Post ridiculous battle outcomes / probabilities

[SCIkick]

So here's a decent example . . .

I just had a 97.1% attacker probability with a Lvl.1 paladin, a minotaur, and 2 light cavalry against 1 heavy infantry in a 5 wall city.

Outcome was the single heavy infantry killed the whole army, and almost the paladin except for his last hit point.

These types of outcomes are actually quite common, so some bit of explanation would be appreciated.

Anyone else experience this?

[KGB]

All the time and it's perfectly normal.

The 97.1% refers to the win probabilities of your entire stack (4 units). It doesn't say ANYTHING about how many units will survive or die.

Your battle numbers look like
P-28, M-33, L-13, L-13 vs 25

The chances of a 13 strength unit beating a 25 is about 21%.
The chances of a 33 strength unit beating a 25 is about 60%.
There are 5 total outcomes:
1) All your units survive = 21%
2) Pally, Mino, 1 Lt Calv survive = 49% (slightly more than double since Inf could be injured by time it reaches 2nd unit)
3) Pally, Mino survive = 88% (slightly less than 90% or else you'd be guaranteed to have 2 units live)
4) Pally survive = 97.1% (what actually happened)
5) You lose = 2.9%

So your outcome was about 12% likely (anything > 88) and should happen in about 1-8 of these type battles which is why you see it fairly often.

If you want to lose the fewest units possible in a battle like this you should put the Minotaur up front since he wins outright 60% of the time vs the 21% that a Lt Calv will win. Of course that also means you lose the Minotaur 40% of the time vs the 12% you lose him the way you did things now.

KGB

[Chazar]

I'd like to add that the game actually prohibits extremely bad luck. This is shown with little dice appearing next to the death-skulls in the Battle display,

Look to the number displayed in the battle dialogue called "Probability to Win".

It was probably at 89%. If the survival chance of your Minotaur had been above this number, the Minotaur would have always survived due to the rare luck prevention. However, 88% < 89%, so the Minotaur has 12% chance of dying.

[makeixo]

88,7% < 89%



http://abload.de/img/bildschirmfotovom2015ymjun.png

[KGB]

Don't feel too bad, I've lost on 88.9% before. More than once too. If you play enough games you will get some 88.9% losses.

The really sad thing is the battle simulation only uses 1000 simulations so it's very possible that just normal variance in the simulation results said you were only 88.7% likely instead of 89.0% in which case you would have been guaranteed to win!

KGB