Last Revised June 28, 1998
While the Military Advisor is useful, sometimes he just doesn't give you enough information (especially if you want to know the odds that your *enemy* will win if he/she attacks *you*!). And for cheat-free play-by-email games, it's important to keep your opponents honest and not let them win battles against incredible odds by simply reverting a gazillion times. With this in mind, we have analyzed the Warlords combat system, and learned how to analyze battles. A number of resources for doing this are listed below. WarBOT in particular is absolutely essential to the Warlords II World Tournament, and the Battle Bonuses documentation for it is very helpful for understanding how the bonuses work in any army set. An upcoming version of WarBOT should support arbitrary army sets, and then it will be useful for all Warlords games.
WarBOT, the ultimate Warlords Battle Odds Tool:
Each of these allows you to calculate the odds of victory for any set of attacker and defender strengths. (WarBOT will also figure out all the bonuses of all the units, and you just need to know which units are in the battle, what the terrain is, and whether units are blessed, carrying items, or otherwise enhanced.
Additional Information below is useful for gaining intuition about how the battle odds will work out in a given situation.
(Note - this is normal combat - odds for Intense Combat are different.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Def. | Attacker Strengths --> Str. | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 -----|------------------------------------------------------------------ 1 | 50. 76. 87. 92. 95. 97. 98. 98. 99. 99. 100 100 100 100 2 | 24. 50. 67. 77. 84. 89. 92. 94. 96. 97. 98 99 99 99 3 | 13. 33. 50. 63. 72. 79. 85. 89. 92. 94. 96 97 98 99 4 | 8.0 23. 37. 50. 61. 69. 76. 82. 86. 90. 92 94 96 97 5 | 5.1 16. 28. 39. 50. 59. 67. 74. 80. 84. 88 91 94 96 6 | 3.3 11. 21. 31. 41. 50. 58. 66. 73. 78. 83 87 91 94 7 | 2.2 7.7 15. 24. 33. 42. 50. 58. 65. 72. 78 83 87 91 8 | 1.5 5.5 11. 18. 26. 34. 42. 50. 58. 65. 71 77 83 87 9 | 1.1 3.9 8.3 14. 20. 27. 35. 42. 50. 57. 65 71 78 83 10 | 0.7 2.8 6.1 10. 16. 22. 28. 35. 43. 50. 57 65 72 78 11 | 0.5 2.0 4.4 7.7 12. 17. 22. 29. 35. 43. 50 58 65 73 12 | 0.3 1.4 3.1 5.5 8.7 13. 17. 23. 29. 35. 42 50 58 66 13 | 0.2 0.9 2.1 3.9 6.2 9.2 13. 17. 22. 28. 35 42 50 58 14 | 0.1 0.6 1.4 2.6 4.3 6.5 9.2 13. 17. 22. 27 34 42 50 15 | 0.1 0.4 0.9 1.7 2.8 4.3 6.2 8.7 12. 16. 20 26 33 41 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (Note - all values were rounded off to 2 digits. 100% is really >99.5%)
On this list, stronger units are toward the bottom, weaker units near the top.
Stacks represented on each line are of roughly equal "strength", with adjacent units within 2 percent of a 50/50 chance, and the slightly stronger units to the right. Units on the same line, but not immediately adjacent may be as much as 5% off a 50/50 chance. Units on separate lines are typically further apart in relative strength, though they could be as close as a 53/47 split. For example, the line "1^4 2^2 4" should be read as: "Two 2's is close in strength to four 1's or a single 4, but is slightly stronger than the four 1's and slightly weaker than the single 4."
From this, a good guess at the relative strength of other stacks can be made - for example, a stack with three 3's and four 4's will lie between seven 3's and seven 4's, and so probably between a single 12 and 13, possibly around the strength of six 4's. In fact it lies somewhere between six 4's and a 13.
The single unit strengths are all three lines apart, but the gaps are not "equivalent".
Single
unit
1
2 1^2
3 1^3
1^4 2^2 4
1^5
5
1^6 2^3 3^2
1^7 6
1^8 2^4
7 4^2
3^3
8 2^5
5^2
2^6
3^4 9 4^3
2^7
6^2
10 3^5 2^8
5^3 4^4
7^2 11 3^6
3^7
4^5 6^3 8^2 12 5^4
3^8
4^6
9^2 7^3 13 5^5
6^4 4^7
8^3 5^6 4^8 14
7^4 6^5
9^3
6^6 8^4 7^5
9^4 7^6
8^5
7^7
8^6
9^5
7^8
8^7
9^6
8^8
9^7