See the above, you did not calculate the unit rating of 2 halberdiers, you calculated the unit rating of a unit that has the stats of two halberdiers together in one unit.
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Strategic Combat in CoM
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Unit ratings, with levels included, in the file.
units4.txt (Size: 199 KB / Downloads: 8)
Also has ratings for magical weapons and adamantium for each level. 
What I see from the text is a surprisingly balanced defense rating and two weaknesses:
*Ranged units with very low hp fare horrible (can't be fixed without breaking something) (the topic at hand) *Single figure units with unforgivably low attack ratings (e.g. veteran dragon turtle around spearmen level ... stag beetles below many veteran swordsmen ... pretty much the majority of examples could be listed) Of course, some of these single-figures benefit from very high hp and armor and end up with fairly acceptable combat ratings, but the patterns are so blatantly obvious to ignore here. full-healed single-figures have much lower attack scores than their tactical attack damage performance indicates. Thanks for the text file. I studied it for a bit. It's very helpful and really drives the point home that single-figure attack ratings are consistently lower than they are expected to me. Once you add a figure or so, the attack ratings become quite impressive. * If we can add a partial figure adjustment, you will like what you will see. If this can be generated via a new text file, we can have better analysis. Otherwise, I'll pretend every single figure is +33% offense (and overall combat) more. Reading the text files for the most part limits what Nelphine and I consider to be a problem to just the non-ranged offense ratings. 
I'd like to point out that a Dragon Turtle actually does absolutely horrible damage. What makes it a playable unit despite that is being near invincible to average attacks - an effect these ratings can't simulate.
Anyway, the data in a more readable form, with only total ratings, for each units :
units5.txt (Size: 15.7 KB / Downloads: 6)
If you think the ratings are still wrong, actually pick units where you think it's wrong, where abilities the rating cannot include do not exist on either unit, send them against each other in normal combat 10 or 20 times, and if the outcome is significantly different from what you'd expect based on the ratings, then report it. Otherwise I'd have to consider "single figure units are underrated" as purely anecdotal. In my experience, single figure units often underperform compared to my expectations vs multi-figure units in real combat. In general I would be hesitant to send stag beetles against elite halberdiers with magic weapons, and fail to see why the ratings should say otherwise. Multi-figure units benefit more from levels, that's what they are designed to do. By raising the units to veteran or elite level, you are already giving an advantage to the halberdier (or swordsmen) - one that exists in actual normal combat. I wouldn't be so hasty and think the ratings are wrong just because the beetle is rated lower. (btw the beetle is 35 while veteran swordsmen of a good race, with magical weapns is around 18-28. So I don't see where "veteran swordsmen is stronger" is coming from, unless you were looking at adamantium swordsmen or something.
I am referring to the offense rating only. Beetle manages to have a decent rating only thanks to its massive 7base armor and 20hp because its offense rating is quite poor.
There are many other instances of low offense rating pushing overall combat rating down. See doom bats vs chimera, great lizard vs multi-figure summons, air elemental. These units have good to great defense ratings and knowing their intimidating attacks, don't deserve such weak attack ratings. *However, seeing the ratings of a few advanced single-figures with 2 attacks like colossus or great drake may solidify the moderated (figure+0.5) against Nelphine's stronger (figure +1). Warship, also thanks to ranged, doesn't look that bad (tho I was of course expecting more). I can continue arguing for my (figure +0.5) to place the 1-figures closer to the ideal level but let me take a small detour here and talk about the other pieces of strategic and offense: *Flame breath/Thrown: attacks that happen 1/2 the time (closer to 2/3 if human), not 100% of the time. I suggest a 25% decrease here as it overrates some units. *Armor Piercing = I suggest 1.25 -> 1.5X ... in strategic, you are reducing strategic defense of opponent by roughly a 1/3. *Eldritch - irrelevant, can u leave room for immolation? *Immolation - suggest adding as a +200, will benefit a couple of units (single figure doom bats could use more offense) and the spell itself. *Life-steal - seems low, but leave it because at least 2 units that have it have great ratings *Death and Stoning Gaze - since this is normally -3 or -4, this is EXTREMELY LOW. Suggest +500 or +600 to help our night stalkers. *Multi-Gaze - EXTREMELY LOW AGAIN. Suggest +2000. Slow chaos spawn needs to have a good combat rating. *defense rating - - Have you considered adding a tad of melee to some of the most fragile range-only units? It might help wonders to strategic balance (excluding catapults of course). - Have you considered adding a weak 'death gaze' of 0 resist to add strategic points to 'demon' ? - Is there really no defense multipliers? I'd love modifiers to magic immunity, invisibility, among others. - what if the defense formula (armor + 2) is replaced with (armor + movement)? Is it feasible? It'd allow less strategic ranged or melee damage because with more movement, the easier it is to avoid getting hit when you don't want to. Quote:I am referring to the offense rating only. That doesn't matter. Nowhere in the game is offense used separately. I only care about the total rating of the unit. IF the total rating is bad, we can THEN decide whether the culprit is the offense or defense. However for that you first MUST prove the total rating is bad by playing out the normal combat between those units and end up with the opposite result of what the numbers would imply. I'm not going to blindly change the formula unless there is solid proof the current one is not working with an acceptable accuracy. Doom Bats don't do good damage. They do 8 damage, period. Which is not much at all. Immolation is ignored by the ratings, so it does not apply. Great Lizards don't do very good damage either. Their expected damage output before shields is a mere 9 - after shields it'll be closer to 6. Compared to this, a 6 figure unit with 8 swords and +1 to hit would do 3.2 damage per figure. Even if we assume enemy armor reduces it by 1.8 each (6 shields), it still deals 6*1.4 = 8.4 damage. More than the Doom Bat. Again you project your expectations of the unit instead of measuring how much damage they actually do in a real battle. Single figure units do poor damage, unless they are one of those high end units with +3 hit and 25-35 swords. The ratings are meant to be an accurate representation of what happens if the two units fight in normal combat. Not something that's "higher if the unit looks stronger". Now for the other suggestions : Armor Piercing : It halves enemy shields, so if we go with the assumption of enemies typically having 8 shields, it's worth as much as +4 swords on our own side. Adding 25% more to the rating is an accurate representation for units with 16 swords which is fairly normal for a single figure unit, but unlikely for multi-figure. So Armor Piercing is actually underrated for multi-figure units only. For this, if we really want to increase accuracy, we should be adding +4 swords to the unit instead of using a multiplier. Flame Breath/Thrown - I already refused reducing it further in the past, don't bother asking. Immolation - This is not an attack flag, so it cannot be included. The "Eldritch" flag is actually used by Mystic Surge, so it's not a free slot we can replace with Immolation at all. Death, Stoning, Multigaze - Each of these only appear on one unit. We should look at that particular unit and decide whether that unit has an appropriate overall rating : Gorgons, Night Stalker, and Chaos Spawn. Quote:Have you considered adding a tad of melee to some of the most fragile range-only units?Not relevant. Ranged units get the first turns in strategic combat just like in normal combat. If that isn't working as intended, we need to increase the weight of ranged damage by increasing the number of ranged turns, but we've already discussed that and didn't want to change it. Quote:Have you considered adding a weak 'death gaze' of 0 resist to add strategic points to 'demon'That would make demons instakill things in normal combat you know? Let's not change unit functionality for such silly reason. Quote:Is there really no defense multipliers? I'd love modifiers to magic immunity, invisibility, among others....You should already know very well this is impossible, we discussed it a hundred million times. We can only use things that are actual input parameters of the procedure.
I think it is clear that night stalkers have a terrible rating (comparable to some common units) and reason enough to boost death gaze considerably with suggested 500 or 600 points.
Same for chaos spawn. They only move 2 overland and their overall rating of 174, among the poorest performers in rare summons. Why not push for low to mid 200s? No reason to punish these given their overland restrictions. On the other side, Gorgons probably shouldn't crack 500+, so I'm nervous if death and stoning gaze can't be separated.
By the way if we change Armor Piercing, we also need to change Doom and Illusion. Doom is tricky because it would also need to ignore the "To Hit".
Honestly I'm not a fan of making large changes here because if something goes wrong, we'll not notice it - strategic ratings (unless extremely wrong) aren't transparent to players. Still, it is something to consider. However, I'm unsure if we really should change the percentage bonus into a flat addition. That would actually make the ability weaker on high end units. We should make more detailed calculations for each case to decide. I'm leaning towards keeping it a percentage and being lazy and don't calculate however - as armor itself is represented by a percentage bonus to defensive rating (+50% for each 1 point), so armor piercing doing the same on offense at least makes some sense even if still completely wrong due to it having the same problem as armor itself - ignoring the other unit. Although, Armor Piercing, Doom and Illusion aren't exactly common abilities either. We might want to look at the affected units specifically instead. (Griffins, Paladins, Elven Lords, Air Elemental, Great Wyrm, War Mamoths for AP I think, Phantom Beast and Warrior for Illusion, Doom Bat for Doom. Aside from these, only heroes have these abilities, albeit any hero can gain any of them through items.)
I see, I was also thinking about armor piercing adding attack points, but that may become biased toward multi-figure units with the abilitiy.
In regards to Death Gaze, I still recommend +500 or +600 instead of +300. The night stalker's combat rating is comparable to a war bear or naga. That needs to change. The Chaos Spawn's rating is pretty low compared to most other melee-driven rare units, plus they have only 2 overland movement. I don't see why we can't bring the chaos spawn to low to mid 200s territory by boosting multigaze [which is incredibly damaging in tactical] offense rating. |