First Strike Chance

[VoiceOfUnreason]

CR1 alone raises a Catapults attack strength to 6 against cities, and a treb gets boosted up to 8.8 attack against cities

Don't think about it that way, it will only mess you up.

1) The bonuses add, rather than multiply
2) And the effect is applied to the defender, not the attacker.

 

[Habitus]

Except Combat promotions of course which are always applied to the unit itself.

 

[bhavv]

Don't think about it that way, it will only mess you up.

1) The bonuses add, rather than multiply
2) And the effect is applied to the defender, not the attacker.

You dont really explain your points very clearly, I still cant get the gist of what you are trying to say.

If you add CR promotions to a unit, then it gets that percentage added to its attack.

CR1 is 20%, which is +1 for a Catapult, and +0.8 for a treb on top of its default 100% city attack bonus.

 

[ben-jammin]

You dont really explain your points very clearly, I still cant get the gist of what you are trying to say.

If you add CR promotions to a unit, then it gets that percentage added to its attack.

CR1 is 20%, which is +1 for a Catapult, and +0.8 for a treb on top of its default 100% city attack bonus.

The CR bonuses are actually subtracted from the defender, not added to the attacker.


So if you're facing a fully fortified longbow with CG1 in a city with 60% defense with a unit that has CRII, the longbow's defensive bonus is (25% [fortify] + 20% [CG1] + 25% [unit bonus] + 60%) = 130% - 45%. So depending on the difference in strength between the attacker and defender, combat promotions can actually be much more effective than city raider. For example, a maceman with combat 1 attacks at 8.8 strength. If he's fighting an archer, CR1 is going to reduce the archers defensive strength by less than 0.8.

It makes sense to do it this way so that higher strength units dont get a ridiculous bonus against less advanced units (which they dont really need, being already much stronger). If the bonus was applied to the attacker's strength, a rifleman upgraded from a unit with CR3 would attack a city with a strength of 24.5, which would be hilariously broken. Siege would likewise be far too strong.

 

[bhavv]

Ah, I never knew that :x

 

[2metraninja]

Just an example of how strong first strikes can be. In the MTDG2 pitboss we are currently playing, team Amazon was about to storm the heavy fortified Merlot Home Island. Merlot had like 40-50 mainly muskets mixed with some maces, LBs and such + about 20 catapults. Team Amazon had rifles, cannons and cavalries and to our estimates we were about to lose something between 20 and 30 units, no matter what. The time was pressing on us so we had to act quickly. But then we decided to wait just 3-4 more turns so we get MGs. 3 Quatro first strike promoted MGs was enough to soak up all Merlot units. We only lost 1 MG and she died after killing 28 Merlot units in a row in a single turn.

So, yes FS are powerful, especially when used with more advanced units than the enemy had