A combat oddity

[beorn]

I have noticed that, very often, in a stacking containing disciples of leaves (strength 3) and hunters (strength 4), a lizardman will kill a disciple of leaves.

Not sure if it always happens, but I have seen it happen very frequently, and it bugs me because I see no rule that explains it.

Lizarmen have no assassin ability. (If they did, then why have an upgrade to lizardman assassin.)

It does not seem dependent on promotions of units, since I have seen it happen when both disciple and hunters were level one, but also when the hunters had promotions.

Anyone able to explain this?

 

[Vulcans]

did the disciples have any promotions?

 

[xanaqui42]

Ignoring Marksman and Guardsman, the predominate things to determine the defender are the current strength and first strikes (assuming that the attacker isn't immune). Other things that impact it are the amount of cargo, collateral damage, interception probability, and the promotions Guardsman, Summoned, and Hero. UnitCombat type Adept also affects this.

However, in your case, it seems that the only thing that should impact this are the current strengths. So my guess would be either that the Disciple of Leaves has enough combat promotions to be stronger, or that the Hunter is wounded enough that it's weaker than the Disciple of Leaves.

The former would require that the Disciple has 2 combat promotions more than the Hunter; the later would require that the Hunter is down to less than half its HP. Of course, it could be a combination of the two, and it's possible that the Disciple of Leaves is Elven, and the units are in the Forest, which would change this marginally.

 

[beorn]

Well, this happens most of the time, but the two times that provoked me to post, both of th units were unpromoted and undamaged.

I'm starting to think it is some kind of bug. Especially since I am now noticing that it happens with some animal attacks too.

 

[Sarisin]

Well, this happens most of the time, but the two times that provoked me to post, both of th units were unpromoted and undamaged.

I'm starting to think it is some kind of bug. Especially since I am now noticing that it happens with some animal attacks too.

I've seen something likewise unexplainable (no one did when I posted before). I approached a stack of 6-7 units including Diseased Corpses, Ritualists, Sect of Flies, etc., with Basium who was loaded with promotions. The defender in the stack was a Savant, or whatever the lowest disciple unit of AV is. No promotions.

In this case I wanted to take out the tough defenders. Why the Savant? Obviously, Basium did not have the Marksman promotion.

Also, I still cannot figure out why barb goblins defend against Larry, Moe and Curley when they are on a tile with barb warriors with Bronze weapons. The hill giants did not have Shock and the warriors were clearly the stronger units.

 

[Draconian]

If my memory serves me right, goblins get a bonus vs animal units like scouts. That would explain why they are chosen against hill giants.

About Basium, if he has Shock II, Demon and Undeadslaying, etc he might actually get such a big bonus against Sects of Flies or Diseased Corpses, that Savants are stronger against him.

And to the OP: Those hunters that do not defend, are they loaded with hawks?

 

[Vulcans]

yes, combat etc changes things a lot. i often have some hero with cover2, and want to knock out those pesky fortified garrison archers to open the way for my stack, but the archers never want to defend against my hero, so instead i only kill their reserves and not the archers. I’ve found that sometimes if i want my good unit to knock out the archers i purposely don't upgrade him with cover so that the archers will still defend against him, and then my weaker units won't have to deal with the garrison archers.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

It was a normal lizardman, not a lizardman assassain, right?

 

[xanaqui42]

If someone could create a simple way to reproduce these problems via world-builder, I'd be happy to look at why the relevant code is acting as it is (and report on my results here). If I think it's a defect, I'd proceed accordingly (fix it in my mod, then report it to the main defect thread).

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Are you positive that the disciple had strength 3, not strength 3 +1 holy from an altar of the luonnatar?

 

[Sarisin]

If my memory serves me right, goblins get a bonus vs animal units like scouts. That would explain why they are chosen against hill giants.

About Basium, if he has Shock II, Demon and Undeadslaying, etc he might actually get such a big bonus against Sects of Flies or Diseased Corpses, that Savants are stronger against him.

And to the OP: Those hunters that do not defend, are they loaded with hawks?

Thanks for the comments. Hill Giants are treated as animal units? I guess I should have known that as barb Lizardmen are pretty good at picking them off.

I still think even with that bonus, the Warrior with bronze weapons would be stronger than the goblin. The Stooges were Hidden Nationality, but that shouldn't make any difference when computing the strengths, should it?

In my particular example, I can tell you Basium had none of those promotions. He had plenty of XP and promotions, but I just hadn't chosen those over other available ones at that point.

That only came up once and would be hard to replicate, however, I can say that whenever I get Pact of the Nilhorn and get the Stooges, I have that problem of goblins defending instead of Warriors. I guess it can be confusing though, as I recall those wonderful combat odds say 100% against either unit. Maybe that is why the goblin defends instead of the Warrior? Same odds and the lesser unit defends

 

[daladinn]

i typically never get supprised on who is defending. a while back though they reduced the bonus that scouts get vs animals. my question is whether or not hte goblin was overlooked?

things to keep in mind...

-some modifiers effect attackers str
-some modifiers effect defenders str

 

[onedreamer]

Thanks for the comments. Hill Giants are treated as animal units? I guess I should have known that as barb Lizardmen are pretty good at picking them off.

I still think even with that bonus, the Warrior with bronze weapons would be stronger than the goblin. The Stooges were Hidden Nationality, but that shouldn't make any difference when computing the strengths, should it?

I think you are correct but it's a close call because Goblins have a "vs" bonus, which is applied to the opponent's strength. Since the opponent's strength is a Giant this bonus becomes huge. For the warrior it was strength 4 vs stength 7, for the goblin it was strength 2 vs strength 4,375. So the warrior would be a better defender, but in case the goblin was overlooked as Daladinn has supposed, then it would be goblin 2 vs giant 3.5. So it would be the exact same chances.

Btw I've seen cases in which the defender was definitely the wrong one, but I can't remember anything specifically. It happened quite often, but I haven't played FFH since BtS was released so I can't remember

 

[Sarisin]

Btw I've seen cases in which the defender was definitely the wrong one, but I can't remember anything specifically. It happened quite often, but I haven't played FFH since BtS was released so I can't remember

Sorry for the off-topic, here, onedreamer, but I am curious as to why you stopped playing FFH since BtS was released? Does this mean you are playing BtS INSTEAD of FFH? I tried several games of BtS including the FFH scenario and just found it not very interesting ... although it did tend to move faster and have less combat glitches (same game settings for both).

Anyway, I have always enjoyed reading your posts on this forum.

 

[onedreamer]

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