Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

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New Zealand zoom
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Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

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Post by zoom »

I figured I would post the results, in the event that anyone is interested, and for posterity purposes.

Test conditions: 10 idle Macehualtins in 2 rows, regular formation, struck (targeted) with a single Skull Knight hit at the center unit of the front row.

Group A took an average of 118.5 splash damage, from a Champion Skull Knight with the Great Temple of Huitzilopochtli shipment (increases Skull Knight splash radius from 2 to 3)
Group B took an average of 110 splash damage, from a Champion Skull Knight without the Great Temple of Huitzilopochtli shipment (increases Skull Knight splash radius from 2 to 3)

This means that, under typical conditions, the temple shipment increases splash damage by less than 8%. The total damage increase is smaller than that (below 6%), since only splash damage is affected by the shipment. The effect would be even smaller with additional attack bonuses, such as Knight upgrade shipments, the Legendary (Imperial) improvement, and War Dance, since the hidden statistic "damage cap" does not scale along with attack. On the plus side, predictably, the splash damage increase is a much larger percentage when its subjects are unusually far from the targeted unit. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case in practice, and when it is, the absolute values (in terms of damage dealt, as opposed to percentages) are much smaller, too, since splash damage decreases at an exponential rate, with distance.

It seems that the shipment's effect is insignificant at most. Just as it did me, this might surprise some players, to various extents.

Thank you to Gamevideo 112-114 for helping conduct the tests.

We also tested 1 Frigate v 1 Fuchuan initiated by Broadsides at full range, in identical tests. Neither unit had any upgrades. The Frigate has 2 more range, so it turns earlier, but we found it turns much, much more slowly than the Fuchuan, so it still starts attacking about a second later). Here are the results, in Fuchuan hitpoints remaining:

1. >1000.
2. 560.
3. 0 (Frigate also died). Yes, really!
4. 300.
5. 390.
6. 810.
7. 840

:chinese:
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by Garja »

Area of damage is great when you have multiple units, not just one.
Also it's not clear if the unit reaches capped damage without further upgrades.
Also idk about %, it's more whether it's effective or not.
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by Kaiserklein »

Maybe that kind of upgrade needs to also increase the damage cap somehow. I assume the same thing would happen if you get the arsenal up for grenadiers.
But the uglier thing here is the boats fight, it really shouldn't be that random.
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by dansil92 »

Describe aztec civ design in one sentence:

An unmassable 4 speed melee infantry with a useless 2000 coin upgrade that costs an age 4 shipment

(So when will skull knights become a coyote runner equiv?)

Thank you for your testing, ive long suspected that card to be entirely useless.
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Bhutan jgals
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by jgals »

having used this shipment a lot in team games, or water maps for a surprise blitz attack with a ton of skulls after a water boom I can tel you it is very OP in those situations. Having 3 area skulls is worth spawning, having 2 area is not. By the way, did you guys ever fix infantryfencing/cavalry school to work with dog soldiers/skulls? Thats the important topic here
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by Kawapasaka »

jgals wrote:did you guys ever fix infantryfencing/cavalry school to work with dog soldiers/skulls? Thats the important topic here
wut, why should it?
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by gamevideo113 »

Kawapasaka wrote:
jgals wrote:did you guys ever fix infantryfencing/cavalry school to work with dog soldiers/skulls? Thats the important topic here
wut, why should it?
Artillery school works with heavy cannons (10% creation time reduction), so i guess you could make the case for skulls and dogs too.
jgals wrote:having used this shipment a lot in team games, or water maps for a surprise blitz attack with a ton of skulls after a water boom I can tel you it is very OP in those situations. Having 3 area skulls is worth spawning, having 2 area is not. By the way, did you guys ever fix infantryfencing/cavalry school to work with dog soldiers/skulls? Thats the important topic here
No in the end it's really not because you don't care as much about the extra area if your units are doing the same damage before wasting a shipment that costs 2000c (btw, since the cost of a skull knight is 250c, 11 skulls are worth 2250, which means that you're paying basically 1350 resources for the extra area of effect). It's much better to just ship the free 7 skulls and use the coin for something else.
Imo the cost of all of the industrial temple cards needs to be reduced to 1000c and the number of units adjusted accordingly, 2000c is just too hefty of a price tag.

And yes, fuchuans vs frigates have really variable outcomes. I think normalizing a bit the firing rate of warships would be a step in a good direction.
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by harcha »

Knew this already, how the damage cap on area of effect units works in this game is more noticeable with artillery pieces. If you shoot 1 falc in a group of tightly packed infantry (take sepoy for this example), you would expect that the infantry would be shredded, but instead the most of its base 300 damage will be spent on a single sepoy and the neighbouring ones will take only light damage. The damage cap really limits the output of these units, then impact of the area of effect variable is negligible. This variable only comes into play when the targeted units are being spaced, then the different area of effect variable will start showing different results.

IMHO the damage cap shouldn't be touched as it would change the game too much and unnecessarily.
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by zoom »

Garja wrote:Area of damage is great when you have multiple units, not just one.
Also it's not clear if the unit reaches capped damage without further upgrades.
Also idk about %, it's more whether it's effective or not.
There are ten units in the given test. Not all of them took damage, for either case.
The cap is 40; same as the attack of the Champion Skull Knight. Damage cap doesn't work in the linear way you seem to think it does, though. Having tested it, before, Eaglemut and I were unable to determine exactly how it works; only that it's impactful, and that it isn't straightforward.
The numbers, whether absolute or relative, strongly indicate that it isn't very effective at all.
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by zoom »

Kaiserklein wrote:Maybe that kind of upgrade needs to also increase the damage cap somehow. I assume the same thing would happen if you get the arsenal up for grenadiers.
But the uglier thing here is the boats fight, it really shouldn't be that random.
It's pretty crazy variance, yeah.
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by zoom »

jgals wrote:having used this shipment a lot in team games, or water maps for a surprise blitz attack with a ton of skulls after a water boom I can tel you it is very OP in those situations. Having 3 area skulls is worth spawning, having 2 area is not. By the way, did you guys ever fix infantryfencing/cavalry school to work with dog soldiers/skulls? Thats the important topic here
Considering the marginal impact it seems to have, I wonder if there's anything to that.

IDK that it were a fix so much as a change. The effect of the shipments, on the respective dances, was manually negated by ES. Whether it's warranted is debetable. I think making the unit more viable, in the first place, is a greater priority, regardless.
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by Garja »

zoom wrote:
Garja wrote:Area of damage is great when you have multiple units, not just one.
Also it's not clear if the unit reaches capped damage without further upgrades.
Also idk about %, it's more whether it's effective or not.
There are ten units in the given test. Not all of them took damage, for either case.
The cap is 40; same as the attack of the Champion Skull Knight. Damage cap doesn't work in the linear way you seem to think it does, though. Having tested it, before, Eaglemut and I were unable to determine exactly how it works; only that it's impactful, and that it isn't straightforward.
The numbers, whether absolute or relative, strongly indicate that it isn't very effective at all.
Not multiple damaged units but multiple damaging units. In other words, more skull knights stacking area damage.
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by Garja »

Ok ye damage cap is quite bs. It's the reason why units with area damage taken singularly are quite bad. Basically if there are too many units in the given area of damage, the output gets diluted among too many of them often causing the actually attacked unit to not even lose a single HP (priority seems to be given to the center of the area).

Damage cap seems to be consistent at 2x the base damage of the unit: Cuirassiers have 60. Mahout has 56 (based on colo stats and the unit also has multiplier vs infantry so it caps even more). Abus gun has 80 (yes abus used to have area of damage originally). Samurai has 50 (on area 1). Dopplesoldner has 40, etc.
Urumi do have 38 (colo base damage is 17) for some reason, spread over area 1. They also have ROF 1. Maybe time to nerf the unit?

Anyway, skull knights have 68 on a base damage of 20. So the unit seems to take into consideration the extra possible area.

With that said, the Temple card doesn't do much and it is potentially even detrimental for the mentioned reason.
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

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Post by Hazza54321 »

Lmao if abus had area damage
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by dansil92 »

Siege elephants and flamethrowers have absurdly high damage caps (flames do virtually limitless damage wherever they target)
Grens also have an exceptional damage cap as well

War canones and Tlaloc canoes have a low damage cap, like 1.5x its base attack, im not sure what the reasons behind that are
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by Garja »

I think stuff like cannons have higher damage cap on purpose.
Anyway it's really complex. I just tried to remove damage cap from the skullknight and doesnt seem to be any difference either in area of 2 or 3 (6 or 9 units).
Does anyone knows if the game reads TWC unit stats from theprotox file rather than the protoy?
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by edehollandsbrother »

One time I tested the effect of sending the shipment several times in the scenario editor, giving skull knights 10+ area. The result of attacking a group of units is remarkable: often the unit being attacked does not take any damage, but units far away from the skull knight do take damage. This suggests that the damage done doesn't actually fall off with distance from the unit being attacked. It's not clear how the damage output is calculated, but it's certainly the case that increasing the splash radius can cause the unit to perform worse in 1v1 combat.
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by Garja »

According to this scenario, having area2 resulted in slightly more damage output overall, distributed mostly among the closest units.
Area 3 provided less damage output but spread over more units.
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by duckzilla »

Garja wrote:According to this scenario, having area2 resulted in slightly more damage output overall, distributed mostly among the closest units.
Area 3 provided less damage output but spread over more units.
less overkill! completely op!
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by harcha »

Splash overkill is still quite minimal in this game if targeted units are not intentionally spaced out.
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by gamevideo113 »

I think we should do another comparison to see if there are effective performance differences between a group of carded skulls and a group of uncarded ones, depending on the different distribution of the splash damage dealt.
@zoom
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by Garja »

I used a legendary skull knight to do the testing to reproduce the higher attack.
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by dansil92 »

How does this compare to Bolas and Chakrams, that do a funky sort of ranged splash damage..?
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by harcha »

they suck even more than grens why would you even care tbh
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Re: Skull Knight Temple Shipment Test

Post by dansil92 »

harcha wrote:they suck even more than grens why would you even care tbh
The noble pursuit of knowledge? (Who floats 2000 coin industrial for a stupid skull Knight shipment?)
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