Infantry and Machine guneers Vs Catapults and Knights; guees who wins ?

Last night I had a frustrating game. A stack of 6 /infantry/rifleman/machine gunners in a city was overrun by a hoard of French macemen, knights, and elephants. preaty much every crappy unit that the ai somehow managed to support without being bankrupt.

Now I can see how knights might might beat up some musketmen but how the hell would a knight or a macemen even come close enough to a machinegunner?

My suggestion would be to add a + x % of attack Vs mounted/meele units to all gunpowder units.

So a musketman would start with only +10%, a rifleman would start with +30-45%, infantry would get 60%, machinegunners would get +100%.

Obviously tanks should have + 300% or something like that, since no matter how hard a maceman might wack it, he wont do much except chip the paint.

You're gonna bang your head against the wall on this one. I had the same problem and there wasn't a single person in the forum who sympathised with me. Basically the arguments are - "get over it!", "you're a noob", or my personal favorite "the maceman hit the crew in the head when they came out to take a dump."

i believe that if you explain what exactly happened a reason can be found. I guess that it probably launched some catapults and that "hoard" was of more than 20 units? or might be your units had just conquered the city and were damaged?

Eigenvector said:

You're gonna bang your head against the wall on this one. I had the same problem and there wasn't a single person in the forum who sympathised with me. Basically the arguments are - "get over it!", "you're a noob", or my personal favorite "the maceman hit the crew in the head when they came out to take a dump."

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ahem, u said that you lost a tank heavily damaged [5/40] atacking or being atacked by a longbowman... That made reason to me as your vehicle were damaged and your ammo depleted so your men where fighting with barefist standing over a metal useless junk

I'd love to see how you know that is what 5/40 means. How do you know this to be true?

But let's not hi-jack this thread.

I believe the operative word is "horde". I suppose your machinegunners ran out of ammo, or their barrels melted.

Firstly, it's a game. THey can't make one tech so damn overpowering. For instance, realistically a Jet Fighter would annihilate a regular fighter. However, that does not happen in game. The Jet fighter merely has an advantage.


This is because a high tech unit should not automatically win.

If you want to think about it realistically, there are an infinate number of ways that they could have won. You discount the human ingenuity that the lower tech units could have had.

I think to solve this question we need to come up with some documentation.

We need some rules established to lay down the law. Some people, myself included, need to see it written down that in such and such a situation this will transpire. After that I think most people can just write it off as a part of the game and move on.

So, where is it documented on what an injured unit represents? The game shows it as a banged up unit, but is that a simple graphical aid to demonstrate that a troop/platoon/division isn't at full strength or is that a literal graphic meaning a single unit badly hurt? Where is that documented? Right now it appears arbitrary to me, or that everyone else has information that I don't have access to.

you´re spoiling some fun here. You want hiper realistic interpretation in civ but try to see it as tha game it is. Yo have a 5/40 unit that means you have power 5 of a total possible of 40, no extra bonusses when atacking so your total is 5. The long bow has power of 6 more if defending so it has the upper hand.

Move some fresh units to cover your wounded unit or retreat it and play by the game rules. There´s lots of metaphores that will cover this game situations most evident for me is unsuplied units...

I can give you this thounds of examples but you still woll find them insufficient. But as i do enjoy this i´l put just some.

English Rifflemen being destroyed sometimes by hordes of zulues in africa in the Zulu wars.
German Panzers waiting to be destroyed because they had no ammo or fuel in the II WW.
Spanish Conquistadores being sometimes beaten in south america.
Rusian army being destroyed by Taliban guerrilla in afganistan
US army being beaten in Vietnam
Sparta winning over persia in the termopilas

If you keep digging you will find more examples of weird odds in real battles and what i mean is that this things happens. Do you think a USA comander would launch into action a heavily damaged armor just because is going to fight some underarmed guerrilla?

So, where is it documented on what an injured unit represents?

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You could move to the Strategy-forum and read this great post of Arathorn.

No no no. I want the docs to back that up. Its not about spoiling fun, its about suspension of disbelief. I can ignore those type of unlikely situations as long as I know the game is behaving in a fashion consistent with its programming. That's what the documentation is for, not to ruin your fun.

HOLD ON, READING THREAD FROM ABOVE POST.....

Eigenvector said:

So, where is it documented on what an injured unit represents? The game shows it as a banged up unit, but is that a simple graphical aid to demonstrate that a troop/platoon/division isn't at full strength or is that a literal graphic meaning a single unit badly hurt? Where is that documented? Right now it appears arbitrary to me, or that everyone else has information that I don't have access to.

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From the manual, pages 40 - 41:

DETERMINING THE ODDS
Basically, if an attacker and defender have the same (modified) combat strength at the start of a battle, each has an equal chance of winning the combat. If one unit has double the strength of the other, it has a 2-1 chance of obtaining victory. And so on.

However, as discussed, a variety of things might modify a unit’s strength during a combat. Here are some of the most important:

INJURY
When a unit takes damage in battle, its combat strength is reduced until that unit “heals” (see below).

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As for in-game stuff, the graphics give an idea of damage, but if you mouseover the unit it will gove you the exact number (ie. 5/40) for their strength. If the unit is uninjured there will be no slash or second number, just the full strength number.

Another one of these threads. This is a game. Don't take it so seriousally. For game play mechanics to balance, you're going to get some strangeness now and then. The only thing I would like to see changed would be a significant gap between gunpowder units and non-gunpowder units since gunpowder was such a huge deal for warfare. Besides that though I'm alright with combat the way it is.

Eigenvector said:

No no no. I want the docs to back that up. Its not about spoiling fun, its about suspension of disbelief. I can ignore those type of unlikely situations as long as I know the game is behaving in a fashion consistent with its programming. That's what the documentation is for, not to ruin your fun.

HOLD ON, READING THREAD FROM ABOVE POST.....

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Hmmm, I guess I can live with it. Assuming that's how the battle outcome is calculated then I can get over it. I really wish gunpowder would have had a larger impact on the outcome, but since it doesn't I won't gripe no more. I guess I'll have to mod my tactics.

Eigenvector said:

Hmmm, I guess I can live with it. Assuming that's how the battle outcome is calculated then I can get over it. I really wish gunpowder would have had a larger impact on the outcome, but since it doesn't I won't gripe no more. I guess I'll have to mod my tactics.

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AFAIK the Zulu won a handful of engagements against British forces equipped wth machine guns. Their numbers were completely devastated, but they won in the end. Of course the amount of losses they took broke their back militarily.

dar: if you mean the battle of Isandlwana, that was spears vs. rifles. Pretty amazing battle indeed. But not against machine guns... that's pretty much impossible.

I think the power of machine guns, and their first strike ability, might have to be increased a bit to make sense (look at WWI, it doesn't really matter how many riflemen you charge towards machine gunners). But musketeers were never very effective, and riflemen often had to rely on bayonet charges to win a battle, so well positioned longbowmen or hordes of macemen/pikemen could very well defeat them.

zafyro said:

I can give you this thounds of examples but you still woll find them insufficient. But as i do enjoy this i´l put just some.

English Rifflemen being destroyed sometimes by hordes of zulues in africa in the Zulu wars.

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That happened once. And a week later a single company, 100 or so men, anihilated 3000 spearmen.

German Panzers waiting to be destroyed because they had no ammo or fuel in the II WW.

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what were they destroyed by ? Russian macemen running up to them and hitting them repeatedly until the armor split ?

Spanish Conquistadores being sometimes beaten in south america.

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Yah. And sometimes 100 guys conquered whole Empires

Rusian army being destroyed by Taliban guerrilla in afganistan

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Guerrillas that were armed with stinger missiles, not spears.

US army being beaten in Vietnam

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Ak-47's, not spears

Sparta winning over persia in the termopilas

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They lost. But here they fought spear on spear

ns. Do you think a USA comander would launch into action a heavily damaged armor just because is going to fight some underarmed guerrilla?

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If the underarmed guerrila is a division of British longbow men from the 13th century, whose primary tactic is to stand inline and shoot their long bows at you then yes. Because the tank will out run them and crush them, it wouldnt need any ammo.

zafyro said:

i believe that if you explain what exactly happened a reason can be found. I guess that it probably launched some catapults and that "hoard" was of more than 20 units? or might be your units had just conquered the city and were damaged?

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2 machine gunners, with 2 defense upgrades; 2 rifleman with 3 defense upgrades and an infantryman with 2 defense upgrades were ovverun by about 6 knights and about 10 macemen. In a city with a +30% defense bonus.

Ray Patterson said:

dar: if you mean the battle of Isandlwana, that was spears vs. rifles. Pretty amazing battle indeed. But not against machine guns... that's pretty much impossible.

I think the power of machine guns, and their first strike ability, might have to be increased a bit to make sense (look at WWI, it doesn't really matter how many riflemen you charge towards machine gunners). But musketeers were never very effective, and riflemen often had to rely on bayonet charges to win a battle, so well positioned longbowmen or hordes of macemen/pikemen could very well defeat them.

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Fair enough I agree that even riflemen werent that great.

But when a 11th century knight can ovverrun a division of machinegunners this is geting borderline ridiculous

Initially I had no idea why people had a problem with this. It's a game peopel! But then I did the math:

A warrior has a strength of 2.
An infantry has a strength of 20.

From what I can tell, in an unmodified battle (no promotions, no tile defence bonus, etc.) what happens is this:

The warrior has a 2 in 22 (1/11 rounded) chance of winning and the infantry has a 20 in 22 chance (10/11).

Is that right?!?!? Seems a little off even considering that it's just a game!