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I've been playing Master of Magic since its release and I've always wondered this: what unit wins in a fair fight - Golem or Minotaurs?

By "fair" fight I mean no magic, no help, and same XP level.

Golem and Minotaurs screenshot comparison

Both units have the same attack (12), but Golem has more armor (8 vs 4) and hit points (20 vs 12), while the Minotaurs unit is composed by two figures and it has the "Large Shield" skill.

With no multiplayer modes in the game, it's hard to test this and, to be frank, most of the time I've played other races (dark elves), plus both dwarves and beastmen are somewhat uncommon.

Hopefully, someone with more experience in those races or more knowledge in MoM combat mechanics can answer.

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The Minotaurs will likely win.

Each "Sword" represents an individual 30% chance to deal one damage. Each "Shield" represents an individual 30% chance to negate one damage. What your screenshot does not show is that Minotaurs also have a +20% to Hit bonus, so they actually have a 50% chance to damage with each sword.

The "Hearts" represent the health of each individual figure in the unit. So the total life expectancy of the Minotaurs is not 12 but 24 hits.

The "Large Shield" ability only has an effect on ranged, thrown and breath attacks, so it's not relevant in this combat. The Poison- and Death Immunity of the Golem do not matter here either.

With a multi-figure unit, each figure will do a separate attack vs. the full defense of the opponent. So the two Minotaurs will do (12 * 0.5 - 8 * 0.3) * 2 = 3.6 damage on average. The Golem will deal on average 12 * 0.3 - 4 * 0.3 = 2.4 damage.

After about 5 rounds, one of the minotaurs will die. At that point the Golem will have approximately 2 hearts left while the remaining Minotaur will have 12 left. Now the damage output of the Minotaur is just half as much (1.7 damage). It will take approximately 2 rounds to kill the Golem. But that will usually not be enough for the Golem to catch up, because it would need about 5 further rounds to kill the remaining minotaur. So the Minotaur will win.

Bonus: But what if we bring in experience levels? In that case it looks even better for the Minotaurs. The bonus on attack and hits counts for each figure in the unit. So the more figures a unit has, the more does it benefit from experience.

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    Great answer, thank you. I don't know why the +20% bonus doesn't show in my game, but wikia.com link about Minotaurs confirms it. I'm kinda shocked, as I was favoring the Golem. May 26, 2018 at 16:00
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    @Mr.FlaySepulcrast The first version of this answer did not account for that bonus and came to the conclusion that the Golem would win. See the version history for details.
    – Philipp
    May 26, 2018 at 16:47

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