[Bug?][1.0] Maul still overpowered

from Elemental Forums

In a prior patch, an attempt was made to nerf the Maul ability by applying a percentile penalty instead of a flat -15 to accuracy each hit.  I believe the intention was to reduce the chance to hit by 15% each swing.  What has actually happened, however, is that the accuracy is reduced by 15%, and then on the next swing, the remaining accuracy is reduced by 15%, and so on.  This means the penalty shrinks with each hit.  It also means that your chance to hit will probably never hit 0%, as it's on a curve.

For instance, say I have a Cave Bear with 135 accuracy (which, in my current game, I have several around that amount).  I'll count the swings in the first column, then in the 2nd column show you what the chance to hit will be for that swing based on the current percentile reduction, and in the 3rd column show you what it would be with the old flat reduction.  These numbers disregard the 97% hit cap since that is not the number used in the equation.

You can see below that, for swings 2-6, the bear does indeed have a better chance to hit with the flat reduction, but after that it has a better chance to hit with the percentile reduction, still having a chance (albeit very small) to hit even after 30 swings, whereas the flat reduction maxes out at 9 hits.  You might think that the chances of getting to 15 consecutive hits is very small, but my bears have done it more than once (never got close to 30, though).  That's something they couldn't do with the old system.

I think the intention was to have -15% from the initial accuracy taken off, which in this example would be 20.25 (limiting the bear to 7 hits), however if you watch the hit chance as the bear swings (keep your mouse cursor over its target), you'll see it update realtime, and you'll see the hit chance reducing slower and slower as it goes.
 

Swing Hit Chance -% Hit Chance -Flat
1 135 135
2 114.75 120
3 97.54 105
4 82.91 90
5 70.47 75
6 59.9 60
7 50.92 45
8 43.28 30
9 36.79 15
10 31.27 0
11 26.58 0
12 22.59 0
13 19.2 0
14 16.32 0
15 13.87 0
16 11.79 0
17 10.02 0
18 8.52 0
19 7.24 0
20 6.15 0
21 5.23 0
22 4.45 0
23 3.78 0
24 3.21 0
25 2.73 0
26 2.32 0
27 1.97 0
28 1.67 0
29 1.42 0
30 1.21 0
5,535 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Maul isn't overpowered they gave Bears EPIC horns to balance. Just Maul still is scary as hell but it kinda makes combat exciting as your at the edge of your  seat praying one maul will miss you. 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

In my current game I'm running a beastmaster, so all the bears are on my side.  My army of cave bears is unstoppable.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

From your chart a 15 chain hit should happen once every half a million mauls. That is strange you have seen multiple 15 hit chains, maybe the formula isn't working that way? At the point the two sequences diverge, we are already dealing with about 1/6 attacks, and the probability of longer chains is an exponential decline from there. It doesn't seem like it should make much of a difference, unless the formula isn't working right.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I actually suspect that the displayed hit chance and the actual hit chance are two different things.  The displayed hit chance lines up with my calculations (although without the decimal places).  However, they seem to go beyond the 50% chance mark more than 50% of the time, which really shouldn't be the case.  Of course, I haven't compiled evidence of this, as that would be a bigger undertaking than I'm willing to take on.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Maul seems just fine in my games. I never see a great many hits in a row (even as beastmaster with bears)

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top
Dodge is the antidote to maul. Monsters should have more dodge ability.
Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

I maintain Uteran is the strongest hero in the game. XD

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

I think Maul is currently balanced, but it is too easy to get an Accuracy of 100+ with the Leadership ability. It should be reduced to Leadership I - III and every level should increase the Accuracy of the army by 10, because an Accuracy bonus of 50 (5 + 10 + 15 + 20) is overpowered.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

I've previously noted that mauling a prone unit is a 100% kill, which seems over the top to me. Is this what you're seeing? It can happen quite easily if you have air elementals or an air mage, or troops that can get Bash results.

Regardless of how little damage the attacker is doing and how many hitpoints the defender has, you will keep mauling until they die, because the chance to hit prone troops is always 100%.

100% chance for the first hit + half the norml maul pemalty for each attack after that might be one way of doing it. Getting a lot of hits when mauling prone troops seems to "make sense", but I just don't think it should be a guaranteed kill regardless of hitpoints.

As to your original point, it doesn't really seem that overpowered to me, compared to some other exploits. Your actual chance of getting more than five hits is pretty small. If it was really considered that big a deal then you could deduct 15% or 15 points, whichever is greater. That way you would always reach 0% eventually.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

No idea if maul is op but my cavebear is my strongest unit by far. 

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

instead of reducing the accuracy, subsequent maul attacks should reduce the attack value, IMO. 

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Maybe that 15% reduction is why they keep attacking prone units for ever, since their accuracy is never dropped to 0.

I guess the calculation doesn't use the original value, but the current value for accuracy, which leads to a problem. A reduction of -15 though is not as nice as it may seem, as very high accuracy you will still get 15 hits or so. Unless they mitigated the accuracy bonuses that one may get. If their were a variable called total accuracy that never changed and one could remove 15% from that, which is probably the original intent.