40k attack losing to 36k is hardly surprising, and probably somewhat common. The game most definitely has a randomness factor attached to fights, where the difference in stats determines the odds of a victory, rather than the victor. E.g. perhaps something like if you have 15% more attack than the opponent's defense, you have an 80% chance at winning. Then the game determines the winner via some random draw (e.g. purely hypothetical, but perhaps something like if you have an 80% chance of winning, the numbers 1-80 are assigned to you while your opponent gets 81-100, and then the game randomly selects a number from 1 to 100 to determine the victor).
For those purposes, you need at least 25% more attack than your opponent's defense to be assured of a victory. I'm not sure what the figure is exactly, but I lost a few matches last syndicate war (over hundreds of attacks) with 25% more attack than their defense. So perhaps 30% is an even safer figure. If I had 40k attack, I wouldn't be dumping gold hits on anyone with a 30k defense or above. If their weakest player had a 35k defense, then I would use my free attacks on him, but not be surprised if I go 3 for 4.
The influence points seem to me to be based on level ranges and give a random amount of points in a given IP range. Again, I don't know what the exact figures are, but the top tier of influence points has to be an opponent at least 30 levels above you (I don't know the exact number, but it most certainly isn't less than 30, and probably not more than 50). I have no idea of the exact figures for lower level opponents, but the points work something like:
Opponent's level - your level |
Influence point range |
over 40 |
300-565 IP |
25 to 40 |
250-500 |
0 to 24 |
200-450 |
-24 to -1 |
150-350 |
less than -25 |
50-100 |
These figures are total speculation/guesses on my part; I can't attest to the level ranges or the point ranges, mainly because I primarily attack players well above my level. I feel alright about the top range, as I don't think I've gotten less than 300 points or more than 565 points for an attack on someone more than 50 levels above me. I think the ranges are uniformly distributed-- that is, the average number of points for an attack on someone in that range is probably the midpoint of that range. So yeah, if you attack 4 times you might get something like 323, 500, 376, 442... but if you were to attack someone hundreds of times, I believe you'd start approaching the same number of average points for someone in a given "tier." So don't look at the IP result of one attack, look at the average number of IP over many attacks.
Also, I can't attest to this at all and perhaps a high level player can, but it seems like you get the max amount of IP points on someone level 250, even if you are fairly close to level 250 yourself? E.g. a level 235 player would average more points on a level 250 player than a level 135 player would on a level 150.