Block Dodge, Block Block Dodge...

Block happens when the attacker does less than zero damage.  You will see this a lot when the attackers att is equal to or lower than the defenders  def.  

Dodge is a function of the attackers acc and the defenders dodge.  Both of which are related to dex.

The game will show you stats.  Something like 80% chance to hit, damage 0-5 (3 average).  

I've seen 5 dodges in a row with a 90% chance to hit.

Generally you want your att value way above their def value.

I think those stats are just random text?

I mean, i have been playing this game (1.1) for a while now and i have given up trying to comprehend any possible connection between the stats and the actual units and combat?

I just had this issue in a big way. Was in a tactical battle with Capitar trying to take their capital city and my archers missed 95% of their shots throughout the entire battle. Shots on soldiers, sovereigns, everyone all blocked almost every time. The other units did fine but the archers, who had better stats than the enemies they were firing on were blocked almost every time. I guess I'm confused about how blocking works but these archers are stronger than the units they're fighting in all stats and are still being blocked every time. How come my melee units are hitting but my archers constantly missing?

what is the attack level of your archers?

This has been an issue for a long time in the in-game stats. I highlighted this back in December...

https://forums.elementalgame.com/401588

and in other posts since then without any response from Stardock. I think the only inaccuracy now is the To-Hit percentages but it would be good to get some sort of response back about it.

Hmm while I did start a new game and eventually noticed the potential damage and chance to hit.   It still does seem kind of wacky.   I mean I understand if a unit is stronger and when fighting a weaker unit the weaker unit will not hit me as hard.   BUT  come on.  I made 3 hero's all with better swords and equal defence to the enemy and they were able to take out 200 guys...  This should not be possible.   Dodging all the time and block all the time should not be possible.

Also the auto resolve is fail as well unless ur a sure win.     I was defeated many times with auto-resolve, where i than loaded the game went tactical and won just fine, no losses...

I really like this game.   My main rant is the tactical battles take to long, especially when guys don't hit most of the time.   They need options to let me use all my action-points on one attack to speed it up, instead of me just keep hitting attack, attack, attack, attack, attack.  They also need to fix the blocking issue.

i think there is a more fundamental issue here: how do you make a combat system where there are dodge mechanics and armour blocking mechanics (which come into play often enough to be relevant), without bombarding the user with loads of tedious dodge messages? most games that have thse kind of mechanics have an auot-attack feature. i can now see why they originally wanted to keep the game simple and have almost every attack do some damage. but at the same time, i wouldn't want to sacrifice this extra depth.

Is this happenign with units of every power, or does it happen more with powerful units than it does with weak units?

I am very new to Elemental and have not yet experienced the 3 guys killed 200 enemies problem, but if this is the case, it seems they need to add a "stamina" mechanic, that after so many actions, defense and attack begin to drop.  So many turns of "rest" that are not interrupted by damage or action can refresh those troops.

Maybe not this exact mechanic, but it is an idea.

I feel like this would be at least partially solved if the defense rating was decreased each time it 'blocked' an attack, for instance by attack/10, and possibly have a minimum value of defense/10. This would mean that, eventually, the armor rating should decay to the point where obsolete units can do damage - but the more obsolete the unit, the longer it takes to begin really doing any damage. A slightly more complex formula that factors in just how advanced the weapons and armor are would also help, and could even help distinguish between different types of armor (light vs heavy) and weapons (fast vs hard-hitting).

Such a formula might look something like this:

   Defense_Reduction = (Attack*Weapon_Type_Modifier*Weapon_Tech_Level)/(5*Armor_Type_Modifier*Armor_Tech_Level)

where Weapon_Type_Modifier depends on what branch of the weapon tree the weapon came from (cutting vs blunt, at minimum, and possibly take into account the type of cutting/blunt weapon) and Weapon_Tech_Level indicates how far up the tree the weapon is (I see this as a '1, 2, 3, ...' type number, but it could easily be something else, or be ignored; and this should not, in my opinion, be the warfare/conquest research level); Armor_Type_Modifier is dependent on whether this is 'heavy' or 'light' armor (could also indicate the relative durability of the armor, but either way for this to really matter there would need to be at least two distinct armor branches; also if multiple types of armor are on the defender, use some kind of weighted average based on how much armor of each type), and Armor_Tech_Level is a multiplier based on how high up the Armor branch the defender's armor is (if multiple tech levels of armor are involved, use a weighted average based on how much of each type of armor is equipped). I chose to use 5 as the basic divisor just because it seems to me to be relatively reasonable. If you wanted a somewhat variable amount of damage done to the armor each time, Attack could be the attack roll and 5 could become the defense roll.

Defense_Rating would thus end up as:

   max(Initial_Defense/10 - Armor_Tech_Level (rounded down to nearest whole number with a minimum of 0), Initial_Defense - Defense_Reduction)

where Initial_Defense is the Defense Rating of the unit at the start of the battle, and max() spits out the highest number given to it (ensuring that, eventually, a minimum

I also agree with RenegadePeon that some sort of overuse penalty should apply - whether 'overuse' is defined as uses of _ per battle or per turn. It doesn't really make sense that one soldier/champion is capable of dodging and blocking the attacks of some much larger number of enemies each turn - though I think the block issue would be better taken care of with a stacking defense penalty as the unit blocks more attacks.

joeball, I suggested the degrading armor idea as well, and I completely support it as a possible solution.

Other solutions include:

• Making armor resist a percentage of damage which softcaps out (similar to MMOs such as WoW)
• Adding an armor piercing mechanic available on certain weapons or certain troops.
• Lowering the effectiveness of armor (I personally hate this one, since it leads directly to the one shot kill gameplay of pre 1.1)
• Making different types of armor and different types of attacks.

Another solution is to rearrange the combat tech tree so that learning defense always also boosts offense.  For example, let's say that there are separate tech branches for each of: wood arms (bows, spears, shields), animal-based arms (slings, leather armor, bone knives or something), and metal arms.  Each would have it's own offensive and defensive boosts for each tech researched, and some boosts may be cumulative with ones from other techs.  For example, plate mail (which would be learned in the same tech as maybe longswords) may be more effective with leather lining than without, and leather hilts could make swords more effective.  In this model, metal arms is obviously the most individually powerful, so to balance it should probably have more research and building requirements up front before starting to get the desired weapons.  But spending the time to research more than one of the different kinds of weapons boosts things enough to be worth it to get the edge in a battle over a pure-metal army.

The problem with the current combat system is easily solved by adding a fatigue modifier, such that the more actions units take the worse their defense becomes (you could also hinder their offense, but that doesn't solve the problem) to such a point where they are so exhausted they simply pass out and have a defense of zero.

I made a longish proposal a while back on such a system in the suggestions area if you want to look at some of the mechanics.

I really like the fatigue concept as it is also something which magic can affect.  So rather than just fry everyone with a fireball, cast a draining cloud and drop their fatigue (or increase it, however you want to look at it).  Buff a unit so that they recover fatigue, or don't lose it as quickly.  Curse so that the rate is doubled, or so that they don't regain, ...

Lots of options, solves the stalemate problem, and generally makes things more 'realistic'.  [bad word in some contexts for a fantasy game, but I think tac combat needs realism to be interesting]