Are your units getting blasted?

[morb]

Originally posted by yavoon
hehe u save reload newbies crack me up, obviously firaxis has put some kind of protection against save/reload for new battle results. which I think is really nice.

unfortunately I doubt its foolproof. either way, the pure amusement of you running around like ur head is chopped off because you can't seem to save/reload every lost battle nemore is rather hilarious.

troll

[dexters]

well he does have a point Morb

One easy solution is to simply change the order you do things. If for example, a unit you want to save is in a bind and you don't want it to die, but keep getting the same battle result, simply move other units first, then come back to it. I find doing this erases the previous outcome and you'll get a different outcome.

[Kc7mxo]

Hmm. I definetly miss the old system of firepower and hitpoints, but i doubt its coming back.

And just exactly what do you think these forums are for? They're for discussing. Whining. Talking. Arguing. So, when you can't think of anything constructive to say, its kinda pointless just to tell people to quit whining.

I'm not complaining about my bowmen losing to his swordsmen. I'm complaining about my pikemen losing to his warriors.

I played some Civ 3 yesterday, and much to my amazement, I was able to hang with the computer. My musketman and cannons succesfully defended a city from attacks by Knights! But still, this combat system is infantile. Attack, defense? I strongly agree with the post that suggested Sid has sold out to pop-gaming. For most idiots, this combat system is all they'd want. Hell, how many people in America could even find Afghanistan on a map? How many would find issue that a tank got roached by a guy with a flaming arrow? Hell, Rambo did it in Rambo 3! It must be possible! With the exception of we Civ and SMAC fanatics, who have practically turned this kind of thing into a religion, no one else is going to care about the damned combat system. And, that's why Firaxis didn't do squat with the game. My next question is why it took so long to make Civ 3? This could have been released in 1999 with ease. This is not 2001 programming we're dealing with here. And, here's the sentence I never thought I'd type. Would it have been that difficult for Firaxis to use some AOE/AOK-style combat principles, like hitpoints for various unit types, attack values, ranged attack values, armor, piercing armor, etc. And, let's keep in mind that AOE/AOK have been blasted for being unrealistic, so we're not talking about something incredibly advanced. After Civ 2, I started playing AOE and AOK to waste time until Civ 3 came out. Fun games (the first time I built a catapult and fired the sucker with the surround sound on, I was sold), but unrealistic as hell as far as empire-building and diplomacy are concerned. I can't believe I'm now suggesting that Civ 3 should have been more like AOE or AOK. Let's hope that Firaxis comes out with a "should've been" patch that addresses these goofy combat problems. Otherwise, I hear Empire Earth is coming out soon...

[LaRusso]

i am really wondering what you people are all about:
1) there is plenty of war. AI honors alliances and attacks en masse
2) combat results are VERY believable. massive tank and infantry battles worked out just as they should. sure you get killed when you attack, but bear in mind that as a rule of thumb, military planner say that you should have 3-1 superiority to win. i cannot remember seeing 'odd result' more than once or twice. i am playing regent and the world war unfolding before me looks very real. sure, sometimes elite cavalry kills a damaged tank but sometimes it is MY cavalry

firaxis, great job on warfare

[Slartibartfast]

Originally posted by Andy
...

Perplexed by this odd repetition, I reloaded the autosave game again and repeated about 6 or seven times. EVERY GAME HAD THE EXACT SAME RESULT. Exactly. Down to the amount of damage that each warrior inflicted before he died, in the same exact order.

I am not exactly a statistician, but to get the same results time after time is extremely unlikely. I realize that the odds may have been stacked against me in the whole overall battle, but there should have been some variation in the amount of damage inflicted by a particular warrior and each warrior should have performed randomly. I find this lack of randomness troubling.

This, gentlemen, is a feature designed to prevent you from reloading until you get the desired results, which, IMO, is cheating.

Seems like the battle-results are calculated in advance. I guess if you've saved the game one round before the battle you'd have gotten a more varied outcome.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Andy
Outside of the complaints already registered in this forum, my largest is that there doesn't seem to be any actual randomness in the combat system of the game. In a recent game, I attacked a English city being defended with 2 warriors with my six 6 warriors. After being defeated the first time, I decided to load a recent auto-save to try my luck again. To my suprise, I lost WITH THE EXACT SAME RESULT. The first few warriors were killed outright, and then the fourth beat his opponent down to one hit point before dying. The fifth warrior caused his opponant to lose one hit point initially and then lost the remaining rounds. The sixth warrior died with out causing a scratch.

Perplexed by this odd repetition, I reloaded the autosave game again and repeated about 6 or seven times. EVERY GAME HAD THE EXACT SAME RESULT. Exactly. Down to the amount of damage that each warrior inflicted before he died, in the same exact order.

I am not exactly a statistician, but to get the same results time after time is extremely unlikely. I realize that the odds may have been stacked against me in the whole overall battle, but there should have been some variation in the amount of damage inflicted by a particular warrior and each warrior should have performed randomly. I find this lack of randomness troubling.

You do know that Firaxis put something in the game to prevent the save/load style of cheating that most people do. The only thing you can do now is load if you got your ass kicked and not attack in the re-play of the turn.

[avvv]

I don't think they should have prevent the reload cheating method.
It is the player's decision if to cheat or not to cheat. You are only cheating yourself, right?
Also, this feature is important for testing if you just had some bad luck or if the combat system is really biased.

About the combat system balance, you shouldn't be able to conquer all the world with a single tank, that's good, but also, tank cost 5 times than an archer and needs 2 strategical resources. I don't care if there are mountains, I want my expensive tank to beat any archer that they face

[yavoon]

I am discussing how much u r whining. ideally a forum is for fruitful discussion. not petty whining. you are all coming at the wrong angle from this. so unpragmatic. if u think that archers are too good against tanks, then make archers to defend against tanks. not gna do it are you? cuz u know that won't work out well enuff.

asto the wished endless complication of the combat system. the combat system is an ends, NOT a means. you don't need a hugely complicated combat system to fulfill a desired ends. AOE's combat system is massively inferior to almost everything in gaming today. its basically huge rock/paper/scissors, which is like newbie balancing. sure it has pretty **** like piercing and crap, but civ3 does not need those things. its scale is different, its ends are different.

[Sava]

Originally posted by avvv
I don't think they should have prevent the reload cheating method.
It is the player's decision if to cheat or not to cheat. You are only cheating yourself, right?
Also, this feature is important for testing if you just had some bad luck or if the combat system is really biased.

About the combat system balance, you shouldn't be able to conquer all the world with a single tank, that's good, but also, tank cost 5 times than an archer and needs 2 strategical resources. I don't care if there are mountains, I want my expensive tank to beat any archer that they face

I disagree. The new model requires more strategy. And that is good. Plus, tanks aren't invincible. If those archers dig a big enough trench, they can disable the tank in a tiger pit. Then the people in the tank are screwed. It's little realistic scenarios like that that Firaxis intended to include when they wrote the model. It would be so hard to program 8 million little combat options like "dig trench" "sabotage wheels" etc. So they just left it to chance. Which is good. Trust me though, if there is one archer in the mountains, I'm going to bring over an artillery piece, bombard him down to one red, then attack him with a mobile unit. It's all about strategy, those who use it will win, everyone else will be invited to the "I suck at Civ" party.

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by SoulAssassin


I disagree. The new model requires more strategy. And that is good. Plus, tanks aren't invincible. If those archers dig a big enough trench, they can disable the tank in a tiger pit. Then the people in the tank are screwed. It's little realistic scenarios like that that Firaxis intended to include when they wrote the model. It would be so hard to program 8 million little combat options like "dig trench" "sabotage wheels" etc. So they just left it to chance. Which is good. Trust me though, if there is one archer in the mountains, I'm going to bring over an artillery piece, bombard him down to one red, then attack him with a mobile unit. It's all about strategy, those who use it will win, everyone else will be invited to the "I suck at Civ" party.

Amen to that!

Most battles I do in this game that I adequately plan work out the way they should. Combat has been abstracted like many elements from civ 2 in a way that does necessitate more strategic thinking. Complaining about cities not being defendable? Sheesh, they are more defendable than they ever were in civ 2 with the inherent defense bonuses and the lifting of restrictions that troops must be IN a city to not cause unhappiness(in those governments for which that happened). Try positioning troops outside in defensive positions and fortresses. Be a little more creative. And remember folks, its only a game, absolute realism is secondary IMO to having good gameplay.

[Mister_X]

Originally posted by Andy
Outside of the complaints already registered in this forum, my largest is that there doesn't seem to be any actual randomness in the combat system of the game. In a recent game, I attacked a English city being defended with 2 warriors with my six 6 warriors. After being defeated the first time, I decided to load a recent auto-save to try my luck again. To my suprise, I lost WITH THE EXACT SAME RESULT. The first few warriors were killed outright, and then the fourth beat his opponent down to one hit point before dying. The fifth warrior caused his opponant to lose one hit point initially and then lost the remaining rounds. The sixth warrior died with out causing a scratch.

Perplexed by this odd repetition, I reloaded the autosave game again and repeated about 6 or seven times. EVERY GAME HAD THE EXACT SAME RESULT. Exactly. Down to the amount of damage that each warrior inflicted before he died, in the same exact order.

I am not exactly a statistician, but to get the same results time after time is extremely unlikely. I realize that the odds may have been stacked against me in the whole overall battle, but there should have been some variation in the amount of damage inflicted by a particular warrior and each warrior should have performed randomly. I find this lack of randomness troubling.

Actually this is a common feature in many games. My favorite game that comes to mind is Jagged Alliance 2. Yes, it stores random numbers in advance. Duh. Random numbers come from a table or alogrithm, and they get saved with the rest of the game. So take other actions to advance the random numbers if thats what you really want to do.

Do things in another order. Or actualy play the game.

Does the combat system bother me? At times very much so, but you should atlest understand WHY it is like it is.

[saracen31]

Sheesh. Just quit the game & restart it. Every time you play, there's a random seed generation which locks in the whole time Civ III is running. This prevents the tired save/load, save/load routine. This seed remains in memory until you actually quit.

If you really want to get around it, just exit the game & restart Civ III. You'll see different results.

[morb]

alright, all of you fools need to shut up about the saved game cheat prevention biz. enough already. That isn't even a problem. We're talking about something entirely different.

The problem is that a warrior can fend off multiple, concentrated attacks from bowmen. Screw 'realism', we're not talking about that either. We're talking about reasonable outcome. And the kind of outcome I see from battles in Civ3, is not reasonable. I don't expect "easy" or constant vicotries in combat. I simply expect stronger units to actually _be_ stronger. But I guess accourding to some people here that's "whining".

So if you want to call me and others who have a problem with the combat system "whiners" fine, whatever. But just so you know, I wasn't whining about the SMAC system. And don't let me catch you voicing your own problems about the game elsewhere on these forums. Lest you want to become a whiner yourself and be called on it by me at every step.

FIN

[Zurai001]

while my bowmen got slaughtered while attacking the enimy pikemen fortified in the city.

Well, let's examine that. Bowmen (assuming longbowmen) are 4/1/1... Pikemen are 1/3/1. Fortified raises it to 4.5, lowest terrain defense modifier raises it to 4.7, if there's walls or it's a size 6+ city that raises it to 6.3. 4 attack vs. 6.3 defense yields slightly over 60% win rate for the defender. If you instead mean the Babylonian-specific Bowman, that's about an 80% win rate for the defenders.

AND/OR at the very least, the defenders should not be allowed to heal back to full strength even if the city has a berracks when they have spent the entire turn defending the city.

Actually they don't heal fully. They heal either 2 or 3 health, depending on the presence of barracks. It's quite possible to bombard a city's defenders down to yellow or red health and keept them there if you work at it. Still, I do wish that they'd kept the supressive fire ability of artillery from SMAC.

[Temujin69]

For those of you who haven't experienced large scale war, you obviously haven't played long enough or far enough into the game.

My scenario: 1960, modern age. EVERY civilization has mutual protection pacts and the computer starts a war so it's roughly 3 civs vs 4 civs. The romans attack with tanks and the greeks manage to kill 1 tank with their cavalry and archers.

My gripe? Well, my army of *4* Elite modern armour attacks a British *conscript* tank in a city of size 4... what happens? That lonely conscript tank took out my army AND 4 Panzer attacks. The fifth Panzer tank took out that conscript. There is definitely something wrong here. Of course, the one that takes the cake is the galleon that defeats my battleship. Yes, few people have had this happen, but it DOES happen. Something needs to be done about this strange and totally random combat system.

[Jack_www]

I dont know what you all you guys are complaining about. The game I have now is on Regent level. I am playing as the americans. I have fought a lot of wars in my game. That was the only way I could expand. When I was attacking with knights I did lose some to spearmen, but they were eliet spearmen. In war you are going to lose units, plain and simple. You have to take this into account. Also I made a army unit and put three knights into it. In every single battle it has fought the army has won. The computer never attacks it etheir, always avoids it. In fact I used this army of nights to take out two armies of longbowmen.

When attacking use bomdardment properly. Take into account the terran and the city size before attacking. Also considered the units stats. I have not had a problem witht the combat system. Some of you guys are just too use to playing Civ2, thats all. Things you did in Civ2 dont work in Civ3, you have to change the way you play, thats all.

[Leonid]

I didn't read thru all of these but i have to respond. To the guys saying there knights get killed by fortified pikemen. ummm do some math . pikemen have defense of 3, knights have attack of 4. fortified behind city walls is like +100%= pikemen defense of 6... even if they are just fortified +50% they are gonna win almost everytime. The pikeman should trash all your knights ..why would you attack pikemen with knights? go to war when you have cavalry at least or better yet infantry or tanks against pikemen. I would feel nervous attacking fortified SPEARMEN with knights..they are to be used in open field against unfortified units.

When seiging cities bombard and get them to 1 or 2 health tops... then use units that preferably at least have 2x preferably 3x more attack rating than defense of the fortified unit. Basic rule of war is attacker needs 3 to 1 advantage minimum.

Don't expect this game to be cheesy like civ 2 where you easily bowl over all the civs in combat..this is better ..this is more realistic.

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by Temujin69
For those of you who haven't experienced large scale war, you obviously haven't played long enough or far enough into the game.

My scenario: 1960, modern age. EVERY civilization has mutual protection pacts and the computer starts a war so it's roughly 3 civs vs 4 civs. The romans attack with tanks and the greeks manage to kill 1 tank with their cavalry and archers.

My gripe? Well, my army of *4* Elite modern armour attacks a British *conscript* tank in a city of size 4... what happens? That lonely conscript tank took out my army AND 4 Panzer attacks. The fifth Panzer tank took out that conscript. There is definitely something wrong here. Of course, the one that takes the cake is the galleon that defeats my battleship. Yes, few people have had this happen, but it DOES happen. Something needs to be done about this strange and totally random combat system.

i had massive modern wars. none of the stuff you described happened. occassionally a full strength vet cavalry would finish off my 1 point tank but i consider that legit

[konradius]

Hmm... Just loaded up the editor and saw a nice feature there:
You can change the number of hitpoints of the different xp levels (regular, veteran, etc). I'll now try and play the game with conscripts having 2 hp's, regular 4, veteran 7 and elite 10.
Incidentally this will limit the healing power of cities I've seen people complain about.

Might be a nice idea :-)

Konradius

[Quint]

For you folks that are loosing in combat, I'm sorry to say that you just aren't doing it right. Combined arms is the name of the game when fighting, and when you do it right, you will win. You may take some unit losses, but you WILL win.

Bombardment units are your friends, That annoying group of defending pikeman or infantry there? Blast them to 1 hit point with bombardment before you attack with you offensive units. (One note, when I use bombardment units I bring at least 4 or so along with me, in smaller doses they don't do any good). Later in the game when you get artillery this becomes extremely powerful.

When attacking if at all possible use cavalry units (ie. horsemen, knights, cav, tanks). They have a good chance of retreating to fight again if they are loosing the battle.

Defend with infantry units, and always keep two of em guarding your valuable bombardment units. One thing to note, you want to also defend your attacking force of cavalry with infantry if at all possible.

Anytime you see an offensive unit of the computer's in a vulnerable position, take it out or it will hurt you.

My last tip, when defending scorched earth is your friend. Trash their road system to the front lines (with bombardments if possible). Then kill their offensive units as they slowly come to you. Once you've wiped them out, then its your turn to attack. This makes wars take longer, and also makes you have to do more work improving any ground you've gained, but that is what all those enemy workers you captured are for

[Morganstern]

I've reloaded one particular sequence, and haven't had the exact results repeated the way it's described by some here. This is influenced somewhat by the AI's decision to move some of its units in different directions than before, but this again proves the point of a degree of randomness.

[rah]

There are two types of random number generators.

1. Use of a seed number. If the seed number is the same. (which is what they've used here. the same result occurs) The machine remembers the seed number for all you reloaders out there. Which I am thankful of.
The random number generated will become the next seed number.

2. Created seed number. The seed is usually created from the system clock so the results will change every time you use it. (Similar to older Civs)


For all you reload fans, the solution is easy. Either

1. before you do the combat, do something that requires a random number to be generated. This will change the seed.
You can either run a different combat first.
Some types of diplomacy will also change it.
Open a hut.

2. Or just wait a turn. The AI moves will require a random number so the seed number will change. This is real useful on huts.

3. Or just close the game and restart it. This will erase the held seed number.


OR 4. Just live with the results like the designers intended.


Parting note: If you do practice reloads, please don't come back and brag how you Won the game, because you didn't.

RAH

[Marcusrife]

Yes, there is definitely something different about battles. I tried to take a city with two regular warriors and they had one regular warrior. The first warrior knocked down two of the enemy's hitpoints and the second couldn't do jack. He never got that one hit point and he died. I had just saved before that so I reloaded several times and every time it was the same result. Two hit points down for the first warrior then death and the second could never kill the warrior off. So it seems as though the hits are not random. That is definitely apparent but why can't a warrior with three hit points kill one with one. Firaxis obviously built things into the combat system for a reason but some seem to be awkward on several occasions. Maybe someone can shed some light on this.

[Barchan]

Thermopylae.

300 Spartans, plus a smattering of other Greek troops, managed to stave off several thousand Persian attackers, including the Immortals, for several days. By most accounts, the Spartan defenders inflicted grave casualties on their attackers before finally being overwhelmed. This delay threw the Persian advance into disarray and, thanks to a Greek naval battle shortly thereafter, ultimately resulted in the Persian withdrawl from Greece.

Bastogne.

Elements of the US VIII Army Corp, reinforced by elements of the 101st Airborne division, repulse numerous attacks from German Armored and Mechanized Corps. Despite having both numerical and equipment advantages over the Americans, the Germans are unable to take the town. Although it can be debated that Opreation "Wacht am Rhein" was doomed from the start, it certainly was not helped by the failure to capture the key crossroads town of Bastogne.

These are the only two examples I can think of right off the top, but history is replete with examples of combat where the "expected results" failed to materialize. The point is that your mileage may vary. Over the long run, tanks will kill more spearmen than the other way around. But occasionally, even the spearmen win a few. But if you consistently attack with sufficient mass, the enemy will crumble.

Oh, and anyone who thinks that a small number of elite, technologically superior units should always prevail, regardless of the number of technologically inferior conscript units, please read "Black Hawk Down."

BTW, I get just as frustrated when my tanks get shafted by spearmen. This is a normal reaction to losing when you expect to win. At least in the game you can restart, make a better plan and try it again. In real life you just have to suck it up, press on, and have a better plan next time. Assuming you survive for there to be a next time, that is....

[Sava]

Bravo! I'm glad to see that we are putting all the combat newbies in their place. If you use combined arms and pick your battles, you will win. Position your forces in such a way that the computer can't counter-attack, and only attack the computer in situations where the numbers favor you.

If there is a defensive stronghold, bring in some artillery. If you don't have any artillery, then you weren't prepared to fight the war in the first place and you deserve to lose. If you see a guy on a mountain square, move back so that he follows you to a square with less defensive bonus, then attack.

Only attack with mobile units. If you are getting reamed, then your guy will retreat.

Mass your forces and attack at once. If you have one mobile unit next to a city and two more that can be there in one turn, don't attack. The computer isn't going to attack your mobile unit with his garrisoned force. Even if he does, your guy will retreat and then you can heal under the cover of your other units. You want to attack with everything you have on one turn. Because if you don't, any guys you don't kill will get healed the next turn.

Find out how many units are defending before you attack. What I like to do is fortify a defensive unit, build a fortress, and bombard the city until I can determine how many guys are in there. Then I bring 2x as many mobile units as they have defensive units garrisoned to attack. You can determine the number of guys very easy. When bombarding, and you damage a guy, the next bombardment will target the unit with the most hit points, except when one unit is more advanced. But when the advanced unit gets down to one health, the less advanced unit will be targeted next.

Cut off supply routes first!!!! I think I mentioned this before, but it is so important, I'll say it again. If you land troops and pillage all transportation to their resources, they won't be able to produce more modern units. So while your initial first wave might not wipe out their entire civilization, you will be able to produce modern units to reinforce your attacks while they will be spitting out conscripted spearmen.

But then again, if you make stupid battle decision and try to attack a spearmen in a fortress on a mountatin, you deserve to lose.

The combat in the game is fine, if you can't beat the comp, you suck.

[Soliloquy]

Originally posted by konradius
You can change the number of hitpoints of the different xp levels (regular, veteran, etc). I'll now try and play the game with conscripts having 2 hp's, regular 4, veteran 7 and elite 10.

How'd it go? It looks like an interesting idea.

[Jason]

In order to get rubber for my infantry (noone else had the tech and I sure wasn't giving it away) I had to capture an English city guarded by Riflemen with my own riflemen. (no horses either.) Holy US Civil war time. Spotsylvania. Cold harbor. It was a massacre Lost easily 10+ riflemen even with healthy artillery beforehand and when I finally took the city, I'd destroyed the harbor and the rubber wasn't linked to the rest of my empire


Fortunately you can upgrade units if the disconnected city they are in has the resource, so the units inside the captured English town were able to upgrade to Infantry and (compared to before) kick some serious English ass.

I recommend players avoid having to use riflemen vs. entrenched riflemen I should have waited for someone to free up horses for trade I guess.

[morb]

Originally posted by SoulAssassin
Bravo! I'm glad to see that we are putting all the combat newbies in their place. If you use combined arms and pick your battles, you will win. Position your forces in such a way that the computer can't counter-attack, and only attack the computer in situations where the numbers favor you.

If there is a defensive stronghold, bring in some artillery. If you don't have any artillery, then you weren't prepared to fight the war in the first place and you deserve to lose. If you see a guy on a mountain square, move back so that he follows you to a square with less defensive bonus, then attack.

Only attack with mobile units. If you are getting reamed, then your guy will retreat.

Mass your forces and attack at once. If you have one mobile unit next to a city and two more that can be there in one turn, don't attack. The computer isn't going to attack your mobile unit with his garrisoned force. Even if he does, your guy will retreat and then you can heal under the cover of your other units. You want to attack with everything you have on one turn. Because if you don't, any guys you don't kill will get healed the next turn.

Find out how many units are defending before you attack. What I like to do is fortify a defensive unit, build a fortress, and bombard the city until I can determine how many guys are in there. Then I bring 2x as many mobile units as they have defensive units garrisoned to attack. You can determine the number of guys very easy. When bombarding, and you damage a guy, the next bombardment will target the unit with the most hit points, except when one unit is more advanced. But when the advanced unit gets down to one health, the less advanced unit will be targeted next.

Cut off supply routes first!!!! I think I mentioned this before, but it is so important, I'll say it again. If you land troops and pillage all transportation to their resources, they won't be able to produce more modern units. So while your initial first wave might not wipe out their entire civilization, you will be able to produce modern units to reinforce your attacks while they will be spitting out conscripted spearmen.

But then again, if you make stupid battle decision and try to attack a spearmen in a fortress on a mountatin, you deserve to lose.

The combat in the game is fine, if you can't beat the comp, you suck.

heh, did you get wood from all that "puting newbies in place" biz? You easily took everything that was already said here and regurgitated it back out.

When I do battle, I do all those things. Its self evident that if a unit is well defended it will have a better chance to repel an attack (all the defense bonuses). If I'd have attacked with inferior force/number/strategy I'd expected to get my ass kicked too. The problem is I don't. I can beat the computer most of the time just fine. What I have a problem with is having a single unit stand up to a massive hoard of invaders when it shouldn't be able to. This happens because the unit wins almost unilaterally. Basicly it doesn't even get damaged.

The other day I was attacking a city on a plains squre with 2 fortified regular spearmen. So his defence was 2 +85% defensive bonus which totals to 3.7 I was attacking with 5 veteran Knights. The first spearman went down with the first Knight, but it took me the other 4 to bring down the second one. BECAUSE IT DIDN'T EVEN GET DAMAGED with 2 of the 4 attacks.

This is what I have a problem with.

[Sava]

Originally posted by morb


heh, did you get wood from all that "puting newbies in place" biz? You easily took everything that was already said here and regurgitated it back out.

When I do battle, I do all those things. Its self evident that if a unit is well defended it will have a better chance to repel an attack (all the defense bonuses). If I'd have attacked with inferior force/number/strategy I'd expected to get my ass kicked too. The problem is I don't. I can beat the computer most of the time just fine. What I have a problem with is having a single unit stand up to a massive hoard of invaders when it shouldn't be able to. This happens because the unit wins almost unilaterally. Basicly it doesn't even get damaged.

The other day I was attacking a city on a plains squre with 2 fortified regular spearmen. So his defence was 2 +85% defensive bonus which totals to 3.7 I was attacking with 5 veteran Knights. The first spearman went down with the first Knight, but it took me the other 4 to bring down the second one. BECAUSE IT DIDN'T EVEN GET DAMAGED with 2 of the 4 attacks.

This is what I have a problem with.

Actually I have 24/7 wood just thinking about how I'm going to beat you newbies in MP .

The comp had 3.7 def to your 4 attack. 50-50 chance of either him or you winning. Mathematically, that is not that improbable for him to fend you off. So do you have a problem with math? Or just your misunderstanding of it? If you want to constantly win, make your own scenario with a UU that has attack 40 and def 30 with movement 5. Then you'll never lose. But if you do, I won't give you crap about it if you whine on the board. The game is supposed to be challenging. I don't remember a war in this World's history where one side didn't have casualties. Maybe you are playing this game in the bizarro world or something.

BTW, those strategies are common sense. I didn't need to read all the other posts to put those on. Most of them were in my first post, but I figured since you continued to whine after that, you didn't read them, and that I needed to post them again. I was trying to help you out because I have no idea the level of your Civ skill. I figured if I listed all the strats I use that it would help you beat the comp better. Next time, I'll just let you whine in your own thread about how you can't beat the comp on Chieftain.