question for the math guys

[kenc80]

ok I'm in a defensive struggle and I'm not sure the right answer:

I have a castle with max walls. It has medusa, RD, 4 Ghosts, Unicorn, Devil etc etc. Normally I populate with either Spiders or Griffs but I am also producing Sandies & GD's in nearby castles.

Is it better to place the 3HP greenies & sandies or stick with my spiders and Griffs?

Thanks in advance,


Ken


PS im playing at LP's chokepoint map if youre wondering why im bothering loading it up.

[smursh]

Sandworms(I assume that is what the sandies are) do not get the wall bonus so they are terrible for defense.

For the other units, I generally find the spiders will be best for defense here. This is because the defensive value, rate of production, and unit upkeep are more favorable for a long term defense. If you need additional strength the GD are going to be stronger than the griffons, but also more expensive.

In general both the GD/griffon are best for their ability to bypass frontline cites and raid behind the lines. The sandworm is best for attacking cities with strong walls since they ignore walls both when attacking as well as when defending.

[kenc80]

oh yeah i forgot about that wall bonus thing for sandworms. good call. whoops better get them out!

[Maze]

oh yeah i forgot about that wall bonus thing for sandworms. good call. whoops better get them out!

No need to get them out: unlike battering rams and catapults (attack) they don't ignore the wall for the whole stack but only for themselves (both attack and defense).

[Chazar]

I think this depends largely on what is attacking you:

• If the attacker brings a catapult along, then sandworms might be quite a good choice.
• If the attacker brings a unicorn along, then spiders are actually pretty bad.
• If the attacker brings anti-air along, then griffins might have a problem.
• If the attacker has plenty of ambush, then you are better off with 4 spiders than 2 green dragons.

[smursh]

The unicorn anti moral/fear bonus does not affect spiders. It applies only to units that give an army wide moral/fear bonus such as yeti or crusader.

[kenc80]

The unicorn anti moral/fear bonus does not affect spiders.

I think Chazar is referring to the Uni's terrain negate which affects Spiders in city not the fear.

[Chazar]

Exactly: from the perspective of an attacking unicorn, a 2T spider is no different than a 1T heavy infantry - both have 20 strength and 2 hitpoints. (WRONG, see below)

EDIT: Oops, I got that wrong! I was just about to file a wish that a unicorn's negate ought to be capped at ten, when I decided to look up the rules first. And indeed the unicorn only negates up to +10 terrain bonus - the icon even shows the number. So spiders defend at 30 instead of 40 in the city against a unicorn. So at 2 turns, the spider is still a better option than a minotauer or a sandworm in this case. (Now I need to check some recent battle replays why my spiders were doing so badly against those invading unicorn hordes - I really started to hate them unicorns and whished to banish them all into the sea I guess I must have been just a bit more unlucky than I had thought.)

[kenc80]

Thats right Chazar. Still -10 is nice!

[Chazar]

The more I think about all this all-or-nothing negate mechanism (not only negate terrain, but NegateAura vs Morale/Fear and NegateHeroism vs Leadership/Chaos) there more I think the whole system is wrong.

Is it right that a light cav is entirely reduced to a light inf in the presence of a unicorn? Is it right that a single pegasus is just as good as 4 pegasi? I think the route that we see with warding is the better one: a relative modifier. So one does not need these caps like on negate terrain. If negate terrain would just reduce a terrain bonus down to, say 25% percent, the light cav would still be a tiny bit bettter, and the spider would still be hurt badly.

Furthermore, having just one negating unit is a start, but having more actually helps. Say a single unicorn gets a 50% reduction and then two achieve 25%. Maybe the new warding calculation could be used for the negate abilities too!

Hm. Didnt the devs hint at reworking the entire bonus system? Do we have any news on that?