I can't believe this..

[Qilue]

Story time.

During one game, I was positioning my fleets when an elite galley and a regular battleship from two civs who were at war with each other, moved into the view range of my ships. I remember I totally screwed up my next turn because I was in tears laughing.

The battleship attacked the galley and lost.

History time.

Anyone ever read about Rorke's Drift? This was a battle where 150 British soldiers defended a supply station against 4000 Zulu warriors.

http://www.rorkesdriftvc.com/

To use a Civ comparision, 1 rifleman defends (and survives) the attacks of 26 Impis.

[spy14]

Originally posted by Zachriel


A Veteran Frigate will beat a Veteran Galley 82.67% of the time -- better than four out of five on average.

Civulator
http://207.191.20.18/civ3/lwc-civulator.html

In theory yes. In practice no. Make a scenario and try it

[Average Monkey]

interesting discussion

i've not really played Civ3 enough to make a decision about the combat model, but in my current game i'm using Knights and Swordsmen against my german neighbour who is similarly armed.

most times i get the results i would expect, though obviously i havn't seen any battles with a civ with lesser or greater military technology.

anyway, what this all kinda reminds me off was the arguments i used to have with a group of friends i regularly played board games like Diplomacy and Risk with.

a few of us loved Diplomacy as it had none of the dice rolling that took place in Risk, but others hated it because they felt this made the game too predictable, especially if you were one of the central powers...

my argument was always that the game was called Diplomacy for a reason, and the nay-sayers should have concentrated more on making successful alliances to balance any geographical weaknesses of their nation

from what i'm hearing here, there's a lot of disagreement about the way the combat model works, but most of the examples are on a tactical level - if you know there's uncertainty over a battle, do as much as you can to limit that uncertainty and plan for the worst - - at the end of the day the war option is only a part of the game as i play it, and all-out war is the FINAL option for when all else fails

anyway, thats my first post done with and gotten outta the way - didn't know where to jump in there!

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by spy14
In theory yes. In practice no. Make a scenario and try it

I have tested it extensively. Generally, those who make extraordinary claims would have to provide the evidence. If there is a pink elephant in your garage, perhaps you would consider showing it to us.

In this case, if you could provide us a proper demonstration.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Average Monkey
if you know there's uncertainty over a battle, do as much as you can to limit that uncertainty and plan for the worst -

Good advice. There is much more uncertainty in real battles. At least we have the exact percentages.

[vondrack]

I have fought thousands and thousands of battles in Civ3, with expected results most of the time. The exceptions were just to the extent of probability count, as given by mathematical formulas expressing odds of winning/losing. Yes, there were times when I was screaming at the monitor, because I lost something like two vet swordsmen to one unfortified regular spearmen in the open grassland... but that's what happens. Military campaigns should not be based on the existence or non-existence of two or three units. If you want to win a campaign, you have to be able to replenish your fighting forces on the fly.

The Civ3 combat system is not flawed. Just the combat results are a bit less predictable that in other games... you sometimes lose even if you think you must win. And thanks God it is so - otherwise, Civ3 would be about mindlessly moving hundreds of units... no surprises, no excitement, no thrills... just tedious battling to the eventual victory.

[The Puny Celt]

In a recent game I played I was keeping track of how many units I lost in battles compared to my opponents, like a football score. So the Egyptians (me) slaughtered the Greeks 47-6, we beat the Russians 41-10 and 27-5 against the Germans. This was from just using basic strategy like avoiding battles when the odds were against me, increasing my odds by attacking from hills and mountains, protecting my attacking units with strong defensive ones, using bombardment to soften up the enemy, etc. When I'm getting overall results like the above, I don't worry so much by the occasional AI Spearman victory over my vet Cavalry.

However I can sympathise with those who get frustrated. I avoid sea-battles as much as possible, because I can't use terrain advantages etc to tilt the odds in my favour. I'll attack caravels with my ironclads, frigates with my battleships but even then I do it with a sense of dread.

[Grumbold]

I thought that Firaxis had bowed to the demand and introduced a seed-randomiser option so those who dislike the extreme results can reload and get a better one?

I'm a fan of the CtP army system. Not only does it allow ranged combat, flanking and sheer weight of numbers to be a factor but it also compresses so many "random" numbers into one fight that it is very hard to have completely absurd results.

OT: The Spanish Armada was not defeated by the English fleet. Its orders were to sail up the channel, allow the army to board then sail them over to England to invade. They proved that they could easily achieve this had circumstances not prevented the army from being ready to embark. Most of the casualties only came when they were on their way home and struck by a huge storm off the coast of Ireland.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Grumbold
OT: The Spanish Armada was not defeated by the English fleet. Its orders were to sail up the channel, allow the army to board then sail them over to England to invade. They proved that they could easily achieve this had circumstances not prevented the army from being ready to embark. Most of the casualties only came when they were on their way home and struck by a huge storm off the coast of Ireland.

That means, of course, that they were defeated without the help of the enemy. They were sailing around Ireland to avoid contact with the enemy.

Not really off-topic. Storms, and other local events, are represented by the randomizer. The Spanish knew this, and thought they had brought along sufficient numbers to overcome any bad rolls of the dice. Unfortunately, they miscounted the tiles and their two fleets didn't quite meet up on time.

[Grumbold]

They were sailing around Ireland because that was the way the wind was blowing, but I take your point. Its just that some people have a misguided impression that the Armada was defeated by plucky English ships sinking a lot of them. Most sunk weeks after the English harrassment of the fleet had ended so you need a Civ timespan of 1 year/turn to be able to claim those as combat losses In civ terms it is a good example of an aberrant result.

[I-iZ-1337]

Hap33 d00dz, j00 muzt b33 a n00b if j00 cantz b337 th33 AIz. J00 shoulz g0 t00 th33 stratz sectionz and l00kz atz m33 1337 h4xx0rz threadz aboutz stratz. 133arnz fromz th33 1337, bringz morez knightz nexzt tim33z, thenz j00 mightz winz.

[dunk]

I used to complain about seemingly "obsolete" units defeating my more modern ones. I'm certain you're exaggerating your losses. "It happens every time!" is utter crap. It may happen in a string, but that type of thing happens. I've gotten just as lucky as the AI has in individual battles.

Then I got better at Civ III and I stopped whining.

When you get better, you'll quit whining too. and the game will be much more fun.

Yes, listen to the "cool guy" who types like he's illiterate. The Strategy Forum here has plenty of helpful hints.

[HappySunShine]

Maybe you should shut the **** up dunk. My real name is EyesOfNight. I was the best civ2 MP player ever. I spent 2 years at number 1 on the ladder and I have written more MP strategies than anyone. I've been playing this game for over a decade and civ3 isn't what you would call a challenging game. But that's beside the point. Only newbies worry about the AI anyways, I'm worried about the combat model as it applies to MP. So why don't you sit back and keep your stupid rookie assessments to yourself? Got it? Anyone else want to act stupid like dunk?

[Ribannah]

C'mon, play nice! Not everyone can grasp the subtleties and annoyances of a master strategist.

I think you're right about the random factor being too high for a sophisticated MP-er. For less experienced players, however, that is not necessarily the case. Let's hope Firaxis has planned an option to control the randomness of (especially) battle outcomes with a slider (from pre-determined to even a little beyond the present toss-up). That shouldn't be too hard to implement, and practice will show what feels comfortable and just.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Grumbold
They were sailing around Ireland because that was the way the wind was blowing, but I take your point. Its just that some people have a misguided impression that the Armada was defeated by plucky English ships sinking a lot of them. Most sunk weeks after the English harrassment of the fleet had ended so you need a Civ timespan of 1 year/turn to be able to claim those as combat losses In civ terms it is a good example of an aberrant result.

Yes, the money was on the Spanish. Who would have thought they would roll snake-eyes -- twice or three times in a row?!

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Ribannah
C'mon, play nice! Not everyone can grasp the subtleties and annoyances of a master strategist.

I think you're right about the random factor being too high for a sophisticated MP-er. For less experienced players, however, that is not necessarily the case. Let's hope Firaxis has planned an option to control the randomness of (especially) battle outcomes with a slider (from pre-determined to even a little beyond the present toss-up). That shouldn't be too hard to implement, and practice will show what feels comfortable and just.

the nearer the results come to the expected value (smaller empirical variance) the bigger the motivation is for the player to calculate every single move (see cracker's japan-conquest description from GotM9 at CFC). and it would also make fights boring.
eg. if variance=0, then an attack 4 (knight) would always win against defence 3.85 (pikeman fortified in grassland town 3*(1.25+1.1)), but _never_ against the same pikeman in a city (extra 50% defence bonus)). ok, but this would be an extreme case.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Ribannah
Let's hope Firaxis has planned an option to control the randomness of (especially) battle outcomes with a slider (from pre-determined to even a little beyond the present toss-up). That shouldn't be too hard to implement, and practice will show what feels comfortable and just.

That option is already available. Increasing the hitpoints in the editor decreases the variance. Sabrewolf makes the very good point that decreasing the variance too much will have a profound negative effect on the game.

War is always chaotic.

[Ribannah]

Yes, but you would send TWO knights in that case.
The single fights would be boring, but also reliable. For the pure strategist the interest lies in the battle (/game) as a whole.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by HappySunShine
I played civ3 today for 3 hours. That's more playing time in 1 day than the past 9 months since its release.

Originally posted by HappySunShine
Maybe you should shut the **** up dunk. My real name is EyesOfNight. I was the best civ2 MP player ever. I spent 2 years at number 1 on the ladder and I have written more MP strategies than anyone. I've been playing this game for over a decade and civ3 isn't what you would call a challenging game. But that's beside the point. Only newbies worry about the AI anyways, I'm worried about the combat model as it applies to MP. So why don't you sit back and keep your stupid rookie assessments to yourself? Got it? Anyone else want to act stupid like dunk?

Yes. Here. Me.
(I would never think I could actually use this smiley... )

As I see it, it is not dunk who behaves in a stupid way here. Considering your original post, it is perfectly okay to assume you've spent very little time playing Civ3. So, Your Highness HappySunShine aka EyesOfNight, the greatest of all Civ2 MP players, what makes you believe that just you are right? Civ3 is a lot different from Civ2. It takes some time to master it, even for skilled Civ2 players... especially for skilled Civ2 players, I would say. Your accolades from Civ2 do not help you very much with Civ3. This game needs to be played in a bit different way. Both by rookies and pros.

I 100% agree with what dunk said. It is possible to learn to play Civ3 with pretty low casualties, quite easily overcoming bad luck that strikes here and there (and certainly not as often as you suggest it does). I find this combat model more challenging than that of Civ2. You seldom "waltz" to the victory... You need reserves, artillery support, terrain bonuses and a backup plan... not just tech superiority.

But then, I am perhaps a rookie, too... never climbed any Civ2 ladders... so I would better shut the *** up, wouldn't I?

It's quite rare to see somebody post in such an offensive, arrogant way here, HappySunShine.

Originally posted by Ribannah
C'mon, play nice! Not everyone can grasp the subtleties and annoyances of a master strategist.

I think you're right about the random factor being too high for a sophisticated MP-er. For less experienced players, however, that is not necessarily the case. Let's hope Firaxis has planned an option to control the randomness of (especially) battle outcomes with a slider (from pre-determined to even a little beyond the present toss-up). That shouldn't be too hard to implement, and practice will show what feels comfortable and just.

And this is a perfect example of just the contrary.

On topic (hm, is this the topic?): a slider adjusting the randomness of combat results would definitely do no harm, should be easy to implement and would obviously make many people enjoy the game much more. I would vote yes on this, even though I would leave it at the default position.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by HappySunShine
I played civ3 today for 3 hours. That's more playing time in 1 day than the past 9 months since its release. I decided to try out the patch and I was really impressed with some of the new features. However for all the fixes one of the biggest problems still exists...the battle model. Is it that difficult to fix? How can you call a game strategy when the greatest strategy feature is based, as far as I can tell, on random numbers. For three hours I played and everything was going great and then I declared war on the Russians. All they had was regular archers and spearmen, nothing special. Yet my veteran and alot of times elite knights would seemingly randomly die to them. Even attacking an archer with a defense of 1 would sometimes kill my knights. I attacked a warrior, just a regular warrior, with my elite knight and it DIED! But that's not even the worst case. The final stunt was when I attacked just a regular old spearman on a size 3 city and it took my army of 3 elite knights down to red without losing a single hitpoint. How ridiculous is that? And is the defense of 3 for knights correct or is that a typo? Every time an archer with an attack of 2 attacks a veteran knight, the knight loses majority of the time. Civilization 3 isn't a difficult game, the AI isn't any harder than it was in civ2. The simple fact is that the biggest part of the game has a major flaw in it. No game can survive in MP if it doesn't have some sort of consistency to its play, nor can it be called strategy when the outcome of battles are random. Is this going to be fixed in PTW?

I decided to reread your original post, and after all the recent controversy, I think it is important to state that your opinion was certainly not formed in undue haste, but honestly reflects your thinking in the matter. Yet, I believe you are generally wrong. (I am not against a tweak or two of the combat system.) I disagree with your assertion that strategy is not possible with a strong random element.

The Art of War (Wonder of the World) stresses the unpredictability of battle, the importance of deception and surprise, the close relationship between politics and military policy, and the high costs of war. The futility of seeking hard and fast rules and the subtle paradoxes of success are major themes. The best battle, Sun Tzu says, is the battle that is won without being fought. http://www.bartleby.com/65/su/SunTzu.html

Generally, Sun Tzu is saying that war may be chaotic, but it can be understood. War is a subtle Art. Real life military planners deal with much, much more uncertainty than anything we have in Civ3. Indeed, historical conflict is the inspiration for Civ3. And Sun Tzu, a better than average observer, with a better than average vantage point, says that battle was unpredictable as of 500BC.

Yet, strategy was still possible. That was Sun Tzu's momentus discovery.

Agreed that in multiplayer, the experts may find that a slightly lower variance would be more balanced, just to get everybody out of the ancient age (but there is still a huge variation in starting terrain). However, for normal players , the standard variance is more fun and more historical.

. . . The variance is easily changed in the editor. When multiplayer starts, you just have to convince other players to join you in a high-hp game.



-------------------------------------------------
Sun Tzu says
http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Ribannah
Yes, but you would send TWO knights in that case.
The single fights would be boring, but also reliable. For the pure strategist the interest lies in the battle (/game) as a whole.

Exactly! What happens before the war is just as important as the war itself.

Furthermore, in multiplayer you don't even have to be all that good at combat if you have friends. That is strategy. The rest are details.

[N. Machiavelli]

I suppose that the 'gripe' is not the acknowledgment of randomness in combat, but of it's representation in the game. In the real world or warfare, an infinate number of things can go wrong. There is, however, a reasonible grasp of how to, if not control, then to minimize the chance/effect of the random variables.

For example, battle plans rarely perform as they are drawn on the maps prior to engagment. The enemy can pull surprise maneuvers and roll up your flanks. While there is no 100% way to predict that, a general *can* route forces to protect the flanks prior to attack, an therefore lessen the effect of a 'random' occurance.
Civ III gives you no such ability outside of 'divide X value by Y(multiplied by variables) value and compare to pre-ordaned random number'.
It's not that there is randomness in Civ's combat, as much as the player is helpless against it. All combat in the game is ultimately decided by that pre-determined random number string. Pitting your Modern Armour against his cavemen has just as much to do with the technological difference as it does with whether or not the Game Gods decided to give you a .1 or a .01 as a result.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by N. Machiavelli
It's not that there is randomness in Civ's combat, as much as the player is helpless against it. All combat in the game is ultimately decided by that pre-determined random number string. Pitting your Modern Armour against his cavemen has just as much to do with the technological difference as it does with whether or not the Game Gods decided to give you a .1 or a .01 as a result.

Exactly, and exactly as it should be. Washington wonders if his army will disappear into the mist, unwilling to fight. Later he captures thousands of Hessians without losing a single soldier. Lincoln's general, McClelland, dilly-dallies so much that Lincoln asks McClelland that if he wasn't going to use the army, if he could borrow it. Later McClelland won several battles in Virginia, and inexplicably retreats each time. Eisenhower sends troops onto the beaches of Normandy, not knowing that Hitler was in a drug-induced stupor, rendering units of the German army unavailable.

Washington, Lincoln and Eisenhower are all great leaders, all who used strategy effectively in the furtherance of their causes. Yet they are often helpless in the details. You plan, then you pray.

Do not think that just because some events were beyond these great leaders' control that there was no strategy. They all had specific military ideas and knew how to minimize the risk from a bad roll, or take advantage of a good roll. (Gee whillikers! What Lincoln would have done to know that regular riflemen will beat veteran muskets 30.024% of the time.) In any case, Washington, Lincoln and Eisenhower all made important contributions to military science.

In a strategy game there are always going to be thousands of details not represented in the game, otherwise it's not a strategy game. These details are grouped together and called the randomizer, or if you are historically minded, destiny.


-------------------------------------------------

Sun Tzu says
http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html

[MOHonor]

Originally posted by HappySunShine
Maybe you should shut the **** up dunk. My real name is EyesOfNight. I was the best civ2 MP player ever. I spent 2 years at number 1 on the ladder and I have written more MP strategies than anyone. I've been playing this game for over a decade and civ3 isn't what you would call a challenging game. But that's beside the point. Only newbies worry about the AI anyways, I'm worried about the combat model as it applies to MP. So why don't you sit back and keep your stupid rookie assessments to yourself? Got it? Anyone else want to act stupid like dunk?

Uh...freak out much? Think that maybe some devotee of civ for "over a decade" might find any sequel kinda simplistic? Christ man you're a walking example of who NOT to listen to. You represent nobody but a handful of fanatics.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by MOHonor
Think that maybe some devotee of civ for "over a decade" might find any sequel kinda simplistic?

Naw, a devotee of Civ 2, not Civ. I don't expect anything more than whining concerning Civ 3 from the people who worship Civ 2 as their holiest artifact.

[Coracle]

It is Civ 3 that has resulted in the mindless SYCOPHANTIC DEVOTION by the smug sarcastic proponents of a flawed game. These are the same folks who told us how fabulous Civ 3 was even before the first patch when it was a buggy mess!!

[HappySunShine]

Zachriel you have to have played MP to understand just how important early battles are. Against an AI opponent you can mess up as many times as you want, the AI isn't really capable of killing anyone or anything. Sending out hordes of longbows isn't exactly intelligent or challenging play to a human. So take whatever you have learned in SP and forget about it. Every strategy that has ever been written for SP has ever held up to the strategies of MP. I suspsect some of these off the wall results are probably an advantage given to the AI. I remember in civ2 agianst the AI that it would take twice as many units to kill the AI as it would a human player. However what worries me is that this is a totally new design and the randomness is far higher than it ever was in civ2. So unless this is just an advantage given to the AI MP is going to have a very difficult time. If you look at all the successful strategic multiplayer games you'll see that randomness is nearly non-existant. The whole point of strategy is that you can plan. Right now civ3 is like Risk. You're basically rolling some dice and hoping for the best. The only real way to win is with overwhelming numbers. These kinds of games don't do well in MP because nobody is going to play a game competitively that has too many random variables. And you might say that competition isn't needed or that only the small amount of players that play competitive are affected. But that number is not small, and competition is what keeps games alive. Civ3 right now is probably great for team games because of the resources and trading, but for 1 on 1 there's just too many random variables and it's too slow. It's pretty obvious though that Firaxis/infogrames isn't really too worried about MP as much as they are the SP players. THey'll release this "expansion" (Which it's obviously not) with the goal of just getting the casual gamer to buy it out of curiousity. I really don't think MP will last more than 6 months after release before you'll be left with just a handful of players. What are they doing differently with this release than what they did with the original release? Nothing, they're even releasing it at the same time. This will probably be just another rushed release with a year of patches before it's even playable.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by HappySunShine
Zachriel you have to have played MP to understand just how important early battles are. . . .

I have played many multi-player strategy games, including AOE, Diplomacy, Axis and Allies, Strategy I, Shogun, etc. For instance, maybe you are familiar with poker. It is one of the most sophisticated strategy games ever devised and "luck" is an intrinsic aspect of the game. It is knowing what to do with the cards you are dealt and the perception of other players to your strength that matter.

In Civ3, the starting position will probably dwarf any slight difference in combat results in the early game. In the later stages of the game, luck is no longer a major factor due to the numbers of units.

In any case, at the risk of repeating myself, these values can all be adjusted in the editor.

[sabrewolf]

zack: what values do you use for the different experience levels?

i tried putting everything up by 1 and by 2 ... but then elite and veteran advantages got lost. and doubling all of them made conscript units waaaay to weak, because no lucky punches were possible any more.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by HappySunShine
Zachriel you have to have played MP to understand just how important early battles are. Against an AI opponent you can mess up as many times as you want, the AI isn't really capable of killing anyone or anything. Sending out hordes of longbows isn't exactly intelligent or challenging play to a human. So take whatever you have learned in SP and forget about it. Every strategy that has ever been written for SP has ever held up to the strategies of MP. I suspsect some of these off the wall results are probably an advantage given to the AI. I remember in civ2 agianst the AI that it would take twice as many units to kill the AI as it would a human player. However what worries me is that this is a totally new design and the randomness is far higher than it ever was in civ2. So unless this is just an advantage given to the AI MP is going to have a very difficult time. If you look at all the successful strategic multiplayer games you'll see that randomness is nearly non-existant. The whole point of strategy is that you can plan. Right now civ3 is like Risk. You're basically rolling some dice and hoping for the best. The only real way to win is with overwhelming numbers. These kinds of games don't do well in MP because nobody is going to play a game competitively that has too many random variables. And you might say that competition isn't needed or that only the small amount of players that play competitive are affected. But that number is not small, and competition is what keeps games alive. Civ3 right now is probably great for team games because of the resources and trading, but for 1 on 1 there's just too many random variables and it's too slow. It's pretty obvious though that Firaxis/infogrames isn't really too worried about MP as much as they are the SP players. THey'll release this "expansion" (Which it's obviously not) with the goal of just getting the casual gamer to buy it out of curiousity. I really don't think MP will last more than 6 months after release before you'll be left with just a handful of players. What are they doing differently with this release than what they did with the original release? Nothing, they're even releasing it at the same time. This will probably be just another rushed release with a year of patches before it's even playable.

i'm a bit suspicious about MP too. but if i understood it right, sid meier and firaxis have developed a totally new style of multiplayer. some mix between turn-based and realtime. so expect that it'll either die after just a few months or it might even start an absolutely new style of strategy-games, like civ1 once did.

however, my biggest worry about MP will be the grouping between community members. i can immagine the best players chatting together, telling them where luxuries, etc. are, trading favorably, just to keep peace while grouping up against oponents (e.g. "i'll give you luxuries, resources and improve your terrain, while you concentrate or building a strong army to defend us" ... or "leave that city to me, i need a beachhead" ... or something like that.
outsiders won't ever have a chance, even with more favorable starting locations!