Posts from Which is stronger – a titan or a black dragon?

No, it was much more serious! ))))

:smile13: Sorry for the off-topic!

Glad to see everyone and glad that the eternal topic is still alive!
The damage range for Titan is from (1-0.025)*60=58 HP to (1-0.025)*90=87 HP. In 4 hits, it will be 232-348 HP, which in 42% of cases will be equal to 300 HP or more (this will allow winning the battle) and, accordingly, in 58% of cases the fight will end in defeat. This arrangement is wonderfully confirmed in practice.

Conclusion: Titan is stronger. But Black Dragon is more likely to win.

What did the author of the question mean?
Did I miss anything? Was it about Heroes of Might and Magic III? :D

Intuitively, I estimated it at 45% and 55% respectively (11 wins for Black Dragon in 20 trials), but I felt that something was slightly off:)))

PS. Seeing the topic brought back so many memories:)))
PPS. In the second game, Black Dragon kills Titan without a chance...

Round 4
The Black Dragon attacks the Titan, and the Titan retaliates. In its turn, the Titan finishes off the Black Dragon.
In this scenario, I didn't take morale into account. If the Black Dragon is lucky with its morale, or very lucky with its damage, it will win.

"Who is stronger" and "How to defeat the Black Dragon with a Titan" are still somewhat different questions. ;)

From the perspective of single-hit damage, the Titan is stronger; from a statistical perspective, the Black Dragon will win with a higher probability. Also, you are absolutely right – there is a combat tactic that will allow the Titan to have the opportunity to strike first in the fifth round. This is a 100% victory. The only limitation is that the Titan must survive until the fifth round. Considering that the total damage of the Black Dragon over four attacks will be in the range of 252-312 HP (calculated analogously), the probability of defeating the Titan is 21%. Therefore, if the combat tactic you mentioned is followed, in 79% of cases, the Titan (and, in reality, the player controlling the Tower) will prevail.

Regarding Morale – it cannot be taken into account at all, as in this case, it is a cheating tactic and cannot be used to assess the strength of the opponent. Everyone knows that a Butterfly can easily defeat a Legion of Dwarfs, but not because it is stronger...

P.S. "Wait," as well as retreating into a defensive stance, doesn't save the situation, because in a one-on-one battle, "Wait" is not needed by the slower unit, and "Defense" will be applied only after taking damage, and the fact that it only works until the end of the round makes this tactic completely useless.

Please, don't spread confusion, Sir!!! )) The "Defense" order works perfectly until the next turn of the creature, not the next round of the battle, and it provides a significant defense bonus - 20%, and not just its own, but a cumulative bonus with the hero's defense! The Titan, by using the defense order on its turn, will take less damage to its head in the next round than without defense. Check it on Nagas (speed 7) and Hydras (speed 5), both heroes without any parameters, of course, the terrain is grass, let the Naga attack the Hydra - it will take 28 damage. Use the defense order on the Hydra. A new round will begin, the Naga attacks, and we see 26 damage. Q.E.D.

Regarding the topic: the topic, although it will guide newcomers on the right path of mathematics and other things, but when they start searching for information themselves, such topics will no longer be needed, but for now, unfortunately, newcomers are characterized by a lack of initiative; they need everything to be told and shown... this is not a criticism, but a call to be more independent!

Please, don't cause confusion, Sir!!! )) The "Defense" order works perfectly until the creature's next turn, not the next round of combat, and provides a significant defense bonus - 20%, and not just to its own defense, but to the total defense, including the hero's!

Sorry for the misinformation, if that's the case... :) I haven't played in a long time. I'll take a look and comment if I get the chance.

PPS. Secondly, in Heroes II, the Champion of Darkness defeats the Titan without any chance...

I also checked who is stronger in part 2, and it's a pity that the Champion of Darkness defeats the Titan there; it turns out that evil is stronger than good... poor Titan from the second game...:smile34:

The eternal, crucial, and burning questions of Heroes 3 continue to plague the minds of the community: how awesome are Titans, really? Is the Dragon a rare bird, and if so, will it even make it to the middle of the Dnieper River?
Frankly, it's surprising that after four pages, there still hasn't been a clear and understandable answer to the original poster's question (either vague or not quite accurate). I'll have to correct that.
Let's consider two different approaches to unit control separately: AI and human.
1. Auto-battle.
The Dragon wins if it survives until the 5th turn, but this won't happen very often due to the significant damage variance of the Titan. To calculate the probability of such an event, we need to know the damage distribution programmed into Heroes; this is unknown to us. There was a suggestion to model it as uniform, but this is not only an assumption but also an approximation, since the distribution is discrete (remember that all Heroes discard the fractional part and only operate with integers). Then, the final distribution of the total damage from 4 Titan attacks can be calculated using formulas from probability theory, but believe me, it's not easy. There will be convolution operations, which are extremely difficult to calculate in our case; we will have to deal with a geometric representation of probability in order to solve the problem. We can consider the distribution as discrete and uniform, build a tree of outcomes, but this approach is even more cumbersome. And yet, using other (perhaps somewhat approximate, I'm too lazy to check everything thoroughly) methods, it is possible to approximately calculate the probability of the Dragon's victory; I found it to be approximately 0.6. There is no point in calculating more fanatically, because the initial assumptions are already too strong. Conclusion: in auto-battle, the Dragon is stronger. For those who are tired of all the complicated words and numbers, I will give a simple interpretation in "Heroes" terms. If we ignore the probability of the Dragon dealing maximum damage 4 times in a row and assume that the damage distribution is symmetric with respect to the average (which is almost certainly the case), then in auto-battle, dragons are stronger than titans by exactly +1 attack and defense, i.e., on snow, they will be equal.
2. Under the careful guidance of a human.
We respond to the "defense" of the Titans with the "defense" of the Dragons, and to the retreats – with fly-ins, but only starting from the 4th turn. If the Dragon's morale is high after the fly-in, we click "wait" and get the right to strike first on the 5th turn, which means winning with a probability similar to that in auto-battle – approximately 0.6. If the morale drops for the Titan, it wins almost certainly, which means the final distribution of forces is approximately 70 to 30 in favor of the Titans.

Which of the two approaches to assessing the relative strength of units is closer to the "Heroes" reality, you decide for yourself; depending on this, the answer to the question of who is REALLY stronger changes.
After all, it is quite obvious that a battle between two groups of level 7 units with zero-level heroes and no magic is something like a "spherical horse in a vacuum".

P.S. Let's hope that at least someone will be able to read all these "many letters".

When the Black Dragon's morale is low after approaching, press "wait" and gain the right to strike first with the 5th attack.

With high morale and wait, the Titan will also press wait and force the Black Dragon to move first, dealing 2 attacks in a row (if it kills) or retreating (if it doesn't kill). Morale doesn't matter for the dragon if it doesn't attack, but it brings victory to the Titan.

2 Dirty Player
The mechanic is, of course, illogical, and I forgot about this nuance, so you are right. This means that Chaos Dragons only help with morale in the first 3 turns or with extreme luck in damage. Therefore, their chances are less than 15% (but more than 10%). Thank you for the correction. However, I voted for the dragons. :D

Interesting topic. I always thought that nothing could be stronger than a black dragon. However, in a one-on-one fight, the Titan wins about 8 out of 10 times. Its damage can vary greatly; once, it dealt 87 damage in a counterattack. If the dragon waits in the first round, the Titan wins easily. If the dragon attacks immediately, the Titan retaliates much more strongly. On its turn, the Titan simply attacks the dragon. Almost always, after the first round, the dragon has less than half its health remaining, while the Titan has more than half. After that, the dragon doesn't have much of a chance. If it waits, the Titan will happily attack it again, and the difference in HP will increase even further. After that, if the dragon attacks the Titan, it will most likely die from the counterattack. So, the question can indeed be posed this way: what are the dragon's chances of surviving to the third round? Personally, once it had 11 HP left after two rounds (the Titan had 34), and another time it had 2 HP. In the other battles, the Titan defeated the dragon in 2 rounds.
Amazing! I have to vote for the Titan, although initially, without any empirical evidence, I was going to vote for the Black Dragon.

Interesting topic. I always thought that there was nothing stronger than a black dragon.

What do you think, who is stronger, the Ancient Horror or the Black Dragon?
Archmage or Black Dragon?

The Black Dragon is good, but I wouldn't bet on it.

What do you think, who is stronger, the Ancient Horror or the Black Dragon?
Archangel or Black Dragon?

The Black Dragon is good, but I wouldn't bet on it.

The thing is, I was initially looking at the poll from the perspective of who is stronger in general, abstracting from the fact that this is a battle between heroes of level 1 only with these creatures in a quantity of 1, and then, of course, the dragon wins. 1 Black Dragon, given the presence of high-level magic, can defeat a certain number of horrors: in one stack (Berserk + Explosion, for example) or in several (Armageddon). Archangels are also vulnerable to Explosion or Armageddon, although it will be more difficult for the dragon to fight them due to their lower speed, but the battle can definitely take place in a dungeon with a speed amulet on the hero with the dragon. Well, that's my view. I just find it hard to imagine a game situation in which there would be a battle: 1 Black Dragon against 1 Titan or Archangel.

I always thought that there was no one stronger than a black dragon.

According to the rules mentioned above, archangels, archdevils, ancient creatures, and perhaps titans are stronger than a black dragon.

Are Archdevils stronger than Chaos Devils?:smile07: I'll never believe that.

Just checked – it's stronger...
First speed and no retaliation.
And according to all calculations, it seems to have no chance, even better than against the Titan, it's crazy, I also thought that the Dark Knight was better....

I wonder how many people had their fragile, illusory worldviews shattered after reading this thread.