How to fix the Phalanx vs. Tank problem

[Ray K]

OK, so this problem looks like it has reared its ugly head yet again.

Now that techs are conveniently divided into four ages, here is how it could work: any unit that is two ages behind its opponent AUTOMATICALLY loses. No probability check should be required.

If Firaxis does not implement a common-sense solution to this problem, they are just going to open themselves up for unnecessary criticism over what is hopefully just a minor problem.

If it is a rare occurrence, then implementing a fix like this would have little effect on the game balance.

[Grumbold]

If it only happens a tiny amount of the time, it is not a problem, it is real life. A number of posts have already been devoted to calculating the exact odds of a "pikeman win" scenario. Unless the weak unit has significantly more hit points than the strong one the changes of a win are very very low. If the in-game results defy the stats then we know the combat routine is bugged or does not work as advertised. An elite infantry unit armed with knives is far more deadly than a badly trained band of guerillas with machine guns, tanks or rocket launchers.

[Skanky Burns]

I disagree with that 'solution'. If you sent in a rusting, old, very damaged tank against some village, you shouldnt be surprised that the slightest nudge would cause it to break down. Infantry sticking there obsolete pikes into the wheels of the tanks could provide that nudge.

The point is that any combat unit has a chance to win, regardless of whether its an ancient unit or a highly advanced unit. Nothing is impossible, only highly unlikely

[OneFootInTheGrave]

However if you go to combat with a fresh infantry unit armed with machine guns, and go into a village with the same number of warriors, how on eart are you going to lose. Ever!

All that technological advancement for nothing. I'll be interested to see phalangs vs airplane problem. That is impossible in real life and I don't think it adds to gameplay. And if elite swordsman or knight can beat normal infantry (WW1 type) more than once in 5 games on plain field (In the mountains and rough terrain it might be OK with added bonuses) I will be dissapointed. Especially if it can happen every game once or twice, that just means that you can never be sure if your unit is good enough for a fight. Huge technological advantage (like anoter age we are speaking about 500 years or more) always wins well more than 99% of the cases for sure. I am speaking here about normal infantry (full HP, not some almost dead unit) and elite ancient or medieval unit with full HP. You should upgrade or become obsolete, and not fortify a phalangh on a mountain and have F16's being shot down by spears.

I just don't tthink it is a good gameplay concept.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
I disagree with that 'solution'. If you sent in a rusting, old, very damaged tank against some village, you shouldnt be surprised that the slightest nudge would cause it to break down. Infantry sticking there obsolete pikes into the wheels of the tanks could provide that nudge.

The point is that any combat unit has a chance to win, regardless of whether its an ancient unit or a highly advanced unit. Nothing is impossible, only highly unlikely

This is ridiculous. There is nothing in the game that suggests that your tanks are rusting, old, and very damaged. You are rationalizing away a very real problem.

And before anyone brings up Russia vs. Afghanistan, remember that the Afghan rebels were armed with hi-tech weapons from the USA. They were NOT swordsmen fighting tanks!

[Eli]

My solution :
A) The chance for one unit to lose to a unit one age older is twice as small than in the "normal" calculations.
B) Only modern units can defeat airplanes.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Ray K

And before anyone brings up Russia vs. Afghanistan, remember that the Afghan rebels were armed with hi-tech weapons from the USA. They were NOT swordsmen fighting tanks!

Okay, how about African tribesmen ramming railroad ties and tree branches into Italian tank tracks then burning out the occupants and stabbing any that tried to flee. A genuine battle that took place between "iron age" style troops and tanks. No, it won't happen often, but yes it DOES and CAN occur, especially if the weaker units are smart and ambush the stronger.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by Grumbold


Okay, how about African tribesmen ramming railroad ties and tree branches into Italian tank tracks then burning out the occupants and stabbing any that tried to flee. A genuine battle that took place between "iron age" style troops and tanks. No, it won't happen often, but yes it DOES and CAN occur, especially if the weaker units are smart and ambush the stronger.

That's the reason why we don't have an Italian civ, ancient Romans would kick their present day ass, even with legionares

but really it can be 'that' rare in the game (once in five), plus I guess that the iron age troops have to be in a forest or a mountain where such 'accidents' could happen.

[yavoon]

its not a problem. yes its not uber realistic, but do planes haev 2 years of fuel? infact, keeping old units from becoming useless is in lots of games, and it significantly helps gameplay. the guy w/ one tech advance shouldn't be the auto winner.

[J10]

It's very simple IMO, just implement a bonus against any units that is an age or ages behind.

For example:

Modern unit (any) against ancient unit (any) will have a +16 combat (attack and defense) bonus.

Modern unit against industrial unit will have a +12 combat bonus

Industrial unit against Renassiance unit will have a +4 combat bouns... etc.

I don't think that's hard to program at all, but the number (+4 per age) is very rough, someone could possibly work out a better number for us I believe

[Haphazard]

Can anyone with the game say if hit points for con/reg/vet/elite units be altered? If so simply change 2/3/4/5 to 20/30/40/50 and the overall probabilities will balance out better like in Civ2. Problem solved!

[RobKid]

Originally posted by Haphazard
Can anyone with the game say if hit points for con/reg/vet/elite units be altered? If so simply change 2/3/4/5 to 20/30/40/50 and the overall probabilities will balance out better like in Civ2. Problem solved!

I don't think this would necessarily help, and it wouldn't even make much sense without increasing the damage done per round. Right now only one point of damage is done per round, so if that wasn't changed, you'd have combats going up to 50 rounds. Plus, the reason why a pikeman can beat an armor really only takes much meaning if the pikeman is elite (5 hps) and the armor is regular (3 hps). The mathematical reason the pikeman can win is because it is given more opportunities (more hps). Giving him more hps won't really help. Either adjusting the probabilities (i.e. more complex than A/(A+D)) or re-adding the concept of firepower would be required.

I actually ran the math (doing the binomial expansion in Excel), and it's really only when you get hp discrepancies that it becomes a bad problem. For example, a fortified spearman (base def of 3) in a metropolis defends at 7.5. If the attacker is a regular armor, he only has a 60% chance of winning. Increase that to a veteran armor (and who wouldn't be building barracks if you're really fighting a war) and he has a 77% chance of winning. On even experience, he has an 88% chance of winning. Personally, I agree that these numbers are a little low, but remember this also includes the +100% metropolis bonus, which is supposed to reflect the difficulty of taking a city and probably the citizens helping out in defense (i.e. helping in ambushes, harrasment, etc.). Attacking a city includes taking complete control of it. If you drop the metropolis bonus, the regular armor's chance of winning increases to 82%. If the armor catches the pikeman in the open field (i.e. not fortified), it's 92%. Elite armor wins 99% of the time in the open field, and 97% of the time against just fortified.

At any rate, is this any worse than the problem of an infantry unit being unable to cross the United States in one year on roads while being able to go from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and still attack on railroads. In other words, there are always problems with any simulation that is not incredibly complex, and personally I'm not too terribly bothered by this one. It's just too hard to come up with a combat system that realistically simulates combat over a 6000 year period. Just break out those artillery units and bombers. It's a safer form of combat anyway.

[Haphazard]

I agree that the x10 method wouldn't change the result much in your example (where the Att rating is close to Def) just that it would help in the extreme 16Att Vs 2Def anomalies. If Civ3 actually plays out each round in a second, it could get silly though. Not that I'm too bothered about this really either.

[Dogbert]

Check the post........................

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

The way I see it, the easiest way that the whole "Spearman vs Mech Inf" debacle could have been avoided this time would have been to give all units 2 extra stats: Armour and Range.

Armour: Basically, in order to damage a unit, the hit success would have to have been able to overcome the units armour score ( a number from 0-5). Example armours might have been
Spearman/Warrior: 0
Swordsman/Hoplite etc: 1
Rifleman/Musketmen etc: 2
Knights/Cavalry etc: 3
Mech Inf/Tanks: 4
Modern Armour :5
This way, the rare "lucky hit" from a spearman or hoplite would lack the neccessary "force" to penetrate the armour of mech Inf.

Range: An arbitrary number from 0-5 (again) based on what weapons a unit is fighting with.
Example ranges would have been:
Melee units: 0
Archers: 1
Musketmen: 2
Riflemen/Cavalry etc: 3
Infantry/Mech Inf: 4
Tanks/Modern Armour: 5
Basically, the difference between the 2 units ranges indicates the number of "free attacks" the unit with the better range gets. For example, in a battle between a Rifleman and an archer, the rifleman would get 2 free attacks before the archers could close enough to retaliate!
When you consider the combination of these 2 stats, then a spearman would have no real hope of taking down mech infantry, whilst still having a remote chance of taking down an archer or a rifleman (remote being the operative word!)

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Caesar the Great]

yeah the tank could misfire and could explode..... therefore phalanx wins....

[Strollen]

I am not sure that ancient units should have no chance of destroying more modern ones but the chances are way to high.

I have two suggestions. If a unit is fighting one from an earlier era, the first point of damage should be ignored.

If it is 2 or more era's ahead it takes 2 hits to inflict a damage point.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

B) Only modern units can defeat airplanes.

Airplanes don't come into direct contact with anything. They bonbard.

It's very simple IMO, just implement a bonus against any units that is an age or ages behind.

For example:

Modern unit (any) against ancient unit (any) will have a +16 combat (attack and defense) bonus.

Modern unit against industrial unit will have a +12 combat bonus

Industrial unit against Renassiance unit will have a +4 combat bouns... etc.

I don't think that's hard to program at all, but the number (+4 per age) is very rough, someone could possibly work out a better number for us I believe

Good idea, but I would do it differently. Since Industrial and Modern have gunpowder units, and Ancient and Middle don't (except middle has just at the very end) Industrial/Modern should get +0 against each other and +5 against Middle/Ancient. Middle/Ancient get +0 against each other.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
Range: An arbitrary number from 0-5 (again) based on what weapons a unit is fighting with.
Example ranges would have been:
Melee units: 0
Archers: 1
Musketmen: 2
Riflemen/Cavalry etc: 3
Infantry/Mech Inf: 4
Tanks/Modern Armour: 5
Basically, the difference between the 2 units ranges indicates the number of "free attacks" the unit with the better range gets. For example, in a battle between a Rifleman and an archer, the rifleman would get 2 free attacks before the archers could close enough to retaliate!
When you consider the combination of these 2 stats, then a spearman would have no real hope of taking down mech infantry, whilst still having a remote chance of taking down an archer or a rifleman (remote being the operative word!)

This seems to me to be the best solution to the unrealistic chances ancient units have of destroying modern ones.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Yeah Skanky,

What I like best about my idea is that it would pretty much eliminate any REAL chance of a hoplite or spearman taking on mech inf. (I mean, think about it, The Mech Inf would get FOUR free attacks and, assuming only half of these hit, would reduce a veteran hoplite to only 2hp! Then, considering the damage it had suffered, the hoplite would have almost no chance of penetrating the MI's armour!)
At the same time however, it still gives the same hoplite a reasonable chance of going head to head with a rilfeman/musketman! He'd probably still die, but would have the chance to damage the superior unit (especially if the hoplite is a higher experience level!!)
Which reminds me. How do unit attacks work now? For example if you sic 3 riflemen onto 1 tank, will all your riflemen get to attack the tank simultaneously, or is it still that lame "Wait your turn" stuff?

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker