Warlords TBS Series
Spin-off Projects
Home Forum
Welcome,
Guest
|
TOPIC: Leadership, Fear and Combat
Leadership, Fear and Combat 12 years, 11 months ago #217
Is leadership really only 3/5 as good as fear?
In the game (.pdf) manual, leadership and fear are defined similarly, affecting both movement and combat. (The 'fear' text seems to be a bit messed up though -- I think the intent was to add movement to your own troops and take combat from enemy troops.) However, in the in-game help system (1.05b), only leadership matches what the manual states. Fear is listed as having no impact on movement and more impact on combat: leadership: +1 +2 +2 +3 +3 fear: -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 Is the above really the way the game works? (I looked through the various readmes and didn't see anything saying that 'fear' had changed so no indication that it should be different than the original manual states.) And if it is, since the combat score is so crucial to winning battles (and winning the game), doesn't this give an advantage to the evil races that get fear heroes? (A difference of 2 combat results in a 44% relative difference in # of hits.) |
|
|
Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 12 years, 11 months ago #219
The manual is messed up - Fear adds move. As far as I know Leadership and Fear are "equal opposites", i.e. the +Combat distribution for Leadership is 1-2-3-4-5. This actually makes Leadership a little better since a unit's combat can never go below 1, which means that Fear +5 is only fully efficient on units with Combat=6 or higher.
Note that the Ogre Hero also has Fear, so half of the Heroes have Leadership and the other half Fear. |
|
"Negate does not negate Negate."
--- KGB "Moreover, I advise that Daemons and Dark Elves must switch places on the Race Wheel." --- Marcus Porcius Cato |
Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 12 years, 11 months ago #222
Turtle,
The Manual is incorrect. It was produced before the game was released so the late change to Fear was never corrected in the manual. What is stated in the online help is correct. It does not add/subtract moves, it only reduces your enemies Combat strength. So yes, Leadership is only 3/5 as good as Fear when it comes to combat effects. However since the effect doesn't start until Level 3 (when you don't get a Leadership combat bonus) and there are very few units that reach level 3 (other than retinue) it seldom comes into play. Also remember the extra moves from Leadership are always in play even at Level 1. Those extra moves add up allowing you to reach cities/ruins faster and attack enemies without them being able to attack back. I am not sure where you get the 44% relative difference in hits from. Lets say you have Stack A and Stack B all equal strength (5) units in them. The strengths are 5 vs 5. The difference is 0 which equates to 50% chance for each side to hit. Obviously there is no relative difference in hits here. Now Stack A adds a Hero with +5 Leadership and Stack B adds a Hero with +5 Fear. The Stack A units are now strength 5+3-5=3. The Stack B strengths remain at 5. So the strengths are 3 v 5. The difference is 2 which equates to 41% vs 59%. That's a difference of 18% or roughly 40/60 hit ratio. KGB |
|
Last Edit: 12 years, 11 months ago by KGB.
|
Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 12 years, 11 months ago #223
KGB wrote:
I am not sure where you get the 44% relative difference in hits from. ... The difference is 2 which equates to 41% vs 59%. That's a difference of 18% or roughly 40/60 hit ratio. Back to math class for you! The 41% and 59% numbers are (as far as I know) correct. However, you can't just subtract them -- that is bogus math. Consider what happens over the course of 100 battle turns. One side will hit 41% of the time, or (on average) 41 times. The other hits 59% of the time, or (on average) 59 times. So, if (looking at averages) one hits 59 times and the other 41, then it gets 59/41 = 1.439 times as many hits, or about 44% more hits. (If you instead look at how many less hits the other guy gets it's 1-41/59 or about 30.5%.) |
|
|
Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 12 years, 11 months ago #224
KGB wrote:
So yes, Leadership is only 3/5 as good as Fear when it comes to combat effects. However since the effect doesn't start until Level 3 (when you don't get a Leadership combat bonus) and there are very few units that reach level 3 (other than retinue) it seldom comes into play. I didn't quite get this part. Could you elaborate? |
|
"Negate does not negate Negate."
--- KGB "Moreover, I advise that Daemons and Dark Elves must switch places on the Race Wheel." --- Marcus Porcius Cato |
Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 12 years, 11 months ago #225
Seppuccu, if you look in the manual ("Unit Abilities" section, "Leadership" entry) you'll see that Leadership levels provide combat modifiers of: L1=+1 L2=+2 L3=+2 L4=+3 L5=+3
KGB is saying that it's kind of like combat bonus = Leadership up until you hit Leadership 3. At Leadership 3 it diverges from that simplification because the combat bonus remains at +2 and doesn't go to +3 until Leadership 4. The combat modifier provided by Leadership is still stuck at +3 when Leadership reaches 5. Fear, on the other hand, provides a combat modifier of 5 at Fear 5. That's why Leadership is only "3/5 as good" as Fear for combat. I find the claim that "there are very few units that reach level 3 (other than retinue) it seldom comes into play" completely bogus. I park at least one hero on cities that are having to defend against AI attacks and (with me usually making the hero steal the last kill) they get ramped up to Leadership 5 pretty darn quick (though I really shouldn't bother beyond Leadership 4), and of course Leadership 3 even faster. It's not uncommon to already have a non-retinue Leadership 2 hero before the fighting really gets going (e.g., due to getting a hero offer). Subsequently, I spend most of the game feeling the pain of having only a reduced combat modifier (relative to what Fear provides). And these heroes are (intentionally) kept where the most battles are taking place, so it "comes into play" very regularly. I'm thinking of combining leadership/fear heroes even if that means the stack's morale drops by 3 points. However, due to morale-based extra attacks, it might not reach break-even until Fear 2, and net positive until Fear 3. (It's better if I can use sides adjacent on the wheel -- then the morale drop is just 1 point and net positive should be achieved with just Fear 1. But then curse might be nice to have too...) It also seems that the best strategy would be to level up the Fear hero before the Leadership one (or at least before going beyond Leadership 2) as the Fear hero provides more return on your investment. |
|
|
Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 12 years, 11 months ago #226
Turtle wrote:
Seppuccu, if you look in the manual ("Unit Abilities" section, "Leadership" entry) you'll see that Leadership levels provide combat modifiers of: L1=+1 L2=+2 L3=+2 L4=+3 L5=+3 KGB is saying that it's kind of like combat bonus = Leadership up until you hit Leadership 3. At Leadership 3 it diverges from that simplification because the combat bonus remains at +2 and doesn't go to +3 until Leadership 4. I did get the first part and upon reading one more time it's quite obvious what he meant. Silly me. So, Fear is clearly "stronger" than Leadership when it comes to pure combat and everything else being equal - but like KGB pointed out the extra Speed you get from Leadership is not to be taken lightly, and like I mentioned before Fear isn't fully efficient for weaker units since Combat can never go below 1. |
|
"Negate does not negate Negate."
--- KGB "Moreover, I advise that Daemons and Dark Elves must switch places on the Race Wheel." --- Marcus Porcius Cato |
Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 12 years, 11 months ago #227
Oh, and I forgot...
Turtle wrote: I'm thinking of combining leadership/fear heroes even if that means the stack's morale drops by 3 points. You should DEFINITELY combine Leadership and Fear heroes, the gain is much higher than the penalty, although like you said it might take some leveling for the effect to come into full bloom. Also, remember the -2 Morale penalty only comes into play if you have two exact opposite units in the group. So if you have, say, a Knight Hero and a Dark Elven Hero, you don't get that penalty. |
|
"Negate does not negate Negate."
--- KGB "Moreover, I advise that Daemons and Dark Elves must switch places on the Race Wheel." --- Marcus Porcius Cato
Last Edit: 12 years, 11 months ago by Seppuccu.
|
Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 12 years, 11 months ago #228
Turtle,
Turtle wrote: Back to math class for you! I have an undergrad degree in Math. It's possible I taught you math so I doubt I need to go back to class. Turtle wrote: The 41% and 59% numbers are (as far as I know) correct. However, you can't just subtract them -- that is bogus math. Consider what happens over the course of 100 battle turns. One side will hit 41% of the time, or (on average) 41 times. The other hits 59% of the time, or (on average) 59 times. So, if (looking at averages) one hits 59 times and the other 41, then it gets 59/41 = 1.439 times as many hits, or about 44% more hits. (If you instead look at how many less hits the other guy gets it's 1-41/59 or about 30.5%.) Now I see what you are talking about. It's perfectly legal math to say the difference is 18% since that's exactly what it is. I said the ratio was roughly 40/60 which it also is which is roughly 1.5. Your logic here though only covers part of what's important. You are just covering raw percentages to hit. It's important but it's only one part of the overall equation. The other parts are damage and unit hit points. Damage is 1 for a miss and 5-8 (6.5 avg) for a hit. So the average damage per swing math works out to: Avg Damage Fear = .59*6.5+.41*1 = 4.245 per swing Avg Damage Leadership = .41*6.5 + .59*1 = 3.55 per swing Now if you look at the races with Fear heroes their 1/2 turn units have either 8 or 9 life. The good/neutral units tend to have more life or archery shots to compensate (10,10,13,8+archery shots,dragons lack a 1/2 turn unit). So the average number of *swings* required to kill a 1/2 turn unit is 3. The extra damage isn't carried over from unit to unit. So in terms of balance everything is fine. The numbers are different on the 2,3 and 4 turn units because the strengths/hits vary so much that you literally have to compare unit to unit and race to race. What's important is to work out the average number of swings required to kill. So overall Fear and Leadership is a lot more balanced than you make it out to be. Plus, as I said, it's not until L3 that Fear becomes better in combat. Up until that point Leadership is better due to the extra moves. Even at L3/4 the difference is only 1 and not 2 in terms of strength. Despite the fact you can level up 1 or maybe even 2 heroes, the vast majority (90%) are playing a L1 and L2 for the entire game where Leadership is better than Fear. Note: If you have a Combat Warlord with Weaponmaster you can often level up more than 1-2 heroes but any other Warlord can't really do that. Most definitely you should be doing what Seppuccu suggests and obtaining a Fear hero. That's because a mated pair gives a spread of 8 (-5 fear, +3 leadership)on strength rather than 5 (Fear) or 3 (Leadership). And you don't need to be L3 to see a benefit, you get a benefit right away at L1 (A Fear and Leadership hero combined give a spread of 2 where a pair of Fear or a pair of Leadership only give 1 because the numbers aren't additive). KGB |
|
Last Edit: 12 years, 11 months ago by KGB.
|
Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 12 years, 11 months ago #232
Damage is 1 for a miss and 5-8 (6.5 avg) for a hit. I don't think so. I'm guessing average damage for a hit is actually: .9*(5+8 )/2 + .1*12 = 8.6 Avg Damage Fear = .59*6.5+.41*1 = 4.245 per swing Avg Damage Leadership = .41*6.5 + .59*1 = 3.55 per swing Fixing those (assuming my above guess is correct, and ignoring things like unit special abilities and an enemy unit not actually having enough HP to absorb the damage) gives: Avg Damage Fear = .59*8.6+.41*1 = 5.484 per swing Avg Damage Leadership = .41*8.6 + .59*1 = 4.116 per swing So Fear provides a bit over 33% more damage than Leadership. So the average number of *swings* required to kill a 1/2 turn unit is 3. First, for a 10 hp enemy unit, that result is based on your incomplete formulae. When critical hits are included that is not the case, and (using your "math") Fear gets to kill in 2 swings while Leadership requires 3 swings. (The same result is obtained for a 9 hp enemy unit, but not for an 8 hp one.) Second, applying average damage in this way is not mathematically sound and is therefore not guaranteed to yield correct answers. In fact, such answers are almost certainly wrong -- the correct average # of swings are likely going to be non-integers. If you want to compute the real average # of swings the math isn't difficult, but it is a bit tedious. And you don't need to be L3 to see a benefit, you get a benefit right away at L1. The concern was with the mixed-race stack causing a -3 morale drop giving the enemy extra attacks/hits and thereby offsetting the gains provided by the Fear +1. However, the math seems to indicate that even a full -3 drop in morale just doesn't impact things enough to turn the tide: Fear +1, Leadership +X, and -3 relative morale (against Leadership +X) = .55*8.6+.45*1 = 5.18 damage Leadership +X (against Fear +1, Leadership +X, and -3 relative morale) = (.45*8.6+.55*1) * (1 + 3% * +3 morale) = 4.8178 damage So I guess Fear +1 does pay off right away, to the tune of about 7.5% more relative damage (or more if you don't suffer a full -3 morale hit). |
|
Last Edit: 12 years, 11 months ago by Turtle.
|
Time to create page: 1.56 seconds