FAQ

[Jey]

Quite a few questions come back regularly. It's a bit annoying to go back every time to get the copy-paste, or to repeat the answer, so here are their answers.

I don't understand why my weapons don't deal as much damage as they say/I don't understand why when buffing my damage, I don't actually deal more damage

[Answer by adozu]

so the way damage works each "weapon" will have a base damage, a number of attacks and an accuracy. any other modifier like blast or twin linked influences those.

the formula looks like this: total damage = (base damage x accuracy x number of attacks) * damage resistances

the big thing people overlook however is that the base damage is capped by model hp, for example: my lascannon has 8 base damage but the enemy cultists has 2 hp (20 max hp / 10 models) so in the formula the damage will become:

2 x 0.86 (example of accuracy) x 1

the first thing to get from this is that you can never kill more models than your number of attacks multiplied by the accuracy in a single turn, no matter if you have 9999 base damage.

as for reductions they all stack multiplicatively across different multipliers and additively if it's the same multiplier (with except of invulnerable which always takes the highest)

so take the damage total and divide in any order by armor, ranged reduction (if applicable), feel no pain, etc etc. cap for any one type reduction, including armor, is 84% or 5/6

Neutral units are too strong, they're besieging me and I can't kill them all
[Answer by adozu]

Each enemy is part of a "pack".

Packs are comprised of a small number of enemies of the same type, except kastllan packs (always include exactly 1 priest) and catachan packs (always include exactly 1 nest).

Packs roam a definite area, you can get a feel for what area they roam by observing them over a few turns.

Packs start as non aggroed: in this state they will roam their area and only attack if a unit is directly in their way and sometimes if it is in range (this appears to be random) after they completed their move.

Any player inflicted damage will aggro a pack: once aggroed ("unleashed" in game files) all members of that pack will seek the weakest targets in their reach and attack it together. They do not distinguish between which player damaged them.

Once unleashed packs will chase you as long as they have vision, even far outside their roam area.

If not damaged for a few turns (usually about 3) packs will lose aggro and return to their roam area.

Overwatch damage will unleash packs so turn off ow around wildlife you cannot handle or don't want to yet.

What should be taken from that?

1) don't attack any enemy you don't want to aggro yet
2) expect more enemies of the same type to show up if you damage one
3) try to never aggro multiple packs at once early game

I can't hit an enemy even though I'm in range

There is a Line of Sight (LoS) feature in Gladius.
I didn't find any easy explanation for this one. The only rule I found is overly complex, but there are some approximations.
If you are unable to reach the image, please hop in on the Gladius discord server to check them.

Mildly comprehensive rules:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/635973735597211650/854013852815065148/unknown.png

Easy cheatsheet for range 2:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/467378026389307392/856929325067272223/unknown.png

Complex cheatsheet for range 3:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/467378026389307392/856942373274386442/unknown.png

Note that cover includes :
-City tiles
-Forest
-Ruins
-Smoke (from tank skills)

Fortifications count as +1 elevation (e.g a city on an elevation 3 tile will actually count as being elevation 4).
Flyers count as elevation 6, no matter what their actual tile elevation is.

If an enemy can shoot at you, you can shoot at them (assuming you have the range needed).

Finally, when moving an unit, before releasing the right-click button, you can see red circles around enemy units you can shoot from this new tile.
Note that it only works against enemy units, you cannot know if you'll be able to shoot at a currently empty tile.

Even though I was in range of sight, I didn't see an unit.
Cover tiles hide units from enemy sight. You need to use a scout ability (e.g the Sentinel Scouts scout ability, the Space Marine Orbital Scan...) to see in cover tiles or to have an unit immediately adjacent to the tile or to have been shot by the unit in cover this turn.

In addition to that, the LoS feature above obviously prevents you from seeing tiles.

How does the bonus for outposts works?
Outposts give three economic bonus (amazing!)
First of all when they are controlled, they give +2 resources per turn to the player that controls it. The player that controls the outpost can be easily determined by the color of flags on the outposts. The resources given depends on the outpost type as well as the faction played.
Second, all outposts give a bonus to all 6 adjacent tiles. This bonus is given to all buildings built on those tiles. The bonus depends on the faction and the outpost type. This bonus is directly seen on the tile.
Third, all outposts give a city-wide bonus when their tile is claimed by a city. This bonus is the yellow percent that can be seen when looking at the outpost. Again the bonus depends on the faction played and the outpost type.

Space Marines can get the city-wide bonus by placing a Fortress of Redemption adjacent to an outpost instead of claiming the outpost into their city.
Note that if you claimed the outpost in your city, placing a FoR will not give an additional bonus (and of course, if you placed a FoR, claiming the outpost in your city won't give you an additional bonus either).

How do DLC work?
In solo games, you need the DLC or its content is entirely unavailable (can't play with it, can't play against it).

In multiplayer games:
If you want to play as a faction, you need to have the faction DLC.
If you want to use units from unit DLC, the host needs to have the unit DLC and activate it in the lobby settings.

More explanation here

Are there any recommended DLC?
DLC only contains what they say. They don't provide additional mechanics or features.

If you pick the T'au DLC, you will get the T'au faction. If you don't want to play as the T'au or against the T'au, then there's no point in picking it.

If you only play Space Marines and Astra Militarum and you like neither the Chimera nor the Razorback, then there's no point in picking the Assault DLC (or whichever DLC contains the two vehicles).

[Jey]

Some traits aren't explained (like Blast, Beam...), where can I find information about them?

Most traits have an explanation in the Compendium, ingame. For example the Blast family of trait have their value there.

Graviton damage is equal to

base_damage * (0.4 + armor_of_the_target/10)

Which means against a 6 armor target, you deal the damage displayed on the weapon tooltip. Against a 0 armor target, you deal 40% of those damage.

Monofilament multiplies accuracy by 5, then divides it by the movement max of the target (0 movement target counts as 1)

Psychic Power is just a classification. I think aside from the Aegis Harness (which blocks one psychic power every three turns), nothing affects them.

Witchfire does two things:
- It's a specific source of damage, and a few effects specifically reduce it (the Librarian trait, a Canoptek Spyder upgrade, an Astra Militarum's vehicle upgrade...).
- It ignores ranged damage reduction.

[Jey]

Loyalty and its maths

Let's say you built your second city. You have probably about 3 buildings (research + production or ore + settler building) and you should have about 5 population on your first city.
This means that you should have roughly -5 loyalty.

Let's assume that you build a loyalty building.
You'll gain 0.6 research from the building, 0.4 resource from the military building (or 0.6 ore from the ore building), 0.4 resource from the settler building, 0.6 from the crane building and 3 from the HQ.
It will take you 6 turns to build and you will pay 2 upkeep.

net gain :
3 resources spread across the board per turn after 6 turns


Let's assume you build a military building.
You'll get 180% speed on it (2 buildings at 90% each) against the 101% you would have with the loyalty. Which honestly can be rounded to "twice as fast".

I have an army twice as big as yours. You lost.

Let's assume you build an eco building.
Net gain :
5.4 resource -1 upkeep = 4.4 resource
And it took me 2 turns fewer to build it, so I have a bonus 10.8 resources for free during those two turns.

I got 1.4 ressource per turn +10.8 resources more than you. My army is bigger/is reinforced for longer. You lost.

Loyalty is a percentage bonus. To be meaningful, it must have a high base to apply on.

I also didn't take in account terrain bonus (which will make a specialized building even more advantageous compared to a loyalty building) nor the fact that among the 3 flat resources you get from the loyalty some can be meaningless early on (You really don't care about +0.6 food early on if you go for full vehicles. +0.6 influence is often useless too)

TL;DR : Don't build loyalty until you have 10 buildings running in your city.
(although the exact condition may vary. Some people advise "after your first pop building", which is slightly earlier than I advise)


You may ask "Ok but later in the game, what do I do?"

After your first loyalty building, you should strive to keep your loyalty above -10. If you don't need urgently a resource/military building, try to keep it above -5 even. The rule of "specialized eco building > loyalty building" remains ;)

Later in the game (when you have ~14-15 resources building on your city), it becomes more interesting to keep loyalty above 0 or even to spam loyalty only (though it's more expensive, at that time pop economy becomes more important than resource economy.)

[Jey]

What are the chance for boons, and how does Worthy Offering interfer with it?
A discord user made a spreadsheet with data about it :
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1usc0U06KNBJTKfI6LvvlSwpRXvAs7A4HUTBRHXBHsWQ/edit?pli=1#gid=0
It's empirical so you kinda have to take their word for it, but 20% for a single boon seems legit to me.

[AlphariusOmegon87]

Thanks for putting this together Jey!

[ApacheBeatDown]

How about an update on controller interfacing? Is there anyone working on that? would love to play on my couch, plenty of 4X that have made this (with tooltip functionality) work flawlessly (cough cough, age of wonders 4)

[Augustus Gooch]

Originally posted by ApacheBeatDown:

How about an update on controller interfacing? Is there anyone working on that? would love to play on my couch, plenty of 4X that have made this (with tooltip functionality) work flawlessly (cough cough, age of wonders 4)

THIS! This "partial" controller support is just a straight up lie. I bought it because it said it had it.

[99Legion]

is it possible to add a function of demolishing buildings? in each match it happens that one or two cities require rebuilding tiles, most often this is research for example.