Flawed combatsystem

[beijingguy]

This is the scenario

Batlefield: 6 mobile, 3 ranged and 3 melee slots

Attackers army setup: many mobile, few melee and few ranged
Defenders army setup: yet to be built

Attacking side players: Max
Defending side players: 2

This battle was played before the attackers had the technology to make catapults, so on the ranged side the defenders had the advantage(when comparing atk/def pr production), in melee the attackers had man at arms and defending had phalanx, so the attacking side had the advantage there.
On the Mobile area both sides had the possibility to make horsemen and cavalry, so its an equal match here.

Obviously since the attackers had a max player alliance they are expected to have more production to back up their army, so the only way for defending alliance to win is using the only area they have the advantage, ranged.

What defending side will then build is:
1 horseman
1 spearman
Loads of Archers

After each round where the attackers attack the defending side will probably have lost a horseman since this is where the majority of the enemy army is focused, defending side will then make another horseman and add him to the field to prevent attacking side from getting flanking bonus. Meanwhile every time the defending side attacks its gonna hit the attacking sides ranged, so they will quickly gain the 2x bonus.

Ofc the attacking side can do the same trick adding 1 new archer each round, but that just shows how the system is flawed.

So to sum up the problems, if both sides have players online it will be a really boring battle where every round 1 unit will die. If one side doesn't have a player online they will be massacred without doing any real damage.

Also because of this the only unit people should really make is the one with the best atk/def pr production and ignore all other areas.

[Glinda]

Yeah, you don't understand how combat works. This is not to say combat is not flawed, but "not working the way I expect" is not really a bug.

[Ironsmack]

in theory, there is some validity in what you are pointing out. You could consistently drop 1 unit stacks to absorb and ultimately waste an enemy turn while your main stack attacks. I have done this with horses and naval from time to time to force a larger stack to attack a smaller stack. But this only works to hold off until I can work a better strategy to bump my overall strength.

There are 3 problems with this in reality, however.

1. you will never ever ever be able to coordinate this with your team mates - Period. your team mates will always screw up your plan by dropping in something unexpected. It happens aand you work around it. You are better off preparing a well rounded army.

2. You have no control over who the computer targets for each attack. You could have all the single unit stacks you want and the comp could repeatedly target your offensive stack anyway.

3. If you can't manage to bring a higher strength to the table then your enemy then you can get your attacker to take pot shots at 1 unit stacks all day and you will still lose. You would only delay the inevitable.

[beijingguy]

I understand how the combat system works, and i didnt say it was bugged, I just meant there is a flaw in the design that makes it silly/stupid/abusable or whatever word you wonna ues.

1. All your team has to do is build the unit with the best atk/def pr production.
2. The higher a units strength is, the more often it will attack. So if you have a well rounded army,each area will attack about every 1 out of 4 times, meaning 3 out of 4 attacks will only kill 1 unit.
On the other side if you have single units in all but one area, that one area will get to attack almost everytime therefore quickly destroying the enemies forceses in that area giving you the 2x bonus.
3. If both sides spend an equal amount of production on building their army its obvious that the side who focused on only building the best atk/def unit will have the highest army strength.

[avien]

Nice find.

[VeliK]

The combat system seems strange. I had a stack of 460 Riflemen with Heroic on them and was attacking a stack of about 100 Riflemen with normal stance. Our army's strength was about 3-4 the size of the enemy's. Now I was chopping off like 5 from their normal stack and whenever they got the attack they were chopping off 23 off my heroic stack. I could have easily accepted 10 cause of the Heroic. That's what it should have been anyways, twice as much as I took from theirs.

So my only conclusion was that with bigger stacks you lose more and this does seem a bit strange to me.

[Ironsmack]

I would like to see some evidence that the higher strength 'unit' gets more opportunities to attack. This has not been my experience. As far as I know, the higher strength 'team' gets more attacks but the unit selected for attack would apparently be random.

[stream_mm]

The combat system seems strange. I had a stack of 460 Riflemen with Heroic on them and was attacking a stack of about 100 Riflemen with normal stance. Our army's strength was about 3-4 the size of the enemy's. Now I was chopping off like 5 from their normal stack and whenever they got the attack they were chopping off 23 off my heroic stack. I could have easily accepted 10 cause of the Heroic. That's what it should have been anyways, twice as much as I took from theirs.

So my only conclusion was that with bigger stacks you lose more and this does seem a bit strange to me.

Well which Civ was attacking, and which civ was defending? Why you ask - well Riflemen have 3 attack, 7 defend. So if the other side was defending, then they have a 7 defend strength which will take more from you in the first place - then with you on heroic, it will make the lose even greater.

So you were taking 5 of them (attack with 3) - then a normal attack with 7 would be a little more then double the 5, lets say around 11.5 units for normal attack against you. And if you have heroic, then x2 loses (11.5 x 2 = 23) - TaDa!

[The numbers were just made up - in real battle, think it is a little more complex with some more random factors in there.... please don't correct my math, I know it's not exact.... but enough to show the point.]

(the defending civ will use the "defend" value of the unit when it attacks with that unit.)

[grinfish]

A small correction to Stream's illustration - Heroic Mode costs you TREBLE the losses, not double.

Let's try and work through your situation:

(Please note, I do not have any inside knowledge on how the combat damage system works, this is purely to make things work in your head as a possible reason things go the way you saw.)

All figures are made-up, and you should allow for rounding of numbers.

460 Rifles Attack Heroic vs 120 Rifles Defend Normal

460 attack: 460 x2 (Heroic) x3 (Attack strength) = 2760 score, which you claim killed 5% of the stack

120 attack: 120 x3 (Treble damage due to Heroic Penalty) x7 (Defence Strength) = 2520 score, which we can estimate would kill 5% of the enemy stack

5% of 120 = 6 = losses to the 120 stack
5% of 460 = 23 = losses to 460 stack

So, what if you had gone with a Normal stance? This wipes out all the modifiers.

460 x 3 = 1380 Score

120 x 7 = 940 Score

With the treble damage penalty removed, you come off a lot better, and probably save a few lives.

In combat, there are only two benefits to Heroic stance:

1) To out-power the enemy to gain the larger share of attacks
2) To try and wipe out more enemies before they can hit you back

The risk that comes with that is the chance they might just get a hit back at you before you kill them off, which will hurt, but as long as your army's power still outnumbers them afterwards, you're still odds-on to win.

[beijingguy]

I would like to see some evidence that the higher strength 'unit' gets more opportunities to attack. This has not been my experience. As far as I know, the higher strength 'team' gets more attacks but the unit selected for attack would apparently be random.

i recently had a battle where i had 1 horseman on the flank and every time he died i replaced him with a new one, but through the battle he didnt get to attack once. All my attacks where split between my ranged and my melee, which is also where i had 99% of my army strength.

The enemy in that battle had loads of mobile and meele and few ranged, but his ranged didnt get to attack once through out the battle. Id say his ranged was 5-10% of his army strength.

This can of course be a total coincidence.But it seems to me like the more power an area has the more likely it is to attack over weaker areas.

[grinfish]

I think it may well be coincidence. I had a large defence battle this afternoon, groups of units of all shapes and sizes.

My 30 Heroic galleons didn't fire a shot, yet 20 Normal galleons of a team mate fired a broadside about every 15 minutes.

My 30 Heroic Knights barely raised a lance, but my 50 Fortified horsemen were running the Kentucky Derby fairly often.

The 3 groups of longbows present ALMOST proved your theory, as the two groups of 60-80 bows fired quite often, with the middle group of 21 staying quiet... until about 10 rounds to go, where they fired at least 3 times into the (mainly battered) enemy.

I'm reasonably assured by that performance that the unit stack chosen to attack is random. Especially when the 50 horsemen charged twice in a row a couple of times, yet 75 Phalanxes barely broke sweat.

[beijingguy]

Ye that does kinda negate my theory, new theory: the more strength an area has the higher chance it will have to attack, but the attacking unit from that area is chosen at random.

[grinfish]

It's possible. The only way to test that will be to arrange units into Weak and Strong areas on the board, which would take some serious juggling with a couple of team mates, as there's normally more slots than you can fill on your own :/

[Ironsmack]

I have found that flanks tend to attack less while range and melee get the majority of attack opportunities. This of course is personal observation and memory. I didn't document specific scenarios but now I'm curious. Here's what I have noticed:

1. range always attacks range.
2. flank always attacks flank.

The field is set up like you might see one of those civil war battle maps with opposing sides arranged into 'walls'. The melee line is the main front protect the second line (range). The second line is untouchable, except by other ranged units until the main front line has been eliminated. With this in mind, one could argue that the defender should maintain a tough, perhaps fortified, front line that can easily absorb heavy damage without minimal losses while allowing heavy stacks of range units behind to deal the heaviest damage. Range always targets range first (in my exprerience). Once opposition range is gone, it begins to target frontline units. So by protecting the main frontline and flanks, the range can be the decisive factor.
So far I have tried to impliment this strategy as much as is possible and it has worked very well. I generally gravitate to smaller alliances (4-6 players) as they tend to make decisions faster and are active. We have easily defeated larger nations (10-16) that just dumped units into heroic. I always start out under strength but always end up winning.