War Machines

War machines are manned by Laborers in battle. In Military Combat their damage/absorption is 5/0.0001 for every 100% of their xp. In Bombarding they have 15/1 for every 100% of their xp. They do not participate in other types of battle.

To see how many labs are needed per war machine and how many of them are manned at any moment, check the Warfare screen. Non-manned wms do not take part in battles.

Until the score section gets updated, suffice to say here that while it is well-known that war machines carry a hefty score, it is even more so when they are manned.

Strategy

War machines can easily be the determining factor in many a battle, but being able to plan around them as alliance tools and even using them as defense, requires a familiarity with the numbers associated with their power (as explained above), and exactly what it takes to make 'proper' use of them, as it is different for every race, at different times, on different amounts of land.

The most current usage formula is (current as of Jun 2007), and described in all its numeric beauty below. Here, however, a clarification could be made in [More about equipment]. It states: "The number of laborers needed to man a war machine/deflector depends on the race of one's kingdom and the % of the warmachines the kingdom possesses (meaning the % of the warmachines available, not the studied % or base %). Another important point is that wms, in contrast with weapons and armor, are used in the same way from all races - there is not such thing as wms racial usage mod."

This means that race only affects the number of laborers it takes to man each war machine, which indirectly affects their efficiency by changing the number of barracks that must be built just to house the laborers manning the war machines (instead of other damage providing troops). This is different from the explicit "usage modifier" of weapons and armor.

Once the universe matures a bit, feeding troops becomes the most critical issue (rather than gold), so it is almost always more efficient to use war machines, especially if the additional score isn't an issue (e.g., on retals).

The Numbers

An alternative to 'checking the warfare screen' to see that critical laborers per war machine number, (e.g., to see if it's worth an ally of a different race using them in the mid game, or to know if a particular quality on the open market would be 'worth' you using them instead of other sources of damage) is to use the formula below:

LABORERS PER WARMACHINE = [(WAR MACHINE RATING/100)/10 + 1 ] * (Racial "Laborers per War Machine" mod)

LABORERS PER WARMACHINE is the number shown in the warfare screen, as is "WAR MACHINE RATING" -- the % works as a reminder of the /100 in the formula. The racial "Laborers per War Machine" mod can be found in the Races section, under "Equipment/Construction". The mod is expressed as a percentage, so Humans, like usual, don't have to do anything for that step (e.g., just multiplying by 1.00).

As a humorous example one would hopefully only find on the testserver, consider the amazing sprite tandem, a war machine constructed of the most convenient reeds and twigs available, barely able to coast downhill when the wind blows right... (anyways, sprites build wms at 40%, so, completely against their ruler's better judgment... they built one). First, we'll just see, out of curiosity, how many sprites it would take to actually ride this wimpy whimsical construction:

LABORERS PER WARMACHINE = [(WAR MACHINE RATING/100)/10 + 1 ] * (Racial "Laborers per War Machine" mod)

that is,(for this sprite) 40/100 = .4/10 = .04 + 1 = 1.04 * 2.00 = 2.08 LABORERS PER WARMACHINE.

All right... not wondering about the 'amazingness' of partial sprites (it happens with all the races, actually) we can move on to hash out the numbers above to actually show why this thing would really be a piece of junk.

To estimate how war machines compare to Archers, they provide 2.5 times the damage as them on a Military Attack, and another 2 times that when Bombarding. It is most often useful to be able to just predict their effective strength as 'archers', so to speak. This is where the 2.5 multiplier comes in, with the formula below:

(WAR MACHINE RATING/100) / LABORERS PER WARMACHINE * 2.5 = (equivalent archer quality for these war machines)

Now (with many thanks to Azmo for checking my numbers), we can see that our sprites have the equivalent of 48% archers (not 481, as my silly intuition made me fudge the math), since:

40/100 = .4 / 2.08 = .1923 * 2.5 = .48075 = 48% 'archers'. Without getting into the details of efficiency, it should be clear that even 25 of these war machines would take 52 laborers to man, and be as effective as 52 48% archers (since each laborer manning a war machine counts as this effective archer)-- NOT a prudent move considering that 1 sprite archer + 1 sprite mage = 1 750% archer. It should be clear from this whimsical example that it will be a fairly long time until sprites find war machines suitably efficient for that horrible modifier, and generally smaller amount of land (Always remember Armories for your war machines!).

Happy 'Kersploding'!

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