Combat Issues

[MrEos]

This issue is so obvious, I'm surprised, after reading through the first 10 pages of this forum noone else has brought it up.

It has to do with combat starting when catapults show up on the scene.

You attack a city with your catapults, and see in the animation that you lost 2 out of 3 of your catapults in the attack, but you were victorious. Magically your catapults are still at full strength (with blitz possibly).

Its like suddenly, everyone gains the aztecs bonus when they reach medieval age.

Leave aztecs as they are, since it seperates them from every other civilization, but fix the rest.

Getting into the later ages...lets say tanks vs. riflemen.. just to give probably one of the more common late age domination blooming situations.

(box is in transit to be fixed so I'm gonna come up with numbers for now)
Tank w/ blitz (75) vs Riflemen (50) seems close enough....now when I attack, I'll win, lose 2 of 3 tanks during animation, but what's this, I'm attacking again with blitz at full strength no less.

If a guy comes up to my city, and I have 2 rifleman armies, and he brings 1 tank with blitz, I think, if dmg was sticking like it should, my 2nd rifleman army would either kill him off, or make him seriously reconsider making a 2nd attack when he's at 1/3 of his total strength.




The other issue.

Lose the bull**** random dice rolls, if I attack with a 3 vs 2, I SHOULD WIN, and it should take a MIRACLE ....scratch that, it should take a million miracles for the 2 to win. Not a 50/50 toss up like it seems to be now.

Same goes for when you get into the mid 60's to 100's for attacks, IF I have 101, and he has 100, I EXPECT TO WIN, not watch as my entire army gets smashed and he takes a scratch.

With numbers that close whoever wins, should have to heal for the next 2 turns.

Going back to civ 4..if I hovered my attack of a 3 vs 2. It says my odds are 90-99%

I think I've given enough of a picture of the situation.

Recap:
1. Units healing when they should not be, and causing a severe imbalance between offense and defense.
2. UNDERDOG IS WINNING WAY TO OFTEN.

[Yoacim]

Lose the bull**** random dice rolls, if I attack with a 3 vs 2, I SHOULD WIN, and it should take a MIRACLE ....scratch that, it should take a million miracles for the 2 to win. Not a 50/50 toss up like it seems to be now.

It's not a 50/50 toss up, it's a 66/33 toss up. I don't think you realize what you're asking for. I would not play this game if stronger meant winner, it would completely ruin the game.

[Mysterio]

Lose the bull**** random dice rolls, if I attack with a 3 vs 2, I SHOULD WIN, and it should take a MIRACLE ....scratch that, it should take a million miracles for the 2 to win. Not a 50/50 toss up like it seems to be now.

Same goes for when you get into the mid 60's to 100's for attacks, IF I have 101, and he has 100, I EXPECT TO WIN, not watch as my entire army gets smashed and he takes a scratch.

Your 3 versus a 2 would give you a 60% chance to win (3/5*100); that's simple odds calculation, which hardly requires a "miracle" for your opponent to win that battle.

And you think your 101 should beat a 100? That's downright laughable. You essentially have a 50% chance to win that battle. Your extra point is meaningless, so don't be surprised when you lose that battle.

[xbman22x]

i love it when people register for the sole purpose of complaining. it wont change, complaining about it when it has been done before just makes you look like a jackass

[guenzak]

Your 3 versus a 2 would give you a 60% chance to win (3/5*100); that's simple odds calculation, which hardly requires a "miracle" for your opponent to win that battle.

And you think your 101 should beat a 100? That's downright laughable. You essentially have a 50% chance to win that battle. Your extra point is meaningless, so don't be surprised when you lose that battle.

Amen


i love it when people register for the sole purpose of complaining. it wont change, complaining about it when it has been done before just makes you look like a jackass

Double Amen

[Nosrettap]

This issue is so obvious, I'm surprised, after reading through the first 10 pages of this forum noone else has brought it up.

It has to do with combat starting when catapults show up on the scene.

You attack a city with your catapults, and see in the animation that you lost 2 out of 3 of your catapults in the attack, but you were victorious. Magically your catapults are still at full strength (with blitz possibly).

Its like suddenly, everyone gains the aztecs bonus when they reach medieval age.

Leave aztecs as they are, since it seperates them from every other civilization, but fix the rest.

Getting into the later ages...lets say tanks vs. riflemen.. just to give probably one of the more common late age domination blooming situations.

(box is in transit to be fixed so I'm gonna come up with numbers for now)
Tank w/ blitz (75) vs Riflemen (50) seems close enough....now when I attack, I'll win, lose 2 of 3 tanks during animation, but what's this, I'm attacking again with blitz at full strength no less.

If a guy comes up to my city, and I have 2 rifleman armies, and he brings 1 tank with blitz, I think, if dmg was sticking like it should, my 2nd rifleman army would either kill him off, or make him seriously reconsider making a 2nd attack when he's at 1/3 of his total strength.




The other issue.

Lose the bull**** random dice rolls, if I attack with a 3 vs 2, I SHOULD WIN, and it should take a MIRACLE ....scratch that, it should take a million miracles for the 2 to win. Not a 50/50 toss up like it seems to be now.

Same goes for when you get into the mid 60's to 100's for attacks, IF I have 101, and he has 100, I EXPECT TO WIN, not watch as my entire army gets smashed and he takes a scratch.

With numbers that close whoever wins, should have to heal for the next 2 turns.

Going back to civ 4..if I hovered my attack of a 3 vs 2. It says my odds are 90-99%

I think I've given enough of a picture of the situation.

Recap:
1. Units healing when they should not be, and causing a severe imbalance between offense and defense.
2. UNDERDOG IS WINNING WAY TO OFTEN.

Dude...Catapults healing after a battle win is NOT A FLAW. This has already been talked about on this forum.

ALL armies composed of ONLY 3 units, automatically heal after a win. This means Catapults, Tanks, Artillery, Bombers...etc.

LET ME RESTATE THAT IN CASE YOU WERE NOT PAYING ATTENTION:

ALL armies composed of ONLY 3 units, automatically heal after a win. This means Catapults, Tanks, Artillery, Bombers...etc.

[Billy_S]

Just to add to this, personally I've never been in a situation where when I had an Army of 3 that I loose two and still win. Out of every battle I've ever fought with or against an army of 3 units, if someone looses two of them they have lost the battle 100% of the time.

This is on the PS3, btw, not sure about other systems.

[MrEos]

How is catapults healing "NOT A FLAW" I'm sorry, but I truly think that this game would be better off if the random element was taken out of battles, and damage stuck.

It'd come down to a quality vs. quantity...instead of....my 1 quality unit is gonna wipe out your entire 50 units of quantity "UNLESS" you get some lucky bull**** where your 1 beats my 2 which seems to be what the case is with this game....

So it comes down to this (for those who want to defend the current) Do you want a game that requires strategy..or luck to win?

Last I checked Civ was known for being a "strategy" game.

And remember one more point, even if the 101 wins the 100 every time...If units didn't magically heal after victories in every case beyond catapults the 101 unit is gonna to be severely damaged afterwards...not magically healed because they got the victory, thus prone to an easy counterattack (or at the very least, not able to make a second attack at full strength).

Edit: For the math of it all, Consider how many hammers it takes to build a single catapult? How does being out in battle on the field and obtaining a victory with such units suddenly circumvent the fact that it takes turns and production to make more catapults. It just magically happens out on the field.. at least with warriors you need to expend 1 turn to heal up, which is a major shortcut already considering it'd take 3 turns to make a new one (that early in the game)

Aztecs aside, how do you figure that it wouldn't take as much time to rebuild your catapults or tanks in the same amount of time that it'd take to heal up an army of meat shields (warriors, etc.)????

So defend it some more.

Cause as it is now, first person to get to tanks, before anyone can get modern infantry wins domination, or at the very least starts steam rolling through many...MANY cities, because tanks keep healing and keep going and going and going...so long as they keep winning...no stopping to heal..just keep on going....until you get screwed by a unit that had only a 10% chance of winning (which by my calculations is upgraged to a 50% chance).

It's like the random dice is trying to account for the fact that units are healing when they shouldn't be for the sake of keeping offense and defense balanced. And if they intended for units from catapults and onward to heal after victories..then I'll just say...STUPID MOVE, it's FLAWED.

[eireksten]

How is catapults healing "NOT A FLAW" I'm sorry, but I truly think that this game would be better off if the random element was taken out of battles, and damage stuck.

There are three types of units, those with 1 life, those with 2 lives and those with 3 lives.For a single unit, one life is 1 dude/machine, while for an army, one life is three units. So you can easily see that catapults have 1 life, while knights have 2 and for instance archers have 3.

If a catapult army would lose its life, it'd be dead. If it don't, it'd be fully healed. That's not a glitch at all. It's a difference between the units.

[Razlath]

There are three types of units, those with 1 life, those with 2 lives and those with 3 lives.For a single unit, one life is 1 dude/machine, while for an army, one life is three units. So you can easily see that catapults have 1 life, while knights have 2 and for instance archers have 3.

If a catapult army would lose its life, it'd be dead. If it don't, it'd be fully healed. That's not a glitch at all. It's a difference between the units.

So the life points stay the same when it goes to an army correct? So a catapult army has 1 life, a Knight army has 2 life, and an archer army has 3 life?

I can see why this would be the case due to display issues and gameplay issues. I can certainly see why it would suck the other way. After all, who wants to see 8 little broken hearts on their armies? Or how about you won barely!, now heal for the next 8 turns...

So while it seems odd on the surface, it makes sense if you think about it from a gameplay standpoint. If units scaled their health points up when they made armies, things could become rather annoying quickly.

-Razlath

[guenzak]

Cause as it is now, first person to get to tanks, before anyone can get modern infantry wins domination, or at the very least starts steam rolling through many...MANY cities, because tanks keep healing and keep going and going and going...so long as they keep winning...no stopping to heal..just keep on going....until you get screwed by a unit that had only a 10% chance of winning (which by my calculations is upgraged to a 50% chance).

Not at all true...I have been the first with tanks on many occasions just to have another civ buy advanced flight and bomb the **** out of me. Also remember that unless the tank army upgrades with special movements they only get one attack per turn. So even if the defending city only has archer armies, if they had 5 it would take 5 turns for the tanks to defeat them all. Not exactly "steam rolling". Everything offensive in this game has it's appropriate defense and it is in the way that you play the game that determines if you are prepared.

[lbloom]

I'm not sure I see the whole point in this debate.

But; it seems there is some arguement about how fast units heal after debiltating combat and the odds for winning a battle based on opposing unit's strenght.

I do think the way in which units heal at times makes no sense. To take the original posters example; three catapults get reduced to one in the course of the battle and if they win they are reconstituted to the original three. I think I agree to a large extent with the OP's idea. I could see a unit in a home city healing better than a unit outside it's home territory doing the attacking. But even at that I don't think any army, which loses two of it's corps in the course of a battle should be able to reconstitute to a full army if it wins. I could see the unit defending from it's home city healing quicker than attacking units. Of course this is not taking into consideration any unit upgrades. Also any healing, unit upgrades aside, should take a turn or more to completely be refitted and rearmed.

As to odds...having an advantage of 101 to 100 is really no odds at all. That is an even match and would be 50/50. And even having a 66/33 odds may still result in defeat. History has shown more than one example of a numerically inferior or lesser equiped unit winning out over a stronger one. There are as many reasons for this as there are varriances in the weather, commanders at all levels, or even the squad leader or single private just getting lucky or on pure grit winning. I would agree though that if I have 75/25 or more I ooght to win 95% of the time.

[burth179]

This is purely speculative, and I saw this point being made on another message board and on someone's strategy guide... And I totally agree with it...

This is in response to the people complaining about a unit rated 3 vs. a unit rated 2 "only winning 60%"

I think it ends up being far more than that..

Let's use the warrior vs. barbarian 1 vs. .5 example..

You almost always win as the warrior, you lose every blue moon.. Yet by the numbers you should lose one out of every 3 times if you are just measuring the numbers against each other...

There are 3 "mini-warriors" against 3 "mini-barbarians". Take the total, and divide by the number of mini-units...

So you have each mini-warrior as .33333 and each mini-babarian as .167777..

Which is still 2 to 1 odds for the first fight between Warrior A and Barbarian A..

Say Warrior A wins. Now you have a 3 on 2 advantage.. But if you lose you have a 2 on 3 dis-advantage in numbers... But those 2 units you have left are still twice as powerful as the individual Barbarian units...

To get the true winning percentage you have to figure out all scenarios and calculate the cummulative percentage...

In this case, without actually doing the math (it would be a pain), I believe the probability of the warriors winning is actually well over 90%

Which makes a HECK OF A LOT MORE SENSE as it realtes to how the game is played..

So, really, even if you have a seemingly "small advantage" numerically, chances are it could be greater than you initially think.... Really, if you seemingly have anything higher than a 2:1 ratio, chances are you are a much BIGGER favorite...

Can you still lose? Of course, only a few percent is still a few percent... I think people just "remember when they lose as a favorite", and don't think about the "12 times they won before they lost 1"...

It's all about the ratio, AND the number of units, and so forth. I think it is far more complex than most people give credit too..

Although, maybe I'm wrong, I don't know...

[MOMOwheeler]

Burth... can you explain this below with your formula?

My post from last night:


For the first time in my memory I have turned off a game (early, for the night) due to complete and utter frustration.

Long story short, it too 3 consecutive battles spread out over 3 turns.

Battle #1
My Veteran Cruiser vs. Standard Galleon
9 vs. 3
I lose
No biggie, it happens. I'll just rush this next cruiser and get my revenge.


Battle #2
My (rushed) Veteran Cruiser vs. (the same Mongolian) Standard Galleon
9 vs. 3
I lose
WTF!?!? Fine, I'll cancel my orders for a courthouse in my island city and rush a standard cruiser to finish him off.


Battle #3
... screw all the typing... he won again. :mad:

<power off PS3>

[badken]

That's just plain ol' bad luck :)

[thorstein]

Strategy game yes. But all the strategy in the world doesn't mean an automatic win. There are countless tales of victories that are incredibly one sided despite the odds.

I believe in the American Revolution a battle between the Brits and the Yanks, Yanks overmatched lost only 12 soldiers and decimated the Brits.

This happens time and again throughout history. Pay attention to it and it might help you enjoy those losses more regularly.

[InfiniteStates]

I once had a single fortified warrior unit defeat an entire AI legion army...it was sweet :)

Except he had 2 armies...


Does this mean that medic is a useless upgrade for tanks, catapults etc? As they either auto-heal, or are dead...

[Tzadkiel]

Being that your life points represents the amount of actual "lives" in your army unit, do those life points mitigate the number of "dice" in the "rolls" made during combat?

[Predator WH]

I think if you have a 3 to 1 advantage or higher you should always win.

[Gordoi]

I think if you have a 3 to 1 advantage or higher you should always win.

I've never lost in a 3 to 1 advantage.
Except in sea battles wich seems to multiply the random factor with 10, or add a hidden 100% bonus to the AI, ive lost some really silly fights on the sea.

[Mysterio]

I think if you have a 3 to 1 advantage or higher you should always win.

Even with overwhelming odds in my favor, I prefer that there's always a possibility that I might lose a battle. I never said it doesn't prevent me from cursing at my screen, though. :D

[eireksten]

Even with overwhelming odds in my favor, I prefer that there's always a possibility that I might lose a battle. I never said it doesn't prevent me from cursing at my screen, though. :D

I totally agree. It makes the game a lot more interesting if something could go wrong (or right).

[badken]

I think if you have a 3 to 1 advantage or higher you should always win.

The designers agree with you, except their threshold for "always win" is a little bit higher. :D

[mtdg]

ALL armies composed of ONLY 3 units, automatically heal after a win. This means Catapults, Tanks, Artillery, Bombers...etc.


What about an army automatically regrows two units, therefore an army of three automatically heal after a win and an army of 9 automatically heal if there are 7 left.

I do not use horses much so not sure what an army of 6 does.

[L0rdmarth]

If everyone is going to complain about combat i think i might as well through somethings in too.

If your complaining about the number difference they should reduce it, nothing should be based on chance, i personally am not a two face fan, I have played this game enough to see a pikeman army defeat my tank army that has a great general someone explain that, that is like a 40 vs. 80 fight i mean really when or better yet how can a tank with a bullet proof armor lose to a spear someone explain how you can hurt a tank with a spear or arrows.

Now for the people who will say what about airplanes vs. pikeman and the pikeman win, yes i know it is also nearly impossible, so the game should be made so that planes win everytime or better yet they should through a timer into the battle and if the group survives long enough then the battle ends and the loses are put on the board. Also for the people saying that is unfair well if your too busy attacking to work i tech i execpt you to get your butts on a tray, you decide what to do and every choice has a equal and opposite reaction and how that affects you is based on how big the choice was, to put it in layman's words it came back in bite you in the butt aka Karma.


They should put in a era difference bonus so if a tank fights a pikeman the tank get a 200% or so bonus for being a modern era build while the pikeman get a -100% bonus for being a medieval era build, this would be a goo band aid on the wound untill it can be fixed.

[tangerinedarter]

They should put in a era difference bonus so if a tank fights a pikeman the tank get a 200% or so bonus for being a modern era build while the pikeman get a -100% bonus for being a medieval era build, this would be a goo band aid on the wound untill it can be fixed.

This would completely ruin the game. If all you had to win was be the first to produce tanks then the game would be flawed. As it is combustion is much earlier than modern infantry, giving tanks an advantage. The combat is not meant to be realistic but strategic. The way it is now attacking is somewhat of a gamble because you can lose even with an advantage. This is much more strategic than this unit will always beat this other unit. That would be like paper, rock, scissors, which is not quite as fun to play.

[mtdg]

Since the game only wolks on attack / defense number and not what th eactual unit is then there will always be a chance that the weaker unit will win.

Maybe a simple % modifier that reduces attack / defence when a unit is out of its era, but if that was the case you would need to bring back the ability to upgrade units at a barracks by paying money that was in Civ:TOT and / or CivIII (cant remember)

[badken]

Maybe a simple % modifier that reduces attack / defence when a unit is out of its era, but if that was the case you would need to bring back the ability to upgrade units at a barracks by paying money that was in Civ:TOT and / or CivIII (cant remember)

The problem with this is that it would negate the advantage of game features like Leonardo's Workshop and the German auto-upgrade bonus.

[InfiniteStates]

The problem with this is that it would negate the advantage of game features like Leonardo's Workshop and the German auto-upgrade bonus.

It would water them down, sure, but it wouldn't negate them. It would still be preferable to have all units instantly upgraded for free rather than spend gold to manually upgrade, but both options would be best.

[Michelasso]

Also it's a general rule that applies to everyone, AI included. If we had to heal the tanks and the likes, we would just have to change the strategy a little but the game would become much longer.I don't see a reason to complain, apart from the fact that it's not very realistic.

[MrLowcash]

What is irritating, is that when you have a horse army of 6 horses attacking and you die 2, you only get to keep 3 instead of 4 after the combat.