Talk: Attack

New Damage formula for Age of Empires II

Since update 81058, the damage formula for AoE2 has been changed to allow individual sources of damage to be negative if the attack value itself is negative because of how the new Royal Heirs tech was implemented.

The Damage formula is now:

$Damage=\max(1,k_{elev}\times \sum _{i}\max(\min(0,Attack_{i}),Attack_{i}-Armor_{i}))$

instead of:

$Damage = \max(1, k_{elev} \times \sum_i \max(0, Attack_i - Armor_i))$

However, since the previous formula is the same for the other games and all of them are listed together, I'm not sure how to edit the article to have the new formula.

For proof of the new damage formula, in the Scenario Editor, we can use a Samurai (which has normally 10 melee attack and 10 unique-unit attack) against a Rattan Archer (which has normally 0 melee armor and 0 unique-unit armor). If we make the Samurai's melee damage be -5 by creating a new trigger with a Change Object Attack effect for the Samurai and subtract 15 to Attack Type 4 (melee), the resulting damage after the Samurai attacks the Rattan Archer is only 5 instead of the expected 10 if the old formula still applied. Furthermore, if we add a Change Object Armor to the Rattan Archer and add, for example, 2 to Armor Type 4 (melee), then the resulting damage is still 5 (10 UU damage + (-5) melee damage) and not 3 (10 UU + (-7) melee), proving that the new minimum is the negative attack value (in this case (-5)). Finally, setting the Rattan Archer's melee armor to -2 results in an attack of 7 damage (10 UU + ((-5)-(-2)) melee).

I believe what you say. It is just that I have been lazy enough to edit the formulae. You can go ahead and push your changes to Armor class (Age of Empires II) page. Sauravt2812 (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

That's a very interesting finding. And now that I read it, it makes 100% sense due to Royal Heirs. Joaosantos92 (talk) 23:42, 23 November 2023 (UTC)