Which light spear do you guys use for your Hoplites?
I am torn between the Rostam (Damage + Crit Chance) and the Lycurgus/Sargon (Damage + Cavalry Damage). I have read that Crit Chance was nerfed in the past, therefore it is not as good as before?
Any tips for specing the Hoplites?
You know, I thought this was going to be a fairly easy decision before I crunched the numbers, but after doing the math they are much closer than I thought.
Regarding crit damage - crits are 2x normal damage. This was changed back during AOEO classic when MS still ran the game (and as far as I know that has always been the crit damage since Project Celeste began). Ever since that change took place, back in the day, the general rule is that you want to weapons that do more base damage than crit damage. But... these two weapons are neck-and-neck with each other, the answer depends on who you're playing against and whether the current meta in the game for Lvl 40 players favors more cavalry or less cavalry.
When all is said and done (see the Summary at bottom) I would give a slight edge to the Lycurgus. The Rostam has a slight advantage against non-cavalry, but the Lycurgus has a pretty significant advantage against cavalry that I think will give you more total damage over the course of multiple games as you play a variety of people and a variety of civs.
And, if you're playing a a lot of games against people who love a lot of infantry ( *cough* the Romans are coming *cough* ) and ranged, well then you'd be better off with the Rostam. But, let's say you play 100 battles against a variety of people playing an equal mixture of all 6 civs, some of them like lots of infantry, some like lots of cav, some like lots of ranged, when all is said and done you'll do a little bit better over all with the Lycurgus.
And now... all the math.
I'm not going to round off any numbers in these calculations, because I don't know how many decimal points the game uses when doing calculations.
1) Hoplite (I'm using the base Hoplite, before any upgrades or enhancements)
13 DPS (x1.5 vs Cavalry)
2) Rostam spear
Damage +54.6%
Crit chance +3.3%
13 +54.6% = 13 * 1.546 = 20.098
20.098 doubled for a crit = 40.196
96.7% of the time the Rostam spear will do 20.098 DPS
3.3% of the of the time the Rostam spear will do 40.196 DPS
0.967 * 20.098 = 19.435
0.033 * 40.196 = 1.326
19.435 + 1.326 = 20.761
20.761 * 1.5 = 31.14
The Rostam spear will do:
20.761 average DPS vs. non-cavalry
31.14 average DPS vs cavalry
3) Lycurgus spear
Damage +58.2%
13 +58.2% = 13 * 1.582 = 20.566
100% of the time the Lycurgus spear will do 20.566 DPS non-cavalry
Now for Cavalry:
Damage +58.2%
Bonus vs Cav +10.4 more percent
Total damage bonus = 68.6%
13 + 58.2% + 10.4% = 13 * (1.582 + 0.104) = 13 * 1.686 = 21.918 DPS from weapon vs cavalry.
Then when you include the multiplier for being Hoplites you get
21.918 DPS * 1.5 = 32.88 DPS vs Cavalry
Summary:
Rostam spear
20.761 average DPS vs. non-cavalry
31.14 average DPS vs cavalry
advantage = 0.195 DPS vs non-cavalry
Lycurgus spear
20.566 average DPS non-cavalry
32.88 DPS average vs Cavalry
advantage = 1.74 DPS vs cavalry
