Can someone please explain how critical damage works?

Mortal Engine

Long Swordsman
Oct 30, 2021
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Can anyone tell me how critical damage works? It seems like a x2 damage is a bit weak compared to some weapons giving consistent damage PLUS bonuses. Also, do units have a base crit chance of 5%? Thanks!
 
Yes it does x2 dmg. It means you can consider 1% crit = 1% dmg on average.
It's not always entirely true depending on the unit or on the target properties, but that comparison works in general.

Notes:
Area effects don't crit, only main target gets critted. (Woads, Zerks, etc.)

There exists melee and ranged crit even if both are named the same on items.
Ie:
Arrow crit only works on ranged attacks.
Melee weapon crit only works on melee attacks.
(Immortals, Centurions have both attacks.)

Shield of rostam have both melee and ranged crit, one is hidden.
 
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I know it's an old post, but mathematically its not always the same as dmg.

Eg. Spear gives +35% dmg and plus 5% crit.

Base damage 25.
25 plus 35% = 33,75 base dmg

Plus it does 33,75 x2 = 67,5 in 5% of all cases.

Which means:

33,75 dmg in 95 cases = 3206,25 dmg
67,5 dmg in 5 cases = 337,5 dmg

Leads to 3543,75 divided 100 = 35,44 dmg on average.

Spear would have 40% more= 35 plus 40% = 35 %.

It is almost the same but the outcome can be exactly the same or can be more different.

The e. g. just shows the way how to calculate. Not considering overkill btw. And it is just statistically average.

There is almost everytime an optimal outcome for every unit where optimal base damage and crit ratio leads to maximum damage outcome.
 
Just another better example:

Base damage 115 plus 80% damage and 30 % crit

compared 115 dmg plus 110% base.

115 plus 80% = 207

207 x 70 = 14490
+
414 x 30 = 12420
=
26910

269,10 average

Pure damage 115 plus 110% = 241,5 average

This time is around 30 damage more, but bit more overkill.

The optimum needs crit ratio but also high enough base damage. Im sure there is a mathematically solution for the optimum. But at least you can calculate for yourself now.

It really matters eg. For high crit units and items, which gives crit over total damage
 
Last edited:
You should consider crit to be multiplicative like dmg. 80% and 30% on the same weapon would be equivalent to 134%, not 110%.

Try comparing crit to damage separately in same amount first before comparing different amount of dmg with crit in the mix.

Also take my advice with a grain of salt, I often found that things didn't work under the hood like I thought they did.
 
Seems reasonable, you come to the correct numbers and its an easy solution, since it works like it would be stacked.

115 x80% = 207
207 x 30% = 269,10

Thanks for the mentioning
 
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