I understand the numbers mathematically, but I have a hard time getting an intuitive grasp of the effect of attack, other than "Higher attack = higher chance of critical hit and vice verca". Any general rules that can be concluded for use when picking hero bonuses, placing units or upgrading troops?





For example (these rules are made up and may well be totally wrong, but these are the kind of heuristics I'm looking for):



"Attack is most important when fighting units with defense at a level similar to your units own attack stat" (or is it?)

"+10% increase in attack is much more valuable if you have high than low attack rating". (is it?)

"You should use your hero to upgrade whichever your infantry has least of - attack or damage" (or the other way around? Percentage or absolute boost?)



If I ran the numbers I'm sure I would find some valuable trends, but I have no idea how to test a range of values like this. Anyone smarter than me? Or perhaps insights from other games with similar mechanics?

Assuming that this graphic (which I don't know the original source of) is correct:



http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=12821&d=1411080264



You do, on average, 40% of your rated damage when your attack is half the target's defense, 75% of your rated damage when your attack is equal to the target's defense, and 110% of your rated damage when your attack is twice the target's defense. Outside of that range, attack/defense is less important because it's only affecting the critical or miss lines, which move much more slowly than the fumble line.



In relative terms, that means that if you start with attack equal to half the target's defense, then doubling your attack = +75% average damage (75/40 = 175%). From that point, doubling your attack again = +47% average damage (110/75 = 147%).



So I'm concluding that doubling your damage is always better on average than doubling your attack, but attack is relatively more valuable when it's low than when it's high. Of course, looking only at average damage can be misleading; if the enemy's remaining health is less than 50% of your damage rating, then all that matters is whether you miss or not, so more damage won't help you at all.



How all that translates into equipment choices is another question, of course...

Thank you, brilliant response, this is the kind of thing I was looking for. The implications when it comes to low health units and equipment choices are much easier for me to get my head around in each case. So the role of "attack" is basically to get my expected damage up from the "fumble"-area to the "normal" area, which means getting a bit more attack than the typical enemy I expect to meet has defense. Once I reached a high level, each additional attack point or % is less valuable, and I can focus on other important stats. At the same time, each +1 damage is more valuable when my attack is high because it would otherwise only be +0,5 damage.



One things still bothers me: If doubling your damage is always better than doubling your attack, why is hero Army Attack Boost (+5 pts, +5%) less powerful than the Army Damage boost (+8pts, +10%), despite being made from the same amount of a higher tier material? (palladian vs titanium). The designers must have felt that attack was in some general sense more valuable than damage?

PaleBluePixel wrote:
Thank you, brilliant response, this is the kind of thing I was looking for. The implications when it comes to low health units and equipment choices are much easier for me to get my head around in each case. So the role of "attack" is basically to get my expected damage up from the "fumble"-area to the "normal" area, which means getting a bit more attack than the typical enemy I expect to meet has defense. Once I reached a high level, each additional attack point or % is less valuable, and I can focus on other important stats. At the same time, each +1 damage is more valuable when my attack is high because it would otherwise only be +0,5 damage.



One things still bothers me: If doubling your damage is always better than doubling your attack, why is hero Army Attack Boost (+5 pts, +5%) less powerful than the Army Damage boost (+8pts, +10%), despite being made from the same amount of a higher tier material? (palladian vs titanium). The designers must have felt that attack was in some general sense more valuable than damage?

You can get them both, so it's not an either/or situation. Also, maybe they don't want to devalue defense entirely by giving too many +attack options, whereas damage is a more independent stat and there are plenty of +health boosts to counteract it. The overall balance formula should take into account all stats, not attack vs. damage in isolation.

Also, take unattributed charts of hidden game mechanics in a recently-released game from some anonymous third-hand source with a grain of salt.

PaleBluePixel wrote:
Thank you, brilliant response, this is the kind of thing I was looking for. The implications when it comes to low health units and equipment choices are much easier for me to get my head around in each case. So the role of "attack" is basically to get my expected damage up from the "fumble"-area to the "normal" area, which means getting a bit more attack than the typical enemy I expect to meet has defense. Once I reached a high level, each additional attack point or % is less valuable, and I can focus on other important stats. At the same time, each +1 damage is more valuable when my attack is high because it would otherwise only be +0,5 damage.



One things still bothers me: If doubling your damage is always better than doubling your attack, why is hero Army Attack Boost (+5 pts, +5%) less powerful than the Army Damage boost (+8pts, +10%), despite being made from the same amount of a higher tier material? (palladian vs titanium). The designers must have felt that attack was in some general sense more valuable than damage?

There have been drastic changes to combat a week before release. They had to change all the stats of items and heroes and units. There's still some things that needs adressing. But the devs are well aware.

For instance there's two armors that provides the exact sam ebonus but one costs 40Ind and 10 Dust when the other cost 30 Ind.

this raises the question of how to deal with an opponent that has high attack. this usually means they have low to moderate defense. so then the choice becomes whether to go the straight forward route and up your defense and HP. or maybe go full offense and up your initiative and damage. having your attack near to what their defense is allows more of your damage to get applied per hit. having high initiative lets your units attack first, which allows you to kill units before they have a chance to attack and thus gain numerical superiority. anyway, this helped clear up some things for me.

Against ridiculous attack numbers, I would just go all-out HP, then as much attack as is necessary (no more than 2:1 if the chart is correct) and then high damage. Higher initiative is always a top priority too, of course.

Is this data still correct for "shadows" or as asked do you want more damage or attack?

This is unchanged as of Shadows, although T3 accessories, written about briefly in this thread, have been revised.

natev wrote:
This is unchanged as of Shadows, although T3 accessories, written about briefly in this thread, have been revised.

Yah and what was the exciting conclusion.. Attack is better?



I would take this as Amy Attack Boost 3 > Army Damage Boost 2

Well, the general gist is the same as in this thread: over a range spanning from 1:2 to 2:1 attack: defense, an equal percentage of damage is superior to an equal percentage of attack. There is a narrow range where attack outperforms damage, at around 1:1.7 to 1:1 attack:defense.



However, yes, attack boost 3 gives a much larger percentage boost than damage boost 2, and I would take the former.