[Question] How much does damage reduce attack?

[Ben Jones the Newb]

I can't see the health bars clearly enough to calculate how much damage reduces attack strength. Suppose you've got one turn against a unit with low health, and a unit with full health. All else being equal, would you take less damage by killing the unit with lower health, or by attacking the other unit and reducing its health to 1 or 2?

 

[Agent327]

If you kill the unit with lower health you will not get damage at all.

 

[wolfhoundtoo]

Killing an enemy unit is better than wounding a bunch.

 

[Agent327]

Killing an enemy unit is better than wounding a bunch.

Unless they have "Last Stand" ofcourse.

 

[Ben Jones the Newb]

If you kill the unit with lower health you will not get damage at all.

That didn't really answer the question, but thanks for replying. Wolfhoundtoo gave a better answer.

 

[Agent327]

That didn't really answer the question, but thanks for replying. Wolfhoundtoo gave a better answer.

It did answer the question. A killed unit can not retaliate, so it can never do any damage.You can never get damage from a killed unit. Never!

 

[wolfhoundtoo]

It did answer the question. A killed unit can not retaliate, so it can never do any damage.You get never get damage from a killed unit. Never!

I agree it did answer the question but unfortunately, not in a way that was especially helpful to the person asking the question since it wasn't quite a straight forward response to the question.

Your last stand response was correct also but if he didn't know what that was already he'd of had to go look that up which most people asking questions would of decided wasn't all that helpful either.

 

[Agent327]

I agree it did answer the question but unfortunately, not in a way that was especially helpful to the person asking the question since it wasn't quite a straight forward response to the question.

It actually was a straightforward answer to the question asked. He wanted to know when you would take less damage and that is by killing the wounded unit. That exactly answers the question. You on the other hand say it is "better" to kill than to wound a bunch. Not something that was asked, cause the question was about taking damage and as I have shown, there are cases when it is not "better" at all.

 

[wolfhoundtoo]

It actually was a straightforward answer to the question asked. He wanted to know when you would take less damage and that is by killing the wounded unit. That exactly answers the question. You on the other hand say it is "better" to kill than to wound a bunch. Not something that was asked, cause the question was about taking damage and as I have shown, there are cases when it is not "better" at all.

And if you'd spent the same amount of time you've spent responding to me to expand on your answer i wouldn't of bothered to post more information to expand on your post. Pretend people asking questions don't know the answer.

 

[Agent327]

And if you'd spent the same amount of time you've spent responding to me to expand on your answer i wouldn't of bothered to post more information to expand on your post. Pretend people asking questions don't know the answer.

My answer that killed units can not do damage was spot on to the question asked.
Your answer that killing is better than wounding is an answer that is not always right and it doesn't the question asked, but if you think you gave the better answer fine by me. Not worth the time to argue this.

 

[WearyBrawler2992]

I don't think it is necessarily true that killing a unit is always better than wounding multiple units. I have found when facing 4 artillery units that hitting all four and taking them down to 1-2 dots of health will mean that they in turn will usually only do 1 dot of health in damage. Killing 2 units and leaving 2 at full health, those 2 do more than 4 dots of damage. This has saved units of mine that were damaged or limited the loss to one unit and little damage to the next they move on to. This has been my experience at least through PME, your mileage may vary.

Of course this only matters if you are manually fighting since the AI goes for the kill every time.

 

[Agent327]

I don't think it is necessarily true that killing a unit is always better than wounding multiple units. I have found when facing 4 artillery units that hitting all four and taking them down to 1-2 dots of health will mean that they in turn will usually only do 1 dot of health in damage. Killing 2 units and leaving 2 at full health, those 2 do more than 4 dots of damage. This has saved units of mine that were damaged or limited the loss to one unit and little damage to the next they move on to. This has been my experience at least through PME, your mileage may vary.

Of course this only matters if you are manually fighting since the AI goes for the kill every time.

Perfectly true, but it does not adress the question. Qustion is: " Suppose you've got one turn against a unit with low health, and a unit with full health. All else being equal, would you take less damage by killing the unit with lower health, or by attacking the other unit and reducing its health to 1 or 2? "

So you are facing two units. One damaged, one not. Attack the healthy unit and you still face two units. Kill the damaged unit and you will only face one unit. So when it comes to damage it is better to kill the damaged unit in that situation.

You are talking about facing more than two units. That changes the situation.

 

[Ben Jones the Newb]

I'm not interested in arguments, just trying to get a straight answer to a straight question.

It did answer the question. A killed unit can not retaliate, so it can never do any damage.You get never get damage from a killed unit. Never!

If you think "dead units can't retaliate" is a helpful answer, I must have failed to ask an intelligible question. I'll rephrase the question about strategy. Ignoring retaliation and variables except health, is it always true that two units with low health can deal more damage than one that's uninjured? WearyBrawler299 understood the question and gave a useful, albeit limited, answer.

I'm more interested in how much less damage an injured unit dishes out. WearyBrawler299 touched on this, but I'm looking for a direct, quantifiable answer. E.g., does taking 1/10 damage taken reduce damage dealt by 10%? Does it depend on the unit type? Does taking damage reduce damage dealt in a linear fashion? If not, is the range of damage reduction too great (i.e., is the correlation between damage taken and reduced damage dealt too weak) to be usefully predictive? I can't expect something like ΔDᵧ=Dᵧ*(RandomReal[{0.05,0.15},1]Dₓ)-Dᵧ where Dᵧ=damage dealt and Dₓ=damage taken, but something resembling a mathematical expression of the relationship would be great. We could calculate the correlation if we recorded enough samples, but I'm just looking for a rough estimate.

My answer that killed units can not do damage was spot on to the question asked.
Your answer that killing is better than wounding is an answer that is not always right

I'm confused; your answer seems to suggest it is always better to kill a unit than injure another, except when last stand matters. Your answer was neither complete nor direct. You didn't say anything about the difference in damage received; you only said a dead unit can't cause any damage (duh). Obviously retaliation isn't always possible. wolfhoundtoo gave a direct answer, but it was terse.

Like I said, I'm not interested in arguing. I think everyone is trying to be helpful. Hopefully I've clarified my questions.

 

[Ben Jones the Newb]

Perfectly true, but it does not adress the question. Qustion is: " Suppose you've got one turn against a unit with low health, and a unit with full health. All else being equal, would you take less damage by killing the unit with lower health, or by attacking the other unit and reducing its health to 1 or 2? "

So you are facing two units. One damaged, one not. Attack the healthy unit and you still face two units. Kill the damaged unit and you will only face one unit. So when it comes to damage it is better to kill the damaged unit in that situation.

You are talking about facing more than two units. That changes the situation.

Why should facing >2 units change the strategy?

It's hard to ask questions that precisely articulate what you want to know - even for scientists. You're right, I specified two units, but @WearyBrawler299 understands my question. I phrased it more formally in my previous post a few minutes ago.

 

[wolfhoundtoo]

Why should facing >2 units change the strategy?

It's hard to ask questions that precisely articulate what you want to know - even for biologists. You're right, I specified two units, but @WearyBrawler299 understands my question. I phrased it more formally in my previous post a few minutes ago.

There isn't a simple rule or answer to your question. Like so much else in FOE, the answer is going to depend upon the exact circumstances that you are facing. The simplest answer (excluding units with the ability of last stand which I figured if you were asking this question you weren't that far on the map to encounter last stand) is that it is better to kill enemy units because dead units don't hurt your units.

The far more complex answer which WearyBrawler299 raises but doesn't really discuss in detail is that in certain circumstances yes wounding an enemy unit might be better for losses. This is part of the reason (I presume) that Agent says it matters how many units you are asking about matters to the answer.

The question is going to be impacted by special abilities, the turn order of your units and the enemies, the relevant ranges involved, where the units are in relation to each other in the rock, paper, scissors type of combat that is in this game, the terrain boosts, and not lease your own attack and defense boosts versus the enemy. It will also be impacted based on how lucky you get in the draw when an enemy unit attacks since the damage is a variable range. Units always do at least one damage on an attack (assuming of course that they CAN attack before anyone gets into flying units and artillery and anything else that could conceivable be thrown into this topic).

 

[Agent327]

Why should facing >2 units change the strategy?

Cause it will bring many more options.

It isn't as simple and straightforward as you make it look, or want it to look. There are a lot of factors that come into play. Age, terrain, range, movement and ofcourse attack/defense. Can you or can you now one-shot that healthy unit.

A damaged unit can do less damage itself, but if that unit has an attack bonus against your units, it might be able to do more damage than a healthy unit that doesn't have a bonus.

 

[Ebeondi Asi]

-

 

[Ben Jones the Newb]

Cause it will bring many more options.

It isn't as simple and straightforward as you make it look, or want it to look. There are a lot of factors that come into play. Age, terrain, range, movement and ofcourse attack/defense. Can you or can you now one-shot that healthy unit.

A damaged unit can do less damage itself, but if that unit has an attack bonus against your units, it might be able to do more damage than a healthy unit that doesn't have a bonus.

I'm not sure if we're on the same page. Set strategy aside. Are you saying there's no rule of thumb to estimate how much less damage an injured unit will be able to inflict vs the same unit with full health, under the same conditions?

After 997 fights, I'm aware of the those factors. This thread has gotten muddled, and I'm not sure anyone but WearyBrawler2992 understands what I'm getting at. I tried to rephrase my question more formally in my earlier post (maybe it hasn't been seen or wasn't understood), so let me phrase it as simply as I can.

Knowing injured units do less damage is useless if we can't draw any conclusions about their proportional relationship. I understand it's impossible to make precise predictions. Let's ignore special abilities, range, unit advantages, and other confounding variables, and consider only the simplest cases. We should be able to roughly sketch the graph of how damage drops off even if we don't know any specifics. It could look something like one of the lines in the graph below. The endpoint may be unpredictable, but the general behavior (or shape of the line) shouldn't be.


Or maybe I'm wrong, you understand my question perfectly, and there's no way to know anything more specific than "injured units inflict less damage." If so, that's useless information.

 

[Algona]

Do you take the chance to kill the healthy unit? or the 25% chance to waste your AO one shot kill? To me that is where it gets complicated.

Interesting question.

All else being equal , shoot the wounded unit first.

Reasoning: Count the number of hits you take form the other units under each alternative.

Shoot the wounded unit first, it dies. The unwounded unit hits you. You shoot the unwounded unit next. 25% chance of instakill, if you don't crit hit, you take another hit, and kill it with your next shot. 25% chance you take 1 hit, 75% chance you take 2 hits.

Shoot the unwounded unit first. 25% chance instakill, you take 1 shot from the wounded unit, kill it. You've taken 1 hit. If first shot on unwounded unit is not instakill, it and other unit both fire back, you take 2 hits, then you kill 1 then take another hit, then kill last unit.
25% chance of taking 1 hit, 75% chance of taking 3 hits.

Corner case. If PVP and defender also has AO, gving the defender an extra shot could end very badly for you.

 

[wolfhoundtoo]

I'm not sure anyone has done much analysis of how much difference it makes wounding a unit to how much damage that they deliver. With so many variables (including the range of the attack damage done) it's not easy to isolate factors to test them individual. The more favorable time for that would be very early on but that's the time when you have the least units to do the testing.