Hi,

Can someone please help?

I've been trying to understand what is going on which this scenario:

Player 1 has 50 troops in place A
Player 2 has 30 troops in neighbouring place B

Player 1 deploys 30 troops in A
Player 2 deploys 80 troops in B

Player 1 attacks with 79 troops
Player 2 defends with 110 troops

OK, what I expected would be that player 2's troops are sufficient to hold B and that all 79 of player 1's troops are killed off.

But at the start of the round I see that:

Player 1 has 41 troops in place A
Player 2 has 28 troops in neighbouring place B

My question is - why?

Why didn't player 1 lose all his troops?

Anyone kind enough to answer and I will be very grateful! If I ask during a game, no-one ever actually tells me so I cannot really learn from my mistakes. In fact, most of the higher level players just get very obnoxious which is quite off-putting for new players looking to improve.

Thanks!

Check the kill rates and the luck modifier.

Are they default? (60% Off, 70% Def, 0% Luck)

Try linking the game and we can take a look at it.

Yeah, link the game, or if it is fogged, link screenshots here.

Not sure if I'm missing the point, but the default kill rates are 60% attacking and 70% defending. So if 100 troops attack 100, then 30 of the attackers (100-0.7*100) and 40 of the defenders remain. So it is normal that you can lose an attack but not all of your troops.

If you slightly outnumber you opponent, you can even kill more of theirs than you lose, but lose the attack. For example 50 attackers vs 40 defenders, the attackers lose 40*0.7=28, but the defenders lose 50*0.6=30.

if you take the default then the attacker should have 3 armies left total, the 1 that has to stay in the territory and 2 which survive the attack so the game he is talking about isn't using default kill rates for sure, might be something like those 85% offense and 35% defense games i see coming through in open games regularly

Thanks for all your comments guys, you have all already been like 500% more useful than anyone I asked during a game! I didn't know anything about a killrate setting, but I guess that is pretty much that answer.

Actually the numbers I was referring to were just a bit arbitrary because I couldn't remember the actual values - maybe I can link the game here somehow.

But is it actually working in Olivave's example? "50 attackers vs 40 defenders, the attackers lose 40*0.7=28, but the defenders lose 50*0.6=30." - you can even kill more of theirs than you lose?

Looks like there is more to this game than I had realised!

Thanks everyone

They could also have transferred armies in from another territory before during or after attack this would change outcome.

The easiest way is to use the graphs in the attack analysis. It tells you how many you need to attack with to kill "X" number of armies (and indeed dont forget you cant use the 1 left behind on the initial land). The graph below tells you how many both defender and attacker lose relating to how many armies have been used by the attacker, against that X defending armies.

Edit : That's for Straight round with 0% luck or killing rate modified. But that's a good start to get things.

Edited 2/26/2016 19:45:07

Looks like there is more to this game than I had realised!

I agree. It's a deceptively simple game that reveals some neat complexity underneath. It's why I like it and continue to play. :-)

Hey gruff,

The main principle here is usually called "Stack advantage" it's quite unique to Warlight because of how the battles are calculated, and I was playing for a long time before I fully understood it.

Basically, if you attack or defend with a larger stack than the opponent, you will gain an advantage, sometimes a huge one (it's very possible to turn games around with this)

To keep it simple let's assume the kill rates are 50%.

You attack a player with 300 troops, and he defends with 200.

50% of your 300 troops kill an enemy, that means 150 defending troops die.

At the same time (before they die) 50% the defending 200 troops kill the attackers, meaning 100 attackers die.

You kill 150, they kill 100.

Even though you didn't take the territory, your opponent just suffered a net loss of 50 troops, secondly to that you now have 150 troops ready to attack 50 troops for next turn (even more stack advantage)

The exact same thing works if you defend with more troops than the attacker uses (for example by deploying in defense, moving troops in before the attack, or by airlifting more troops in! Hope that helps :)

Edited 2/27/2016 03:24:34

If anyone stumbles through here, a concise, thorough explanation can be found reading through here: https://www.warlight.net/wiki/Combat_Basics

I always knew to use analyse attack, which is the easiest and simplest way to predict a scenario, but I've never liked just accepting something blindly, and I never really understood the mechanics of it until I'd read this and the additional pages linked therein. Now that I have, I can appreciate the elegance and underlying complexity or simplicity of it, depending on how you choose to look at it; I think wct was spot on earlier with the oxymoronic "neat complexity" :)