CivProBlows wrote:I think the defender is supposed to have the advantage, because all ties goes to him.
As you say, ties between individual dice comparisons are resolved in favor of the defender.
But, the attacker always has the advantage in an attack if he gets to throw more dice than the defender. The attacker gets to throw one fewer dice than he has attacking armies up to a maximum of three dice, while a defender gets to throw one dice for each defending army up to a maximum of two.
So for example, the attacker in a 10v20 attack ends up having the advantage in each individual attack because the attacker is throwing three dice, while the defender is only throwing two dice (this situation holds as long as the attacker has more than three armies and the defender has at least two armies). The attacker is approximately 8% less likely as the defender to lose two armies.
If the attacker has an 8% advantage in each individual attack why don't the odds favor the ultimate success of the attacker over a whole series of attacks? Why does the attacker only stand a 5% chance of conquering the country in a 10v20 attack? Because when the attacker throws three dice and the defender throws two dice, there is a 35% chance that both the attacker and the defender will each lose a single army in an attack.
When you are attacking 10v20, you can ill afford to lose a single army even if the defender loses a single army too in the same attack. This is because you will reach your stopping point of one army quicker than the defender will reach his stopping point of zero armies, because you start out at 10 while the defender starts out at 20.
When you attack 10v20 and the result is that both the attacker and defender lose a single army, ostensibly the attack was a tie. But that one army represents an 11% loss of your total armies, whereas it only represents a 5% loss of the defender's armies.
