Battles - Minimum Roll Modifiers - Not High Enough

[defekt]

Freshness and Veterancy modifiers in battles seem to minimally affect outcomes.

A bunch of tired and low veterancy troops vs fresh and high veterancy units, with all other things being equal, should get wiped nearly every time. But they don't. And the reason for this is that when you're rolling multiple dice the minimum roll modifier influences the outcome less the more dice you're rolling; also, as the minimum roll modifiers never really reach significant levels they influence the outcomes even less.

Perhaps the minimum roll modifiers for freshness and veterancy should be increased to further widen the gap between 'the worst' and 'the best'.

[Pocus]

Extra dice is only given by good or excellent generals. Are you saying that a genius general should have tired troops beaten by fresh ones led by a nobody?

[defekt]

No, of course not. I'm suggesting that the minimum roll modifiers are so low as to make little difference to an outcome when they are meant to represent, arguably, qualities that should be making the most difference: veterancy and freshness (w/ all other things being equal). Add Generals to the mix and veterancy and freshness modifiers become even less statistically significant.

It's not the end of the world or anything so dramatic. It just struck me as being a bit off that the difference betwixt 'the best' and 'the worst' has such a small influence on battle outcomes.

...unless I'm completely misunderstanding how the mechanics work when it comes to unit veterancy and freshness.

[poesel71]

What happens when you roll below minimum? Is that a reroll or is it just raised to the minimum?
If it is not a reroll then I would agree with @defekt.

[defekt]

What happens when you roll below minimum? Is that a reroll or is it just raised to the minimum?
If it is not a reroll then I would agree with @defekt.

Exactly, yes. Re-rolls until a result >= minimum would make this mechanic more impactful. If that's what happens then grand.

[travling_canuck]

I'm pretty sure this is what happens. Otherwise, you'd see a preponderance of dice rolls == unit minimum.

I haven't done an analysis to confirm this, but my impression is that if your minimum is 6, you're effectively rolling a d5 + 5 giving a range of 6 to 10, with 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 all being equally probable. If your min is 3, it's effectively a d8 + 2 giving a range of 3 to 10, again all numbers in that range equally likely.

If I'm right about this, then having a higher minimum not only raises your floor, but also increases the chance of rolling a 10 (or any other high number). A min 6 troop would receive a 10 die score 20% of the time, whereas a min 3 troop would score a 10 only 12.5% of the time.

[storeylf]

Well the dice being used is a D10 and the min roll for veterancy and freshness gets to +7 at the cap. On a D10 there isn't much more room to go higher, so I'm not sure about how can be seen as too low. For a couple of 0 rated generals Min 7 will be a massive influence on the battle, where as if both sides are +2 leaders then the minimum roll is no where near as significant and the dice roll is going to dominate as the highest of the multi D10 is higher than the min for quality already.

Despite that a crappy leader with a 0 rating leading uber spartans will still have a higher chance of winning each duel against an uber +2 commander in charge a useless dross with a min roll of 1, it is only at a min roll of 3 that the chances start to slightly favor the genius with the inferior troops. Those 3's could be half decent troops (as in at least not a mere rabble), so as you start to get into the mid range of half decent troops led by a genius you get to the point where the 'lions led by donkeys' start to come off worse (on average) which doesn't seem that bad.

A half decent +1 leader leading those Min 7s doesn't start losing on average to anything less than Min 6s even if they have a +2 leader (all other things equal). At that point you are are talking 2 probably high quality veteran groups led by at least competent generals having at it.

Neither is it just whether you win or lose though. If your minimum roll is a 7 then you can't lose by more than 3 against an otherwise equal unit, so no being wiped in one battle in a mirror match (for heavy inf anyway). As pursuit damage is based on overkill there is also potentially a lot less pursuit damage even if you do lose. Also whilst effectiveness will degrade over multi combat rounds, the experience won't.


Yes the logic is reroll until you at least get the min. So a min 7 equates to rolling a D4 + 6.

[Pocus]

It's a reroll indeed