Calculating Attacks/Defends

[SharkBait]

Ok I have a small project at work to keep some of the employees entertained while they do their job and I am having troubles balancing the attack/defend portion of the game.

I base their initial attack/defend power on their level.  They gain experience based on various aspects of the website they use in their daily tasks.

What I am having troubles is when they attack each other. They earn 'soldiers' to fight/defend with so those numbers can vary. What is the best way to determine who wins in the battle?

Ex:

Player1 is lvl 10 with 1000 troops
Player2 is lvl 8 with 800 troops

Obviously Player1 is stronger than Player 2

Player1 is lvl 12 with 1200 troops
Player2 is lvl 8 with 1500 troops

Who should win this?

I'm just fuzzy on the logic.  Also I plan on having bonuses like +1 to offense or +1 to defense.

On a side note I currently add a small bonus modifier if a player is attacking another player who is higher level. IE Attacker Level > Defender Level.  Hoping that it isnt total hopeless for a lower level character to attack a higher level.

Make sense?

[Daniel0]

Make a function that calculates an attack score based like this: [code]function calculate($level,$troops,$bonus=false)
{
$result = pow(sqrt(pow(($level*22),2)/($troops*18)+$troops/100),3);
if($bonus==true)
{
$result *= 1.25;
$result += 3;
}
$result = round($result);

return $result;
}[/code]

Highest score wins. The bonus is given if you are attacking a higher leveled person.

Example 1: Player1 wins (P1: 45; P2: 43) - bonus to Player2
Example 2: Player2 wins (P1: 59; P2: 84) - bonus to Player2

Edit: Here is the formula:
[img]http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/5219/formulayx1.png[/img]
and for the bonus:
[img]http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/6052/formula2tv3.png[/img]
(S: Score; T: Troops; L: Level)