I don't really know exactly what I need help with, but i know that I need help. The whole "I keep losing thing" is a big indicator. Any bits of advice would be helpful.

Well 1st start by clicking on the top bar the help URL, then the online-manual.

From there this forum, and the questions forum have invaluable knowledge, you just have to dig deep.

If you want to break a losing streak you need to find someone else who's a loser and battle them. Then at least ONE of you will be happy


Also, taking on easier opponent's can help


Or try Mog, he keeps losing (joke )


Kyrion

Well, try to battle someone who's on the IRC or a chat with you and go through the moves being explained. Preferably a veteran who's willing to help.

Ohh.... and try to avoid Kyrion... he smelles of Orphaths!

Orphaths need hugs as well you know!

* removes some Orphath hair from his jacket *


Anyway, the IRC idea's a good one, but you need someone who's really helpful and experienced and lots of other traits that are really good to have, like, well, me

lol


Kyrion

Gyne,

Your welcome dear! I just fixed you up with your first online WOL tutor - Kyrion. (I hope I'm not punished for that later )

He just committed himself for a few free lessons.

Good luck

Gyne, here's a tip: Knights don't take retaliation, but they also don't "defuse" what they hit and the target will retaliate against any melee troop that hits it next. Use a spearman to take the retaliation.
____________________________


Oh...ha ha HA ha, Kyrion! Such a jester you are! That is so rich the way you pointed out my losing streak like that. It brings joy to my heart when I go to sleep at night to know that you are concerned about my suckiness.

To show you there are no hard feelings, would you care to come to the the Mogcabin and have some delicious ORPHATH SOUP? Yummie-tum-tum, it's good. I even de-boned it, just the way you like them, I hear. I did it while they were alive, too.

Auch!, that hurts...

* yelling at everybody *

Fight!, fight, fight!!!

ok .. everything is helpful. However, I have already had several people in IRC help me. I know the basics. I am looking for things like what Mog was explaining, things that you wouldnt normally know about troops.
I guess what I am asking for are the small details of most of the troops. Or anyway that I could find these details. I am not sure how to search the Forums!

Searching the Forums:

At the top of the Main Page, mouse over "Forums", then click on the sub-menu "Search Forums".

In the text box, enter a subject string at least 4 characters long, and it needs to be exact and fairly simple. This search program won't do any thinking for you. A good example, using Mog's subject on "retaliation" above, would be to enter "retal" in the box. This would ensure that both the proper term, "retaliation", and it's often used slang, "retal", are returned in the search.

Be patient, it's slow, and it often seems to time out even when you know for a fact that the subject is in the forums. If you get the white screen, just back up, click the "Find Posts" button again, and go cook a turkey. No, it's not that bad. Be patient and perseverant and I promise you will find a lot of excellent information, plus quite a bit of crazy stuff by some way-out-there people. Anything you see written by me that sounds really stupid was done when those crazy-people stole my password.

Good luck

Last Edited : Tuesday, 20 July 2004 - 21:30

ok... general tips for increasing your skill as a battler

commandeers add 50% damage to surrounding troop attacks, so putting them in the middle of your ranged troops makes all those arrows hit harder.

Macemen repost EVERY attack made to them, that means everytime you attack a macemen unit it will retaliate your attack, even if its your 5th unit to attack the macement

Knights suffer no repost attack, this means your knights can attack any unit and not suffer the return damage, however if you attack that unit again with another melee IT will be the one that takes that units retaliatory attack.

heavy cavalry have a 50% chance of doing maximum damage to any unit they attack.

Falconeers have a 50% chance of doing a additional 50% damage to a enemy unit.

Archers suffer a range penalty, the further from your opponent your shooting you are, the less damage your archer will do.

Arbellesters suffer no melee/range damage penalty and can fight a attacker normally. they also suffer a drop to htere attack the further from there opponents they are

Pikemen these get a +50% damage to calvary units. (at least thats what i believe, id have to ask for clarification on what Rival Bonus : +50% damage to rival attack type. means if not against its rival, ex: spearmen vs scout = rivals, in my oppinion)

Squires and balista suffer only 50% of ranged damage, they are good against archers taking half damage with each shot.

Scouts,spearmen,swordsman are all basic units of melee, each is good against its rival Spearmen > horseback, Swords > spears, Horse > swords. Melee combat , meelee > ranged (save arbelesters casue they sufer no penalty when engaged in melee combat)

Macemen even htough they dont have a spear are considered spearmen class, back when the units were listed as that =P now its rock paper or scissors but eh i memorized them all long ago.

HOPE this helps ya bro.

*sigh* I wasn't gonna take the time to help her, but I have to elaborate and correct some things that DoRW said.

"commandeers add 50% damage to surrounding troop attacks, so putting them in the middle of your ranged troops makes all those arrows hit harder."

No, that would be insane. Commanders add +1 to the attack strength per 5 commanders, so a stack of 10 would add +2 to the attack of any troop nearby it. A higher attack means more damage done to the enemy, sure, but not 50% more.

I can't really explain how attack and defense affect the final damage result, as Req is extremely vague about it in the guide (on purpose?) and has yet to supply us with the formula. We can assume that if your attack strength is equal to your opponents defense strength, normal damage will be done. If you have higher attack than they have defense, you'll do more damage. Likewise, if they have more defense than you have attack, you'll do less damage.

"Macemen repost EVERY attack made to them, that means everytime you attack a macemen unit it will retaliate your attack, even if its your 5th unit to attack the macement"

This makes macemen extremely tough to kill. A lot of times your opponent will try to either take them out with marksmen, or weaken them sufficiently with marksmen before bringing a power unit in to finish them off. Use macemen to protect key points in your defense, but remember: 4 stacks of marksmen will, providing they don't have to move first and lose BP, kill an entire stack of macemen. Putting a macemen stack into defense mode will force your opponent to use FIVE marksmen to take out the stack, as marksmen will only kill two with each shot, as opposed to 2.5

"Knights suffer no repost attack, this means your knights can attack any unit and not suffer the return damage, however if you attack that unit again with another melee IT will be the one that takes that units retaliatory attack."

This over-rides the macemen special ability, so if you have knights, use them without worry on the macemen, they'll die in droves.

"heavy cavalry have a 50% chance of doing maximum damage to any unit they attack."

I'm not sure how helpful this is in battles. Heavy calvary have such a powerful Attack Stength (24) that they usually do close to maximum damage all the time anyways. Once again, I'm not entirely sure what the formula for damage is, but in my experience heavy calvary always do consistent damage...it doesn't fluctuate and change like it would if the 50% chance of max damage played a big role.

"Falconeers have a 50% chance of doing a additional 50% damage to a enemy unit."

I never use falcs, so I can't contest or elaborate on this point

"Archers suffer a range penalty, the further from your opponent your shooting you are, the less damage your archer will do."

Yup.

"Arbellesters suffer no melee/range damage penalty and can fight a attacker normally. they also suffer a drop to htere attack the further from there opponents they are"

Yup, although you generally don't take arbs into battle. Archers make much better ranged fodder.

"Pikemen these get a +50% damage to calvary units. (at least thats what i believe, id have to ask for clarification on what Rival Bonus : +50% damage to rival attack type. means if not against its rival, ex: spearmen vs scout = rivals, in my oppinion)"

Normally, a rock troop versus a scissors troop will inflict 140% damage, and the scissors troop will only do 70% damage back. With pikemen, however, it is increased to 150%. The scissors troops, to the best of my knowledge, still do 70% damage.

"Squires and balista suffer only 50% of ranged damage, they are good against archers taking half damage with each shot."

Balistas also do less damage the farther away from the target they are, just like archers and arbs. Marksmen are the only ones who can do full damage at maximum range

"Scouts,spearmen,swordsman are all basic units of melee, each is good against its rival Spearmen > horseback, Swords > spears, Horse > swords. Melee combat , meelee > ranged (save arbelesters casue they sufer no penalty when engaged in melee combat)"

Yup.
Rock beats Scissors
Paper beats rock
Scissors beats paper

"Macemen even htough they dont have a spear are considered spearmen class, back when the units were listed as that =P now its rock paper or scissors but eh i memorized them all long ago."

Don't confuse the new people.

Some battlers tear down the walls near their castles to make a rubble-strewn open area. Rubble takes off attack and defense when standing on it. Bad idea to fight from rubble or blood.

confusing nuffin everyhting was truth save the commandeers which i misread and i appologize.

Commandeers are able to take command of any enemy building as well as boost nearby troops moral increasing their damage up to +50%.

UP to... stupid english! =P

falconiers straight from the manual
Extra Damage : 50% chance of doing +50% Damage.

but everything else you simply elaborated on what i said, and i thank you.

as far as the Rock paper scissors thing, to me it was always simpler to look at the unit and see what would beat what. instead of having to read if its rock and thencheck what it can attack to do damage... if its holdin a sword , attack spear/mace, if its ridin a horse, attack things with swords, if your usin spear/mace attack a glue factory *(aka horse) if your holding a non ranged weapon beat things with bows/crossbows.

I'm quite aware of what the manual says. I said that I never used falcs in battle, so I didn't know from experience.

its important to make things very clear with new players, they're easily confused.

Sage, here is the mechanics of attack broken down:
For Melee:

Basically there are 5 stages to the attack sequence (the sequence the game does it might not be the same, but the steps are)

[1]
First the raw damage to be inflicted is calculated, this is done by multiplying the stack size by the Battle Points% (BP%). Then we calculate the range of the damage which is the minimum damage (nD) of the stack plus a random number from 0 to the difference of maximum damage (xD) minus minimum damage, this effectibly gives a numer that is from nD to xD. This random number is multiplied by the first calculated number and it will be the raw damage.

[2]
Second is the calculation of the Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS) modifier.
If the attack is R->S, S->P, P->R then there is a plus 33% to the attack.
If the attack is R->P, S->R, P->S then there is a minus 33% to the attack.

[3] (this is the one you wer asking about sage)
The attack modifier of the attacker is compared against the defend modifier of the defender.
If the attack modifier is higher than the defense modifier, then the difference is doubled, if is lower is left as is.
This number is divided over 100 to make it a % value.

[4]
Special modifier are taken into account. Like the 50% chance of Heavy Cavalry of doing maximum damage, like the 50% chance of the Falchioniers of doing 50% extra damage, etc.
Also the troop of the day modifier will go here.

[5]
The net damage is calculated by multipliying the raw damage [1] by the special modifier [4] then multipliying this value by (100% + the RSP modifier [2] plus the attack modifier [3]).

The number of troops that die is the division of the net damage over the defenders Hit Points (HP).

Experience if calculated by multiplying the number of troops that died by that stack experience.

Retaliation is done the same way but now the defenders becomes the attacker and the attacker becomes the defender, taking into account the ability of the defender to defend itself, that is not being attacked by Knights, and having enough Defense Points (DP%)

too much math brain hurts

Simple.

You have a stack of 20 falcs (sage ) they do 11-18 damage, and their attack defend modifier is 17:14, ah! of course they are scissors, and they are a 100% BP, and they have a health of 60.

This is the sequence if they attack a stack of 20 swordman, are paper, they are 100%BP, they do 4-6 damage and have a/d modifiers of 5:7, and they have a health of 24.

Step [1] 20 * 100% = 20, then we get the random damage (let's use the highest possible damage). 20 * 18 = 360 (This is the raw damage).

Step [2] Since the attack is s->p we get a 40% bonus.

Step [3] Our attack modifier is 17, their defend modifier is 7, so we get a delta of 10, since it is greater than 0, we double it to a nice round 20%.

Step [4] this just adds to the raw damage so will leave it as is 100% (if we got the extra damage then it will be 150%, etc.)

Step [5] 360 * 100% * (100% + 40% + 20%) = 360 * (160%) = 576!!! This is how much pain we will inflict on the poor swordman.

So 576/24 (the health of the sword) yields 22.95. So basically we eliminated the whole lot of swords. Experience earned is 20 * 6.1 = 122!!!

Now for the retaliation, we do the process but now using the swords as an attacker.

Step [1] 20 * 100% = 20, then we get the random damage (let's use the highest possible damage). 20 * 6 = 120 (This is the raw damage).

Step [2] Since the attack is p->s we get a -30% bonus.

Step [3] Our attack modifier is 5, their defend modifier is 14, so we get a delta of -9, since it is lower than 0, we leave it as -9%.

Step [4] again!

Step [5] 120 * 100% * (100% - 30% - 9%) = 120 * (61%) = 73.2!!! This is how much pain we will inflict on the poor falcs.

Since the falc has a health of 60, 73.2/60 = 1.22, we lost a whole falc, and the tail of another, pluse since the other guy is gone there is no experience.

SIMPLE, ain't it!

*EDITED due to using OLD 33% modifiers, but the idea is the same *

Last Edited : Thursday, 22 July 2004 - 06:31

As far as I know (the manual says so ) the RPS bonus is +40%, not +33%