Attack vs Defence...how does it work?? and some other stuff.

The attack-defence is a bit more complicated and it really needs to be adressed in-game. The manual gives some hints but is also lacking a bit.

You have blunt, crushing, piercing and magic attacks. Different armor gives different defense. A helmet for example gives protection against blunt damage, and always gives it's full defense against a blunt attack (meaning a helmet with 5 def would always roll a 5 against blunt attacks).

If that helmet is the only armor I'm wearing, against a piercing attack the def roll against the attack would be 1-5.

The attack roll is always between 1-Max I think, although I'm not sure.

Both attack and def values are also affected by strength and dexterity, and a sovereign with 20 dex wearing the 5 def helmet would have a constant def of 10 against blunt, and a def of 1-10 against a piercing attack.

Am I making any sense whatsoever?

Tomas

Are you sure about the "automatic max def against XXX damage type" ? I knew that damage types and resistance were implemented in the code, but I was thinking that they were not used yet.

 Is there somewhere in game where this info can be found to know what armors pieces are good against ?

So one point of dex gives 0.25 points of def vs. blunt attacks, but non vs. piercing attacks?

(I'd love a detailed manual for this game! :))

1 point of def over 10 gives you a 10% bonus. Basically stat modifier equals (stat - 10)/10. So if you have a 10 attack weapon with 15 strength, your total attack (if you're just using just the weapon) is 10 x 1.5.

You might be right that it isn't implemented yet, but since it said so in the manual I assumed it was in. Otherwise it's pretty basic, a def of 10 means you roll between 1-10 in def. So if you have 2 attack and are attacking an enemy with 10 def, you have a 5% chance to score 1 damage.

(chance of him rolling a 1 equals 10%, chance of you rolling a 2 equals 50%, and that's the only rolls you will score damage on)

Now if you had 20 attack, it's a whole different matter. If you roll between 11-20, you're guaranteed to score damage even if he rolls the maximum ten. And with optimal rolls here, you will score a whopping 19 damage (0,5% chance of that happening...)

(chance of you rolling a 20 equals 5%, chance of him rolling a 1 is 10%)

And as Sagittary pointed out, dex doesn't give direct defence, it uses %. Basically every point equals 10% of the armors def. So 5 point in dex would give you 5 def with a 10 armor item, while 15 dex would give you 15. With a 20 armor item the def values would be 10 for the 5 dex, and 30 for the 15 dex character.

Same with weapons and strength.

Tomas

I had a bunch of fights today and got the feeling it was soming like this. I had my king with a bow an attack of 9 and defender had like 3 defence. I have no way to be 100% sure of this, but felt like I "rolled" a 1d9 for damage vs defenders "roll" 1-3 defence.

Different damage types I have not considred how that works.

If an attack is of the same type as the armor is optimized for, then the defense roll is automatically the best number. If it's a different type, then you roll as normal.

ugh that explains the massive swings I have had in fights. now with units of more than one model do their swings happen individually vs the unit they are attacking's defense? If I have a unit of 3 guys with 10 each attack for (showing on the unit card 30) do they take one big 1-30 swing or do they take 3 1-10 swings?

I miss the system of combat in MoM if its one big throw of the dice. randomness with the potential for that much of a wild swing in result skews the combat a lot. I watched my one mace wielding lvl 3 soldier single handedly massacre a sovereign and his whole army today and was pretty puzzled how he did it.

So what happens if I've got both a helmet and a suit of plate? Okay, so a helmet is good against crushing damage and a suit of plate isn't. So... pretend the helmet has a rating of 8 and the plate has a rating of 5. What's my defense roll? 13 (the sum)? 8 (just the helmet)? 8+1d5 (the sum of what they'd do individually)?

So you got a bunch of damage values that were less than 6?

It's the first one, according to a thread from before the big patch. People were bitching hard about it being like this so maybe they changed it though, idk.

He probably just had a high defense rating that counters the army's damage type. If you always get max roll on the right kind of defense, then if your defense > the enemy's attack you will literally never take damage. Well, that's about as not random as it gets.

LOL!!

Hope he became a hero with that show of strength

yep 1-6 never higher then 6

Did you ever miss?

The game is still confuzing regarding this.

Also is there a seperate resistance roll? to hit roll?

Currently you can't hit for zero damage so I my guess is that zero damage is a miss.

Also fractional attack power is counted as well or the roll takes place only on ineger power?

My caster with an attack of 0.8 tried to hit a unit with 1 defence. Can I do damage?

I suspect in that case that the defender had the "right" armor against piercing damage, otherwise you should have been able to score up to 8 damage. A damage roll of 3-6 is alot pore possible thought since several different rolls can give that, so maybe you didn't get lucky enough to score higher.

I would guess in the plate and helmet question that the 8+1d5 is correct, otherwise it would screw up the entire system.

In regards to stack units with 30 attack, I agree it would be a lot better if they had three 1-10 rolls than 1-30, especially since this makes sovereigns and adventurers more important. They should have an attack rating of 3x10 instead of 30, and the defense value would still only be the single 10 and not thirty. This of course would make these units a lot less cost effective (since you still have to pay armor for all of them even though you don't get to add it up), but pretty reasonable considering someone who attacks this unit probably isn't trying to cut through all their armors at the same time. Maybe have a system where they get several defense rolls though, to make the armor worthwhile but not quite as powerful.

This would lead to the player actually having a choice between different unit sizes, instead of always pumping out the biggest available?

Tomas

I suspect 0,8 counts as one, although I'm not sure. As far as I know no rolls are made to hit, on the other hand you have the obscure "dodge" on some shields, and I have no idea what that does...confusing it is.

Damage is equal to attack roll - defense roll. So with attack 10 against defense 10, no special modifiers, it would be 1d10 - 1d10 => damage taken. Less than or equal to 0 is zero damage. It is possible to roll 0s as well as the max.

Another question: where is the type that an armor is "optimized" against displayed?

Nowhere Seems that bit never made it into the UI. It might be worth checking the equipment XML to see. I don't have access to it at the moment.

Well I hope this combat will be explained better at some point, would realy love to know how it works for sure.

I struggled really hard to like this game. But so far it has been excises in frustration. How does the stuff works, what is the logic behind it...even when we think, we figure the things out, design decisions just do not make sense. It is not only that all the math was not explained to us clearly by developers, I also think a lot of it needs to be redesigned from the scratch and it is a little too  late for it now. Sorry for rambling outburst, but I am really disappointed that 8 year old game of Age of Wonders is still a superior design.

Presumably it is the difference between chain and plate, and leather and padded, which are otherwise far too similar.

I have noticed a lot of "strangeness" during my short time with this game.  Playing the story of campaign mode of the game atm and have run into multiple battles where a group of archers (8) does a lot less damage the to a certain mob then just one individual archer.  The mob in question was pretty high on armor (22 iirc) and the individual archers had an attack rating of 6 where as the group of archers had an attack rating of 48, yet I have never seen the group do more then 3 damage to this particular mob while the individuals where hitting between 1-6 although they seemed to miss a lot more.  Against lighter armored mobs the group does insane damage while the individual still seem to do 1-6 damage.  Just trying to figure this out, but the math seems to be messed up somewhere.

You were rolling 1d10 for damage, technically (zero is a possible outcome, it's 0-9). And yes, the defender rolls 1-3.

Or maybe manual has obsolete info, and that thing with matching defense never made it into final build of the game.