In age of wonders, and to a lesser extent, Age of wonders 2/SM, the best way to ensure your dominance (Against AI at least, I never played multiplayer), was to Pump defense into your heroes as they leveled up. In fact, in AoW you could start the game with 10 defense (The max) on your leader, which effectively meant that the highest chance any unit had of hitting your leader was only 50% (If that unit had 10 attack). For each point the attacker had less than 10, hit percentage was lowered by 10% down to a minimum of 10% (Meaning t1 units had a suicidal 10% chance of hitting your leader). In Shadow Magic the situation was a little better, with twice as many points to acquire in a stat before it was maxed at 20.
Anyway, I’m a bit of a minmaxer and numbers guy, and I had lots of fun abusing the combat mechanics of the previous titles (Stacking enchantments…), and the new combat system of AoW3 leaves me wondering – how exactly does it work?
The projected damage calculation you are shown before you commit to an attack does help a little, but it still bothers me that I do not know the mechanics behind the numbers. It doesn’t help that it seems to be misleading at times as well (One of my raptors got a projected minimum damage in the double digits x2, but when I actually went ahead with he attack both of his attacks were below 10).
Since every attack now hits regardless of defense, how much damage is absorbed by each point of defense? What about resistance? I assume resistance has a bigger role this time around, as it seems to be effecting secondary damage like fire, blight and so on. Finally, what is more valuable to level, health or defense?
I’m going to back to my game and dig some more, but I would love to hear from others who’s as obsessed with this as I am, haha.