I actually do have one complaint about the game- combat probability

Dis · December 6, 2001, 14:56

judging from other threads, including the lengthy one about random numbers, it is clear that superior numbers is the best way to win wars. You can never go wrong by building tons of horsemans and just running over the ai. To do this you need a decent amount of cities. Unfortunately this only gives humans one way to fight wars.

I myself don't really care, because I build lots of units anyways so the ai respects me. but I do realize people want to substitute high tech instead of high numbers. They want a more efficient fighting force.

As it stands now, you cannot win a war with few amounts of units than the ai. I'm almost certain that I win more battles when I have more units than the ai. This is why I never get the spearman defeats calvary deal. It never happens to me because I always have a superior number of units.

So in short there is little flexibility in combat. Just build more units than the ai has, and you've won the game. But I really don't give a sh!t about FP/HP. I just want more flexibility for people that like to play the game differently. I personally don't mind moving 50 calvary accross the screen, but some people would rather just move 5 or 10 modern armour.

GePap · December 6, 2001, 15:10

Dissident:
Thank you for finally seeing one of our points! People like I do feel constrained by the combat system, in both the way you describe and others. The question i ask you, is how can we solve this issue? Fine, you don't care about Fp/HP, so what is the solution you envision?

Dis · December 6, 2001, 15:16

well I don't think it is FP/HP causing the problems.

basically it seems the more units I have the more I win. The less units I have the more I lose.

This is great when you are on a run with many units. It allows you to quickly take over a civ.

But in my only loss, I had less units, and I was getting terrible combat results. My elite spearman were losing to archers. my spearman were fortified in a city. This happened more than once.

But that penomenon only happened once. In a game where I had less units than the ai.

as long as I have more units than the ai, I don't get whacky results like losing tanks to spearman.

So the main problem with this setup, is when you are losing, or behind in production, you have no hope of catching up.

So what I want are combat results based on the actual attack and defense values of units. I don't think we have that completely now. Yes they have a major impact on battles, but there is something weird thrown in the battle calculation with regards to the # of units.

Frito · December 6, 2001, 15:19

If you raise the attack/defence values of newer units so you make it less likely for a older unit to win. Thats the best non fp way I can think of.

GePap · December 6, 2001, 15:29

As I said in other posts, I have also very rarely if ever gotten the weird results that have angererd so many, because, like you, I only mainly attack with huge armies (I am a great believer in big battalions) and use arty (Arty is the king of the battlefield). The problem is that the A.I. as is, simply does not wage war that effectively. Yes, neither did the A.I. in civ2, but the failures are different. In civ2, the A.I. was horrible and plain dumb at offense, but it always had lots of defenses held back. In civ3, the A.I. is good at offense, but crappy at defense, very crappy. Kill its offensive army, or bottle it up, and they are wide open, even to small rushes by tanks. I believe that fortified inf. should be nearly invulnerable to cavalry attacks without lots of sofening up, but with combat as is, a human can charge a large city with lots of cavalry and overwhelm the A.I. defense with few losses and keep going. This make warfare in this game just as easy as civ2 if you are on a roll, and it is only the inability to use their infrastructure that keeps people from wipping out the A.I. as quickly as in civ2.
The way to fix this, without going into the calcualtions of the game, is changing the A.I. Now, personally, I think that a few modifications to the few equations that rule combat results are a much simpler fix that reprogramming for a better A.I. that will be a better general.

Dis · December 6, 2001, 15:36

ahh another good point

there is no defense in this game. the best defense is a good offense. I usually don't worry about defensive units so much (long as I got one). I just make sure the ai never gets anywhere near my cities.

cities should be a bit harder to take. This can be changed with the editor probably. But units out in the open fields should be relatively easy to kill with superior weaponry. Although making cities harder to take sure would make diety tough