CivIII team should meet with Alpha Centauri Team

I've gotten so frustrated with all the glitches in CivIII (combat and diplomacy) that I'm starting to crave Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire. Maybe the teams should coordinate. Frinstunce, AC allows an attack bonus. Duh. No such in CivIII. The Faction Editor in Alien Crossfire seems much more
user-freindly; even though CivIII can be MUUUUUUCH more detailed, which is nice for hardcore gamers, there seems to be deep flaws in the combat odds calculations. I wonder why CivIII allows so many to complain about bad luck battles, but AC and ACX you don't hear about it much...

I doubt these teams will ever work together in the future considering how they separated.

FWIW, I see no flaws in the combat odds calcualtions. Care to elaborate? In my experience, bad luck battles have been equaled out by good luck battles.

What's the story of how they seperated?

Warpstorm:

Can you tell us a bed-time story about how they seperated? Can you start it with Once upon a Time? but actually why wont' they work together? have the pledged alliegence to factions and declare the opposing teams enemies of their foreign interest?

Brian Reynolds and crew (who made SMAC) wanted to make their own games (Brian later said of the RTS variety), but Sid didn't want to go in that direction. So a year into development of Civ 3 the SMAC team left to form Big Huge Games which later made Rise of Nations.

There are still people who haven't heard about this?

Yeah, for example *I* haven't heard this story. I spent so much time playing SMAC and CivII that I didn't really research the background on the creators much. But hearing that they separated so thoroughly gives me little hope that CivIII will learn much from the SMAC combat... sigh...

Warpstorm: many many threads are posted on complaints that advanced units too often can be eliminated by basic units. And the terrain thing. Like an Elite Immortal dying every time he attacks over a river--oh! the river bonus applies only to the defense! (though I've lost plenty Immortals fortified and defending against a unit from accross a river...) More advanced analysis shows that the Elite status affects outcome more than terrain. Sirian admits that number truncation occurs a lot in the program, and I suspect that combat bonuses don't apply if it doesn't raise a combat number by at least 1. So +25% gets you 0 unless the unit has a combat value of at least 4. Etc etc etc...

Of course the river bonus apply only to defense. If you attack across a river, you have to cross the river, and that makes you a sitting duck while you're doing it, not to mention that it's very hard to fight right when you come out of the boat.

I had heard the story too, but I guess I forgot about it (actually, I heard two seperate stories, one about Brian Reynolds leaving and eventually forming their game, and the other about those working on Civ3 leaving a year in development. I don't think the thought occured to me that they were the same story).

FinnMcCool said:

Warpstorm: many many threads are posted on complaints that advanced units too often can be eliminated by basic units. And the terrain thing. Like an Elite Immortal dying every time he attacks over a river--oh! the river bonus applies only to the defense! (though I've lost plenty Immortals fortified and defending against a unit from accross a river...) More advanced analysis shows that the Elite status affects outcome more than terrain. Sirian admits that number truncation occurs a lot in the program, and I suspect that combat bonuses don't apply if it doesn't raise a combat number by at least 1. So +25% gets you 0 unless the unit has a combat value of at least 4. Etc etc etc...

Click to expand...

Oddly enough, these aren't problems as far as I'm concerned. They are just tactical considerations since I was aware of all of these from the beginning. They are not bugs, just how Firaxis decided to do things. I thought you were talking about bugs.

Finn said:

Sirian admits that number truncation occurs a lot in the program

Click to expand...

"Admits" may not be the best description. "Observes" would be more accurate.

I suspect that combat bonuses don't apply if it doesn't raise a combat number by at least 1.

Click to expand...

On what basis do you suspect this? My observations run the other way.

It would be easy to test. Set up warriors in towns with walls. The walls add 50% bonus, plus some other minor bonuses will be in play, but not enough to reach 100% bonus. By your theory, then, defending warriors would not get any defense bonus at all, because the bonus wouldn't be enough to raise the value to 2. Set up the situation in the editor, then run tests in the game.

Two possibilities. One is that you are correct, and the real odds will be 1 to 1. The other is that you are mistaken, and the odds would be 1 to 1.6, assuming the standard 10% defense boost plus the 50% from the walls. Would fortifying the units add more defense? Someone please remind me what the fortify bonus is. 25% or 50%? If 25, then even if that were added, it would only up the value to 1.85. If 50%, then the units could not be fortified for the test, as that would carry the value too high.

So anyway, with a net defense value of 1.6 or higher, but less than 2, run a significant sample size of actual combat tests and see what happens.


- Sirian

This was just done in another thread and the rounding off theory was basically disproven.

Finn:
don't you have Conquests? If not, get it. Its much better than the original civ!