Ludicrous bording on insane

[thanakar]

I started a new game in cheiftain mode tonight so I could get a feel for the game. Germany declares war no me (Persia) because I would not give themn contact with the Zulu..no big deal I thought since this is only chieftain mode. I've got a stack of veteran horseman tooling around the plains near their border and out rides two of the German REGULAR horseman and they kill two of my VETERAN's with room to spare on their life meters. What gives here? This has been par for the course for the entire battle so far. Their regulars besting my veterans 8 out of 10 times, and we are talking same terrain types, no fortifications. When I attack them I do not get teh same results.

Not to mention the blatant cheating by the computer hiding in the fog of war and waiting to see which way my troops move then moving in the opposite way I do, i've reloaded an autosave several times to test this..and its quite obvious.

[Matthevv]

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one that has encountered this apparent cheating by the AI in combat. I'm also playing a game where the Germans are very "lucky" very often! The knights beating the veteran musketeers behind the city walls was an interesting result! The contrast with combat against barbarians is very marked. I just have to remember to make extra troops to couteract this. I don't know what will happen when they develop their Panzers though!

[DarkMatter]

My expierience is similar, except with a twist. So my calvary is attacking some spearman on a plains, and my guy routes him down to about 2 hp (i've doubled the hp) with no scratches, then the spearman, obviously spurred on by his impending doom, wipes the floor with my calvary. I've heard of heroic stands, but this is f*cking ridiculous.

[quinalla]

hey thanakar, you may already know this and I apologize if you do, but the difference between veteran and regular is hit points only (regular has 3 and vetran has 4). Now the horseman unit is attack 2 and defense 1, meaning if he attacked you he is attacking with the 2 number while you are defending with the 1. I think the probability for those two numbers works out to the AI hitting 2 out of 3 times, so even though your units have more hp, the AI does have a better chance of winning. I know you said you have other instances that seemed unfair, but hopefully this will help. I always make sure to have extra units in my stacks if possible to make sure I can defend or take out the AI units. Good luck with future games and hopefully this won't frustrate you too much. There are many good threads on this board that can help you with combat.

-quinalla

[Matthevv]

quinilla - valid point about the horsemen being stronger in attack, but this doesn't any of what has happened to me. For example, the knights that attack and kill the veteran musketeers inside a walled city. This could happen just by luck, I agree, but it has happened too frequently to be that - especially if you compare the results with fighting barbarians (poor blighters never seem to get lucky!). You are right about having to stack up several troops to make sure (I haven't lost a city to the pesky Germans yet, however lucky they are!) but the problem is that building and maintaining big stacks of troops is a pain in the bum - detracts from the enjoyment of the game.

[ScottVib]

FYI - The save and reload cheat has been blocked. Firaxis mentioned that they specific fixed the seed in the save game so that if you saved and reloaded after a battle that the battle would play out exactly the same each time (incidently this is also helpful during testing sorry I'm busy testing software I'm working on). The only way to change the seed between reloads is to do things a bit different each time.

Hope this helps

[Ironwood]

One thing to remember is that City Walls are no longer any where near as effective as they were in Civ2, and higher numbers are no longer as great a guarentee of victory.

Knights have an attack of 4. Musketeers have a defense of 4. On flat ground, with the knight on the attack, each point calculation has a 50/50 chance of going either way.

If those musketeers are behind city walls, it's strength is now 6. Add the two together, you get 10. 4/10 (two fifths) of the time, the knights win. 6/10 (three fifths of the time), the muskets win. It's still a pretty even match. In the long run, this will tend to favor the musketmen, but the uncertainties of the odds can easily make a battle go either way.

Enter the role of human observation. You react in a "matter of fact" manner when the muskets win. You react emotionally when the knights win. By default, it is the knight victories that are imprinted most strongly upon the mind. In retrospect, it seems that the knights are winning far more often than they should. In actuality, assuming the random seed isn't favoring one result over the other, the knights are winning almost half the time.

In other words, the best defense is still a good offense.

By the way, for the d20 roleplayers, a knight winning this battle is like a first level cleric with avarage dexterity hitting a creature with an AC of 12 (for example, a peasant wearing leather armor). Entire adventures are planned around the fact that this simply will happen.

[quinalla]

Comparing combat against AI civs with combat vs. barbarians is pointless unless you are playing on deity because you get a bonus against fighting barbarians on all the other difficutly levels (on chieftan it is a 400% bonus I think).

[Matthevv]

Now I have played for longer, I have encountered some cases where my own troops have got lucky, so I think the AI could just have had a run of luck earlier. Mostly I would never attack unless the odds are well in my favour, so I don't see the lucky results going my way often. Likewise I have my cities defended by the the best defenders, so the AI usually has to attack against the odds. I always work on the assumption that I'll be unlucky.

I take the point about the odds of Knights vs Muskets. Historically its a bit of a bizarre result - to take a walled city would usually require to outnumber the defenders substantially, but I guess thats the way the game is. One thing I note is that you get 2 food from a city build on a hill square, so I'll put mine on hills whenever possible, to get extra defense.

Musketmen seem to be a waste of time in this game, as they can only defend and then are only equal to attack units that cost less. Taking into account the need to obtain Saltpeter, and the cost of building them, they are not good value for the one extra defence point - you may as well stack up a couple of pikemen. Quite soon you develop riflemen, which don't need any resources, which is strange.

Its a pity the barbarians are so wimpy. They should be scary. They are mostly just a chore having to go and hunt their little camps, though when they come in a big swarm that is quite good fun. They did sack my capital, but then vanished? Whats that all about anyway? Why make them wimpy and then send them along 20 at a time? Why not make them tougher and send them in smaller numbers?

[N35t0r]

I now don't attack cities exept with my Elte Cossack Army, or by bombarding with my artillery before (i can even use my REALLY obsolete knight even!! (just discovered tanks, but my enemy is on the other side of the world...)