Defence & the 10% Rule

This chapter formalizes four observations contributed in alliance discussion by governor “LM Unc”: (1) an opponent whose defence% sits slightly above your attack% “starts to become solid”; (2) archers with 10% more defence than the attacking cavalry’s attack are almost protected from their base weakness; (3) health% is rare and therefore valuable; (4) with attack% alone there will always be a whale with a higher defence%. All four turn out to be provable from the stacking model — with one correction that matters more the older your kingdom gets.

One extra constant enters: the troop-triangle counter bonus, documented at a 5% base and boosted to roughly 10% by troop-tree talent nodes. Call the resulting multiplier κ: 1.05 base, ≈1.10 talented.

With equal-tier troops at base parity, per-hit damage from a counter-type attacker (say, cavalry striking your archers) is proportional to the ratio of stacked multipliers times the counter coefficient:

R ≤ 1 means the counter-type attacker no longer hits you harder than a same-type one would — the triangle’s edge over you is fully cancelled by your defence surplus. No amount of symmetric stacking removes the raw ×1.10 penalty; only a SURPLUS over the attacker’s stack does.

Setting R = 1 and solving for the defence surplus s = d − a that exactly cancels the counter bonus:

Substituting d = a + s into the ratio (dropping κ for the general case), the incoming-damage reduction from a surplus is:

This is structurally identical to a defence shred running in reverse: a cross-category multiplier on survivability that scales the ENTIRE incoming pipeline down, rather than adding to any single lane. That is the formal content of “starts to become solid” — a real multiplicative effect, not a threshold you cross.

By the marginal-value rule, a point is worth the most in the category with the smallest total. Health% appears on far fewer gear pieces, tech nodes, and skills than attack%, so its total stays small — and every point keeps near-full value:

To restore the damage ratio after an opponent adds s points of defence, you need roughly s points of attack — a 1:1 arms race inside a shared lane, which the deeper wallet always wins. The escape is not more attack but the orthogonal multipliers: skill damage (its own lane) and shred (which attacks the whale’s denominator directly).

A natural objection: “if the opponent has 150% defence, surely MY next attack point is worth more against them?” No — the opponent’s stack cancels out entirely. Moving from a 150% to a 160% stack multiplies your damage by 2.60/2.50 = 1.04 whether the defender sits at 0% or 300%: a constant divisor scales absolute damage but cannot change a percentage change. Diminishing returns are entirely self-referential.

Where the opponent’s 150% DOES enter is the mirror lane: shredding 10 points off their stack is worth 10/(100 + 150) ≈ +4.2% — priced by the same marginal formula pointed at THEIR denominator. Point-for-point, shred is always at least as good as attack, pulls ahead the more stacked the opponent is, and arrives via commander kits (Philip II, Liu Che) rather than competing for your saturated gear budget.