I don't fully understand campaigns... thus why I typically only play battles. In my current campaign, I attacked a maceman with atk 38 and def 35 using a comm with atk 43 and def 33.

Now, I know Mace are strong, third tier, units. However, I invested a lot of gold into making my basic troops strong. So I do not know why the numbers say I'm stronger... but I kill one maceman and lose 6 comms...

Btw, I have all the techs for atk and def.

A macemanstack of 10 should do at least 250 damage, Comms have 180 health Im surprised not all of them died..

Last Edited : Saturday, 19 May 2012 - 10:22

Macemen are a special case in Waronline, nothing else is like them. Since they always retaliate against attackers they can wreak amazing amounts of death on attackers. Your two hopes with Macemen are using ranged troops and Knights. Knights are their natural enemies and take no retal. In a pinch, use Macemen against other Macemen and if the job just has to get done no matter what, use Heavy Cavalry. Anything else, especially comms, just croaks when hitting mace. LOD is right, you're lucky any survived. And comms used to be far weaker units than they are today. They are stronger than basic troops now.

Use ranged.

I am just confused because I bought all of the attack upgrades... So my stack should be a lot stronger than regular comms... In fact, the numbers seem to say that my comms should've been at the advantage...

Comms have terrible health though...macemen have a lot of health. Thus comms are easy to kill, and macemen harder.

Yeah, What Oblivion is missing is the health. Basically when you buy melee units, you get health ( =hit points) roughly proportional to the gold cost of the unit:

Unit . . . . . . Gold . . . Health . Health/1k gold . Damage . . Damage/1k gold
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Spear. . . . . . 2000 . . . . 160 . . . 80 . . . . . . . . . . 40 - 60 . . . 20 - 30
Pikeman. . . .5000 . . . . 400 . . . 80 . . . . . . . . . 100-150 . . . 20 - 30 (double damage vs horse)
Maceman . 12000 . . . . 920 . . . 77 . . . . . . . . . 250-350 . . . 21 - 29 (defending - does damage every time)
Knights. . . .12000 . . . . 960 . . . 80 . . . . . . . . . 200-340 . . . 17 - 28 (takes no damage when attacking)
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Scouts. . . . . 2000 . . . . 140 . . . 70 . . . . . . . . . . 40 - 60 . . . 20 - 30
Falcs . . . . . .5000 . . . . 340 . . . 68 . . . . . . . . . 100-150 . . . 20 - 30 (20% chance of double damage)
Cavalry. . . .12000 . . . . 900 . . . 75 . . . . . . . . . 240-360 . . . 20 - 30 (+charge - up to 45% extra damage)
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Comms . . . . 3000 . . . . 180 . . . 60 . . . . . . . . . . 40 - 70 . . . 13 - 23
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Archers. . . . .2200 . . . . 120 . . . 55 . . . . . . . . . . 20 - 40. . . . 9 - 18
Arbs. . . . . . . 5500 . . . . 340 . . . 62 . . . . . . . . . . 50 - 80. . . . 9 - 15
Ballis. . . . . .13500 . . . . 600 . . . 44 . . . . . . . . . 120-180. . . . 9 - 13 (+5% damage per pop of target)

Maceman obviously kill commandeers in combat because they cost 4 times as much. They do over 5 times as much damage and it takes over 5 times as much damage to kill each 1 population.

Commanders get less health because of the attack bonus they give other units, and their ability to build buildings. You also get a little less health per gold for cavalry type units, because of their extra 2 movement points. Archers and other ranged units get less because of their ranged attack ability. But within each class the health per g.p. is roughly equivalent.

The money you've spent on bonuses will only modify that.
(+2% damage per point advantage if your att > their def, -1% damage per point disadvantage if your att < their def).

Last Edited : Sunday, 20 May 2012 - 05:33

So, to apply this to your comm attacking the mace:
Comm does 4-7 damage per pop.
So a 10 pop comm does 40-70 damage.
Your attack (43) is 8 higher than the mace's defense (35), so you will do 16% more damage (46-81).

The maceman has 92 hit points per pop. So one commander is unlikely to kill even a single pop of maceman, unless it has already taken some damage.

On the other side, macemen do 25-35 points of damage per pop. So a 10 pop mace will do 250-350 damage. But the mace's def is 8 less than your comm's att, so it will only do 230-322 damage. However, even the lower number is more than your commander's health, so it is going to die. Suggest you build some knights, or ranged units.

Last Edited : Saturday, 19 May 2012 - 22:27

So, Hambone, the attack and defense values convert into percentage of typical attacck? I'm not fully understanding you...

Yes, subtract the defense of the defending unit from the attack of the attacking unit.

The difference gives you a modifier to the damage normally done by that unit:

The unit with the higher value does +2% damage per point difference.

The unit with the lower value does -1% per point difference.

This seems silly. I was thinking that you could make a tier one troop better than a tier three troop by researching enough. But there's simply no way.

Back in the good old days when barracks produced a certain amount of troops evey turn, you got the same amount of defence /attack no matter what troop you chose to produce. 4Hc -6 knight-8 mace 16 squires- 18 pikes- 36 spear- 30 sword or 24 scout, with all the production upgrades. Back then you had a chance when using only lower tier. Not so today..

Last Edited : Sunday, 20 May 2012 - 13:34

All of the troops have uses at different times and conditions, it's silly to debate the relative merits unless you think there needs to be an adjustment of troop strength for some of the troops.

I mean, you want a cheap scout that's fast and more or less expendable for some jobs, you wouldn't want to throw an expensive unit in there. Archers are a cheap way to soak up the initial retaliation from a marksman before you paste them with your good ranged, and so on.

i'm not suggesting changes, i just didn't know how to play camps :p

not thinking i'll be que'ing for more

I think the troops are pretty well balanced, but I think the high level troops are better value, because they do more damage AND have more health.

This is especially true of the maceman, because he always does damage when defending. The other high level troops can be overwhelmed by attacking with lots of smaller troops (esp if you start with some small damaged stack with only a couple of pop left).

For example, if you have a one pop stack of swordsman and you attack a 10 pop knight, your swordsman will die. But he will have given his life to use up all of the knights defensive damage. (200-340, plus def bonuses). This then allows all your other stacks to attack that knight and take no damage whatsoever.

There is one mod that would reduce the comparative advantage of macemen and give every troop a chance of doing sensible damage when defending:

When an attacking stack is destroyed by defensive damage, store the unused damage (unmodified) and use it against subsequent attackers (modified as appropriate for attacking troop type). If the

For example, a 10 pop knight is attacked by a 5 pop scout with 70 health. For the sake of simplicity, we'll assume the scout has +10 att bonus (from tech or a commander), so 14 attack vs 14 defense:

Knight does 200-340 damage (let's say the random number generator comes up with 270). Modified by 70% (scissors vs rock), this comes down to 189 damage. But that is still way more than the scout's health. So it dies, leaving 119 (modified) damage unused. If we remove the modifiers from it, it is 170. We store that, to be used against the next attacker.

If the next attacker is a 10 pop commander, with 180 health, the commander will have take 170 damage, leaving it with 1 pop, 10 health. But all the damage has now been used up, so subsequent attackers can attack without being damaged (the knight has been overwhelmed by repeat attacks).

If the next attacker was instead a 10 pop spearman (160hlth), the 170 damage would be modified up to 140% (scissors vs paper) to 238, leaving 78 damage (56 without modifiers). So it would take a 3rd attacker before the damage is all used up.

That's the basic principle. But Requiem could modify it. One thing we should definitely do is reduce the damage done to subsequent attackers if the first attackers kill some pop. So, if the initial scout had killed 1/10 pop of the knight, we should remove 1/10 of the damage from what is left over. (170 - 17 = 153).

When I finally get round to writing a game, I would give the unit a direction they are facing. The first unit attacking would fix that direction. Then, subsequent attacks would modify the damage done (and received) by the attacking units. So, if the second unit to attack attacked from the same direction as the first unit, no modifier (other than from the bloody remains). On the other hand, if the unit was completely surrounded and the unit attacked from the opposite direction, it would do double damage and take 50% (or less, maybe 25%) damage from the defender. Attacks from the flank would be in between the two (maybe 50-60% for rear flank, 80% for front-flank).

This change would encourage players to use proper defensive lines, to protect unit flanks. Isolated powerful units in the open could be overwhelmed by smaller units a bit easier (despite the changes to unused damage).

Last Edited : Sunday, 20 May 2012 - 18:12

We had a similar system once. It was also possible for troops to attack more than once until they used up the attack value.
I think it is ridiculous that 10 well armored knights shold not be able to kill more than, for example,one onepop spearman and then have to rest for the rest of the day. That they can walk a certain distance 7 only if they don't take a peebreak on route is also strange. They should be able to move those 7 steps in any order they like, 1+3+2+1 for example.

Last Edited : Sunday, 20 May 2012 - 23:16

well to my understanding the difference between a macemen and commanders is that commanders are a basic troop and macemen are a expert troop your lucky to have one 1 commander left in your stack of commanders