The Secret Navy

Played a LONG War of Independance. The king still had hundreds of troops to send, but I finally beat him by sinking his ships. This wasn't too hard. Used a small ship for him to attack and weaken himself on, and I then attacked that ship and sunk it. When all the kings ships are sunk . . . the war is over.

This leads to a simple question: Perhaps it would be easier to build a big navy and take the king down early than fight each dragoon as it comes ashore.

Anyone tried beating the king with the navy?
Will the king add ships in response to my building ships?

warroom said:

Anyone tried beating the king with the navy?
Will the king add ships in response to my building ships?

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1) I have yet to declare..
2) No, the king adds ships with a 1/7 probability every N (N is a number) liberty bells. 1/7 because its probability is half as much as the three other units (soldiers, dragoons, artillery).

So if the king added 70 units to its REF, on marathon that would on average be:
- 8 + 2 x 70 / 7 = 22 soldiers
- 4 + 2 x 70 / 7 = 18 dragoons
- 4 + 2 x 70 / 7 = 18 artillery
- 4 + 1 x 70 / 7 = 11 warships

A European warship needs 2 of our best war ships to be defeated. That means 22 warships, each of them costing 900 tools and weapons, so an aggregated total of 19800 tools and weapons. That's enough guns to create 132 soldiers.


So yes, beating the king's navy can be done, but I believe every time it is done, the game could have been won years earlier with a classical land defense. (Of course, this is less fun than beating 18th century England's fleet)

After i found out i can beat him by sinking his ships (my first games i was assuming you need to kill the troops) - now this is definitely preferable. Even a large REF will often have far less ships than troops... Use the Europeans to train a few GG SotL, to make the naval engagements less one sided.

Naval Strategy :

Build a couple of SoL (depending on REF-Size, maybe 4-10) and a lot of privateers ... use the privateers to damage the MoW and finish them with the SoL ... with enough "Luck" by save/load it is possible to sink MoWs without loosing a single SoL ... You will need a Medic-III-Unit (Great General) to have adequate heal-rate so your SoLs will be ready for action asap. After your SoLs have reached Veteran-IV or Veteran-V, they have about the same strength as the MoW ... High Rebel-Combat-Bonus will help a lot, too ...

Questions are :
How many turns does it take you to sink the Royal Fleet?
Can you sink them before or after landing the transported troops?
... you will still have to deal with the landed troops ...

(I used this tactic in WoI to sink about 45 MoWs with 7 SoL ... at the end of WoI, King still had about 30 MoW left but no more invasion troops ... so the naval battle was not the decisive part of the war.)

Something involving "Luck" by save load can hardly be called strategy
(Same goes for my "training the ships exploiting the respwan").

Save and Load...

So you think this is not a realistic plan?

Also called: The Time Machine. Happily what happened is H.G. Wells went back in time to the Revolution, tuaght our people how to go back 1 turn, thus allowing for "Save and Load."

This gives me a idea...

New ressource called "Luck" (or karma or whatever...)
You could get some luck points by... hmmm... Building Lucky stuff in your cities. Or sending a colonist or Two to Monthy's Altars, to please the Gods...
You could spend some "Luck"-points to re-roll a bad fight (or bad goody hut )

too bad one cannot build walls and do as i liked to in age of kings, battle of lepanto... wall in the whole coast and leave those turkish troops unable to land... while towers were sinking the transports

I won my first game this way. I actually used my navy in the hopes that I could sink the ships and fight fewer troops on land, as the kings army was considerably larger than mine. The king knocked out some of my ships and I repelled the forces that hit the shore. Eventually I managed to build some extra ships of my own and sank the others that were still there. I checked the revolution adviser and the king had 0 warships. My first thought actually was "cool, I can build up my army while he's making more ships". However, next turn I won.

well last war of independance
got all my colonies from 0% rebel to 50% in less than 15 turns
he didnt add any ships
so it was 4 ships vrs 10 of my sotl
i won easy..

Since the game uses an RNG (Random Number Generator) to calculate combat-outcome, every fight means Luck / Bad Luck ... you can loose even with 95% success-chance and you can win with 25% success-chance ... at that point strategy vanishes ... Using save/load, you can take a look at the next Random Number and you can choose if you want to use it to win against a cheap or costly enemy unit or if you want to loose a cheap unit or costly unit ... A proper strategy would have to be statistically successful ... this would include high numbers of fights to have a good statistic ...

Just imagine playing chess with RNG-Combat ... you move a unit (chesspiece) to strike another unit and then RNG would decide which unit is winning ... since chess has only a small number of units and so a small number of combats, it is statistically not very balanced ...

I don't like this kind of save/load-play ... but I hate it more to loose a sure fight just because the RNG had a bad moment ... Going into a fight with 99.9% chance to win is different from just rolling the dice RAND(1000) ... in real fight the 0.1% would mean something like a meteor striking your troops ...

I would rather enjoy a Civ4- or Civ4Col-game were Luck in Combat caused by RNG is completely eliminated ... but therefore the complete combat-system will have to be worked over ...

historix69 said:

Since the game uses an RNG (Random Number Generator) to calculate combat-outcome, every fight means Luck / Bad Luck ... you can loose even with 95% success-chance and you can win with 25% success-chance ... at that point strategy vanishes ... Using save/load, you can take a look at the next Random Number and you can choose if you want to use it to win against a cheap or costly enemy unit or if you want to loose a cheap unit or costly unit ... A proper strategy would have to be statistically successful ... this would include high numbers of fights to have a good statistic ...

Just imagine playing chess with RNG-Combat ... you move a unit (chesspiece) to strike another unit and then RNG would decide which unit is winning ... since chess has only a small number of units and so a small number of combats, it is statistically not very balanced ...

I don't like this kind of save/load-play ... but I hate it more to loose a sure fight just because the RNG had a bad moment ... Going into a fight with 99.9% chance to win is different from just rolling the dice RAND(1000) ... in real fight the 0.1% would mean something like a meteor striking your troops ...

I would rather enjoy a Civ4- or Civ4Col-game were Luck in Combat caused by RNG is completely eliminated ... but therefore the complete combat-system will have to be worked over ...

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I could not disagree more there. You will always have unlucky losses and lucky wins. Otherwise you could just calculate how many units you would need to bash an enemy city and you would always be right.

If the game did not have any of this randomness, it would become less interesting. You could tell for sure if a defending army would be large enough or not and such. Not being able to tell for sure creates some more interesting choices. Will you reinforce your city, or do you trust the defending force as it is?

Also a good strategy calculates in the losses that you will have. In any war there will be casualties, and even a superior army can de defeated on a bad day. This keeps thing surprising and interesting, and it can not be compared to a game of chess, which evolves solely around the pieces and the moves they make. The battle in chess is fought before the piece is taken, and a piece that is taken has lost.

I can sink man of wars all day every day with simon bolivar and camping my ship of the lines on coast tiles.

historix69 said:

Since the game uses an RNG (Random Number Generator) to calculate combat-outcome, every fight means Luck / Bad Luck ... you can loose even with 95% success-chance and you can win with 25% success-chance ... at that point strategy vanishes ... Using save/load, you can take a look at the next Random Number and you can choose if you want to use it to win against a cheap or costly enemy unit or if you want to loose a cheap unit or costly unit ... A proper strategy would have to be statistically successful ... this would include high numbers of fights to have a good statistic ...

Just imagine playing chess with RNG-Combat ... you move a unit (chesspiece) to strike another unit and then RNG would decide which unit is winning ... since chess has only a small number of units and so a small number of combats, it is statistically not very balanced ...

I don't like this kind of save/load-play ... but I hate it more to loose a sure fight just because the RNG had a bad moment ... Going into a fight with 99.9% chance to win is different from just rolling the dice RAND(1000) ... in real fight the 0.1% would mean something like a meteor striking your troops ...

I would rather enjoy a Civ4- or Civ4Col-game were Luck in Combat caused by RNG is completely eliminated ... but therefore the complete combat-system will have to be worked over ...

Click to expand...

The only way I'd like to see the RNG eliminated is if instead you got to play the combat in RTS mode. Of course many civ fans wouldn't like that, so I won't ever get to see my favorite game and my favorite type of game combined.

What happened to a cannon and fortress firing on passing ships?

And about RNG, the element of chance makes the game more real. Every now and then something crazy happens... like George Washington beats the British. (Same odds as a man with a stick beating a tank)

Shurdus said:

I could not disagree more there. You will always have unlucky losses and lucky wins. Otherwise you could just calculate how many units you would need to bash an enemy city and you would always be right.

If the game did not have any of this randomness, it would become less interesting. You could tell for sure if a defending army would be large enough or not and such. Not being able to tell for sure creates some more interesting choices. Will you reinforce your city, or do you trust the defending force as it is?

Also a good strategy calculates in the losses that you will have. In any war there will be casualties, and even a superior army can de defeated on a bad day. This keeps thing surprising and interesting, and it can not be compared to a game of chess, which evolves solely around the pieces and the moves they make. The battle in chess is fought before the piece is taken, and a piece that is taken has lost.

Click to expand...

Main problem is that the AI, combat and the costs of war in every Civ - / Col - Game so far were not implemented very realistically ... they lack details, strategically depth, use unrealistic rules and they rely on RNG to partly compensate this ... If the AI would be able to surprise you by tactics and strategic maneuver, you would not need RNG for surprise and interesting game ... Also remember that each unit in civ / col actually represents hundreds or thousands of men ... so combat should be kind of statistically balanced ... no need for too much RNG there ...

RNG actually makes combat a part of the game which I "dislike" ... in other turn based combat simulations (e.g. PanzerGeneral, HeartsofIron (turn = 1h)), the statistically variation of combat results is more tight ... and they are still fun to play ...

Here are some examples of odd things I noticed :

- maximum statistically range of possible combat results :
If you have two identical units of same type and same strength fighting each other, you can get all kind of statistically possible combat results from "unit A defeats B without taking any damage" to the opposite result, just determined by RNG. So RNG represents some kind of invisible detail or information (Luck) which is considered for fighting and winning, but which is unknown to the player. Since the effect of RNG on a single battle is much higher than that of every possible strategic action the player can do, it limits strategic planning.

- Global Good / Bad Luck :
In most games you will encounter a situation where the next attack you will order will be definetely a failure due to unfavorable RNG-values since RNG is global and not local... no matter if you will attack in Europe, Asia or America, even when you use a tank to attack a spearman ... you won't have a chance to win ... This is totally un-fun since you cannot do anything against it ... the game has decided by coin flipping that you are not allowed to win the next battle. Transfered to real live, this does not make much sense ... In this situation there are only two options you have : 1. sacrifice a unit and continue your attacks this turn or 2. stop fighting for this turn if you are strong enough on defense and hope for better luck next turn ...

- Single unit attack :
10 units against 1 enemy (same unit-type) ... in real live I would suppose that some own units get damaged but the enemy gets defeated (destroyed or surrenders or retreats) ... In civ / col every unit attacks on its own ... and may win or loose, depending on RNG ... but that's not realistic ... units represent 100 (or 1000) men each ... so you would have 900 men waiting while your first 100 gets massacred ... and then the next wave would go in and so on ... would be a poor strategy for real live ... a good leader would try to use the strategical advantage of 10:1 by encircling the enemy and start a combined attack ... in the game, you don't have the advantage ... you attack with your 1st unit and a coin is thrown who will win ... your advantage of 10:1 is ignored by the game ... if your 1st unit lost, your 2nd unit might have a better chance based on the damage the 1st did ... but it is not assured ... and so on ... so statistically your just exchanging units at a rate of 1:1 ... and this can be calculated ...

- One unit must die :
Fights in the game usually end with the complete destruction of either attacker or defender ... Exceptions are fights where units (e.g. dragoon) can withdraw ... in real live, units who are fighting under disadvantageous conditions would stop the attack or would try retreat if possible to avoid unneccesary losses. As long as the unit is not completely encircled (in a pocket) the fight would be aborted before complete destruction. (This may depend on the leader ... in WW2 Rommel at El Allamein defended well and finally rather retreated than having his troops destroyed by the superior british troops (superior in number of units and supply). )

- Damaged units heal free of costs (if you can spare the time) :
If you fight a battle with 10 soldiers (= 1000 men) and you end with 10 soldiers with 50% Strength each, mathematically you have an army with Strength of 10 x 0,5 = 5 soldiers (= 500 men left) .... but after a few turns they have regenerated and now you have an army of Strength of 10 soldiers again (= 1.000 men) ...

If you fight the same battle and RNG determines that you end with 5 soldiers at 100% instead of 10 soldiers at 50%, then you just have an army of 5 soldiers (= 500 men) and must build additional 5 soldiers to regain the old strength ...

In real life both battles would have about the same costs ... 500 men lost ... in civ / col they do not cost the same ... case 1 costs some time to regenerate but has no building costs ... the missing 500 men are coming for free ...

So while in a non-RNG-combat-model each fight would have certain costs which you would have to consider before fighting, in civ / col the RNG decides if you have costs at all (due to healing of damaged units.)

I believe that it is possible to change the civ / col combat mechanics to be fun and challenging even without RNG ... Only problem might be the AI which somehow must be introduced to the new rules ...

Bigfoot3814 said:

I won my first game this way.

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Ditto. After an initial shock, I found the REF completely unprepared for my fierce rebel sentiments. Upon landing the first three loads they were quickly routed, and I managed to sink a couple of their ships to boot. That's when I looked at the REF numbers - another 3 ships and 80+ infantry, dragoon and cannons. That's when I exerted my Monarchic benefit of maintaining trade with the Old World, and bought a steady flow of Frigates with my black market trading until I had wiped out all their ships. It was a high attrition rate, but worth it, because my hunch paid off. 60+ troops stranded in Europe fighting each other - the King gives up. Guess he should have added more ships whilst he was so busy bolstering that land-based monster.

First bug that hasn't greatly frustrated me. I guess it's a balance, of sorts.

historix69 said:

In most games you will encounter a situation where the next attack you will order will be definetely a failure due to unfavorable RNG-values since RNG is global and not local... no matter if you will attack in Europe, Asia or America, even when you use a tank to attack a spearman ... you won't have a chance to win ...

Click to expand...

Can anyone with detailed knowledge of the game mechanics confirm this?
I don't see why they would program a game this way when they don't have to, and I honestly have yet to see any really unlikely combat results [spearman takes on tank / losing a fight when I'm a >99% favorite] in Civ 4 / Col 2, so I'm satisfied with the current combat system and would have to say that any crticisms of how it worked in earlier games have been pretty well addressed.

I agree that some of the ways in which combat has been simplified make war less realistic, but I think Firaxis has struck a good balance between realism and playability, because there is more to this game than war and when you've got 6000 years to get though you can't spend too much time on little details, your focus should be more on large-scale strategic decisions.

In defense of RNG-influenced combat adding to realism, two units of the same type from different countries are not identical in real life: they will be armed differently, likely operated based on differing military doctrines, and will be made up of people with different backgrounds. Also, not every battle between tanks that has taken place in a forest throughout history has been the same, there are tons of things that make them all different. Real-life national leaders don't have visibility on things at the company/regiment/battalion level like morale, equipment, supply, specific strengths and weaknesses, time of day and conditions of battle, etc. so I don't think you should either in a game of Civ, you just have to trust your military leaders to look after that for you, and sometimes they lead brilliantly but sometimes they make huge mistakes, and I'm OK with that.

I think unit healing (or more precisely the degree to which it occurs) is the biggest flaw in the combat system as it stands.

For instance, a ship 4000 miles from home wins a combat with 0.1 Str remaining... sits still on the high seas for 10 turns, and is then back to full strength?! (or perhaps from promotion, even stronger than before!!)
Healing at sea should be impossible. (as it was in the earlier generations of Civ)

The same applies to land combat, though not quite so dramatically.

If healing of units could only occur in cities, and took both time & money I think combat would be somewhat more strategic & less about exploiting the numbers.

Yeah, you guys are right about the healing, it's ******ed sometimes.
It probably should drain your resources somehow, and it really should only be allowed if you've got supply lines going to that unit.