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From a strategy experience I understand the want to look under the hood (I'm a tabletop gamer, too; likelihoods and statistics run through my veins) but, for this experience, it would kind of detract from SoW. Knowing that 59STR is better than 58STR is enough; the commander of the army doesn't need to know the exact output of 2 paladins and a spearman in every engagement, they just need to know that the squad has a Heavy Infantry front-line and that padding their HP/Armor is good and may save lives.
Perhaps that's a personal opinion and certainly not the point of the thread so I'll get more on topic.
The short answer is that those equations are purposefully obfuscated and we don't have them. What I'd add to that is how that obfuscation has improved the experience for me as a player.
Crossbows have a MUCH higher Weapon stat than Archers.
Crossbows have a very slightly lower STR than Archers.
Does a large increase of Weapon versus a small increase of STR add roughly the same amount of damage, versus a random light-armored target? Are Crossbows only better on low level troops? I have no idea! It bothers me that I can't compare those two specific units. I can't even make a qualitative decision. Realizing that I can't make an educated choice between archers or crossbows is the first thing I've run into (now in chapter 9 now) that's really bugged me about the game.
Crossbows also get an inherent damage amp versus Heavily Armored enemies. All arrows deal -50% damage to Heavily armored enemies so Crossbows are the better tool for anti-armor until guns/magic become a regular tool of your army. Guns ignore 75% of the enemies armor stat and magic ignores 100% (unless the enemy has the magic-armor trait/tech).
While it is easy to determine that "more is better", and that various different stats have various beneficial effects, it is hard to determine the merits of various combinations when you have no clue about stat scaling, caps or overall effectiveness.
What is the point of giving us all these possible variations, if we do not really know what they are doing?
For instance, the "Skill" stat assist in hit, evade, glance and crit. But is the formular based on level as well or just the raw numbers? So, for instance, is a level 20 with 50 Skill better at evading the same enemy as a level 25 with 50 Skill? We do not know.
Is 100 skill twice as good at evading as 50 skill? Or are there massive diminishing returns or a cap for effectiveness?
Example. Let us say that I have 100 Skill vs an enemy with 25 skill. That might give me(random number) 15% chance to crit. If I had 80 Skill it might have been 12% and if I had 150 it might have been 20%.
How would that change if the enemy had 50 Skill?
Now I can make a more informed decision on how far I want to push Skill as a stat. I can make decisions like Artifacts granting 15 Skill, or an Artifact granting 10 Strength.
Will the increased HP from Earth Affinity compensate for the rather large penalty in Skill, meaning taking more hits and crits over misses and glancing blows? And that is only in terms of Defense.
In terms of Offense, Earth affinity is a pure negative. So is it worth ever taking?
In the opposite end, Lightning Affinity increases both Strength and Skill, while reducing Health and Loyalty gain. Strength reduces physical damage taken and increases most physical damage dealt. More Skill means you are harder to hit and hit/crit more often.
Skill is the number 1 stat for firearms in terms of damage, since you cant directly increase your Weapon stat with Affinity. But is it noticable/important enough compared to more health for survivability?
It is quite possible that the increase in Strength(physical damage reduction) and Skill(evade) compensates for the slightly lower health.
So Lightning might be the best affinity to most units. Possibly even casters. But we have no idea, since we have no relation to any of these numbers.
In a similar vein, Fire does not reduce health, but does grant Strength. Does the physical damage reduction and normal Skill growth compensate for the extra health and negative Skill growth of Earth? Is Fire the best frontline stat?
Water increases health and Magic(less magic damage taken), but reduces skill and strength. Is the increase in health and Magic a good compensation compares to earth? No idea.
In the end it just seems like Affinity simply helps you get your troops upgraded into their final tier faster(after which you can change affinity if you want). This means that Dark, Light and Lightning are the best growth affinities. Water gets an honourable mention due to how hard it is to get Dark.
Fire helps with Loyalty, but that is rarely an issue and Light does it better. Earth gives no stat that helps leveling faster in any way, so it is the worst.
More health does not help you remove threats faster. Less Skill means dealing less damage and taking more damage.
It comes down to understanding the broad-strokes in a tactics game which is bafflingly cool. There is no need to know the exact calculation for a 100 SKL swordmaster because they will, inevitably:
Fight a Heavy Infantry enemy who actually provides them a flat bonus to-hit.
Fight another Swordmaster who has similar SKL but is in the woods, making them much harder to hit to the point where you need above 100 SKL just to have an average chance to-hit.
Be badly wounded and have low morale, delivering a critical hit that only does 40 damage at level 50.
Get shot and die if front-lining against 6 gunners.
Dodge every shot if front-lining against 6 gunners.
Having the base values would be nifty and I won't deny that. However, I've had a much, much better time with the game not knowing those numbers. A commander would not know the exact effectiveness a different bascinet would have when equipped to 1 spearman over an entire battle but they know it would improve their armies effectiveness to have superior armor. Sorry to beat a dead horse.
The affinities comment was interesting. I think we might want to start a new thread on that... I know they're technically related but, even without base damage values, the impacts of all of the affinities are % based if I'm not wrong. It's been a while since my last playthrough but I'm fairly confident they are built off of base-stats so the answer is "it depends".
We have Artifacts that trade 60 M.hp for -35% damage taken from archers and firearms. Those are numbers I can relate to, because I can decide for myself if 60 less HP on every unit in the squad is worth the damage reduction for each individual squad and its intended role. I just want more of that, so that I can make informed decisions.
Example: If I know that my light infantry squad(high Skill) has a 15% chance to crit in most circumstance(let us say it is the max cap for crit chance), but wont see much benefit from further Skill increase(execept for extreme situations), there is no point in adding Artifacts that drastically increases Skill, but I might want to invest in traits that increases crit damage or switch to a different affinity to get overall more survivability.
Currently, I have no way of knowing if I have reached that curve or soft cap. I just have to assume that the devs havent made arbitrary caps that makes stacking Skill on a unit ineffective compared to other defenses.
Another example. There are a few Artifacts that grants % evasion(I think +10% total or something like that). Will this have a noticable effect on my light infantry(already having pretty good dodge chance) or should I put it on my heavy infantry so that what we assume is their low base evasion gets a massive increase? It might be worthwhile to make a dodge focused infantry group, or it might not. I have no idea, because I do not know how quickly I hit diminishing returns or if there is a cap I might reach. So it might be better to stack armor and/or health, or effects that reduces damage in specific situations.
Final example. In X-Com2, you can get various forms of defenses(even though it is RNG by the end in most cases). You can get additional armor that can absorb damage, or you can get evade effects that reduces the chances of being hit, especially if you use cover. These numbers are shown to you, so that you can make informed decisions when you equip your troops. Should this character rely on armor, or go for evasion.
In this game, I have no idea if switching to Earth Affinity is better defensively compared to Lightning Affinity for a front line. It "should" be better, since it provides more health(blanket protection from everything), but as I already said above, the drawbacks(which apparently are more severe than the in-game tutorial suggests) is a lower chance to hit and crit your enemy, and a greater chance to be hit and crit yourself. By how much? No idea.
End result is, I never pick Earth affinity, because the marginally larger hp pool does not "seem" worth it. No way of knowing that though.
Totally. This game is a least documented and least clear of all the similar games. And it is disappointing. May be should go back to play Orge Battle.
That said getting that initial 80% of "optimization" goes a long way, the main things to keep in my that the game doesn't mention:
-% resistances are cumulative, so don't stack too many of them. They give diminishing returns.
-Armor is a flat reduction (if you have 50, each enemy physical hit does 50 less damage), as are strength and magic against respective damage types.
-Crits do double damage.
-Crit is a bit interesting and purplecharmander has a good post about it. But all you really need to know about skill is this:
--High skill units frequently crit low skill units (between 50% to 100% of the time)
--Low skill units never crit high skill units
--Low skill units occasionally crit other low skill units (around 5% of the time)
--High skill units frequently dodge low skill attacks (about 50% of the time)
In short, skill only matters if you're going to buil a pure skill unit, it will crit a lot, hit a lot, and doge a lot. A small bump of skill (lightning on a heavy infantry for example) can mean a bit more damage dealt and a bit less taken so it's not a waste, but don't over think the math.
--Heals can crit your allies for double damage. Lightning medics aren't bad at all in a squad with skill items, and the will dodge arrows.
--Because crits do double damage skill units are great against heavy infantry for two reasons:
1: Heavy inf have low skill so you will crit them often
2: Crits do x2 damage, not 2 seperate attacks, this negates the effectiveness of armor.
-Going off the above the best way to add tankiness to a heavy infantry is unscathed and warriors hubris. % reduction traits aren't ideal on them as they already have guardian trait. Unscathed negates one of their main weakness, warriors hubris the other. For the ultimate tank you put these on a sentinel and his passive also negates firearms.