Re: Legends: Combat (general)

From: griffith@netcom.com (Jim Griffith)

Date: Thu, 11 May 1995 00:00:00 +0000

Student <io.tudelft.nl> writes:

>Don't use soldiers against monsters. Most of the time the monster's
>Invulnerability will be too high to overcome. Most soldier-statuses
>have a Damage of three or less (vampyres have 6).
>I would advice using characters with weapons with a high enough Damage-
>rating to overcome the monster's Invulnerability. Use 1 soldier in the
>slot directly across to take the SA-damage. This is a bit of a gamble
>however, because lair-monsters switch slots between turns.

I would say this is outright bad advice.  Yes, soldiers have INV/DAM
handicaps when fighting tough monsters.  But it is *far* easier to take
a lair with an army than it is with a party.  You can take 305 troops, stick
one troop in each front slot and 100 troops in each back slot, attack the
lair, and probably be guaranteed of taking the force while losing only
two or three soldiers.  If you attack with a party, you get the same
guarantee - only losing two or three *characters*.

Do the math.  Say a monster has INV 6, DF 30, CF 500.  Say it's fighting DAM 0
troops.  That gives it an effective DF of 30*4 = 120.  That means you need to
do 120*500 = 60,000 AF to kill it.  This is compared to needing 30*500 = 15000
AF to kill it with characters.  It is *far* easier to come up with 60,000
worth of soldier AF than it is to come up with 15,000 character AF, because
you're limited to 8 characters, but you can use an unlimited number of
soldiers.  15,000 character AF means eight characters each with an AF of 1875.
I've only got four such characters in my NIC3 position.  But I only need 500
troops with AF 120 to take the same lair, and that's trivial to get.  And my
losses will be far easier to stomach with an army than with a party.

Early in a game, it's more reasonable to take out lairs with characters,
because positions are weaker and they have less soldiers.  Later in the game,
most positions can assemble a few thousand soldiers in a few turns, and even
a few hundred troops will take out the average dragon.

Jim

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Griffith  /--OO--\     | Two great powers are on our side: the power of
griffith@netcom.com        | Love and the power of Arithmetic.  These two are
BEWARE BATS WITHOUT NOSES! | stronger than anything else in the world.

References

Legends: Combat (general)
jgairns@emr1.emr.ca
Tue, 09 May 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Legends: Combat (general)
Student <io.tudelft.nl>
Wed, 10 May 1995 00:00:00 +0000