Error in City Raider promotion?

I am attaching a screenshot form my current prince level game. Playing as Huayna Capac, I am attacking a Greek city.

As you can see, my CR1 swordsman has +30% attack against city and a base strength of 6. So that should make his total strength as 7.8, right? But it is shown as 6.00!

The defending archer has a base strength of 3 and total defensive bonus of +135%, which makes his total strength as 7.05. But it is shown as 6.15!

So is there a bug here or am I missing something?

NOTE - I am using official v3.17 with the latest BUG mod.

As I understand it, the city attack percentage of the attacker is not added to the attacker, but subtracted from the defender.

So the defender gets 135% - 30% = 105%

Base strength 3 x 105% = 6.15

Airefuego said:

As I understand it, the city attack percentage of the attacker is not added to the attacker, but subtracted from the defender.

So the defender gets 135% - 30% = 105%

Base strength 3 x 105% = 6.15

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That would certainly explain it.

But isn't that patently unfair? For me, CR has fallen from grace. And fallen hard

Not sure if it is unfair or not, but don't be too harsh on CR - I think I read somewhere that actually ALL attacker percentages work that way (they are subtracted from the defender) except the 10% from each Combat promotion.

I don't think that CR is worse like this that if you add it up in the attacker.... especially if you're using weaker units with CR vs strong defenders ( siege comes to mind )

r_rolo1 said:

I don't think that CR is worse like this that if you add it up in the attacker.... especially if you're using weaker units with CR vs strong defenders ( siege comes to mind )

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I usually give my siege units the barrage or the extra bombardment promotions as I believe that is their main purpose. So, I am screwed as far as my non-siege units attacking a city are concerned:

1. If I attack with stronger units, I would do better to grant them the combat promotions. In this example, if my unit had the combat 1 promotion instead of the CR1 promotion, I would have the strengths as attacker = 6.6 (+10% strength with combat1) and the defender = 6.75 (135-10 = +125% for the archer). I would have better odds for my swordsman in that case ie with Combat1 instead of CR1.

2. If I attack with weaker units, then either I have reduced the city defenders health using the siege units or I am going to lose anyway

Of course, the CR promotions become really useful when fighting against the units which don't have high city defense ability. This means that the archery units are the most troublesome in this regard. This probably means that the value of the CR promotions become more useful later in the game.

This is a relatively shallow analysis, mind you.

Airefuego said:

Not sure if it is unfair or not, but don't be too harsh on CR - I think I read somewhere that actually ALL attacker percentages work that way (they are subtracted from the defender) except the 10% from each Combat promotion.

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I am thinking of running some tests using the World Builder to clarify this. If anyone has the link to a good guide on promotions then please provide it to me.

It is driving me nuts that I don't know about such an important part of the game even 3 years after I got it

If the bonuses of the attacker and defender are reciprocal, then they offset and are not included in the odds calculation. So 30% of bonus for city raider for the attacker is offset by 30% bonus for city defense by the defender.

bippukt said:

If anyone has the link to a good guide on promotions then please provide it to me.

It is driving me nuts that I don't know about such an important part of the game even 3 years after I got it

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Read the "Combat Explained" Article in the War Academy section:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/combat_explained.php

Ralgar said:

Read the "Combat Explained" Article in the War Academy section:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/combat_explained.php

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Thanks for this - I understand the mechanics now. Different situations will call for different promotions now instead of the standard CR ones which I gave my swords/maces, unless they are facing units of equivalent strength.

For a Non agressive leader, combat I will be better than CR1 if the defender has more than 120% defence bonus.
An unpromoted entrenched archer in a hill city has a bonus of 125% + culture if you attack with an axe and 115% + culture if you attack with a sword, so C1 Is likely better
in those cases. Protective archers with high culture or walls can also get past 120% defense bonus. You should check the defensive bonus and the odds before each fight,
the newest archers won't be entrenched.
If you're likely to survive it's better to go with City raider, because the CR2 and CR3
promotions will be much better, unless you want a medic or a stack defender.

I like to work up a bunch of City Raiders with CR3 before promoting them to gunpowder units. 10-15 Grenadiers or infantry with CR3 can make your later wars much easier. But you don't want to give CR to all of your melee units, because attacking cities is not the only thing you'll be doing with them.

Hmm...lots of things to think about. This method of calculation has some interesting quirks to it. I will take back my initial statement that CR doesn't seem to be good enough anymore, but there are situations where your attacker would fare better if he had combat promotions instead - mainly where his strength is much more than that of the defender. It has the added benefit of being useful in field combat as well.

This means that "+30% City Attack" actually understates the value of the promotion.

Let's say we have two units that are otherwise equally strong, and 10 each.

+30% attack would make the effective strengths 13 vs. 10, which is a 1.3:1 ratio, but -30% defense makes them 10 vs. 7, which is a 1.43:1 ratio. The more the "+_% attack" piles up, the greater the discrepancy.

On the other hand, when the defender already has a bunch of boni (fortified in a city with cultural strength, on a hill, CGx, etc.) , it may overstate it:

Take a 10 base attacker vs. a defender that's only 5 base but has 100% modifiers. The +30% would, again, make it 13 to 10, but the -30% is now only 10 to 8.5, or 1.18:1

You can flip this all around and say the same about defense %. Whichever side has the most total % has the net effect understated by the way the attacker bonus is phrased.

Not quite. When the sum of all the defender combat modifiers is negative (like the -30% you mentioned), the defender's strength is instead reduced by 1/(1+|modifier|) = 1/(1+0.3) = 76.9%.

So it would be 10:7.69 ratio. This works out the same as as if it was +30% on the attacker.

Neat huh?

The thing that complicates things is combat promotions - because they always apply directly to the unit that owns the promotion. Don't use combat promotions on low base strength units when you can help it - use the promotion on high base strength units peferentially (eg. praetorians).

Could you explain that math again?

For instance, how does it calculate the battle strength of an unpromoted Spearman, vs an unpromoted Chariot? It can't really be -100% from the other unit, as that would give the chariot a strength of Zero, and as noted, it doesn't apply to the spearman, so how mathmatically is it applied?

OK - This still works out as Piece of Mind has described without reducing the mounted unit to zero upfront. The multiplier for an attacking spearman is 1.0 + 100% = 2.0, so the actual combat divisor for the defender is also 2.0. This means that the mounted unit battle strength is reduced by 1/2, always giving exacly the same combat odds as doubling the spearman's battle strength since it is essentially doing the same thing.

What I'd like to know is why the game designers chose to do things this way instead of the obvious one of adding all relevant bonuses to each unit,which would be so much easier to understand.

the reason is because the city raider promotion is even better - it gives a bonus against the unit's total adjusted strength. Thus an archer with CG as a strength of 3x1.7 in a city, = 5.1 with the CR promotion you bring that archer down to 5.1x0.8 thus you reduce the whole strength of the defender. This makes CR a very powerful promotion

Bushface said:

What I'd like to know is why the game designers chose to do things this way instead of the obvious one of adding all relevant bonuses to each unit,which would be so much easier to understand.

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I believe that it was designed this way because of promotions. With the current system, promotions easily cancel each-other (CR vs CG is an obvious example).

If promotions all applied to the unit they come from, it would make stronger units even stronger.

I'm not trying to defend the system actually, even if I'm fine with it, so please do not try to debate with me . Just trying to find a justification for the designer's choice.