Combat Issue

C

Copywriter

Warlord
Joined
Jun 22, 2008
Messages
124
Location
Las Vegas
Hey guys,

I'm evidently not understanding combat numbers with this version of Civ.

The Mongols had a 11 strength army left in their city. I attacked it with 10 (yes 10) 9 strength legions one after the other.

They all died and when I sent my catapult (non army) in right after (same turn), the b!$%# was still 11! So my entire military was almost destroyed by this one unit/army and not even a scratch given.

I mean holy crap on a hill. That's some super unit. This was earlier in the game and the Mongols didn't build any super wonder or fight, so what gives?

Does Civ Rev look at unit types and actual combat. For instance, an archer can kill many more legions, because they have to fight the arrows to get to him.

Or was this just some weird stuff?

I eventually came back with more and won, but that was weird. The combat seems very random so far.

BTW, the game was on the warlord level, so I wasn't expecting "god" units.
 
It is very likely that the Mongols had more than one archer army defending their city. After you fought the first archer army the next one probabaly stepped up and then another after that. Also, if he has a good road set up he could be transfering archer units from his other cities to defend that one.
 
Just came online to post about the same thing, had a catapult army (18atk) attack my tank army (36def if i remember right i know forsure it was alot higher than the catapults atk) anyways the catapults won...WTF this type of !@#$ is frustrating as !@#$
 
catapults are overall frustrating for me.
when i use them they always f@#$% die.
when the AI use em agaisnt me, they always f$%@% own me.
even my tanks like noob said.
 
The Mongols had no other city.

And I know they didn't have any other armies, because when I defeated this one, I took over the city.
 
Well after reading your post I noticed the same things happening to me, but not in their cities. It does seem like the AI gets way too many wins win they don't have the advantage...even if it is something like 26 to 13. I think if you have twice as much attack as their defense you should overrun them. I mean It is ridiculous when you don't overrun when it is 60 vs 13.
 
I would have attacked First with my Catapult.
Then with the others.

I believe you lost because all three units/armies were not able to wound the defending unit (50% Defence bonus). I may be wrong but do the Defending Unit Heal after a win?
 
I lose battles where I am favored by 40-200% all the time, so I feel your pain. The ones that irritate me the most are losing so many bombers to cruisers, even though I am favored 27 to 9. This is actually the only thing I don't like about the game, that the numbers don't seem to mean anything in the battles.
 
ARandomNoob said:
so math isnt thier strong suit.....SUCK
Click to expand...

Actually math isn't your strong suit evidently.

Even if your unit has a higher value, it's not a guaranteed win. Otherwise this game would be very boring. It gives you a certain % chance to win, but even if it's relatively high (say 90%), you'll still lose 1 out of every 10 battles on average.

What your actually experiencing is known as cognitive dissonance.
 
You don't know, it may be some Hollywood Action Hero archer.... "One man, against a whole tank army." Coming soon to a theater near you. :crazyeye:

This is one reason I prefer late game domination, as I like to build up overwhelming invasion forces.
 
Endure said:
Actually math isn't your strong suit evidently.

Even if your unit has a higher value, it's not a guaranteed win. Otherwise this game would be very boring. It gives you a certain % chance to win, but even if it's relatively high (say 90%), you'll still lose 1 out of every 10 battles on average.

What your actually experiencing is known as cognitive dissonance.
Click to expand...

There is no way that 11-10 gives you a 90% chance of winning or I wouldn't be losing those 27-9 battles more than half of the time. It is so bad that I actually started tracking it in one game. It is not a perception problem, it is that the numbers don't accurately represent what is going on in the battle.

On four different occasions now, I have received the upgrade for beating a unit of equal or greater strength when I was favored by 30% or more. I don't think my math is broken. When a 27 beats an 18.5, there is no way that 18.5 is equal to or greater than 27.

I don't mind a little randomness in the battles, but come on... I just want the numbers to make sense. If they don't have any substantial relevance to the combat, then why are they the primary comparison made between attacking and defending units. In both of the above examples, the "lower" unit was obviously benefiting from a bonus that was not being accounted for in it's power rating. The game was tracking the bonus, otherwise combat would go a lot differently when your unit has three times the defense rating of the lower unit. When a 27 attacks a 9, it should be a foregone conclusion that the 9 is going to lose. Either that, or let the player win battles like that too.

Someone else must be able to see that the computer actually cheats. Test it yourself. Leave a city without a spy and save often enough so that when that city is infiltrated before an attack, you don't have to backtrack that far. Reload that 8 times and the spy will infiltrate the city every single time. On the ninth time, move a spy into that city and the other spy never comes. This has been 100% consistant in my testing. It would be funny if it weren't so frustrating. Didn't their testers ever notice this stuff?
 
Your experiment has a confounding variable. The game saves the random seed when you save. So no matter how many times you reload, if you do the same things, then you will get the same result.

It is annoying to lose when you are favored to win. On the flip side, I feel that the chance adds to the gameplay. It is not simply a math problem, like in real life. The most advanced/expensive equipment does not always ensure success. Look at every insurgent group, ever.

If you want to guarantee taking a city, bring at least twice the number of armies as the city has defending (that are also a good bit more powerful), a spy-ring, and naval/air support if possible.
 
I have beaten the odds the other way around as well as taken a beating when I had the odds. That's Civ for you there. Next time bring better and upgraded units with a great general and bring some fleets for naval support. Or choose not to attack just yet.
 
Well, I am not certain how CivRev does combat calcs, but in every other Civ game, the chance to win was att / (att + def).

So in your example 1-1 should be 50:50; 27-9 should mean you would win 3 out 4 times.

In my experience with civrev thus far, it actually seems like something else is going on (maybe each figure gets a calc), since the results seem to favor the favorite much more than they should.
 
Lord Geoff said:
There is no way that 11-10 gives you a 90% chance of winning or I wouldn't be losing those 27-9 battles more than half of the time. It is so bad that I actually started tracking it in one game. It is not a perception problem, it is that the numbers don't accurately represent what is going on in the battle.

On four different occasions now, I have received the upgrade for beating a unit of equal or greater strength when I was favored by 30% or more. I don't think my math is broken. When a 27 beats an 18.5, there is no way that 18.5 is equal to or greater than 27.

I don't mind a little randomness in the battles, but come on... I just want the numbers to make sense. If they don't have any substantial relevance to the combat, then why are they the primary comparison made between attacking and defending units. In both of the above examples, the "lower" unit was obviously benefiting from a bonus that was not being accounted for in it's power rating. The game was tracking the bonus, otherwise combat would go a lot differently when your unit has three times the defense rating of the lower unit. When a 27 attacks a 9, it should be a foregone conclusion that the 9 is going to lose. Either that, or let the player win battles like that too.

Someone else must be able to see that the computer actually cheats. Test it yourself. Leave a city without a spy and save often enough so that when that city is infiltrated before an attack, you don't have to backtrack that far. Reload that 8 times and the spy will infiltrate the city every single time. On the ninth time, move a spy into that city and the other spy never comes. This has been 100% consistant in my testing. It would be funny if it weren't so frustrating. Didn't their testers ever notice this stuff?
Click to expand...


I didn't say it was a 90% chance. I pulled 90% out of the air as an example. I don't know how the combat odds are calculated in civ rev.

The examples in your post irrelevant because of your small sample size, and your heavily biased because of your cognitive dissonance. If you wanted a relevant sample size, you would have to chart the outcomes of hundreds, if not thousands, of different battles with the same combat odds (and not just saving the game, fighting the battle and reloading since the game saves the seed on the reload).

I agree 100% that it's very frustrating when your unit loses when it has the combat odds heavily in its favor, but it swings both ways, whether you believe it or not. It's just like in real like. The best trained/equipped/biggest army doesn't always win (although its the safe way to bet).
 
FYI, while cognitive dissonance is a fun term to use, it no longer applies when tracking statistical data. I am not changing the numbers, therefore they are unaffected by bias. No matter how much I want those numbers to be incorrect, they are what they are. This is not like political polling, where the way a question is asked affects the outcome of the data. This is just a check mark in the win column or a check mark in the lose column. There is no column for "Did the outcome of the battle meet my expectations for said battle."

Also, once I started tracking full games, I wasn't reloading the game to get the stats. The reloading and checking was used once to find that the battle outcomes are predetermined in the case of the favored unit losing 10 times in a row and, once that was established, to show that the computer knows when you have and when you do not have a spy in your city.

The bigger thing here is that you are paying more attention to my question than trying to help me with the answer. If you don't have an answer, then something like "Hmm, that is strange. You should email the developer and see what they say" would be more in order, rather than telling me that my research is flawed. It is my contention that the formulas used in determining the outcomes of battles would produce consistant outcomes, irrespective to the sample size. If you would like to do the "counter-research" on this, be my guest. That would be helpful. You can't just say that my polling is wrong without checking it for yourself. I am simply trying to make some sense out of why 24 loses to 12 more often than 18 loses to 12 and why I get bonuses for defeating an equal or superior unit when my 18 beats that 12 from time to time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

S
CivRev 2 pet peeves
Replies
0
Views
274
Shadowhal
S
A
  • Locked
(7-42a) Increase Benevolence Heal Boost to +10
Replies
4
Views
230
Legen
Legen
Rekk
  • Locked
(7-VT) Embarked units have standardized
Replies
2
Views
99
Stalker0
S
K
Could unit diversity be simplified for CIV7?
Replies
11
Views
398
Bonyduck Campersang
Bonyduck Campersang
hokath
  • Poll
[Vote] (7-37) Remove Faith -> Production Conversion from the Order Building
Replies
1
Views
190
hokath
hokath
Top Bottom