Attack or Lethality?

[Fearless Samnite]

According to the Recruitment Viewer

Which is better Attack or Lethality?

what does attack do and what does lethality do
thx

:lam:

[econ21]

I don't think we know exactly what attack does, but the suspicion is that it functions rather like the attack stat in STW/MTW, where we do know exactly what it does. Basically, in frontal melee combat, the computer compares the attack stat of one soldier with the defence stat of the one he is trying to hit and works out the probability of a hit. What matters is (attack-total defence). Raise that by one point and the probability of a hit rises by about 10% (Puzz3D's estimation for RTW - in STW/MTW it was known to be 20%).

Lethality I think determines the chance of a hit knocking off a hit point (ie killing most men as they only have one hit point). In vanilla, most lethality is 1, so a hit kills. In EB, it is often around 0.1, so only 10% of hits kill. That means EB delivers slower paced combat, which makes things less frenetic for the player.

As to which is more important, if what I have said is true, then you could say 10 points of an attack stat is roughly equivalent to a doubling of lethality. Both double a soldier's chance of killing his opponent.

The things I can't quantify easily are the roles of swing speed and animations. They matter but you'd have to investigate them empirically to work out how much.