So I'm having a good game, particularly tech wise (for me at least.) It would seem I'm in shape for victory. Yet...the irrationalities just never end. I have founded Hinduism, yet none of my Hindu friends will close their borders with our enemies common. I'm waging war with Shaka, when out of the blue Hannibal marches his stack across my supposid friends land, and declares war on me. That's okay, he's going for my capital, and I have 6 turns to relocate troops, build some trebuchets to stack bust, and whip some units.

His stack consists almost entirely of macemen. That's great, because I have field and melee promotions on all my nights that I have and that I make, I churn out a few crossbowmen, and have some holkans in there too.

His stack rolls up outside my capital with no seige units. I have...nearly an equal number of Knights/crossbow man to counter his maceman stack with one pikeman, three longbowmen, and a numidian cavalry. I have 80% defense in this city. I have enough trebuchets to damage each unit in the stack once, and they had no way to take down defenses.

Well, the pikeman beat my only maceman. And I don't know why the crossbowman didn't defend first, but it died to the next maceman.

The maceman and the longbowmen without city raider abilities killed all my knights. I won a couple battles, and it went down to the last battle. My holkan warrior, inside an 80% defense city, against a Numidian Cavalry. My Holkan warrior lost.

I'm so friggin sick of this combat engine.

You can do everything right, but it doesn't matter because theirs always that combat engine. Why in every single battle am I losing 97% battles still? Why in every battle, no matter how dominant my units are, are they reduced in half at least? Meanwhile, they still, on a regular basis, manage to fight battles without taking hit points? Why do their seige units withdraw so much more effectively? Why do their mounted units withdraw more effectively?

I thought this crap was supposed to be fixed.

When macemen are defeating knights with melee promotion, in a city defended 80%...there is something really friggin wrong.

I find myself not wanting to declare war anymore. It's just not worth it. Everytime I get war stacks any distance away from my original borders, I have someone invading from the opposite end. If you go to war, at any time, someone who hasn't and who's been building just simply steps right in and wipes you out.

Aside from an axeman rush, declarations of war have become essentially futile. A declaration of war is nothing but a new invitation to trampled on by someone else. Especially when you consider the AI continues to cut itself diplo deals and dog piles on you, but non of your friends will help you out in the slightest (at least without a new tech or two or three or sometimes four.)

Random bad luck?
I it was a spearman against a tank you know ...

power graph...follow it. If the AI sees you are weak, it will attack you. The combat engine is pwerfectly fine. Your skills arent just good enough.

:cry: Wah wah wah things didn't go my way! :cry:

:cry: Wah wah wah things didn't go my way! :cry:

His point is, it should've went his way. He had the appropriate stack to defend his city.

It's simple really - the AI cheats. Various people have tried to lecture me on how "the AI doesn't cheat that way" but it does. I have repeatedly lost battles against inferior forces, less versatile stacks, etc.
In fact, the higher your advantage, the more the AI seems to cheat. I have had walled cities with 10+ defenders overrun by Spearmen with no promotions over a river while entire stacks of my tanks and artillery have been annihilated by garrisons of AI Riflemen.

I don't know if it's intentional or a bug, but the combat engine does definitely twist itself to favor the AI.

When macemen are defeating knights with melee promotion, in a city defended 80%...there is something really friggin wrong.

http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/6537/bild3nb6.png

Note the "Doesn't receive defensive bonuses"? I could be wrong, but I think city defence likewise doesn't apply for knights.

His stack rolls up outside my capital with no seige units. I have...nearly an equal number of Knights/crossbow man to counter his maceman stack with one pikeman, three longbowmen, and a numidian cavalry. I have 80% defense in this city. I have enough trebuchets to damage each unit in the stack once, and they had no way to take down defenses.


How much that "nearly" really was and btw, knights doesn't receive any kind of defensive bonuses. So, you had probably better chance to attack yourself but you didn't realize it.

I thought knight == doesn't receive defensive bonus; doesn't that include city defense? But I've noticed I seem to be losing a lot of fights i should be winning too, maybe theres a bug... It certainly wouldn't be the first one.

Mounted units do not benefit from city defense as far as I know.
Not that this stops the AI mounted units from splendidly defending their cities, though.

It's called a Random Number Generator..this has been beaten to death as well.
Besides if the AI didn't cheat it wouldn't stand a chance.
:lol:
And as for your "friends" allowing a large stack of the enemy to meander through their heartlands then declare war on you..well simple solution. Close your borders if you see this happening..or better yet declare war on the "enemy" before they get close..or convince your "friends" to declare war/close borders.
As for defending cities..Longbowmen (City Defense prom.) and Trebs/Cats(Coll. Damage prom.) is all you really need.
The RNG will screw you, accept this and learn other dirty tricks to nullify this AI "advantage".

But I've noticed I seem to be losing a lot of fights i should be winning too, maybe theres a bug...

Its a bug in the human perception, which is extremely selective. Thats why we remember the exceptional losses, but not if we get lucky wins. In a recent MP game an explorer defended as last unit successfully against an (damaged) infantry.

And if you suspect the AI is cheating, just make a test scenario in world builder and count the outcome of 1000 battles. I bet it will be not far from the shown percentage in-game.

It's called a Random Number Generator..this has been beaten to death as well.
Besides if the AI didn't cheat it wouldn't stand a chance.
:lol:

I dispute that, the AI can be quite adept on higher difficulty levels. I don't think it needs to cheat this way at all.
Besides, it just makes careful strategy and clever defense pointless, and the game just degenerates into a contest of who can produce the most units to flatten the other side with through attrition.

Its a bug in the human perception, which is extremely selective. Thats why we remember the exceptional losses, but not if we get lucky wins. In a recent MP game an explorer defended as last unit successfully against an (damaged) infantry.

How is that a lucky win? A defending Explorer is actually fairly good at surviving, especially seeing how the Infantry was damaged.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random#Misconceptions.2Flogical_fallacies

power graph...follow it. If the AI sees you are weak, it will attack you. The combat engine is pwerfectly fine. Your skills arent just good enough.

I was on par with Hannibal.

How much that "nearly" really was and btw, knights doesn't receive any kind of defensive bonuses. So, you had probably better chance to attack yourself but you didn't realize it. - Ruler

I did a reload, it was EXACTLY a one for one exchange between macemen and knights. I had two macemen, two holkan spearmen, and two crossbowmen as my secondary units. He had 3 longbowmen, 1 numidian cavalry, 3 chariots, 1 pikeman, and one axeman for his secondary units. Why attack? I have the protection of the city, and if I attack, then I'm automatically sacraficing at least one knight, right of the bat. Why not let the crossbowman or the maceman take out the pikeman instead?

Mounted units do not benefit from city defense as far as I know.
Not that this stops the AI mounted units from splendidly defending their cities, though. - EvilTwin

Even if, his assortment of dual promoted macemen should not have won...even a majority of the battles against a knight, with field promotion, and melee bonus.

Anyhow, I boosted my ego, did a reload, and things went as they should have statistically.

I don't see how anybody can say the combat engine is fine.

Who in their right mind rolls up on a city with a stack like that, against a city with 80% defense, and just...rolls through it like it wasn't even there...

I am convinced that the RNG is streaky, and too often produces a series of numbers which all lead to a loss for the human player whatever odds may have been calculated. I have just had an example of such streakiness, attacking a Maceman (fortified in a 40% city) with a Tank which had CR2, their relative strengths being thus 40.6 (tank) and 13.2, with odds >99.9% in my favour. True, the tank won: it began by making 3 hits on the mace for 99HP damage, and then took no less than 9 consecutive hits from the mace which also did 99HP damage: a final hit by the tank killed the mace, but the tank was left with just 1HP and fell to another mace when the AI's turn came. Now 9 successive hits with a theoretical probability of less than 0.1% each time is colossally improbable, but it happened.

I am convinced that the RNG is streaky, and too often produces a series of numbers which all lead to a loss for the human player whatever odds may have been calculated. I have just had an example of such streakiness, attacking a Maceman (fortified in a 40% city) with a Tank which had CR2, their relative strengths being thus 40.6 (tank) and 13.2, with odds >99.9% in my favour. True, the tank won: it began by making 3 hits on the mace for 99HP damage, and then took no less than 9 consecutive hits from the mace which also did 99HP damage: a final hit by the tank killed the mace, but the tank was left with just 1HP and fell to another mace when the AI's turn came. Now 9 successive hits with a theoretical probability of less than 0.1% each time is colossally improbable, but it happened.

No. You got it wrong. Each hit was not with probability 0.1%. This probability is the prob that you lose the fight. Each hit of the mace was done with probability 13.2/(40.6+13.2), so with probability of approximately 0.25.

And I think you mix improbable and impossible :)

edit - mispelling

I did a reload, it was EXACTLY a one for one exchange between macemen and knights. I had two macemen, two holkan spearmen, and two crossbowmen as my secondary units. He had 3 longbowmen, 1 numidian cavalry, 3 chariots, 1 pikeman, and one axeman for his secondary units. Why attack? I have the protection of the city, and if I attack, then I'm automatically sacraficing at least one knight, right of the bat. Why not let the crossbowman or the maceman take out the pikeman instead?

Why did you say it had almost entirely of macemens. Something just is'nt right in this post. Leave your cpaital unprotected, whip wrong units and AI kicks your butt.