[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Fintourist]

3. Your attack with WEs against our knights outside Infrared was an absolute disaster for us. I don't question your move here, it was probably a good use of those elephants, but your WEs killed at least 3 more knights than they should have.

Um...every single battle was 69% odds or better. I won four out of five. Perhaps your 'should have' didn't account for me spending my GG on Formation promos.

Ouch, Mardoc killed four of our knights - at 67%, 69%, 77% and 77% before losing a 67% roll.

- C2 Knight vs C2 Welly - 63%... LOSS with only one hit
- C2 9.9/10 Knight vs C2F 5.8/7 (83HP) Welly - 53%... LOSS but so close - down to 7HP
- C2 HA vs C1 6.8/7 Welly 9%... LOSS BY 1HP
C1 Knight vs 5.6/7 C2 Welly 81%... WIN (down to 8.1/10)
C1 Knight vs 4.6/7 C2 F Welly 74%... LOSS (down to 9HP)
Green Knight vs C2 F 3/7 Welly 96%... WIN (one hit)
Green HA vs C2 F GG 1.7/7 Welly 97%... WIN (no hits)
Sentry HA vs 0.6 Welly 99%... WIN no hits
6.0/10 C2 Knight vs 0.5/7 Welly 99%... WIN no hits

Above is the full log
- Winning 4 out of 5 was already on the lucky side, but the real blow was the way those 4 won. Your winning WEs did not only win they took very little hits by doing it
- Overall you killed 7 knights and 1 HA with 6 War Elephants. I can guarantee you that if you sim the above scenario the average result is way below that what you got

4. You sent a random WE against our knight in Carrot with 20 % odds and won. In PBEM I would have probably considered that as cheating (perhaps I'm missing something), but here it of course was just a gamble move that paid off

Don't remember this. I probably intended to sacrifice the WE and clean up the survivor with a reinforcement, then got lucky.

There were other units inside the city, which makes this scenario unlikely.

6. About T142...

Amazing rolls? You've got to be kidding. If you thought that battle was what the RNG should do, then no wonder you were disappointed with the rest.

2 wins, 5 losses, out of seven battles with an average odds of 24% is just a smidge better than expected value. True, I didn't count on winning any of those, but the real goal was to redline your stack defenders and let me get some decent fights with the survivors. And once I finally did that...I not only started losing, but I started losing without even scratching your units. That one knight who soaked something like four longbows without a scratch, saved you at least three units. When I got even-odds against your HA, I couldn't even scratch him!

Yes, I totally agree that the latter half of the battle was unlucky for you, which evened it out. But the fact is that you should not have got that far at all. You really need to understand/check Cyneheard's combat calculator if you want to get an overview of these battles
- Getting those 2 wins at 36 % and 67 % was obviously already nice
- Your HA getting our pike down to 10 HP or better happens only 1 time out of 20. (there is a 40 % chance that your HA gets 0/1 hit only in) Try that attack in sandbox again and you will see that in many cases that pike will kill multiple HAs or the WE, which got one of your 2 kills if you decide to send that in instead
- Your HA gets 5 hits or better against our knight only 1 out of 4 times
- Your LB gets 5 hits or better against our knight only 1 out of 6 times

Combine the above together and you realize that you got a really lucky start and it should not have come down to situation where we need to really for our wounded knight getting couple flawless wins at 78-82 % odds (happens 1 out of 8-9 times)

Anyway, it wasn't the biggest mistake of the war. Third, at best. Worst mistake was smashing into Azza even though I knew you'd be the one to benefit - pure emotion there.

Yeah, this war would not have started unless we would not have gotten such a nice opportunity to kill your stack. You did not know that we were so well positioned to attack, so I think it would also be fair to say that this was not a huge mistake in decision-making sense, just a risk that happened to backfire.

Second worst was that time I had a HA/cat stack behind a city which would fall, in the worst possible location: you could hit it, and I couldn't hit you with the stack. I guess I just assumed your stack would occupy the city, but I wasted my units for no gain there.

I remember this, obviously that was not good, but at that point Infrared had already fallen so it was always going to be difficult to pick good battles after that.

You seem to be prone to rounding. You argue as though 90% odds = 100% odds = no damage, and therefore every win from the defender is an insult from the RNG.

No, I expect to win 9 out of 10 battles when I have 90 %. And I'm sure you know it, but this gives a pretty good idea of how highly you think of me.

I think it's reasonable that a 9% attack should lose but redline the defender, and you don't. I'll have to pull out a combat calculator and double-check my intuition here.

Combat calculator is always a good idea. I checked some of the math already above for us.