[Edit(psy, Nov 2008):
I wrote the following text back in v2 - Deceember 2005 - and it was, at that time, pretty much accurate. Now (mid-way through v16) it's not. But it does still give an idea of how surrendering works.

If you are a newbie trying to work out what surrendering is, then feel free to read through this - it'll give you an idea of the way surrendering works and some of the factors to consider.

If you're relatively experienced, then this post won't do much good for you. The numbers have changed since this was written, so the detailed examples are all wrong, and you'll get your knickers in a twist if you try to make sense of the detail.

Also, note that health, as in troop health, is what is now known as Stamina, and not to be confused with the defensive statistic of troop strength.

psymann]

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When you fight someone, either they surrender, or they don't.

If they surrender, you get considerably less gold, no troops die or lose health, and you will lose experience.

If they fight, you get much more gold (if you win), both sets of troops lose health (and might die), and you gain experience.

The important question for you, then, is How do I know if my opponent will surrender?

The magic answer is 40%. If your opponent has more than 40% of your strength, then they will fight, if they have 40% or less, they will surrender.

This figure is hard to calculate as many things must be taken into consideration:

Troop health

• If you attack someone with the same number of troops as you, but you have 100% health and they have 30% health, they will surrender.
• If you attack someone with the same number of troops as you, but you have 100% health and they have 50% health, they will fight.
• If you attack someone with the same number of troops as you, but you have 70% health and they have 30% health, they will fight (30/70 = 43%).

Number of Troops
If you have more troops than the opponent then you will have a bigger effective strength (assuming they have the same health). So if you have 200 troops and your opponent has 50 (both with same health), then they have 25% of your strength and will surrender. If you had only 100 troops, then they would have 50% strength and would fight.

Defence upgrade
Defences decrease the power of the attack. For example if you have a Walled Keep, you will attack with an effective strength of 41.7% of your normal attack. This means that people who would surrender to your raids may fight you with a castle attack because your effective strength is a lot lower than it was for a raid.

Wall strength
Defences are affected by their damage - if your defence is half-damaged, it will have half the effect - so a Walled Keep which is half damaged would let an attacker attack at 70.9% strength. Therefore if you have destroyed someone's walls earlier in the day then even if you give them time to heal, if they've not repaired their walls they may surrender to the same attack later on as you will have a bigger effective strength over them.

Siege
As well as troops, with a castle attack there is siege - if they have siege weapons then this will make them more likely to fight; if you have siege weapons, this will make them more likely to surrender.

Siege Weapon Damage
Similar to wall damage, if the siege weapons are damaged they will have less effect.

Troop Classes
Obviously, if they have lower class of troops they are more likely to surrender as their effective strength is lower.

Troops Bonus
Similarly, if their race gets a lower bonus on a certain troop, it will have less strength and be more likely to surrender.

Experience
If your troops have an experience bonus, this will increase their strength, and will make your opponentmore likely to surrender - if your first attack takes you over the threshold for the next experience bonus you could suddenly find your opponent starts to surrender.


Now if you can put all that together, you'll be able to work out who you can attack and who you can't. It is complicated enough that I'm not going to try to give a realistic example.

However, if you pick on people with far less troops than you and you raid them, they will surrender. If you really really want to attack them then disband a load of troops, sell your siege weapons, wait for them to repair their defences and then attack them when your troops are tired. I expect they will bother to fight you then. Or of course you could just find someone else to steal from...


As for "Moderate" "Strong" "Light" Troops
The options are:
Heavy (They have over about 80% troops)
Strong (They have 50% to about 80% troops)
Moderate (They have about 30% to 50% troops)
Light (They have about 10% to about 30% troops)
Weak (They have less than about 10% troops)

[I am not sure about those percentages but it gives you the idea - I think the 50% one is right but not sure about the others]

Now if I have a population of 600 with 250 troops, I will be "Moderate".
Someone else might have a population of 15, and have 13 troops. They would be "Heavy". I hope you can see that the person with Heavy troops would not be expected to win this battle.

The Heavy-Light system does not make sense on its own, you have to consider it at the same time as the population. It is like saying I have 40% troops, when I attacked someone with 60% troops they surrendered - why? You need to ask "the percentage of what?"

Very nice looking indeed Great job guys :) I just have one comment/question :P

"If they surrender, you get considerably less gold, no troops die or lose health, and you will lose experience."

As far as I know you won't lose experience if they surrender, you only lose experience if you attack an opponent with less as half your base strength (or 40%)

lol I always thought it was 50% of your strength but 40 makes more sense indeed, maybe my calc's will work now

I have done a little investigation and I see what you mean.

If you attack someone who would be less than 40% of your health if you were both at full strength, you lose experience.

If you attack someone who is only less than 40% of your health because they have been weakened, then you don't lose experience. (You still get less gold/resources, you just don't lose the experience).

Just to note that that is calculated separately for a raid or a castle attack, so just because they are strong enough for you not to lose experience on a castle attack doesn't mean you won't lose experience on a raid.


If you get the message: "XXX's troops surrender! The situation is hopeless. It would be folly to oppose such a mighty adversary." then you will lose experience.

If you get the message: "troops surrender! They know that in their current state they are too tired and weak to fight. They must rest." then you will not lose experience.

Also, the 50% is, as far as I am aware, only used in one circumstance. For revenge attacks, when the defender would otherwise be surrendering, they are forced to fight. When they are forced to fight like this, they fight at 50% strength, not 40% strength - something to do with them being "desperate not to die, and fighting beyond all expectations in a pitiful attempt to save their skins from becoming carpets."

psymann

Clarifications here between surrendering based on stamina, and surrendering based on compared strength.

If the defender has less than 40 stamina, the defender will surrender. The only exception is if the defender still could easily beat the attacker. This exception is there to ensure that some newbie with 1 soldier doesn't take on someone with 1000 troops who just happens to be below 40 stamina.

If the attacker has double the strength of the defender, the defender will surrender. So if the attacker has 200 troops and the defender has 99 troops and no walls, the defender will surrender. This attack will also cost the attacker experience.