Quote Originally Posted by Atilius
dismal,

You've pretty comprehensively demonstrated the strength ratio/battleOdds connection, that a Heroic victory requires more that just killing all the enemy without any losses of your own, and the Son of Chinglu stuff.
Yep, a lot of this started in my effort to figure out what generated a Heroic victory. The "chinglu" thing was a bit of a diversion, but at least its 100% chance factor helps give a little clarity into a few game variables.

I need to go back and revisit the "Heroic" victory question. I can't help but wonder if it's as simple as BattleOdds (= strength ratio) <1 combined with some minimum percentage of enemy killed and some maximum percentage of allies killed.

I'm planning to look at the effect of a commander's battle stars on battleOdds. Anyone's welcome to scoop me.
You could quickly generate some data using something like the approach I used above.

1) Start new campaign w/ fow and AI moves off
2) Take a general and move him within one turn of a battle.
3) Save game
4) Initiate battle, check odds
5) Quit and Reload saved game
6) Mod general's command up/down
7) Repeat beginning at step 4

The added benefit here is you don't actually have to fight the battles.