Precision Rolls
Ranged combat is different from melee combat in that it does not use defense values. Instead, Precision is used to determine determines which square a missile or spell hits, depending on a unit’s Precision and the range of the attack. If there are units in the square, they may be hit, whether they are friendly or enemy. Missiles cannot distinguish friend from foe.
How the game determines what square to hit is not completely known. Testing has shown that the game will attempt to pick the square (or squares if AoE) where the attack can potentially cause the most damage. This means that the game will tend to prioritize targeting squares with high hit point density and low protection or resistances. This can be exploited by the player by placing high hitpoint units away from the main army to act as bait. Targeting can be influenced by giving squads orders such as Fire Closest, Fire Cavalry, etc.
A missile Precision roll can be triggered when firing a ranged weapon or casting spells. Any ranged attack or spell with a Precision bonus of 100 always hits its target square as long as that square is within range.
Precision Roll
$\text{If Attacker Precision value} \gt 10$
$\text{Precision score} = \text{Attacker Precision value} -7$
$\text{If Attacker Precision value} \le 10$
$\text{Precision score} = \frac{\text{Attacker Precision value}}{2} -2$
Precision roll: Precision score
$\pm$ Precision modifiers
+ DRN
Range: Number of squares from attacker to target square.
Diagonals count as 1.5 square
If Precision roll $\ge$ Range ⇒ The missile hits target square
If Precision roll is $\lt$ Range ⇒ The missile deviates from target square
The amount of deviation is equal to the range x 1.25 / Precision
The game will randomly determine whether the missiles deviate long or short, left or right, or some combination. The actual distribution is a bell curve – most projectiles will fall within the middle of the deviation range, but some will land at the extremes.
Once the game decides where a missile lands (even if it is far away, that square is affected), any unit in that square may be targeted. The size of the unit influences who will be hit. If a square with a giant of size 4 and a human of size 2 is hit, the giant will be targeted two times out of three. Once the target is decided, there is a hit calculation that uses the following values:
Ranged Target Roll
If Area of Effect $\lt$ 1
Attack roll: Size points in the square
+2 if magic weapon
+ DRN
Thus, the more units in a square, or the bigger the units in a square, and the more tired they are, the more likely someone is going to be hit by a missile weapon landing in that square.
Any ranged attack or spell with an area of effect of one or higher will hit everyone in the square. For AoE higher than 1 surrounding squares will be hit as well.
If the attacker’s roll is greater than the defender’s then a hit is achieved. Damage is then calculated.
- Most ranged weapons add one-third of the unit’s Strength to the weapon damage value (plus a random number).
- Crossbows and some other weapons are Armor Piercing in addition to dealing piercing damage. This means that only 40% of defender’s Protection value is used.
- Some spells can even be Armor Negating which means that armor affords no protection.
While it may seem that missile units cannot shoot very far without having their shots deviate hopelessly, in practice massed units can deal severe damage to an enemy simply due to the number of projectiles in the air. Everything that goes up has to come down somewhere!