What determines strongest unit for defense?

I am completely baffled. I thought that spear/pike countered cav, crossbow countered axe/sword, etc etc. But it appears that all has changed with Warlords.

I have noticed on 3 separate occasions the AI attack my stack and the unit I would have thought defended did not. The first time I thought I just watched it wrong. But the next two...

1. maceman (one strength promotion) dug into city maxed out for number turns for entrench bonus allowed. I put in a wounded knight (had 2 promotions) to recover. An enemy horse archer came up and attacked and my wounded knight defended, and died of course.

2. a wounded maceman (3 city attack promotions) in stack with crossbow, 2 pike, 1 knight and couple other hurt maceman. A horse archer came up and attacked the stack and yup...my hurt maceman with the most promotions defended and died.

WTH is going on? I thought strength was determined stricktly by value and promotion modifiers. Does a promotion by itself (does not matter which one) somehow add a "strength" value? That is the only denominator I can see as why the "wrong" unit defended.

Or is it the AI says something gets to die regardless of values, and the most valuable unit gets to die for it and attacks .... GRRRRR!

The defender with the best combat odds is chosen. Strength, promotions, and fortification bonuses all contribute to odds.

Well both of those involved Horse Archers... maybe they added something to Horse Archers and didn't tell us (X% chance of attacking Weakest in stack)

I belive that the strongest unit with promotions and bonuses gets the defence. The knight was strongest as it's 10 healthy, I don't think they factor in damage.
You just got unlucky. I would always build pikes if the enemy has horse archers.

He Had pikeman in the second stack, and amount of damage Should be considered.

Either there is a bug, or they tweaked something about HA deliberately and didn't tell us.

Have you reported this in Bugs Rachetguy?

In your example #1 it could be that the wounded knight still had better chances of defending than your maceman. All depends on the strength still available to the knight. One thing they changed with the last patch is how reduced strength affects combat odds.

#2 is really strange on the other hand. Must be a bug or "feature".

Greetings,

Rince

The unit with the best ODDS of winning ALWAYS defends first - in the heat of battle it is human to err and take it personally!

If you think about it, your most exp/promoted unit will prbably have the most likely best odds to survive - even if he probably won't!!!

Well Maceman with Fortified 1 Strength in a City v. a HA=
8+10% str +10% City penalty for HA +25% fortif =11.6

A Knights two best promotions defending against a HA are Combat so
10+20% str +10% City penalty for HA =13
IF the Knight was healthy... if it is any more damaged than 10% it is the worse defender

(if the HA had Shock this might change, so lets say its a N.Cav. with Shock)
Knight=same (13 if Healthy)
Maceman=8 +45% (above) -75% (anti bonuses)= 8/(1+30%)=~6.15

So if that was a Numbidian Cavalry with Shock, and the Knight was only Partially damaged (>50% health) it would defend


The second one there is no way to explain (unless the pikeman were hurn much more than the macemen)

One final option, is if these were multi-civ stacks... If the HA civ was at war with Rachet guy, but Not with the Civ owning the Other units, then they Would just bypass the other units to get at you.

There might also be something wierd if this is one of the 'continuous/ simultaneous turns' options for multiplayer

Any detail on those options Rachetguy

There was no other civs in the stack. All my guys alone in a tile.

Ref the Knight taken out on me.. he was barely alive at 10% health... died with one poke in the eye.

It was the stack with the pikeman that prompted this post. Flustered as I was I did not think about a screen shot.

Well I would Definitely post this on the Bugs Forum... Firaxis needs to know this (or at least they need to know that they should have Told us if Horse Archers get some neat new special ability... which seems the only remaining 'non-bug' explanation... well to be fair you Could be lying. but I think the first two possibilities need to get mentioned to people who can do something about it.

I'm sure theres a genuine bug here. I've had similar things happen far too many times. Sometimes it seems the combat calculator doesn't see modifiers, and just selects the unit with the highest base value to defend.

I have noticed this too. If a crossbowman attacks, my maceman is chosen to defend even if I have other promoted troops that is there to protect my macemen from crossbowmen. I think that the base value decides, not the odds to win the fight. It is different from the core version. I play a lot of multiplayer duels with friends and have had a lot of experience with this annoying change.

Agree here. Hope they look into this for next patch.

There has not been any change in defender selection in Warlords
Next time something obviously wrong happens, could you please post a save here?

generic civ has the first strike calculation bug
-if the archer or your knight had a good amount of first strikes then this causes bad odds to be calculated

one other point of note involves defending siege weaponry...

my first game with warlords was with korea, so obviously I construction rushed to play with my new "toy".

even with the +50% vs melee ( attacking and defending ), I had stacks with 1 spear and 1 hwacha, both full strength where the spear defends vs an axe or swordsman...and sworsman/hwacha stacks where the swordsman defends vs an axeman, where in both cases the other order would be highly beneficial...

I don't know about the horse archer issue, but siege weaponry seems to be pushed to the last line of defense ( not that this doen't make sense )

joe

alexman said:

There has not been any change in defender selection in Warlords
Next time something obviously wrong happens, could you please post a save here?

Click to expand...

Hi,

I was reading this thread and now I'm sure that my eyes are not fooling me. The defender selection is not correct and it's making the defence weaker. I noticed the things that are described here but I also saw the same defending units defend two times in a row and die (was several times obvious because it was a great general unit), while there were fully healthy and better defenders in the city or on the tile (it also happens when you are attacked on a tile).
I don't know whether this problem also exists in the original Civ4, I never noticed it there but that's possible because until now I played Alexander the Great in Warlords and that scenario is one big war.

To prove the problem you have to post two saves I guess, one before and one after the attack?

The siege weapons defending last is a known issue since before Warlords (and is working as designed), but it will be removed for the patch.

It is also true that first stikes will throw off the claculation for the best defender, but this is not new to Warlords either.

Again, if you have a save of any other situation than the two cases above where you thing the wrong unit is defending, please post it here. Just before the attack is all we need.

alexman said:

Again, if you have a save of any other situation than the two cases above where you thing the wrong unit is defending, please post it here. Just before the attack is all we need.

Click to expand...

Hi,

Of course when you want the problem to occur it won't but during testing I noticed some other obscure things that I wanted to show you. The problems are different from the ones discussed in this thread but I hope it's allright I hand them over to you here.

The savegame is at the end of my turn. The AI (Egypt) then attacks Tyre and the tile next to Tyre after I end my turn.
In Tyre 3 catapults attack and cause collatoral damage to four units, one catapult bombards the city. After the AI-turn only one Swordman is slightly damaged, I think at least 4 units should be damaged by the 3 catapults.
In the tile next to Tyre there are 7 attacks from war elephants, 2 phalanxes, 3 swordsmen and 2 hyspastists are killed. But when you look at the results only 2 phalanxes, 3 swordsmen and 1 hyspastist are killed (one is still in perfect condition).

I'll keep trying to get a savegame of the defender problem.

Was the injured knight sharing square with pikemen:

(a) healing
(b) sentry
(c) fortified
(d) none of above?