If all units were to compete Wimbledon-style...

[Lord Ludwig]

who would win?

I suppose such discussion has been done before, but I was just wondering earlier today.

I am not asking for the best unit to do the campaign with, I am thinking about one single specimen of each kind, regardless of cost or leadership, put against the others, without item or skill modifiers, on neutral terrain (no vulcanic or frozen land, no cemeteries or ships). And by day, of course, since at night I reckon the troll would be undisputed winner.

So who would win? A lvl 5 clearly, but would it be the black dragon? Or would the archdemon's fire resistance make him the favorite even against dragons? Or could it maybe be that the archdemon beats the black dragon but then gets beaten by the ancient ent due to the latter one's higher stamina, after which of course the black dragon incinerates the ancient ent who's vulnerable to fire? In this last case a grand slam tournament would be decided by the draw, who faces who first...

Of course all this can be calculated statistically given the relative values of the unit's various parameter's but it would be quite a task to consider everything...

[Zechnophobe]

Archdemon or green dragon, not sure which. Whichever actually wins head to head, which may be the greenie. Thing is, Archie wins against anyone whose leadership cost is less than his, but also beats red and black dragons. So I think that would leave bone dragons and Green dragons that can beat him (potentially). The exact leadership for those units doesn't come to mind, but I seem to remember archies and bonies having the same leadership cost. Green dragons probably also beat reds and blacks. They have 50% fire resistance, and two no retaliation abilities to one (Target capture rocks Dragon vs Dragon).

Oh, just occurred to me that archdemon also takes no constant poison damage, meaning he may have a good showing versus the bone dragon.

[ivra]

I got a brilliant idea - at least for a while... The Tirex is the obvious winner because of its Ravenous talent. It could just eat a corpse to restore its health to max. It should win any battle.

Then it dawned on me that the only corpse available was the single opponent it is fighting. So if a corpse ever became available it would not need it after all...

Sometimes I surprise myself with my brilliant ideas :-)

[DGDobrev]

Hmm, the question is actually quite tough in my opinion. Each unit has another than can be the death of them. Archdemon beats the black and red dragons easily. Against a green, they should still win due to their high initiative (8 vs. 5 for the green dragon), high move speed(9 vs.6 for the green dragon) and higher physical resistance (20 vs. 10 for the Green Dragon). In general, the Archdemon can get 2 free hits against the green dragon before suffering any hits (move away, wait, green moves, archie hits, next turn, archie hits) not to mention that he can outrun the green dragon.

Against a bone dragon, things are interesting. Archdemons once again have higher move speed (9 vs 7), higher initiative (8 vs 6), higher attack and defence (66 both vs. 53 both), and higher crit chance (15% vs 10%). HP's are 766 vs. 790 in favor of the Bone Dragon. Damage is 88-99 vs. 50-80 in favor of the Archdemon, but the bone dragons have 10% physical resistance, while the Archdemons don't have anything to show for against the poison damage.

However, pure math and 2 free hits put the archdemons slightly ahead, if I'm not mistaken. So, in the end, the Archdemon should take the grand prize :)

[Zechnophobe]

88-99 is an average of 93 damage, 50-80 is an average of 65. Even if the 93 loses 9.3 damage due to resistance, it is still significantly higher. Now looking at it, I think it really does come down to archie vs green.

[ivra]

Quick Answer is that the Archdemon wins over the Emerald Green Dragon. The long answer is documented in the attacked Excel file. All calculations are done using average damage (including average crit). So if you do 100 000 battles between these two combatants the values in the Excel file should be relevant.

Oops, I forgot to include resistance. But since the Archdemon has a higher physical resistance than the EGD, it does not affect the result. All calculations are done with 0 in resistance for both units.

Just a comment to DGDobrev's "while the Archdemons don't have anything to show for against the poison damage". I think it does; its Restoration ability let it clean itself from the Poison damage so it never takes any additional damage from poison or fire, which is normally where you really hurt a stack.

[DGDobrev]

You are absolutely right. I was aware of that, but still, 0% vs. poison isn't much to show for against the regular Bone Dragon attack. Nice calculations on your part, though :) I'm certain that something like this should happen. It would appear that archie gets the cake afterall. I really liked your idea of defending with the EGD for talent reload - if the EGD simply attacked, the AD would have gotten 2 additional retaliation strikes, and the battle would have ended up much sooner.

[lauvhk]

Ancient Ent is probably the only unit that can defeat Archdemon.

[ivra]

I agree. Ancient Ent, and maybe Tirex. The reason is that what killed the EGD in the end was its weaker Attack and Defense values compared to AD. Ancient Ent should clearly win. It can do a ranged attack every second turn that gives 50-90 in damage. Next turn it reloads it. So it only needs to handle the attack from the Archdemon, but having 1400 HP that should be no problem. The Tirex is a much closer call. Its Attack/Defense is almost as good as the AD's. It has a free attack with his Primal Fear that does 10-40 damage since it has a higher leadership than the AD. That and a higher HP is the only thing going for it.

I guess it comes down to a scissor-paper-rock situation. AD beats all units except Ancient Ent and maybe Tirex. Black and Red Dragons beat Ancient Ent and Tirex.

[DGDobrev]

I wonder if the Archdemon can beat up the Ent by using hit and run tactics. That would require some calculations. I'll try to do some.

Archie vs Anchient Ent

Attack: 66 vs 50
Defense: 66 vs 60 (+10 when ent defends)
Initiative: 8 vs 1
Speed: 9 vs 1
Crit: 15% vs 14%
Health: 766 vs 1400
Damage: 88-99 vs 100-140
Phys resistance: 20% vs 10%

- Ent's wasp swarm attack has 50-90 phys + 50-90 poison damage with a range of 4 and penalty of 0.5 if the target is farther than square 4 (meaning it will do half the damage on square 5+)
- Roots will not be a problem since the Archdemon will strip any negative effect off themselves

[Lord Ludwig]

I am really glad to have sparked such interest and calculations... I am almost tempted to actually draw a tournament table and see what comes out :-)

I imagined from the start, as I said in the first post, that it likely would be a rock-scissor-paper issue between archdemon, black dragon and ancient ent, so that means maybe a round robin between all lvl 5 units would be better to give a "winner" than playoffs.

Another couple of thoughts:

1) I said that if the tournament was held at night the troll would be unbeatable. Obviously he would not, however, be undrawable, since many creatures can outrun him and would never get caught, even a tiny forest fairy for example;

2) what would happen if we threw in also the ancient phoenix and even the lvl 5 book of evil? The book is easily dispatched, but what is the intrinsic strength of it's spells without an "Amelie" behind it? Anyway I suppose it still would be no match for any lvl 5 and most lvl 4 units. But the ancient phoenix? In the campaign it's a more or less useless spell, but in a one-on-one contest I think it would rank quite high...

[DGDobrev]

Well, there it is :)

Calculations complete. At the "ceteris paribus" rule (meaning "all other things being equal"), the Ancient Ent wins.
EDIT: Just a small clarification: Wasp Swarm damage is 50-90 physical + 50-90 poison, so I've applied the resistance to the first part of the formula in the xls file. Forgot to comment it for better clarity :)

However, with a pinch of luck, the archdemon can win. All it takes is that 1% better crit chance to work properly and give him a slight edge over the Ancient Ent.

I've used the standpoint that Archdemons must attack straight away, since the damage provided by Wasp Swarm at a distance greater than 4 squares actually equals the Ancient Ent's average attack damage. As such, both parties must start exchanging blows straight away or the other will gain an advantage (for example, if the Archdemon waits or the Ancient Ent defends).

Everything is in the xls table :)

[Lord Ludwig]

Impressive analysis... so it could really go either way, but on average the AE should win more often.

[Lord Ludwig]

Another couple of things regarding AD-AE.

I suppose "halve" works on the number of enemy creatures, not on their overall health, right? If it was the second way round then the AD would have a good chance to halve the AE's health with one blow winning hands down.

On the other hand we are ignoring (rightly, because that would not be in the spirit of the "tournament") that an actual army with a single AD would provide no bonuses, but a single AE would actually have +1 morale. However, as I said, I think it's correct to leave this out.

[MaroonMaurader]

I think a few elements of that analysis probably should be changed.

1. The Ancient Ent's wasp swarm damage should also be effected by the difference between attack and defense, so it's not actually 63 on average (41 at range, actually).

2. Ignoring critical hits overly disadvantages the ancient ent - and here's why: the ancient ent does 100-140 damage. The Archdemon does 88-99 damage. So a critical hit for the ent does 210 damage, or 1.75 times its average damage. A critical hit for the archdemon does 149 damage, or 1.6 times it's average damage. So even though both crit at basically the same rate, the ancient ent benefits more from it.

3. Ancient ents get a +10 defense bonus from defending. So if the ancient ent simply sits there defending, it only takes about 75 damage when the archdemon attacks, and retaliates for about 63. So the Ancient Ent can actually just sit there defending and either stalemate or win with greater odds than if it takes initiative and launches attacks of its own. Over 6 rounds defending, the ancient ent would take about 2 critical hits and 10 regular (including counter-attacks) for about ~988 damage; it would give about 2 critical hits and 10 regular for about 850 damage (significant overkill).

4. Wasp Swarm cannot be retaliated. Ancient Ent should use it.

If the ancient ent and archdemon just sit there swinging at each other, every 2 turns the ancient ent has been hit 4 times (for about 408 damage), and has hit the archdemon 4 times (for about 252 damage). As DGDobrev showed, this ends in 7 rounds with ~74 health left to the ancient ent. And a noticeable portion of the time, due to random variations in damage and critical hits, the AD will even win.

If the archdemon just parks itself next to the ancient ent and starts swinging, but the ancient ent only uses it's abilities, then every 2 turns the ancient ent is hit twice (for about 204 damage), retaliates the archdemon twice (for about 126 damage), and hits it with a close-range wasp swarm once (for about 82 damage). So overall, the AE takes 204 damage and does 208 damage. So if they repeat this pattern for 6 rounds, then in the 7th round the archdemon hits, is retaliated, then gets hit by wasp swarm... the archdemon has done ~714 damage and has taken ~769 damage. The archdemon's chance of victory is less than one in a million in this case.

If the archdemon is a little smarter, it will make use of the "wait" option to park itself precisely 5 spaces away from the ancient ent every time the ancient ent is about to launch a wasp swarm, then close in to strike afterwards - in which case the ancient ent is only doing 167 damage per 2 combat rounds. If this pattern goes on for 9 rounds of combat, the Archdemon does about 918 damage and takes about 772 damage. Closer, but still fairly clearly a win for the Ancient Ent.

[DGDobrev]

1. I am uncertain whether attack and defense play a part in the use of abilities. This is why I left it out. I will read through the russian guide carefully and I'll do some research. However, if it does play a part, the wasp swarm damage will be:
(1/(1+(66-50)*0.0333))*((70*0.8 )+70)

2. That is quite right, but I think you miss that the crit modifier is 1.5, not 1.75, which puts the Ancient Ent's damage at the value I put in there (atk/def ratio is taken into account as you can see from the formula). I know that Jolly Roger from the gift bag improves crit damage by another 20%, but we're talking about pure stats here.
here's the formula I used:
=((1/(1+(66-50)*0.0333))*140)*1.5
everything's there - def/atk ratio, multiplier, etc.

3. That is a good point.

4. Wasp swarm is a ranged attack. Can you use in against an enemy that is right in front of the ent? I haven't seen the AI do it, so I surmise it is impossible (otherwise the AI should have used it because the AI always chooses the higher damage attack).
- waiting puts the AD at a disadvantage, because the Ancient ent will always retaliate to the AD's attack, while in the meantime he will take damage from wasp swarm, even if it's lower.

[ivra]

Regarding: "3. Ancient ents get a +10 defense bonus from defending. So if the ancient ent simply sits there defending..."

I thought the Defend command only lasted out the current round. So it makes no sense to defend if your initiative is lower than the opponent. If the opponent waits for some reason, then defend works. How does the defend command work? Does it last out the current round only or does it last all until it is the defending unit's turn to act again next round?

[MaroonMaurader]

I think we have a non-disagreement about critical damage. I merely meant to say that the ratio between critical damage and average damage is not fixed across units (unlike the ratio between critical and maximum); the ancient ent's critical does 1.75 times its average while the AD's critical does 1.6 times its average. Your formula for figuring out the ancient ent's critical damage is precisely right, and gives a more precise value for the specific situation of an ancient ent fighting an arch-demon than my general statement that a critical does a base of 210 damage before resistances, attack, and defense are considered.

I did forget about the adjacent-enemy restriction on wasp swarm, and you're absolutely correct - it makes my suggestion about wasp swarm simply incorrect.

Defense lasts until the unit's next turn. I'm not sure how that works with abilities that give multiple turns in one round, but that's not really relevant here.

And, because I was curious, I went and checked what the archdemons odds actually are in a straight-up punching match by writing a short script to simulate 10,000 of them (including rolling for damage and critical). The ent won 7,804; the demon 2,196. When the ents took the defensive and forced the archdemons to attack, the archdemons won precisely one match out of 10,000.

So it looks at first glance like the ancient ents have a major edge... which means the archdemons would be happy with a draw, and are free to take delaying tactics of their own: sitting next to the ents and defending, getting a +6 defense boost. Now the ents can't defend, or else the match ends in a draw... and the ents would like to have more than a 50% success rate out of this. When the archdemons do that, their odds of victory go up to 35%.

But it gets even better - suppose the archdemons just sit there defending themselves, UNTIL they have good odds of killing the ents with their next attack; then instead of waiting to counterattack they take the initiative and strike first. Now the demon's odds of winning rise up to 63%.

To summarize:
If the archdemons defend, and the ents defend, it's a draw. 50% success for each.
If the archdemons defend (intelligently), and the ents attack, the archdemons win 63% of matches.
If the archdemons attack, and the ents defend, the archdemons win 0.01% of matches.
If the archdemons attack, and the ents attack, the archdemons win 22% of matches.

So obviously the archdemons should start every match on the defensive. However, the ents need not respond by defending as well. The ents know that even if they get one or two unlucky attacks, the archdemons will still accept a draw; on the other hand if they get a string of lucky attacks they might win. So the ents would be well-served to attack for a little while, and if things go poorly call it off, take the defensive, and accept a stalemate. So if both players are playing optimally, you would expect well over 63% of the matches to end in draws (I don't know the exact number, but I'd guess around 80%), and the remainder to be victories for the ents.

If you change the scoring, you change behaviors and results of course. You could make it zero-sum (a victory for the ents gives the ents one point and takes one from the demons, and vice versa), you could make draws worthless, or any of a number of other creative scoring techniques... which is why it's so hard for me to say who actually "wins" this matchup and by how much. But if you forced me to guess what the outcome would be, I'd predict stalemate (neither side willing to attack, so both sit next to each other defending for eternity).

[lauvhk]

All the defend/use ability analysis are based on player knowledge. For all Ents (both ancient and normal), the AI will never defend, use normal attack when the opposing unit is within reach and only use special when the enemy is out of reach. So while the Ancient Ent Wasp Swarm is a range attack that cannot be retaliated, the AI will never use it if you park something next to it.

(In case you have doubts, I would suggest starting a new game and play through the tutorial. The last battle involve two normal Ents in separate stack. Place your paladin in different hexes to see different actions from them.)

While Ancient Ent can defeat the Archdemon, it would be interesting to see how it deals with the Cyclops. I will leave it to the number crunching players.

[tetleytea]

I tend to view it differently. The demoness has the best backhand, but Knights have a killer circular forehand swing. Vampires have the best serve. Demonologists and Gorguls are pretty good at pressing the net and volleying close-up shots, but that is more suited for doubles play.

[Lord Ludwig]

While Ancient Ent can defeat the Archdemon, it would be interesting to see how it deals with the Cyclops. I will leave it to the number crunching players.

Very good point, the cyclops is not to be underestimated. Considering he is a sniper (no distance penalty) and an archer (basic attack is ranged so he can crit, the AE can't crit with the swarm), considering relative resistances and AT-DE values, I think it comes down to the layout of the grid.

I made some calculations - very approximately - and I think if they just stand and exchange distant blows, considering the AE can strike only once every two rounds, it would take him over 30 turns to take down the cyclops, so around round 24-25 it will be the AE to perish. However if the AE manages to close distance and so eliminate the damage reduction to swarm, then he has a good chance to win.

[Zechnophobe]

A few things:

1) Abilities that damage take into account Attack and Defense. Otherwise abilities like the breath attacks for black and red dragons wouldn't do nearly as much damage as their normal attack.

2) Ancient Ents have less leadership than an Archdemon, meaning that the AD wins hands down due to Halve ability triggering.

3) Tirex looks like it should easily kill an Archdemon in a fight. SO I think our little tournament would depend on fight order. If Black, Red, or Green Dragon takes out the tirex first, archdemon wins. If tirex takes out Archdemon first...

Actually, that's a good question, Does a single black dragon beat a single green? 50% fire resistance vs 20 physical, but the green has lower base damage, stats, and health. Target capture though helps close the gap quite a bit.

[Zechnophobe]

A New contestant Appears:

Ancient Phoenix, I choose you!

[Lord Ludwig]

A New contestant Appears:

Ancient Phoenix, I choose you!

Indeed I mentioned the AP in an earlier post. With 140-240 dmg and 40% crit it's an extremely strong candidate, and that's without considering that, to reflect the "rebirth" talent, it should be killed twice...

On the other hand maybe it should be considered out of league, a sort of "lvl 6".

BTW are there any mods who make AP just buyable? Imagine an army with 20-30 of them...

Trex vs AD: at first I thought the best Trex can do is a draw, since AD can keep teleporting away. But if primal fear works on AD, then - albeit very slowly - Trex could win.

However, if you are right about how "halve" works (I suspect it works on number of troops rather than overall health and would thus be useless in a one-on-one fight) then AD would have an excellent chance of taking down the Trex.

[KongMysen]

The halve works...

I just faced a few Arch demons with my 1 bone dragon, 4 black and 5 red dragons and in round 1 the AD halved my Bonedragon, leaving it with 395hp..

[Lord Ludwig]

This changes things quite a bit... I suppose this makes the archdemon once again favorite versus the ancient ent and the t-rex, if not against the ancient phoenix. But maybe with his fire resistance he trumps even that one.

[Lord Ludwig]

I correct myself, the t-rex has higher leadership so is immune.

[Zechnophobe]

Ancient Phoenix has 1 leadership, so yeah, he wins that one too.

I know.. you say '1 leadership, really?'. It is true however. I believe this is so that you wouldn't summon one and have it immediately go berserk? Not sure.

[Hento]

BTW are there any mods who make AP just buyable? Imagine an army with 20-30 of them...


That would be great, Ancient Phoenix is otherwise completely useless and pointless to summon over any other spell.

[Metathron]

That would be great, Ancient Phoenix is otherwise completely useless and pointless to summon over any other spell.

Couldn't agree more. I only used the phoenix in my very first KB:TL game and never after that. Rather a waste of mana and crystals.

[Harush]

Couldn't agree more. I only used the phoenix in my very first KB:TL game and never after that. Rather a waste of mana and crystals.

Actually, if you rush to tier 3 order as soon as you can, the ancient phoenix pretty much destroys anything it faces on the first 4 islands. With one red dragon and tier 3 order, you can get to 30+ easy.

[Zechnophobe]

Early Phoenix is amazing, I agree. Even Order 2 mature phoenix's will pull through the hardest part of the game (Rusty anchor) very nicely.

Late game I use it as a 2-of tank. Once on the first turn to light things on fire and lock down an archer stack, and again when it resurrects. It has similar utility to Demon Portal.

Now, Nature's Call.. there's a spell I cringe every time I pick up a scroll for it.

[WhYdOyOuThInKtHaThApPeNeD]

For the level-5 competition wouldn't there be a big difference whether it were a 1v1 or 50v50 say?


I did just that with the Phoenix in a paladin game, rushed to tier 3 Order just for the Ancient. It totally ruled until about half way through Verona when it started dying in 2 hits.


I hear you on Natures Call. Though I got Natures Call in Debir on the Paladin run and it was quite useful on Debir and on Scarlet, but only very early on there.
Always thought the mana cost could come down or maybe the leadership could go up. If the power increase were more balanced for level 2-3 it would be usable. Say at level-2 500 leadership more than the level-2 Demon Portal, and say at level-3 1000 leadership more than the level-3 Portal. That's considering the extra mana cost and the relative weakness of animals to demons.

[Lord Ludwig]

For the level-5 competition wouldn't there be a big difference whether it were a 1v1 or 50v50 say?


Of course it would. I specified 1v1 to make things more interesting. At xvx, the higher x, the more relevant the first strike becomes (killed opponents won't retaliate). High initiative thus becomes very important, and guess who has high initiative? Again the archdemon. Consensus seems to lean slowly versus the archdemon winning in 1v1 too, but in 50v50 they would be unstoppable, I reckon.

[Zechnophobe]

Yeah, 50v50 would also benefit burning/poisoning as the amount of damage would be huge. But, once again, Demons do not suffer burn or poison.

It is actually amusing how good the Archies are when directly compared to most other Level 5's. Of course, we are ignoring the very important leadership number.

[pavned]

No Ogre or Giant? Why?
:):confused:

Is anybody playing with those units. They are so weak!

As for Ancient phoenix, they are very good, would have love if they could have made them the level-5 unit for humans and made it buyable.

At least they should have put it has a wonderer scroll, meaning you get some Ancient Phoenix base on leadership and they last for a certain amount of time if they don't get kill (twice) during battle.

[DGDobrev]

Ogres has limited usefulness. Stealing movepoints isn't that bad, but in this bout, he loses to almost everyone. Besides, I never found it useful... Low Atk and Def, 50-60 damage and 680 HP for 1000 leadership. I'd take 4 paladins over 1 ogre any day.

Giants - once gain, limited usefulness. Atk and Def are generally decent, but he is very, very slow and that earthquake ability reduces its effectiveness with distance (100% for the enemies next to him and -10% per cell away).

This is why these 2 units aren't exactly popular :)

[Fatt_Shade]

I`m not sure about Giants. Ad attack and giant retaliate, then earthquaqe ad no retaliation, then attack for attack, then first round again, so in 4 rounds ad hit 6 times, and giant 6 times hit, +2 no retaliation from close range. Not sure for ecsact numbers, but i think close call. giant have more % crit, ad can get maybe 1 crit in those 4 rounds, but giant will have 1 for sure. And 134 more Hp on giant side.

But i think you all forgot real winner in this compettition : Troll. Of course if battle played at night or underground :-)