Impact

[Cunningcairn]

Can someone please tell me what the odds are of fragmenting from steady on impact with a +75 POA? Heavy foot OSp, steady, no casualties, no threatened flanks, uphill charging OSp in flank both in good going. Both protected and average quality.

[DanZanzibar]

So the charging unit has +75 POA? Then it's like 5% chance of losing the combat. Then it's 17% chance to double drop if you were in the open, 28% if you weren't. I'm guessing you were so when you decide to click attack you've got a 0.85% chance to double drop.

[MikeC_81]

So the charging unit has +75 POA? Then it's like 5% chance of losing the combat. Then it's 17% chance to double drop if you were in the open, 28% if you weren't. I'm guessing you were so when you decide to click attack you've got a 0.85% chance to double drop.

It is much lower than that. It is about 2% chance to lose for the +50 PoA and 1% for a +100 PoA. Let's just assume 2% or 1 in 50. Given Cunning's description, I gather there is a general involved plus a gentle slope for a +75 PoA differential. Heavy Foot +1, General in combat +1, standard close combat penalties -2. So you literally have to roll just snake eyes which is 1 in 36. So the approximate odds since we are guestimating the WDL ratios is 1/1800.

edit: nvm I assumed things I shouldn't after rereading Cunnings description. How did you get +75 PoA? Flank charge guarantees +50 so where did the other +25 come from if you were charging uphill?

[Cunningcairn]

So the charging unit has +75 POA? Then it's like 5% chance of losing the combat. Then it's 17% chance to double drop if you were in the open, 28% if you weren't. I'm guessing you were so when you decide to click attack you've got a 0.85% chance to double drop.

It is much lower than that. It is about 2% chance to lose for the +50 PoA and 1% for a +100 PoA. Let's just assume 2% or 1 in 50. Given Cunning's description, I gather there is a general involved plus a gentle slope for a +75 PoA differential. Heavy Foot +1, General in combat +1, standard close combat penalties -2. So you literally have to roll just snake eyes which is 1 in 36. So the approximate odds since we are guestimating the WDL ratios is 1/1800.

edit: nvm I assumed things I shouldn't after rereading Cunnings description. How did you get +75 PoA? Flank charge guarantees +50 so where did the other +25 come from if you were charging uphill?

I was charging downhill for +25. No general involved on either side. If nothing has changed after my opponents move I'll post a picture. The cohesion test hangs on the casualties I received which would have been cancelled by me being heavy foot so I must have been hit with the second -1 for receiving many more casualties than I inflicted. How did that happen with a +75 POA?

[MikeC_81]

One combat is impossible to cause 25 percent casualties.

Odds are 1/600

[Cunningcairn]

One combat is impossible to cause 25 percent casualties.

Odds are 1/600

In the cohesion test you receive a -1 if you suffer 5% or greater casualties and a further -1 if your casualties are far greater than those you inflicted. As a heavy infantry my spearmen would have received +1 which as far as I can see would make the worst case -1 on the CT. Although my first question is still unanswered my second question is how does a HF OSp on higher ground charge an enemy HF OSp in the flank and firstly lose the combat and secondly receive significantly more casualties than it inflicted?

Edit: I have received my opponents move. I see that I did suffer significant casualties ( 65 ) in my impact and did not inflict many myself. I'm not sure how many exactly but about 30. This means I had a net total of -1 on my cohesion test so the fragment is possible. I have also made an error on the POA for the hill as it has a height of 50 and you only get +1 for a height of 75 or greater. This makes my overall POA on impact +50 and not +75.

I would still appreciate it if someone could answer my questions.
1. What are the odds on charging with a +50 POA and then fragmenting as explained above?
2. How can a unit suffer so many casualties when charging a similar unit in the flank?

[Cunningcairn]

I have just had it happen to me in another game on level ground. This time I was a full strength average hoplite charging an above average Roman hastati. This is my second successive flank charge today both with a +50 POA and in both I fragmented from steady.

[MikeC_81]

One combat is impossible to cause 25 percent casualties.

Odds are 1/600

In the cohesion test you receive a -1 if you suffer 5% or greater casualties and a further -1 if your casualties are far greater than those you inflicted. As a heavy infantry my spearmen would have received +1 which as far as I can see would make the worst case -1 on the CT. Although my first question is still unanswered my second question is how does a HF OSp on higher ground charge an enemy HF OSp in the flank and firstly lose the combat and secondly receive significantly more casualties than it inflicted?

Edit: I have received my opponents move. I see that I did suffer significant casualties ( 65 ) in my impact and did not inflict many myself. I'm not sure how many exactly but about 30. This means I had a net total of -1 on my cohesion test so the fragment is possible. I have also made an error on the POA for the hill as it has a height of 50 and you only get +1 for a height of 75 or greater. This makes my overall POA on impact +50 and not +75.

I would still appreciate it if someone could answer my questions.
1. What are the odds on charging with a +50 POA and then fragmenting as explained above?
2. How can a unit suffer so many casualties when charging a similar unit in the flank?

1) So you said that both units were fresh right? There is some RNG involved in spawning unit sizes so a 480 man unit can spawn as a 460 man unit. Even with 65 casualties, that is not enough to bring the unit down to the first casualty breakpoint so you don't need to worry about that. The two -1 modifiers you mentioned are almost always inflicted by steady non-light foot units fighting each other and the RNG produces a winner. It is so standard that I bake them into the die rolls when I calculate.

You double drop on a modified score of 2 on 2d6. You have your basic -2 as discussed. You get your +1 for being Heavy Foot. So total modified score of -1. You double drop then on snake eyes or a roll of 3. Snake eyes is 1/36. A roll of 3 is 2/36. Combined your odds are 3/36 or 1/12. +50 PoA gives you about a 2% chance to lose or 1/50. Multiply the two together to get your chance for the event. 1/50 x 1/12 = 1/600. Or 0.16% chance of occurrence.


2) The game doesn't care about you charging in the flank when producing casualties. That is just a PoA modifier that goes into RBS's black box of combat mechanics and RNG spits out a winner. It is not different than if you had gotten your +50 PoA by having a General in the unit from what I can tell.

[Cunningcairn]

One combat is impossible to cause 25 percent casualties.

Odds are 1/600

In the cohesion test you receive a -1 if you suffer 5% or greater casualties and a further -1 if your casualties are far greater than those you inflicted. As a heavy infantry my spearmen would have received +1 which as far as I can see would make the worst case -1 on the CT. Although my first question is still unanswered my second question is how does a HF OSp on higher ground charge an enemy HF OSp in the flank and firstly lose the combat and secondly receive significantly more casualties than it inflicted?

Edit: I have received my opponents move. I see that I did suffer significant casualties ( 65 ) in my impact and did not inflict many myself. I'm not sure how many exactly but about 30. This means I had a net total of -1 on my cohesion test so the fragment is possible. I have also made an error on the POA for the hill as it has a height of 50 and you only get +1 for a height of 75 or greater. This makes my overall POA on impact +50 and not +75.

I would still appreciate it if someone could answer my questions.
1. What are the odds on charging with a +50 POA and then fragmenting as explained above?
2. How can a unit suffer so many casualties when charging a similar unit in the flank?

1) So you said that both units were fresh right? There is some RNG involved in spawning unit sizes so a 480 man unit can spawn as a 460 man unit. Even with 65 casualties, that is not enough to bring the unit down to the first casualty breakpoint so you don't need to worry about that. The two -1 modifiers you mentioned are almost always inflicted by steady non-light foot units fighting each other and the RNG produces a winner. It is so standard that I bake them into the die rolls when I calculate.

You double drop on a modified score of 2 on 2d6. You have your basic -2 as discussed. You get your +1 for being Heavy Foot. So total modified score of -1. You double drop then on snake eyes or a roll of 3. Snake eyes is 1/36. A roll of 3 is 2/36. Combined your odds are 3/36 or 1/12. +50 PoA gives you about a 2% chance to lose or 1/50. Multiply the two together to get your chance for the event. 1/50 x 1/12 = 1/600. Or 0.16% chance of occurrence.


2) The game doesn't care about you charging in the flank when producing casualties. That is just a PoA modifier that goes into RBS's black box of combat mechanics and RNG spits out a winner. It is not different than if you had gotten your +50 PoA by having a General in the unit from what I can tell.

Thanks Mike! I understand the game doesn't care but it doesn't make sense. A unit of hoplites is charging an enemy unit of roughly same size and quality and hitting them in the flank. The hoplites charged in the flank are completely out of formation with no defence or training to withstand such an attack yet they not only win but inflict more than twice the casualties they incur. The attackers are in formation in which they have been trained, their morale is high due to their advantageous position and yet they fragment on impact. Sorry for harping on this but to me this is absolutely insane. Maybe this could happen once in a million years but it is happening too often. I suppose my integrity will be questioned by those that disagree but it has now twice in succession within one day. Do you think this is modelling historical events?

[MikeC_81]

I suspect given the quantity of anecdotal stories you can find with outrageous outcomes in the history of warfare, that such things happening are not impossible. The personal objection to the specific gameplay mechanics and occurances in this instant is something that you'd have to take up with RBS but we both know that he probably isn't moving on this one. The only thing that is automatic in this game is auto-dropping.

[TheGrayMouser]

In the cohesion test you receive a -1 if you suffer 5% or greater casualties and a further -1 if your casualties are far greater than those you inflicted. As a heavy infantry my spearmen would have received +1 which as far as I can see would make the worst case -1 on the CT. Although my first question is still unanswered my second question is how does a HF OSp on higher ground charge an enemy HF OSp in the flank and firstly lose the combat and secondly receive significantly more casualties than it inflicted?

Edit: I have received my opponents move. I see that I did suffer significant casualties ( 65 ) in my impact and did not inflict many myself. I'm not sure how many exactly but about 30. This means I had a net total of -1 on my cohesion test so the fragment is possible. I have also made an error on the POA for the hill as it has a height of 50 and you only get +1 for a height of 75 or greater. This makes my overall POA on impact +50 and not +75.

I would still appreciate it if someone could answer my questions.
1. What are the odds on charging with a +50 POA and then fragmenting as explained above?
2. How can a unit suffer so many casualties when charging a similar unit in the flank?

1) So you said that both units were fresh right? There is some RNG involved in spawning unit sizes so a 480 man unit can spawn as a 460 man unit. Even with 65 casualties, that is not enough to bring the unit down to the first casualty breakpoint so you don't need to worry about that. The two -1 modifiers you mentioned are almost always inflicted by steady non-light foot units fighting each other and the RNG produces a winner. It is so standard that I bake them into the die rolls when I calculate.

You double drop on a modified score of 2 on 2d6. You have your basic -2 as discussed. You get your +1 for being Heavy Foot. So total modified score of -1. You double drop then on snake eyes or a roll of 3. Snake eyes is 1/36. A roll of 3 is 2/36. Combined your odds are 3/36 or 1/12. +50 PoA gives you about a 2% chance to lose or 1/50. Multiply the two together to get your chance for the event. 1/50 x 1/12 = 1/600. Or 0.16% chance of occurrence.


2) The game doesn't care about you charging in the flank when producing casualties. That is just a PoA modifier that goes into RBS's black box of combat mechanics and RNG spits out a winner. It is not different than if you had gotten your +50 PoA by having a General in the unit from what I can tell.

Thanks Mike! I understand the game doesn't care but it doesn't make sense. A unit of hoplites is charging an enemy unit of roughly same size and quality and hitting them in the flank. The hoplites charged in the flank are completely out of formation with no defence or training to withstand such an attack yet they not only win but inflict more than twice the casualties they incur. The attackers are in formation in which they have been trained, their morale is high due to their advantageous position and yet they fragment on impact. Sorry for harping on this but to me this is absolutely insane. Maybe this could happen once in a million years but it is happening too often. I suppose my integrity will be questioned by those that disagree but it has now twice in succession within one day. Do you think this is modelling historical events?

I think you are taking the "visual representation" way too literally in this instance. This game is not a simulation ( as if there could be an accurate one as we know so very little about so many things re ancient warfare)

First, under what circumstances do you think a unit wandering about the battle field in a linear array would just be hit in the flank in the manner you describe? Its not like it was ambushed or something.
We allow it to happen as players want games where we get to move around little chess pieces and one of the fallout is scenes like you describe where a non pinned unit gets hit in the "flank" or rear" by an enemy it is clearly aware of.

If it could threatened on a flank, even several turns away, no unit would never in real like put itself in a position to get hit in the flank/rear in the first place! But players can and will.

In this situation I view the flank bonus as more of a possible moral blow where the unit has to scramble to reorient ( perhaps not even the entire unit) , there MIGHT be confusion, or ranks out of order etc which would represent a bad result. As Mike pointed about , the chances of the attacker getting fragged is pretty darn low here so....

( you must have really hated Fog1 where literly only a few 6 sided dice determined the outcomes!!)

[DanZanzibar]

Martin - sorry my numbers were off. I wouldn’t have posted if I hadn’t been quite certain... but still I had two bad errors on my probabilities.

First I thought double drops were caused by rolls of 3 or less (before the modifiers). It was nice living this delusion for awhile though as I didn’t feel quite so unlucky when it happened to me!

I also used a someone’s homemade calculator for the combat probability but I should have known 5% was too high.

Mike - do you have some nice concrete benchmarks for correlating POA and win % for the one on the wrong side of the POA advantage? The positive POA side is easy and fairly linear (up to about 85% anyway). Is the negative POA side quite linear as well?

[Cunningcairn]

I suspect given the quantity of anecdotal stories you can find with outrageous outcomes in the history of warfare, that such things happening are not impossible. The personal objection to the specific gameplay mechanics and occurances in this instant is something that you'd have to take up with RBS but we both know that he probably isn't moving on this one. The only thing that is automatic in this game is auto-dropping.

No anecdotes needed. Hoplites were vulnerable to flank attacks and were frontally strong. In other threads the weaknesses of flanks are clearly understood and supported to justify some or other inexplicable result. I have no problem with double drops I just think they happen when they shouldn't as in this example. Thanks for answering.

[Cunningcairn]

1) So you said that both units were fresh right? There is some RNG involved in spawning unit sizes so a 480 man unit can spawn as a 460 man unit. Even with 65 casualties, that is not enough to bring the unit down to the first casualty breakpoint so you don't need to worry about that. The two -1 modifiers you mentioned are almost always inflicted by steady non-light foot units fighting each other and the RNG produces a winner. It is so standard that I bake them into the die rolls when I calculate.

You double drop on a modified score of 2 on 2d6. You have your basic -2 as discussed. You get your +1 for being Heavy Foot. So total modified score of -1. You double drop then on snake eyes or a roll of 3. Snake eyes is 1/36. A roll of 3 is 2/36. Combined your odds are 3/36 or 1/12. +50 PoA gives you about a 2% chance to lose or 1/50. Multiply the two together to get your chance for the event. 1/50 x 1/12 = 1/600. Or 0.16% chance of occurrence.


2) The game doesn't care about you charging in the flank when producing casualties. That is just a PoA modifier that goes into RBS's black box of combat mechanics and RNG spits out a winner. It is not different than if you had gotten your +50 PoA by having a General in the unit from what I can tell.

Thanks Mike! I understand the game doesn't care but it doesn't make sense. A unit of hoplites is charging an enemy unit of roughly same size and quality and hitting them in the flank. The hoplites charged in the flank are completely out of formation with no defence or training to withstand such an attack yet they not only win but inflict more than twice the casualties they incur. The attackers are in formation in which they have been trained, their morale is high due to their advantageous position and yet they fragment on impact. Sorry for harping on this but to me this is absolutely insane. Maybe this could happen once in a million years but it is happening too often. I suppose my integrity will be questioned by those that disagree but it has now twice in succession within one day. Do you think this is modelling historical events?

I think you are taking the "visual representation" way too literally in this instance. This game is not a simulation ( as if there could be an accurate one as we know so very little about so many things re ancient warfare)

So a flank is not a flank?

First, under what circumstances do you think a unit wandering about the battle field in a linear array would just be hit in the flank in the manner you describe? Its not like it was ambushed or something.
We allow it to happen as players want games where we get to move around little chess pieces and one of the fallout is scenes like you describe where a non pinned unit gets hit in the "flank" or rear" by an enemy it is clearly aware of.

Did you read the thread on turning your back to enemy after pursuing skirmishers? Where are those arguments now?

If it could threatened on a flank, even several turns away, no unit would never in real like put itself in a position to get hit in the flank/rear in the first place! But players can and will.

In this situation I view the flank bonus as more of a possible moral blow where the unit has to scramble to reorient ( perhaps not even the entire unit) , there MIGHT be confusion, or ranks out of order etc which would represent a bad result. As Mike pointed about , the chances of the attacker getting fragged is pretty darn low here so....

The odds are low indeed yet it happened to me on two consecutive attempts.

( you must have really hated Fog1 where literly only a few 6 sided dice determined the outcomes!!)

FOG1 was not perfect but I experienced fewer exceptional results in fact I rarely felt frustrated by FOG1 combat results.

[Cunningcairn]

Martin - sorry my numbers were off. I wouldn’t have posted if I hadn’t been quite certain... but still I had two bad errors on my probabilities.

First I thought double drops were caused by rolls of 3 or less (before the modifiers). It was nice living this delusion for awhile though as I didn’t feel quite so unlucky when it happened to me!

I also used a someone’s homemade calculator for the combat probability but I should have known 5% was too high.

Mike - do you have some nice concrete benchmarks for correlating POA and win % for the one on the wrong side of the POA advantage? The positive POA side is easy and fairly linear (up to about 85% anyway). Is the negative POA side quite linear as well?

Dan absolutely no problem. I apologise for not answering you but it had moved on from that with Mike's response. I think it is more than just the probability of this happening as Mike has pointed out but also that it is possible for a hoplite unit hit in the flank to be able to inflict so many casualties and resist taking many itself. This just doesn't make sense. Maybe someone cast a magic protection spell. Thanks for answering.

[TheGrayMouser]

Thanks Mike! I understand the game doesn't care but it doesn't make sense. A unit of hoplites is charging an enemy unit of roughly same size and quality and hitting them in the flank. The hoplites charged in the flank are completely out of formation with no defence or training to withstand such an attack yet they not only win but inflict more than twice the casualties they incur. The attackers are in formation in which they have been trained, their morale is high due to their advantageous position and yet they fragment on impact. Sorry for harping on this but to me this is absolutely insane. Maybe this could happen once in a million years but it is happening too often. I suppose my integrity will be questioned by those that disagree but it has now twice in succession within one day. Do you think this is modelling historical events?

I think you are taking the "visual representation" way too literally in this instance. This game is not a simulation ( as if there could be an accurate one as we know so very little about so many things re ancient warfare)

So a flank is not a flank?

First, under what circumstances do you think a unit wandering about the battle field in a linear array would just be hit in the flank in the manner you describe? Its not like it was ambushed or something.
We allow it to happen as players want games where we get to move around little chess pieces and one of the fallout is scenes like you describe where a non pinned unit gets hit in the "flank" or rear" by an enemy it is clearly aware of.

Did you read the thread on turning your back to enemy after pursuing skirmishers? Where are those arguments now?

If it could threatened on a flank, even several turns away, no unit would never in real like put itself in a position to get hit in the flank/rear in the first place! But players can and will.

In this situation I view the flank bonus as more of a possible moral blow where the unit has to scramble to reorient ( perhaps not even the entire unit) , there MIGHT be confusion, or ranks out of order etc which would represent a bad result. As Mike pointed about , the chances of the attacker getting fragged is pretty darn low here so....

The odds are low indeed yet it happened to me on two consecutive attempts.

( you must have really hated Fog1 where literly only a few 6 sided dice determined the outcomes!!)

FOG1 was not perfect but I experienced fewer exceptional results in fact I rarely felt frustrated by FOG1 combat results.

So, 1) As far as I know I never contributed to the thread about pursuers turning there backs to the enemy so WTH has it to do with this?

2) Sure a flank is a flank... However you completely failed to address anything I said, i was just offering a quick "maybe this happened" to justify/explain a bad roll...

Let me ask you, how do you envision what potentially happened in "real life" in the GAME description of what you have an issue with?? A unit of lets say 50 men wide and 10 deep, all alone and unsupported just sits there and allows an enemy unit to waltz up and "cross the "T" " without doing SOMETHING ?? Even if it crossed the proverbial "T" ok.. so what happens.... The men on the flank turn about face, and now a 50 men wide front crashes into a unit 10 wide.... Sure i suppose the ends of the flanking unit could slowly chomp inward like a big PacMan but what effect would that even have? Would that part be impact or melee? How would that be any different than a column trying to punch thru a thin line? I dont know, I doubt its ever been described by any primary sources. I know you are aware of the Alternate GP mod which was been changing flank attackers to be less powerful for some of the reasons I noted here, primarily 90 degree flank attacks were likely not very common ... ( Oblique attacks for the rear are probably what ancient meant by flank attacks..)

3) I liked FOG1 mechanics too, the virtual dice rolls were fun and visceral. But the amount of players screaming about RNG ruing the game were legion!!

4) Good news for you is statistically this should not happen to you again for a long tine!

[kronenblatt]

Martin - sorry my numbers were off. I wouldn’t have posted if I hadn’t been quite certain... but still I had two bad errors on my probabilities.

First I thought double drops were caused by rolls of 3 or less (before the modifiers). It was nice living this delusion for awhile though as I didn’t feel quite so unlucky when it happened to me!

I also used a someone’s homemade calculator for the combat probability but I should have known 5% was too high.

Mike - do you have some nice concrete benchmarks for correlating POA and win % for the one on the wrong side of the POA advantage? The positive POA side is easy and fairly linear (up to about 85% anyway). Is the negative POA side quite linear as well?

Dan absolutely no problem. I apologise for not answering you but it had moved on from that with Mike's response. I think it is more than just the probability of this happening as Mike has pointed out but also that it is possible for a hoplite unit hit in the flank to be able to inflict so many casualties and resist taking many itself. This just doesn't make sense. Maybe someone cast a magic protection spell. Thanks for answering.

I wrote to Zan but may as well post here too. A point (well, rather my personal view, both in this and other games, in my private life, and in business) regarding probabilities is to not take their exactly presented values strictly, since these are just assumptions and guesses, and more importantly they're just probabilities. I built the calculator (the one Zan is referring to) step-by-step, based on the game's scripts and even though I did, I can't obtain the really low probabilities that the game presents. Maybe (likely) my numbers are off, but whether it is 5% or 1.5% loss or win probability wouldn't make a difference in decision making (at least not in mine), or shouldn't at least (in e.g. pricing of financial contracts; yes, then it makes a difference to be appropriately compensated for the risk, but not in deciding whether taking the risk or not).

5% and 1.5% are both very low probabilities BUT neither are zero; thus they can occur, even if very unlikely and whether 1.5% or 5%. It's only if you do a very large number of runs, that you can notice a tendency to difference between 1.5% and 5%, however not in an individual game or several games for that matter. So don't worry about whether the game (or a calculator) says 0.5%, 1.5%, or 5%: all are tail probabilities and all reflect anyway that an event is very unlikely (likely) to happen, but it's not impossible (certain) that it will. So nothing is 0% and nothing is 100%. (In my spreadsheet, my minimum probability is set to 5%, and the maximum 95% in order to never forget that.)

[DanZanzibar]

Martin - sorry my numbers were off. I wouldn’t have posted if I hadn’t been quite certain... but still I had two bad errors on my probabilities.

First I thought double drops were caused by rolls of 3 or less (before the modifiers). It was nice living this delusion for awhile though as I didn’t feel quite so unlucky when it happened to me!

I also used a someone’s homemade calculator for the combat probability but I should have known 5% was too high.

Mike - do you have some nice concrete benchmarks for correlating POA and win % for the one on the wrong side of the POA advantage? The positive POA side is easy and fairly linear (up to about 85% anyway). Is the negative POA side quite linear as well?

Dan absolutely no problem. I apologise for not answering you but it had moved on from that with Mike's response. I think it is more than just the probability of this happening as Mike has pointed out but also that it is possible for a hoplite unit hit in the flank to be able to inflict so many casualties and resist taking many itself. This just doesn't make sense. Maybe someone cast a magic protection spell. Thanks for answering.

I wrote to Zan but may as well post here too. A point (well, rather my personal view, both in this and other games, in my private life, and in business) regarding probabilities is to not take their exactly presented values strictly, since these are just assumptions and guesses, and more importantly they're just probabilities. I built the calculator (the one Zan is referring to) step-by-step, based on the game's scripts and even though I did, I can't obtain the really low probabilities that the game presents. Maybe (likely) my numbers are off, but whether it is 5% or 1.5% loss or win probability wouldn't make a difference in decision making (at least not in mine), or shouldn't at least (in e.g. pricing of financial contracts; yes, then it makes a difference to be appropriately compensated for the risk, but not in deciding whether taking the risk or not).

5% and 1.5% are both very low probabilities BUT neither are zero; thus they can occur, even if very unlikely and whether 1.5% or 5%. It's only if you do a very large number of runs, that you can notice a tendency to difference between 1.5% and 5%, however not in an individual game or several games for that matter. So don't worry about whether the game (or a calculator) says 0.5%, 1.5%, or 5%: all are tail probabilities and all reflect anyway that an event is very unlikely (likely) to happen, but it's not impossible (certain) that it will. So nothing is 0% and nothing is 100%. (In my spreadsheet, my minimum probability is set to 5%, and the maximum 95% in order to never forget that.)

It’s a good calculator and I completely agree with your perspective on low probability outcomes and how to handle it. But I shouldn’t use those numbers for hypothetical number crunching.

[SnuggleBunnies]

Having played some FoG1 before FoGII came out, the former definitely had far more outlier RNG events than the latter, thanks to its less granular dice system.

[Cunningcairn]

Martin - sorry my numbers were off. I wouldn’t have posted if I hadn’t been quite certain... but still I had two bad errors on my probabilities.

First I thought double drops were caused by rolls of 3 or less (before the modifiers). It was nice living this delusion for awhile though as I didn’t feel quite so unlucky when it happened to me!

I also used a someone’s homemade calculator for the combat probability but I should have known 5% was too high.

Mike - do you have some nice concrete benchmarks for correlating POA and win % for the one on the wrong side of the POA advantage? The positive POA side is easy and fairly linear (up to about 85% anyway). Is the negative POA side quite linear as well?

Dan absolutely no problem. I apologise for not answering you but it had moved on from that with Mike's response. I think it is more than just the probability of this happening as Mike has pointed out but also that it is possible for a hoplite unit hit in the flank to be able to inflict so many casualties and resist taking many itself. This just doesn't make sense. Maybe someone cast a magic protection spell. Thanks for answering.

I wrote to Zan but may as well post here too. A point (well, rather my personal view, both in this and other games, in my private life, and in business) regarding probabilities is to not take their exactly presented values strictly, since these are just assumptions and guesses, and more importantly they're just probabilities. I built the calculator (the one Zan is referring to) step-by-step, based on the game's scripts and even though I did, I can't obtain the really low probabilities that the game presents. Maybe (likely) my numbers are off, but whether it is 5% or 1.5% loss or win probability wouldn't make a difference in decision making (at least not in mine), or shouldn't at least (in e.g. pricing of financial contracts; yes, then it makes a difference to be appropriately compensated for the risk, but not in deciding whether taking the risk or not).

5% and 1.5% are both very low probabilities BUT neither are zero; thus they can occur, even if very unlikely and whether 1.5% or 5%. It's only if you do a very large number of runs, that you can notice a tendency to difference between 1.5% and 5%, however not in an individual game or several games for that matter. So don't worry about whether the game (or a calculator) says 0.5%, 1.5%, or 5%: all are tail probabilities and all reflect anyway that an event is very unlikely (likely) to happen, but it's not impossible (certain) that it will. So nothing is 0% and nothing is 100%. (In my spreadsheet, my minimum probability is set to 5%, and the maximum 95% in order to never forget that.)

Thanks I understand your point. Just to correct one thing the percentage chance quoted by Mike was 0.15% and not 1.5%. I have always liked "living on the edge" both in business and in sport but my decisions have always been calculated risks based on the knowledge of my own abilities and the situation I am facing. Which means that "living on the edge" is and was never really that threatening and therefore I have been successful or maybe just lucky. There are two parts to my frustration. Firstly it is the frequency of these <1% chance events and secondly and probably most importantly how they can incur. I believe this example shows that. Every time examples like this are brought up no-one actually addresses the point being discussed. In this case why has nobody said that it makes perfect sense that a unit of hoplites charged in the flank can inflict twice as many casualties as it receives and then fragment that opponent? The probability of it happening is secondary and the main issue is does what happened actually make sense.