Defending cities against hero stacks

[makeixo]

I think at some point hero stacks get too strong.

http://abload.de/img/bildschirmfotovom20158fs1z.png

I lost in 2 turns (2 cities) about 45-50 units. My opponent lost 4 units. It doesnt make sense to me if I cannot defend cities without a hero stack.

[gil]

get a ghost or a grand archon or a devil

[Chazar]

The Attacker hat 45 GroupWarding, so even two Ghosts would not have changed anything. Neither would have the devil, given that most attackers were maxed out already.

I support the perception that the strength difference is a little bit too pronounced. Look at the little dice icons, showing that this was the best battle outcome the defender could have hoped for!

I think that the Battle Dice should be increased from 100 to 120 - or at least be made configurable for players (its easy to implement anyway).

A higher dice means a tiny bit more randomness for ordinary unit vs unit battle. Paired with the reduced randomness for entire battles overall (due to the cut-off by the thing formerly known as the 90% rule (tfka9p), which is now down to 79%), this would lead to more interesting games.

Currently, 42% of all possible battle outcomes are banned in big battles due to the huge cut off with the little dice icon. That is pretty big and makes it outright impossible for an HInf to be lucky every once in a while. Even an Orc's ambush becomes entirely useless, as the 6% are below the threshold. Still, the tfka9p rule _is_ a good idea: we don't want to see 3 HInfs all get lucky at once and kill 2 spiders and a barbarian, but a small chance would not be too bad.

Consider my WarCup 2013 half-final against piranha:
piranha outproduced me by a lot, and produced quality troops. However, I still won because of my entirely invincible hero stacks. I get that having this possibility is the idea, so that players have a chance to counter a production lead. However, I think that it is currently just a little bit too exaggerated, after the revision of the 90% rule.

[gil]

hmm Chazar

about ghost there are 23 units in defence if you add 9% ambush to each you kill an average of 2 more units

about devil that's removing +5 from dragon and -5 from medusa and giving a -5 to enemy so total of +5 to your units and -10 to his units and that's an average of 4 more dead units

[KGB]

Gil is right that 2 Ghosts would matter on large masses like that. Even a few Orc defenders would help too because of the +6 more they get. Killing 2-3 more units in that super stack would be huge because it would slow it down and make it vulnerable.

In the mid to late game Hv Inf are useless because they can't stop the super stacks. At that point you have to switch to Orc defenders for the chance of ambush kills esp when a Ghost or 2 is present.

Increasing the dice from 100 to 120 has VERY little effect. I simulated it once and it's maybe 1-2% difference in the battle outcomes. Even changing the dice to 1000 makes less than 2% difference. The reduction of the 90% rule to 79% more than overcomes any dice change. 79% has just removed way too many outcomes in battles like these. I still think the game should start at 95% and go down to 85%.

KGB

[smursh]

It is more than just the heroes. Although I can't see all the units he had mostly 3-4 turn units against a mix of 1-2 turn units(can tell he had a griffon and catapult at least). Calculating it out he had close to the same amount of turns to produce his force as you did. That means equal forces until the heroes are added to tip the balance. Stronger forces should be able to slaughter weaker or why have the strong units?

[KGB]

Gryphon/Elemental/Catapult were the 3 units.

I agree with Smursh about the concept that better units should be able to form super stacks to defeat hordes of fodder units. Nothing wrong with that at all.

I think the problem is with the change to the 90% rule. The *idea* behind the change was to do more average damage to stronger stacks. But in reality it makes stronger stacks more invincible because they are almost impossible to kill in a battle and if they survive all that happens is that the player reloads the stack with follow up units and in cases of hero stacks those stacks may be stronger than ever due to leveling up.

KGB

[SoulMan]

strong heros are supposed to be strong. I don't see any problem here.

About 90% rule - i think all is ok or i would make it dependent to game progress. For example it would be 77% rule (max 66% in theory) at turn 1, then becoming lineary higher so it reach 89% at turn = K factor of the map, and 111% (totaly disabled in all cases) at turn about K*4. This change will make game more fair at the most important moments - at the beginning (it's really sad to lose hero stack having 88% vs neutral city). And it will make the game more dependent on luck if it will take a very long time which is actually good rule we can meet in many popular games (for example: poker).

[Chazar]

While I really love SoulMans's suggestion about a dynamic luck reduction as the turn number increases, I also think it is not a good idea to implement it since it isn't very transparent and might heavily confuse new players. As it is, few players seem to be able to interpret the little dice icons correctly - well, at least the icons visualize the 90% rule idea somehow and tell you that this was the best outcome the poor defender could hope for.

About the effect of Ghosts and Dice Size, here are the survival chances for the attackers:

As is: Medusa had 83.6% chance, Dragon 95.5%; so Medusa could never die (>79%)
Replacing last two units with ghosts: Medusa 36.1%, Dragon 58.1% and Archon 76.9%
Changing Die to 120: Medusa 61.5%, Dragon 83.6% and Archon 93.7%
Changing Die to 130: Medusa 53.6%, Dragon 77.5% and Archon 90.1%
Changing Die to 150: Medusa 41.4%, Dragon 67.1% and Archon 83.3%
Changing Die to 175: Medusa 33.5%, Dragon 58.1% and Archon 76.8%
Changing Die to 200: Medusa 27.5%, Dragon 51.3% and Archon 71.1%
And for completeness, changing Die to 120 and also replacing last 2 defenders with ghosts:
Medusa 21.8%, Dragon 41.7% and Archon 62.5%

So I have to admit that the ghosts really have the stronger effect, despite the 45 group warding.

Nevertheless I think that the cutoff at 79% is a bit too much for my taste, and the 120 die would be a better offset than changing that rule again, as it would reintroduce some randomness between two melee units, while still keeping the overall battle outcome in check (allowing for single unit to get lucky once in a while).

[gil]

The concept of an automatic XXX% protection that you keep receiving every turn without paying anything for it is a game killer

if we are playing strategy then any in game should have a pros and cons