What determines success or failure?

[Kardiophylax]

I tried the demo out today.

I found it difficult to understand how I won, or didn't win, certain matchups. Even if I had a 50 point or more advantage in several categories I would still lose. My status was Healthy. I figured a higher Str allowed harder hits with more damage, but it seems like even low str gladiators were hitting me for big (-15, -19) damage. I guess in essence I felt like despite any of my actions the game was going to end up randomly picking if I won or lost and the stats had little to do with it.

Also it can be difficult during battles to determine who exactly is hitting who. I think perhaps color coding the names in the description might help. Also color coding the -wp so we can tell at a glance who took the hit.