Combat questions

[ivanbuto]

Pedrunn, so would you happen to know the answers to my the Qs in my last post?
BTW if there is something that nobody is sure about, is it possible to contact Activision and do they have somebody who participated in creating CTP2 who could answer all Qs?

[ivanbuto]

I've been playing a game of CTP2, and I don't get this. When two mounted archers attack an archer, why doesn't one of the mountain archers back up the other one wih ranged fire, but instead they are both in the front row, one of them just standing there? I thought ranged units go in the front row only if there aren't enough other units to match the opponent's front row.

[Pedrunn]

VETERAN_COEF 50 #percent improvement in attack and defense of vetern units

Yes i that is the bonus

Similarly, they say that the fortification process takes "a few turns to complete". Does anybody know how many this is (I couldn't find it anywhere?) Is it 2 as it was in Civ2?

The data for this TI is in the tileimp.txt, line 500 and it takes 4 turns to complete in all the terrains that is possible to build it.

why doesn't one of the mountain archers back up the other one wih ranged fire, but instead they are both in the front row, one of them just standing there? I

I have not a clue. This also happen with archers and other ranged units. My guess is that although it move to the front the ranged unit still gives its ranged attack since the unit does attacking animation. Maybe it is something sthetic to make it look like a mass attack or just a bug. But i agree thats really is odd.

BTW if there is something that nobody is sure about, is it possible to contact Activision and do they have somebody who participated in creating CTP2 who could answer all Qs?

This comment would look like a joke if it wasnt too sad. Crapvision is no use. It bankrupt became a publisher only and totally forgot CTP2.

[ivanbuto]

Actually it works because first there is ranged fire from both sides, and only after that they get closer. And as far as I know the next round of ranged fire comes only after one of the front rows clears out.
As for fortification, I was actually wondering about how many turns it takes to fortify a unit, not to build a fortification improvement. It seems to me that it just takes one turn, but since the manual says it takes "a few turns" I was wondering if there are some circumstances under which it does take more than one turn.

Ivan

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by ivanbuto
As for fortification, I was actually wondering about how many turns it takes to fortify a unit, not to build a fortification improvement. It seems to me that it just takes one turn, but since the manual says it takes "a few turns" I was wondering if there are some circumstances under which it does take more than one turn.

If you press "f" (fortify a unit) on turn 1, end turn. Then its still digging in on turn 2, then its finished on turn 3. Thats 2 turns i guess. It doesnt matter what terrain youre on or in a city either, well ive never had any longer.

[Pedrunn]

I think you send it to fortify in a turn and in the begginning of the next turn (note that other civs can attack you in this period) the unit is fortified (when the brown wall appears).

[Maquiladora]

I think im right

I've been playing a game of CTP2, and I don't get this. When two mounted archers attack an archer, why doesn't one of the mountain archers back up the other one wih ranged fire, but instead they are both in the front row, one of them just standing there? I thought ranged units go in the front row only if there aren't enough other units to match the opponent's front row.

I think this is because theyre attacking a non-defensive unit, they both attack after each other because the regular archer isnt a defensive unit. Or it could be even because the Mounted Archer has the "ismounted" flag.

Have you tried 2 archers vs. 1 archer? See if both archers attacking stand on the front row then, if they do then its probably because the 1 archer defending isnt a defensive type unit and the game sees that theres no point in one of the archers being on the back row and one on the front defending it.

[ivanbuto]

I've experimented with this a little bit, basically just tried two ranged units versus a single other unit, and Maq seems to be right - when the opponent unit was of the ranged type, there was first ranged fire from both sides and then one of the two ranged units fought the opponend while the other was merely standing by.
When the opponend unit was not ranged, however, the two ranged units fought with one in the front row and one behind it firing shots.
Nonetheless, I thought that armies were supposed to organize themselves to their max advantage, and therefore I don't understand why it would be happening like this.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Locutus how did you work out the total Defensive capacity?

I didn't, I just figured that it would be possible to calculate it somehow and based my generic algorithm on that. The example numbers I just pulled out of my arse

I presumed it's just armor*hp and did some tests today and that does indeed seem to be the case: in dozens battles of [armor 2, hp 10] units vs [armor 1, hp 20] units both sides seemed to have a chance of roughly 50% to win and the victor always ended up severely damaged (all else equal). Battles vs [armor 1, hp 10] units always ended in victories for the armor 2/hp 20 units with rougly 50% damage (all else equal). So basically there's no need to vary HP (as mentioned earlier in the thread), as varying armor accomplishes exactly the same thing.

Presumably the same principle goes for Firepower: it's just a multiplier for damage done per hit (which is 1 by default), although I'm yet to test this. But this all was already mentioned earlier in the thread, so no real surprises here...

[Locutus]

Small update: after some further testing, I can confirm that firepower works exactly as expected.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Locutus

I didn't, I just figured that it would be possible to calculate it somehow and based my generic algorithm on that. The example numbers I just pulled out of my arse

Ah that old trick you truely are a mathmagician

Although i would say that varying HP's rather than armour seems a little more intuitive to the player. Maybe they were forced to change it after losing the Civ license. Armour is more realistic in its thinking but its not as intuitive as HP's by judging units power, although as we know now, they equal the same thing in the end. Anyway I digress, ill try and make the sim with those workings in mind and see what comes out.

[Pedrunn]

I want this as a math formula Something like:

AT(d) = Attack of the defender
DF(d) = defense of the defender
AR(d) = Armor of the defender
FP(d) = FirePower of the defender
HP(d) = Hitpoints of the defender

AT(a) = Attack of the attacker
DF(a) = defense of the attacker
AR(a) = Armor of the attacker
FP(a) = FirePower of the attacker
HP(a) = Hitpoints of the attacker


So the formula is...

[Maquiladora]

Okay heres probably the final version unless someone finds an error or something new to add.

[Maquiladora]

If i made it right this time, you can tell that Firepower(damage) rating is actually more important than armour in judging how good a unit is overall. All the stats are important but Firepower is most important, then armour, then Attack and Defence values, then any bonuses.

This is just 1v1 so its alot more complicated, but still there it is.

[Locutus]

Maq,
You seem to have made a small mistake in the last section of the spreadsheet: you defined 'Defence Capacity' as Firepower*Armour, this should be Armour*Hitpoints.

Once that mistake is correctly, or (even more so) if you look at the formulas I posted above, you can clearly see that Firepower and Armour (as well as Hitpoints) are all linear in relation to each other and thus all equally important: doubling Firepower for a unit has exactly the same effect on it's chances to win the battle as doubling it's Armour or Hitpoints (or halving the opponent's FP, HP or Armour).
You are right when you state that Defence and Attack are less important, as they are not linear: a/(a+d). However, Defence is more important than Attack (see the formula or try doubling the defence and attack values in the sim to verify) and for this reason defensive bonuses are more important than offensive bonuses as well.
So the order of importance of combat stats (in 1v1 battles) is:

1) Firepower/Armour/Hitpoints
2) Defence
3) Attack
4) Defence bonus
5) Attack bonus

In the meantime, I did more testing with the game over the last few days and was able to confirm that terrain and fortifying work exactly as we expect them to, however, I seem to have found a new bug: veteran status doesn't appear to do anything I need to do some final testing to be absolutely sure (it would be useful if others could test this as well to verify or (hopefully) falsify my conclusion), but if I'm not mistaken their chances in battle against non-veteran units of the same type are exactly 50%; the only advantage veterans seem to have over non-veterans is that they have a cool medal icon under their shield...

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Ah that old trick you truely are a mathmagician

I can do some cool things with a rabbit too

Although i would say that varying HP's rather than armour seems a little more intuitive to the player. Maybe they were forced to change it after losing the Civ license. Armour is more realistic in its thinking but its not as intuitive as HP's by judging units power, although as we know now, they equal the same thing in the end. Anyway I digress, ill try and make the sim with those workings in mind and see what comes out.

Not sure about that: the HP value isn't visible anywhere in the game, the only way you can sort of deduct it is from the health bars of units. As it is, a 50% health bar on a Warrior means 5 HP, on a Tank it means the same thing. If you start varying HP then 50% health on a Tank might mean 20 HP while it still means 5 HP for a Warrior - that would be extremely confusing IMHO...

Pedrunn,
Maq and I pretty much layed it out in formula form already, but if you must have the whole thing in a single formula, I attached a screenshot of (the relevant part of) a Maple worksheet for you. If anyone actually has Maple and would like to see the entire worksheet (it's not all that special, just the formulas of this thread in Maple form), let me know.

[Locutus]

What the heck, here's the actual Maple code (might help explain how I accomplished the above results, even if you don't know Maple):

restart;
C := "chance to hit"; T := "turns to defeat"; V := "chance of victory";

C[a] := A[a]/(A[a]+D[d]);
C[d] := A[d]/(A[d]+D[a]);

T[a] := (AR[a]*HP[a])/(C[d]*FP[d]);
T[d] := (AR[d]*HP[d])/(C[a]*FP[a]);

V[a] := T[a]/(T[a]+T[d]);
V[a] := simplify(%);
V[d] := simplify(1-V[a]);

[Maquiladora]

Ah ok i thought it unlikely that i hadnt made a mistake. But at least we know the most important values now.

On veterans, it seems unlikely that the programmers would let it out this way. Also considering theres an entry in the manual about it and its used in some of Activison's own scenario scripts, would they put work into that knowing it didnt work? Maybe they knew it didnt have an effect aside from the little medal as you said though.

It also says in the manual that veteran units only enjoy a bonus to their attack rating, but we know what the manual is like.

Is there a quick way to generate alot of veterans to test with? Otherwise it could take a long time to get enough from combat experience.

Not sure about that: the HP value isn't visible anywhere in the game, the only way you can sort of deduct it is from the health bars of units. As it is, a 50% health bar on a Warrior means 5 HP, on a Tank it means the same thing. If you start varying HP then 50% health on a Tank might mean 20 HP while it still means 5 HP for a Warrior - that would be extremely confusing IMHO...

Thats true, for CtP2. I had intended to use HP rather than varying armour but i realised you couldnt see the HP in the build manager and stuff, and now its clear armour has exactly the same effect so...

Probably the last version of the combat sim, although i said that last time. If it turns out veteran has no effect theres no need to use it.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
On veterans, it seems unlikely that the programmers would let it out this way.

Ain't that the very definition of a 'bug'? I doubt Activision noticed it themselves. After all, even if there is a bonus, it's only a small one and if veterans indeed don't have a bonus, none of us noticed it in over 2 years of playing either. It's pretty darn stupid that the bug is there, but you can't really blame Activision for not noticing it...

[Maquiladora]

Yeah we can, we can blame them for everything I just think its weird they would write a feature of the scenarios around the veteran effect if they didnt know it worked for definate.

On the other hand, say a 50% attack bonus to 1 unit in an army of 12 attacking 12 units defending with all of them having defensive bonuses, hard to spot to say the least.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Is there a quick way to generate alot of veterans to test with? Otherwise it could take a long time to get enough from combat experience.

It's not too bad, you should get several veterans from every 12v12 battle. But to make things even easier, you can use this SLIC code as well:

HandleEvent(BeginTurn) 'VeteranAll' post {
unit_t	tmpUnit;
int_t	i;

	for (i = 0; i < player[0].units; i = i + 1) {
		GetUnitByIndex(player[0], i, tmpUnit);
		ToggleVeteran(tmpUnit, 1);
	}
}

This turns all units veteran at the end of every turn. So create a bunch of units with the cheat menu, end the turn, all units become vets, create a bunch of non-veteran units with the cheat menu, attack.

The vets and non-vets both have an equal chance to win the battle, and usually the winner comes out of the battle severely damaged (only 1 or 2 hp left). When I tested terrain and fortifying, the units with a 50% bonus won 6-7 out of 10 battles and usually still had 5-2 hp remaining. (Note that there's a pretty big randomness factor so it's entirely possible for a non-fortified unit to defeat a fortiefied unit and only loose 2 hp, it just doesn't happen very often).

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Yeah we can, we can blame them for everything I just think its weird they would write a feature of the scenarios around the veteran effect if they didnt know it worked for definate.

That's why I'm pretty sure they weren't aware of the fact that it didn't work. Heck, Harlan shared many of the emails/design docs/etc that he and Activisioners exchanged for the Alexander scenario with me and although I don't have them anymore, I'm pretty sure everyone was assuming veterans had an added combat bonus...

On the other hand, say a 50% attack bonus to 1 unit in an army of 12 attacking 12 units defending with all of them having defensive bonuses, hard to spot to say the least.

Precisely...

[Maquiladora]

Well its hard to say whether theres any bonus, but its probably easier to say it doesnt give a bonus from the tests i did anyway.

Attached shows, twelve 1 Warrior vs 1 Warrior, 1 Interceptor vs 1 Interceptor, 1 Archer vs 1 Archer, 1 Bomber vs 1 Bomber. All units have attack values equal to their defence values so every 1v1 battle is 50/50 chance for either unit. Blue always had veteran bonus and was the attacker. Probably do some more tests with veteran unit as defender.

[Locutus]

The above formulas already proof that it makes very, very little difference whether you attack or defend (except when you only have 1 or 2 hp left, in which case whoever strikes first (I think the attacker) has the advantage of being able to kill the opponent before he can retaliate), so no real need to test that (although it wouldn't hurt of course).

What would be more interesting to test would be to have battles with identical units but give one side a terrain or other bonus - see how different the results are when you're certain that there *is* a bonus (I already tested this myself with defensive bonuses but am yet to test with offensive bonuses).

[Maquiladora]

edit: just rambling

You could of course change the veteran effect to something freakish like VETERAN_COEF 250 then see what happens...

[Locutus]

Edit: okay, I'll spare you the humiliation of quoting and replying to what was there before the edit - this time...

Edit2: changing the const.txt value would be useful but even if that's broken, there could still be a hard-coded bonus or something (unlikely, but still...), so although I certainly plan on trying it to prove that that setting is broken, it's not 100% closing evidence for the fact that veterans themselves are broken.

[Maquiladora]

Sorry about that.

What about VETERAN_COEF? I did a couple more tests, one with VETERAN_COEF 99 and one with VETERAN_COEF 250, and neither showed any positive results, just what youd expect without any effects. Either thats obsolete in const.txt and its hardcoded at +50% and hard to see or it just doesnt work at all.