill, as per my comment, where I acknowledged it had gone past 90.
Then spellweaver increases that to 225 for overland. Then heroes in my capital increases that to 268.
I'm assuming that strategic combat should be using the 150?
And none of the wizards in this game have very rares, and none of them have death books. Eternal night, spell ward, darkness, are all spells that are not present in this game.
Oh, not true. The very first wizard I fought and defeated (in 1402 or 1403) had death and presumably darkness.
