Damage

Damage is a general term for the amount of health loss a creature or a spell can cause to a single creature or to a creatures stack. If a creature suffers more damage than its current health, it is eliminated, while in a stack of creatures, the topmost dies. The remainder of the damage is dealt to the next one and so forth until all damage is dealt or the whole stack is eliminated.

Creature's ability to deal damage typically has a range, which means that it causes randomly chosen damage between the minimum and maximum value. Creatures in a stack cause individual damages, and the combined damage of the stack is calculated by adding them together. However, the final damage can deviate from the combined damage greatly because of different additions and reductions, which are covered in the next section.

Spells damage dealing follow the same rules as mentioned above. However, they do not have a range of damage, but deal damage based on individual formulas. The formulas are always linear format: Ax+B, where x equals the value of spell power while A and B are variables defined by the spell. Damage from spell cannot be reduced, although some creatures have immunities against certain types of spells. Damage can be increased, if the target creature has natural vulnerability against the spell. For example, Water Elementals are immune to Ice Bolt and Frost Ring, but take extra 50% of damage from certain fire school spells like Fireball.

Damage calculation of creature stacks

The base damage calculation is straightforward. Creatures in stack do individual damage within their damage range, which are then added together forming the base damage. Some creatures lige Naga and Naga Queens do not have a damage treshold meaning they always do the same amount of damage. However, the dealt damage may deviate from the base damage greatly

This base damage is modified by attack and defense skills, which are calculated as the sum of the attack and defense skills of heroes and creatures, adjusted for any native terrain bonuses and effects of spells and creature specialties (e.g., bloodlust, disease). When a creature stack attacks, its attack skill is compared with the defending creature stack’s defense skill. The attacker receives a 5% bonus to its base damage for every point that its attack skill is higher than the defender’s defense skill, and a 2.5% penalty for every point that it is lower. When attack and defense skill are equal, base damage is not modified .

The effects of attack and defense skills are capped. Attack skill can increase damage with no more than 300%, and defense skill can decrease damage with no more than 70%. These caps are reached, respectively, when attack skill is 60 higher or 28 lower than defense skill. Thus, attack and defense skills can modify a base damage of 100 to no less than 30 and no more than 400.

Example

No heroes are assumed to be present in the battle.

• 2 Nagas attack a stack of Pikemen.
• The Nagas have a single unit damage value of 20 and their Attack skill is 16.
• A Pikeman has 10 health and their Defense skill is 5.
• The base stack damage done by the stack of Nagas is 2 * 20 = 40.
• The Pikemen's Defense skill (5) is subtracted from the Nagas' Attack skill (16), which gives us 11, giving the nagas an att/def damage bonus.
• The dealt damage will after the att/def consideration thusly have the bonus percentage modificator of 5%, multiplied with the damage bonus number in this case, 11, resulting in 55% bonus percentage of the Nagas damage towards the Pikemen.
• So the damage is increased by a 55% increase and the nagas through superior attack skill have 155% damage on the Pikemen stack.
• The total damage thus is 40 * 1.55 = 62 damage points.
• 6 Pikemen will be killed, and the top Pikemen of the remaining stack will have 8 health left.

When the remaining (if any) Pikemen (attack points of 4) attack the nagas (sporting 13 points of defense):

• -22.5% damage would be dealt by the Pikemen to the 5 creature level higher naga chimera stack.
• The difference between the Pikemen attack (4) and the nagas defense (13) would mean 9 malus points with a malus point resulting in 2.5 % each malus point (the half of the bonus points).
• ((2.5)*-9)% is -22.5% damage the Pikemen can damage the nagas with.