Slitherine

How exactly is the formula for combat. The manual just mention this on a high level. I'd like to know it in detail.

catote wrote:How exactly is the formula for combat. The manual just mention this on a high level. I'd like to know it in detail.

Truthfully, I don't have a clue. I personally go more by experience. Growing up and through my 20's playing board wargame it's definitely an interesting change playing them on the computer. With boardgames you knew exactly the combat odds and movement penalties/prohibitions. However; like everyone I suspect there were rules that I interpreted and played incorrectly. Especially in the days before the internet and semblance of a forum came bi-monthly in the form of, "The General". With computer games on the other hand, the computer takes care of enforcing the rules, managing the map and counters. However; the exact formulas for combat and movement are buried deeply in the computer code.

I will give you an advice concerning the combat system - the higher the value of a given combat element (ground attack/survivability/whatever), the better .

The combat resolution is quite complicated and many factors affect the result. Most unit stats contribute in some way in addition to terrain, river, weather etc.

The calculator is actually simulating the battle 3 times and shows the average of those simulations just as the actual game battles. So the calculator should be pretty accurate. You will have some variation because the variation of results is quite big.

The core of the combat system is that you roll 1 die for each strength step you have + 4. So the range is between 5-14 dice. Each die roll can inflict a hit or miss. Because of that system you can in theory score from 0 to 14 hits with a full strength unit. If you e. g. have a 10% chance per die to inflict a hit you will on average inflict 0-2 hits with a full strength unit. The odds of scoring 14 hits is statistically very low if the hit chance is 10%. It becomes even harder because the combat result is an average of 3 separate combat results. So you need to get 3 extreme results in a row to end up with that extreme result.

I use the combat calculator as a way to decide where to attack. I usually try to pick battles where I can expect to inflict more losses than I receive. Sometimes I have to accept initially heavy losses if follow-up attacks are supposed to destroy the defending unit.

This is similar to combat odds table games where you try to bring the battle up to 3:1 odds or better before attacking. Then you know the worst result can be lived with and the best is usually very good.