Balancing the blesses

[MaxWilson]

Blood bless.... tell me, what distinguishes extra strength from simple +damage bonus of Fire or Death ? Not only is the blood bless weaker, but also bland. In theory, some units can throw javelins further (sun warriors), and commanders could use Fire Bola better. But the difference would be pretty marginal, I think.

Fire and Death aren't a +damage. They're separate attacks, which means armor gets applied again (except that Death is AN,MR and fire is AP). Against a heavily-armored opponent (Prot 20 say), +4 to strength could increase your expected damage more than a separate 6AP fire attack. The following numbers are from a Monte Carlo sim, 2000 runs:

Str 12, Light Lance (3 dmg). Expected damage vs. Prot 20 0.548.
Str 16, Light Lance (3 dmg). Expected damage vs. Prot 20 1.8125.
Str 12, Light Lance (3 dmg) + 6 AP. Expected damage vs. Prot 20 1.322.

The fire bless is non-negligible but it's not as good as the Str +4, if we're not taking attack/defense into account. Expected damage over 2000 hits for the above-given Str 12, Light Lance fellow (Helhirdling):

Prot NoBless +4 Str Fire
1 13.95 18.05 20.18
2 12.84 17.08 18.70
3 11.88 16.19 17.57
4 11.18 15.29 15.93
5 10.26 14.04 14.95
6 9.12 12.74 13.56
7 8.31 11.87 12.14
8 7.37 11.05 10.35
9 6.33 10.18 9.92
10 5.55 9.34 8.19
11 4.90 8.40 7.40
12 4.06 7.23 6.33
13 3.32 6.58 5.42
14 2.73 5.48 4.31
15 2.15 4.72 3.83
16 1.74 3.96 3.00
17 1.27 3.38 2.59
18 0.98 2.75 2.01
19 0.73 2.21 1.60
20 0.46 1.66 1.36

For anything above Prot 8 or so, the fire attack is slightly inferior to the extra strength. To take the attack bonus into account, I simulated a couple of Helhirdlings (Str12,LightLance,Attack12) vs. a Wraith Lord (Def 15, Prot 22).

1 Helhirdling, no bless 0.0725
2 Helhirdlings, no bless 0.1895
1 Helhirdling, +4 str 0.1625
2 Helhirdlings, +4 str 0.6475
1 Helhirdling, F9 bless 0.4745
2 Helhirdlings, F9 bless 1.1065
1 Helhirdling, F4 bless and +4 str 0.392
2 Helhirdlings, F4 bless +4 str 0.971

Take these numbers with a grain of salt (I didn't do variance analysis or test for statistical significance), but it does seem clear that a fire bless's main advantage is indeed the synergy between the attack bonus and the damage bonus, and that against heavily-armored foes it's better to have high strength than an extra fire attack. This may suggest that Wraith Lords are best swarmed by Hoburg Militia under Strength of Giants, but don't try it--6 of them inflict only 0.308 damage per turn.

Python code attached.

-Max Wilson

[Wyehl]

MaxWilson said:but it does seem clear that a fire bless's main advantage is indeed the synergy between the attack bonus and the damage bonus, and that against heavily-armored foes it's better to have high strength than an extra fire attack.

Fire bless can also be nice in that it is a magic attack and can go through/dispell things like ethereal/mistform.

[mivayan]

Wyehl said:
Fire bless can also be nice in that it is a magic attack and can go through/dispell things like ethereal/mistform.

I'm pretty sure the following is right but I want a doublecheck:

Mistform is always totally useless for a supercombatant fighting nothing but Fire9 blessed sacreds.

[WraithLord]

MaxWilson said:

Python code attached.

-Max Wilson

Nice!!!

It should be possible to augment this to a full blown combat simulator. Would you mind if I take a shot at this, based on your code?

[MaxWilson]

WraithLord said:
It should be possible to augment this to a full blown combat simulator. Would you mind if I take a shot at this, based on your code?

Not at all. Do whatever you want with that code. I've actually thought about writing a combat simulator--the nice thing about games like Dom3 is that the rules are transparent enough that you could mostly replicate the battles--but I'm not sure how much interest there is. Be my guest, and email me if you need any help with Python.

-Max
wilson.max@gmail.com

[Sandman]

Does the death bonus affect map attacks as well?

[MaxWilson]

Sandman said:
Does the death bonus affect map attacks as well?

I think so.

Scenario: Anointed of Rhuax casting Fires from Afar.
Target: 70 Niefel Huskarls. Two runs of each scenario.

Blessed (D9 Prophet):
1 casualty, 8 afflicted.
0 casualties, 10 afflicted.

Unblessed (non-Prophet):
0 casualties, 1 afflicted
0 casualties, 5 afflicted.

I only ran it twice for each but it sure looks to me like it works. That probably also means that things like MR penalties from items and extra paths also work with map-cast spells.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

P.S. AFAIK, Seeking Arrow, Fires From Afar, Flames From the Sky, and Murdering Winter are the only map spells that damage military units and can take advantage of a D9 bless. Am I missing any?

BTW, Leprosy actually looks like a really interesting spell to use with Eye of the Void, Rune Smasher, etc. I wonder how many MP games feature diplomacy along the lines of "Leave me alone and I'll afflict one enemy army of your choice with disease. Otherwise I'll afflict you." Note to self: try out MP as soon as I graduate...

-Max

[Foodstamp]

Leprosy was a very powerful diplomacy tool in an MP game I played recently.

I was playing as Pangaea and Tien Chi invaded my lands. As they invaded my lands, Atlantis followed behind and gobbled up the Tien Chi lands and ventured into mine. In attempt to hold some of my former provinces, Atlantis massed quite a few troops in my former provinces even though we were at peace with one another.

I casted leprosy and on the same turn followed it with a message telling Atlantis to leave my rightful territories. To my surprise it worked pretty effectively. If Atlantis would have pushed the issue, I would have been hard pressed to stand against him after recovering from the war with Tien Chi.

So in that instance Leprosy worked pretty well as a message short of war.