Global Triumph

Excellent.  That's what I was thinking...

excellent and useful information! answers quite a few of my questions.

Thanks!

Agreed, that is interesting, and thank you for this information. That is not how I had thought this worked though. I guess I have played too many RTS recently, but I figured armor was simply a subtraction.

Anyway, something that would be really useful to have in the help section is a slightly less vague idea of how combat is worked out. For example:

* If I use a L4 (300x4 = 1200) missile on a L9 warship (120x9 = 1080), am I assured of eliminating it?
* If I fire a L9 (300x9 = 2700) missile over a L4 turret (70x4x100% = 280), will it do nothing (280 < 300), reduce the missile's attack on its eventual target by approximately 280, or have a 10% chance of shooting the missile down (280/2700 = 0.1037)?
* If a L9 missile is fired over a L5 turret, will the turret shoot down 1 of the 9 missiles in the swarm, leaving a L8 missile to attack the final target?
* If 2 ground units engage in combat, is it guaranteed that one of them will be eliminated?
* Do air units receive the same percentage damage reduction against them during an attack as during fly-overs?
* Missiles and bombs say they do collateral damage to adjacent targets. What approximate amount is this {100%, 50%, 20%, 10%, negligible}?

I feel these kinds of questions are fairly important to players because the combat of GT boils down to little more than cost effectiveness since it has no hard counters.

Ah, that's part of the fun of it all.  You've gotta figure it out for yourself.

However, question for Johnny: Would it be possible to display the attack order for tonight's cycle the day of?  As it is, whoever goes first has a massive advantage, and I think it would even out the playing field if the second-in-line nation could know so ahead of time and plan their moves accordingly.

it's random, so there's no way of knowing.

Well, some people might find that fun. However, I would guess that the average person (which may or may not look anything like the average GT player...) would find such lack of information annoying more than interesting. Would you really want to be playing Axis & Allies against someone if they understood how the dice rolls created the outcome and you only knew units costs and strength values?

Hiding how the combat system works gives an advantage to players who have played longer (and thus also likely have more resources, larger nations, and more diplomatic contacts). If that is on purpose as a design decision, that is fine, but it should at least be acknowledged that that is the case.

I numbered your questions to make answering them easier for me.

1) No, you're not assured.  The missile may take damage as it flies to its target, it will take a small amount of damage from the warship as it approaches, and then there's a random factor.  If the values are close and you definitely want to eliminate the target, it's best to send extra firepower.

2) If the missile flies directly over the turret, then it will reduce the missile's attack strength, possibly up to 280.  If the missile flies near the turret, the damage will be reduced.

3) Assuming there are no random factors involved and the missile flies directly over the turret, then the missile strength would be reduced from 2,700 to 2,350.  The remaining 2,350 strength missile attack would continue on to its target.

4) Yes.  Every battle is to the death.

5) Turrets attack air units at full strength no matter what.  However, sea units attack flyovers at 40% strength and land units attack fly overs at 10% strength.  (If the flyover isn't directly over the object, then the value is reduced further.)

6) The amount of damage is the percent of the distance of its collateral damage range times the strength of the bomb.  For example, if the bomb's attack strength is full (2,000) and its range is 4, then a sector that is a distance of 2 from the target will get 50% damage.

First, thank you very much for the answers as this is quite enlightening!

Second, for Q#5, I was wondering about the air strike itself. So, for example, would a jet (strength 40) possibly die in an airstrike [no intervening units] against a jeep (also strength 40), or would it almost always survive because of the ground penalty (40 * 0.1 = jeep would be fighting the jet using only strength 4).

There is the obvious strategic value of being able to cause damage at long range using air attacks, but I am trying to gauge the tactical value of using air power in actual battles where there is no particular unit that needs to be singled out for destruction -- ALL the invaders or defenders need to be eliminated. I am pretty sure that ground units fight at full strength during an airstrike, but it is an important enough point I thought it needs clarifying.


7) Do units or combats stack?
7a) A tank (90) attacks a turret (70) with an infantry (20) in the cell. Is this approximately even (90 vs 90) or does the tank have an advantage (90 vs 70 or 20)?
7b) A L5 tank attacks forwards and there are defenders on the path. Will the tank have better, worse, or similar odds of winning against 1x L5 enemy tank or against 5x L1 tanks in succession?

8) Are combat results linear, or exponential in nature?
8a) Is an attacking L1 tank more likely to destroy a level of an enemy L3 tank than an enemy L9 tank?
8b) In combat, is a L3 construction (3 armor, 30+30+30 strength) truck identical to a L1 tank (3 armor, 90 strength?

What exactly is the attack/defense value of a base?  I think it is 1000, but it has an armour level of 3 -- does that make it 3000?

It would possibly die.  The reduced attack power for land units only applies to flyovers.

7) They stack.

7a) A turret's strength and a land unit's strength in the same sector are combining before deciding a winner.

7b) I'd say it's usually similar odds.  If an L5 tank fights an L5 tank, each unit gets a random value chosen once.  The random value will decide the winner.  Assuming those values aren't too far apart, the winner will most likely be left with one tank.  If an L5 tank fights five L1 tanks in a row, there are five sets of random values.  So, if the L5 tank happens to get high random values and the L1 tanks happen to get low values, it's theoretically possible that the L5 will win each individual battle by enough to not have a loss of a tank.  So, in the end, the L5 could theoretically still have a strength of five.  With random values, though, I think that's fairly unlikely to occur.  It's probably more likely to occur at least once, though, which may leave you with an L2 tank.

8) Linear.

8a) Without random values, the L3 tank would become L2 and the L9 would become L8.  However, you have to consider the fact that a higher starting value would be affected more greatly by the same percentage.  A low random value for an L1 means one tank loses some of its value.  A low random value for an L9 means nine tanks worth of strength lose their value.  I'm not saying it should affect strategy.  I'm just saying that the random values can affect high level units more greatly.  In the end, though, it's still a completely random factor.

8b) Yes.

No, the armor value is just an adjustment applied to the values to accommodate for units of different types battling.

My initial implementation of armor was more dramatic, but it made the battle far too lop-sided.  So, armor currently is applied by dividing the current object strength by one plus the enemy armor over ten.

For example, an infantry (armor 1, strength 20) going against a jeep (armor 2) would have strength level of 16.667 (20/1.2).

A jeep (armor 2, strength 40) going against a tank (armor 3) would have a strength level of 30.769 (40/1.3).  The tank in that battle would have a strength level of 75 (90/1.2).

Correct me if I am wrong, Johnny, but I recall somewhere you writing that armor values do not increase with level. I assume armor also does not stack in the ground unit + turret scenario? May I also assume the attackers strength is modified by the turret's armor of 4 rather than the ground unit's armor of <4 (implying that stacking a turret and a ground unit does not decrease your chance of winning a defensive combat)?

It actually calculates a new weighted armor value, taking into account the strengths and armor levels of the turret and the land unit.