Uneven combat?

[Epistax]

Let me give as much information as possible. I am fighting an enemy with whom I share a huge land border. Compared to them, I am ahead in a few technologies. Specifically, I am at a point where attempting to attack is futile, that is, the strongest offensive unit is the marine, strongest defense is the infantry.

On this border in one specific area are hills and mountains. The other player is Arab, I am Babylonian. I have a huge infrastructure, so I am able to resupply the area with infrantry and marines very frequently. I had the idea to simply create a wall of troops so that they wouldn'r send in lone infantry and simply pillage all my resources (again, strongest attack I have is a marine at 8).

In a complete twist of events, they started attacking my infantry and marines with their unique unit, (4-3-2 I think?) calvary (6-3-3?) and defending them with things as measly as musketeers and riflemen. The result? Almost every combat, whether I am attacking or defending, is lost. Regular calvary charing up a mountain to attack an elite infantry? I lost. How about my marine then attacking that calvary? I lose again.

I am holding my own right now by my ability to pump out around six units a turn. I am able to make armies whenever I wish, so I do have a single defending infantry army they haven't managed to topple. Every unit I make starts out as a veteran.

These strange events would be fine if they were the exception, but it's taking me three to four marines to kill a musketeer on open land. Too many infantry are being lost to old units to make any sense.

Are there new factors I was unaware of? Do hills/mountains no longer give defensive bonuses? Are they now offensive bonuses? Are marines only good at attacking certain things?

[Arrian]

No, you just got a terrible run of luck. I've had stuff like that happen in short bursts. It can be very annoying.

However, over the long run (over the course of a game, or even a 20-turn war) things tend to even out to their "expected" result. So your infantry will start winning.

By the way, I strongly suggest using artillery. Arty really help minimize the odds of (bad) wacky results, because if you pound the enemy down to 1hp, they have to get insanely lucky (instead of merely lucky) to beat you.

I've lost fortified infantry to Cavalry before. That happened in a recent game, my vet infantry fortified in a town (so 12.5 defense) beaten flawlessly by an enemy vet Cav (6 attack). It happens. But it will not happen consistently. Keep pumping out those units, and use artillery. The tide will turn.

-Arrian

[Zero]

it may be a just psychological thing, but going up agst stack VS stack, i find that first half always has more casualty and last half always has more flawless wins. (even though they are fighting equally healthy same rank same type units)

[Epistax]

I know that no matter how badly I do, it could all be odds.

I know Mountains used to provide 300% defense, and hills 150% (or was it 200%?). This was Civ2 I believe, not sure if the rule still applies.

[Arrian]

Mountains give you 100% defense bonus. So your infantry (10 defense) are actually a 20 defense up on a mountain. Fortifying the unit provides a 25% bonus (from the base 10) adding another 2.5, for a total of 22.5 defense. Fortification, as I remember it, requires a full movement point (so if you move a unit along a road, and then fortify it, it won't kick in 'till the next turn).

So a Cavalry (6) killing a fortified infantry on a mountain is really, really bad luck.

Hills: 50%
Jungle: 50%
Forest: 25%
Across a river: 25%
Flat terrain (grass, plains, desert, tundra): 10%

-Arrian

[Epistax]

Call me Mr BadLuck.

The worst so far has been a marine army losing to a calvary on open terrain (I was attacking).

Now I have a tank army losing to a riflemen defense.
I can still destroy my enemies, but only because I can swarm like hell.

I took the suggestion of artillary, and made a dozen or so units. It seems great for taking out invading forces, but very weak versus cities. They seem to miss twice for every hit, and most of the time when they hit, it's nothing good (population, stock exchanges etc). I'm not complaining about it as it makes a lot of sense, but it does take lots of time to actually tell each unit to bombard the city, and then get very slim results from it.

I'm looking into basic bombers now and wondering how they compare (statistically) to artillary, ie, what do the attack values for artillary actually mean? Is defense somehow factored in?

Thanks for the help, however, no length of time is ever enough to even out the bad luck with good luck for me, so I'm riding on sheer numbers.

[statusperfect]

Build huge stacks of artillery (25-30) and try to knock down cities a pop level (that's when the graphics change to smaller city)

pop levels give cities a defense bonus and you want the city to regrow with a loyal babylonian majority

cheers

[Cruddy]

Defensively, I get my workers to build fortresses on hill or preferably mountains. Stack a couple of attack units with your defenders ands you can counterattack enemy units that bypass the forts. You get a 50% bonus from the fortress + terrain + the fortify bonus for leaving units fortified in a turn. You'll still take damage to your units BUT you get far fewer losses.

Offensively, I never USE bombers. They're weaker than artillery and are far too vulnerable to fighters. I still build them to rebase to isolated, far flung cities and then disband for culture improvements and an AIRPORT. You can only fly one unit OUT of an airport in a turn - but you can fly IN as many as you have airports to fly from in a turn (teehee).

Arty is useful but I'm trying to live without the big city smasher stacks now -I try and take cities intact to build up again. Not always possible, but it's worth aiming for if the corruption level isn't hopeless.

[vmxa1]

If you want to increase your tank armies chance of winning, bombard the city/metro down to under size 6.
Riflemen in a Metro can be a problem, especially if they have any additional def bonus, such on a hill or across a river.

[E_T]

Fortifiactaions are good, but have an Arty or 2 fortify with those defenders, as it will automatically fire at an attacking unit and likely reduce it's HP by 1 before it even attacks.

E_T

[Epistax]

I've really enjoyed the seemingly random firing my units have taken at passing units. It's free damage as far as I am concerned.

I really like bombers since I can't use the railroads in enemy territory, I can bomb them ahead of time by plane before my tanks arrive. I've been looking at the autobombard with a little confusion. It seems like it simply bombards the enemy on that spot every turn, so doesn't seem like anything I'd be interested in.

I can see how radar towers could be used defensively, but I'm trying to find a good offensive strategy for them. I think they only way to really use them for that is if your culture extends far enough into the enemy towards their city.

[peterfharris]

Sounds like an unusually long streak of bad luck but hang in there as it should even out in due course. I have had a couple of streaks of bad luck (not as bad as yours though) but things turned around. I have lost a city defended by 2 veteran pikemen and a swordsman to two warriors, attack with the swordsman to promote a warrior and then both kill the pikemen (at Chieftain level AND the city had several wonders and was two turns off finishing another wonder). Another game, barbs killed my spearman defenders, I had two cities, as fast as I could produce them for a long time AND pilaged everything (I gave up in frustration about 50 AD). Thats about it for my bad luck.

Umh, but I did have one incredible steak of good luck, so good it actually spoiled the game, destroying a large pikeman defended civ with only a dozen knights was just too freakishly easy.

Apart from that the combat has been normal in my games. There have been many many games.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Epi - listen to Arrian. Artillery is God at the stage of the game before Tanks (even afterwards, to a lesser degree). If you can find any kind of choke point area, fortify 4-5 Infantry there, have a few fast attackers of your own there (Cavalry, Tanks?) and 10+ Artillery. Bombard the units that approach before they can attack (a fort built helps you defend as well). If you get them down enough, kill them, using a unit with mulitple moves to take down the last one so they can get back to the stack and not get caught in the open. If you can find such chokepoints, you can get a zillion promotions and suffer almost no/no losses. This allows the stack to grow huge - typical size for me on a huge map is 20-25 Artillery, and then when you are ready you can just steamroller away everything in front of you. It may take the stack some two-three turns to wipe out most of the defenders in an ancestral seat city of your foe, but that's all. You can take anything this way.

Bombers I have rarely used, but they are, like normal Artillery, best in packs of many. Otherwise all they are good for is bombarding improvements.

Remember, if you need to drive away the enemy so you can build up, just bombard them down to 1 or 2 hp. They will most likely run away to repair, leaving you a moment to reinforce. The one flaw here is that they can build up the number of units also, so it is best if you take out their units if they are damaged enough, but either way you get a breather.