[SPOILERS] How do you make this thing work: Krill randomly mashes some buttons

[suboptimal]

Barbs don't heal - if it's wounded sufficiently sending a slinger to do cleanup works. It also gets the Archery eureka in.

Did Dave just park his warrior there or is he continuing to explore the area?

[Krill]

Dave's warrior is wandering off.

The barb warrior attacked and dropped itself to below 20hp, one hit from a slinger kills it. I decided that the culture from killing it was not worth fuckign up the warrior move, so I moved the warrior 2NE.

Into a barb slinger.

So right now I'm just waiting for the turn to come back to figure out if I've lost the warrior or not. If I have...then I'm probably screwed on the early settler.

[suboptimal]

OK...the "TL;DR" situation on the warrior is that if it has more than 30hp left it should be OK for at least one barbarian slinger attack.

Here's a bit of a "deep dive" on the combat mechanics to check if the warrior will be toasted or not (this applies to all combats):

The expected (average) damage a unit will take in combat is determined by the formula 30 * e ^ (unit strength diff - 25). The min and max possible damage values are found by replacing 30 with 24 or 36, respectively. A combat unit's strength is reduced by 1 for every 10 HP damage, or fraction thereof, that the unit has suffered.

[Krill]

Is there just one round of combat?

[suboptimal]

Yes. When a unit attacks the units do damage to each other using the formula and their combat strengths before damage is dealt. A random number between 24 and 36 is used as the base damage and is determined separately for each unit. For units with differing strengths the "unit strength diff" just flips its sign for the defender (e.g. in 30 vs 20 it's +10 for the attacker and -10 for the defender).

The math also leads to four points that should be kept in mind:

- a strength differential of +10 gives a 50% increase in damage (avg 45 damage per attack)
- a strength differential of +17 gives a 100% increase in damage (avg 60 damage per attack)
- a strength differential of 30 will average a 1-shot kill
- a strength differential of 36 or more guarantees a 1-shot kill regardless of the RNG gods.

[Krill]

Is there any weighting to the random number?

[suboptimal]

No, the distribution is random. Also note this is only unit v unit. Once cities & walls get into the mix there are damage modifiers based upon units types.

For later game reference a corp/fleet is +10 strength compared to the base unit and a army/armada is +17 strength.

[Krill]

I am getting pissed off with these fucking barbs. I'm running away from teh slinger, because if I don't the slinger hits the warrior and then the other warrior should at least clean up. Or the warrior kills itself then the slinger cleans up.

   

   

[Krill]

The warrior lived with 17 health, but I'm running it behind the settler, and next turn the settler will be covered by the scout.

The slinger completes in 2 turns, so hopefully the barbs focus on the capital and then just die. I think I'll build another slinger afterwards? I'm carrying on to finish this civic, because I want to get two builders out with the production policy boost and then swap out. The warrior should give 10 culture when it dies, but how much culture does the slinger give? half of the melee strength, or half of the ranged strength, or what? It may just make more sense to put some production into the campus rather than build a warrior (4 turns with massive overflow) or second slinger (3 turns).

Killing these two barbs should give the inspirations for BW and Archery...

[Emperor K]

As long as our warrior lives, then yes another slinger. Getting 3 for upgrades is still an ideal course of action i think.
Hopefully out second city will not be delayed to much longer.