What has happened?

[Todzo]

I am pretty new to this, but an old hand at Warlords. Recently I had a 8 strong army with 5 giants, an elephant, and 2 sand worms in the hills. My opponent attacked with 3 units, 2 heroes, barbarian up front. Somehow i think he knew his uber Barbarian would survive. I am definitely in awe of that -- I pretty much assume he has his own calcuator/simulator. The fight was not in a critical location and he had other units nearby that he did not bring. I enjoy playing, and will simply know that there are better players out there who understand everything! I wouldn't mind if the in game army simulator worked. It would be hard to set up all the details (effects of magic items, etc.) and likely wouldn't be used that much. If not a simulator, how about some charts with sample battles and percentages? It would be great to know how risky some attacks are.

[Chazar]

Yes, comfortable calculators do exist. For reasons that I do not comprehend, the consensus here seems to be that calculators are prohibited.

I think this is a grave mistake, as it puts new players at a serious disadvantage. A new player has no clue what a unit's strength and hits and bonuses really means unless he has fought many battles. Due to inexperience, many of those battles will be lost, causing frustration and turning the new player eventually away.

A public battle simulator would allow experimentation to learn and train quickly without ruining a time-consuming game.

[KGB]

I think simulators that allow experimentation are fine so you can set up 2v2 or 3v3 battles.

I think ones that let you pre-check your battle against an actual opponent in a game are not. That's a HUGE advantage to the player who has the turn since the 90% rule can guarantee victory and tell exactly what can and can't be lost.

The worst thing the game ever did was post all the battle numbers for all the units. There should be some element of mystery and risk just as there is in any real battle. This would be really good if units didn't have fixed combat stats (ie not all Giants are 25 strength so some cities made Giants that were stronger based on city wall level so those levels other than 3, 6 and 8 had meaning) and you couldn't see blessings on units etc.

KGB

[Omen]

Any changes to the fight system sound WAY to risky to me

[smursh]

Fight system has been updated before, no reason it can't be revised again. I never like the 90% rule as risk also gives a chance to weaker players to win a game based on luck and gives hope when playing against a stronger opponent.

[KGB]

Probably the worst part of the 90% rule is that it lowers down to 78% or so for high end battles. This helps average out losses but makes it easier for stronger stacks/heroes to be unbeatable. Combined with Warding reaching 70% it makes it very hard to stop strong hero stacks.

On the other hand the rule is absolutely necessary for the early part of the game where you have SO few units and one bad battle can wipe you out of a game before things even get started.

What the game could really use is:

1) Reduce max stack warding to 50% from 70% so that Ghost/Wolfriders/Orcs would again have value against strong stacks.
2) Double the number of starting units and change the 90% rule to 95%. Let it lower down to 90% in high end battles (instead of 78%).
3) Hide all units in cities. In other words cities should be like towers. You can't see any units inside them. You have to attack to find out what's there.
4) Stop showing the numbers in the battle screen in ladder games. In non-ladder you can show every number and calculation as is done now so players can learn and experiment with the combat rules in 'fun' games or games vs the AI. But in ladder games the numbers that should be shown are the overall leadership/morale/fear/chaos ones. But just the final number (as in +4 leadership, +0 morale bonus for a stack) and not anything on how it was arrived at. Things that especially should not be shown are warding %, ambush %, negates, blessed units, 4+ hit heroes, anti air bonus and so on. Note that units that are killed by ambush would still get the ambush symbol.

KGB

[Chazar]

I quite like that combat system as it is: known, and with the extreme chance cut-offs.

However, I think ladder games should not enforce a single starting city, rather 3 starting cities and more initial troops. Gets the game going faster and softens the blow of an early loss, which is currently devastating and frustrating.

[KGB]

Not sure I'd like 3 starting cities per player. That would be hard for the map maker to assign and if the game attempts to randomly give 2 more you can end up with bad luck by being placed closer/further away from important parts of the map on your other cities. More starting units it seems is almost universally agreed upon.

KGB

[Chazar]

...if the game attempts to randomly give 2 more you can end up with bad luck...

No, not randomly assigning starting cities! If the map maker chose only 1 starting city, so be it.

However, why does the game prevent ladder games with more than 1 starting city, even if the map maker designated more than one starting city?!

If the map is unbalanced, then don't grant it ladder status - that is what the ladder status review is for!

I can imagine a balanced ladder map with one side having three weak starting cities and the other side having one strong one. Why does the game prevent such setups right away?

[KGB]

I believe you can set up games like you are describing (3 start cites for 1 side and only 1 for a different side) in scenario maps. There you can also grant as many starting units as you want too of the map makers choice.

Unfortunately those can't be ladder and are not a very popular format to play probably because of that (I wanted to make a map that gave a couple of starting Dragons and a horde of about 10 other starting units but realized no one would ever play it so I never bothered)

KGB