Elemental Forums
Hi, it's 100% chance to hit prone troops. What I assume is a bug is that the maul penalty for later strikes is not applied. So in other words if you maul a prone troop you will kill them every time.
Prone units cannot dodge. I'm not sure if they can block either. It's an interesting issue. In theory a baby bear mauling a prone champion with 100 HP would kill him in one "turn" by mauling him for 4 HP 25 times straight.
If that happened to me I might reload my save. 
... until you consider the scenario of a prone Dragon vs a Bear Cub.
Then maybe a bit less so!
Now, if you have an attack penatly of 100% does that mean you actually hit?
With prone, I think the "no miss when prone" overrides all other considerations. With non-prone units, I think there's always the minimum 5% chance to hit, though I can't be 100% sure. 
Doh, I wondered that when I posted it but couldn't remember 
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The point still stands, being prone shouldn't be instant death to a weak maul.
How does that sound realistic? You don't think that maybe in the time it would take a cub to attack someone 25 times that maybe you could do something about it? Maul should have a max of 3 hits.
Just so this is no longer a theoretical. I've checked this to be true. I leveled up a Troll to level 25 and made a juggernaut with a staff. Pull of the Earth and then attacked with Jugg with mall... The 137HP troll, got hit for 6-8 hitpoints each hit until it died.
Soooo... what this does say is that the OP is correct in that Maul vs. Prone equals certain death. Thus, anyone playing Yithril, now has a very leathal combo. It is a good thing that if a target is immune to damage, then it counts as a miss (so no prone banshee maul infinite loop (I checked to be sure))
Recommendation, chance to miss exceeds 100% either an instant miss or a 5% chance to hit...
Here i agree - maul should have limit. I have Sion hero-panther who with three torch bearers has over 250 accuracy and takes on a dragon without a sweat...
I would put 5 though as limit, maul should feel powerful.
By the way, regarding mauling prone units, i was pointing it out loooong time ago.... I was a little ashamed though, b/c for a long time i was complaining about dodging of prone units
Anyway, i think being prone should just give a huge boost to accuracy of attacking unit, and when you miss the massage should be "miss" not "dodged". Practically speaking - a mauling unit gets so frenzied that eventually even misses non-moving target.
Maul should be limited to three hits. I think 4 is about the limit of successful maul strikes currently (on a non-prone unit) so this would be a bit of a nerf. However you could balance that by making each successful hit increase damage by 10/20%.
Thinking about this gave me another idea... A Tekken-style attack skill where the unit makes a series (3-4) of increasingly unlikely strikes for small damage all of which must land including the final strike that does a huge amount of damage. If I had my druthers assassins and warriors would each get a unique skill like that (with awesome animations).
The warrior would have a whirling dervish kind of spinning attack with each strike doing decent damage and reducing the opponent's defense, finishing off with a powerful final attack with low accuracy.
The assassin would leap over his target to attack from behind with a series of quick strikes finishing off with a kick that if successful would knock that unit forward one space with a chance of ending up prone.
All of which would require it to be possible to set a limit on maul-type attacks. I don't know if that is even possible currently.
Rather than nerfing maul, just give it a max number of hits of say 10. Enough that it may wipe lower level units, but won't attack forever on a decent unit. But 10 is still high enough that it won't nerf maul in a non-prone condition.
The 15% reduction in accuracy is enough, in situations were it matters. This really implies that Maul will last exactly 6 turns at most (7 if you count the miss) in any situation (beyond prone). The title shouldn't say miss when the maul finishes at 6 when they are prone, it should say exhausted.
In fact, after 6 consecutive attacks exhausted would be the appropriate term, because if it hasn't died after 6 attacks, I think it would be exhausted.
Although, I've been having fun recently just pulling earth and watching the jugs kill anything they attacked.
I don't know how large of a problem this is at the moment, nor do I think this situation will occur too often, but now that we pointed it out, maybe a certain AI programmer, might put it in as a special battle tactic for Yithril. Providing a very dangerous situation for mauling juggernauts.
I noticed this too (found this by searching) and it's not an Yithril special tactic.
Just do 2 things: Take Beastmaster and Earth Magic (you get a neat spell which knocks everything in a 3x3 area down, quite powerful even without maul actually) go get something with maul (like a bear cub). Then just go steamroll at least for all the time until you meet dragons, but by then you might have other means of taking them down anyway.
I later also had a mage character + 3 Cave bears which just steamrolled every opponent too, because AI rarely uses mounted units...
Of course Ascian gets pretty OP with this too...
Conclusion short, it's just ridiculously powerful, especially at the beginning.
I'm not sure if the 15% reduction in accuracy only applies for the base accuracy. I'm pretty sure I've had a Bear do more than 6 hits to a non-prone unit, so it may be that the 15% reduction is of the remaining amount.
Not sure this is too overpowered. If someone makes a prone-maul combo army, you can counter it.
Mounted units cannot be knocked prone. Defenders have a trait that stops prone. Boots of spider can be put on any troop design, prevents prone.
Making a prone resistant or prone immune army is not impossible.
Not to mention, good archers/mages will just focus fire on any dangerous maul unit. An entire army of juggernauts is a problem, but- isn't that a given, with or without this issue?
Yes it is 15% of the remaining amount. The calculations are done real time and this is partially the reason for the prone + maul = death syndrome.
If one were to balance the maul trait, I'd recommend the following changes 10% of what is remaining - 10 (flat). For a unit with 100 accuracy, it will cause 6 hits (before going to negative accuracy). For higher accuracies, you are looking at 400 accuracy 15 hits before negative accuracy.
I'm not sure if negative accuracy will mean automatic miss, but it is something that could be tested. Thus, this would "fix" the prone + maul = death formula
Effectively it will act like Maul usually does in a normal situation.
For a closer effect remove 10% of what is remaining and subtract 2. This will match pretty close to what Maul is doing for each hit as it is currently. But I'll let others play with the formulae
i think maul should reduce the attack value, not the accuracy. 20% less attack per swing; against targets with no armor, you'd get about 300% damage out of it (100% 1st swing, +80%+60%+40%+20%). with this mechanic, a good defense value would also be a decent protection vs. maul (since the lower attack swings at the end of the series will deal almost no damage vs. high armor)
i think that makes more sense than basing it off the accuracy stat.
I wonder if the attack will stop when it reaches 0 attack or would it just plink a guy to death when they are prone.... hehehe
500 hit point troop mauling bear doing 1 damage per hit... 500 hits later done.
I recommend a combination of the two. Lower attack and accuracy.
hehe yeah i guess it should just automatically stop at 0%. watching an infinite loop of "clink" "clink" "block" "clink" might be a bit frustrating after a few minutes if one of the attacks misses, it should probably just stop, as it is now. it would still be a very powerful ability but without the problems of super buffing it with extra accuracy from commander traits and "infinite" accuracy vs. prone troops.
Here is a Maul change --- if you want to lower the attack, go for it and uncomment the thing that I commented.
This should make it for units with 100 percent accuracy, it will hit for at most 6 times
Units with 400 percent accuracy, it will hit for at most 15 times.
The commented area will lower the attack by 1 each time, uncomment and change to your liking.
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