Game Appears to Cheat

[Danlo]

I have been playing Civilisation since the very first one came out and have been hooked.

Every version has just got better and better until Warlords came out.

Now mostly I think that Warlords has added some great things - but the tweaking of the game has led to some very weird things to happen that make the game look like it cheats.

This is only in single player mind you:

I've had barbarians appear with technically superior weapons to anything anyone else has;

barbarians winning the a battle with full health when they have less than 1% chance of winning (I even went back saved the game before the battle commenced and reloaded each time - 14 times in a row the barbarians won before I got fed up and started a fresh game).

Now I wont go into combat with anyone barbarians or other civ's unless I have at least 75% or over (preferably 90%) or I know I will loose, and 19 out 20 times I will loose.

I have seen an archer until kill a tank and the archer came out with full health: how is this even remotely possible.

Tonight I had barbarian units moving twice the speed they should have and appearing in my cultural borders without moving there.

Its very frustrating and I can't see the reason for the game to be tweaked like this.

Anyone else having similar annoying problems like this?

[drkodos]

Originally Posted by Danlo

Tonight I had barbarian units moving twice the speed they should have and appearing in my cultural borders without moving there.

Pass the dutchie on the left hand side, please.

[sirford]

Originally Posted by Danlo

barbarians winning the a battle with full health when they have less than 1% chance of winning (I even went back saved the game before the battle commenced and reloaded each time - 14 times in a row the barbarians won before I got fed up and started a fresh game).

thats because the game uses the same random numbers for a seed. Unless you made a custom game and told it to load new seeds upon loading, you could load your game 50000000 times and you'd still lose every single time.

[Stylesjl]

Archers can win against a tank if it is really badly damaged

(Example is if the tank is at 0.2 strength then the archer at full health without promotions has a 100% chance of winning)

[Charles 22]

I will tell you one bit of cheating I have seen a number of times, and it seems like it happens mostly to barb axemen. You attack them turn one and your unit dies and the axemen graphically show one man left. Next turn they move and somehow they got their health raised and two men appear. I believe I have seen this on some barb attacks as well.

[Dnomal]

When you get a promotion u regain health, that would explain it.

[cymru_man]

Originally Posted by Danlo

I've had barbarians appear with technically superior weapons to anything anyone else has;

I'd be surprised. Maybe superior to what you personally have (because you are backward or avoided BW) , or you simply don't have the resources required to build these units.(axes/swords).

Originally Posted by Danlo

barbarians winning the a battle with full health when they have less than 1% chance of winning (I even went back saved the game before the battle commenced and reloaded each time - 14 times in a row the barbarians won before I got fed up and started a fresh game).

The game uses the same random seed each time - so unless you checked the option when you started the game (new random seed on reload) then the result of the battle will never change unless the circumstances change. This is not the AI cheating, but a simple way to make human "cheating" (by reloading) harder. They may have only had a 1% chance of winning, but 1% chances happen 1 every 100 times. =)

Originally Posted by Danlo

Now I wont go into combat with anyone barbarians or other civ's unless I have at least 75% or over (preferably 90%) or I know I will loose, and 19 out 20 times I will loose.

The battle odds have been shown to be accurate. It's just your memory.

Originally Posted by Danlo

I have seen an archer until kill a tank and the archer came out with full health: how is this even remotely possible.

As has been said, if the tank was damaged and the archer was sitting in a city on a hill..

Originally Posted by Danlo

Tonight I had barbarian units moving twice the speed they should have and appearing in my cultural borders without moving there.

Woodsman II or Guerrilla II give double movement over forests or hills respectively. I haven't seen barbs take these promotions, but it's possible. Or maybe you just weren't paying attention

The game isn't cheating, but you might be misunderstanding how it works.

[asabahi]

I am positive the game is not cheating. You should not attack a archer or longbowmen with a tank with 0.2 strength. You should move the tank into a safe area to heal. The games odds are correct. 65, 75, or even 99.9% does not mean you have a 100% chance of winning. The law of large numbers apply here. It can be frustrating but that is what makes the game fun, you have to adapt.

[Boodler]

There is one more thing that really annoys me in combat: The strength my units lose when I win a battle with 90+ % chance of winning (not sure about the odds, but something like a pikeman vs. horse archer). I wouldn't mind if - in the mentioned case - my pikeman's strength went down from 6 to 5.5 or 5 maybe even 4. But when I frequently see the combat strength dropping to figures like 2.1, 0.8, 1.3 etc; in such situations, it really kills the fun of the game.
Let me go further.
Maybe I would accept these high margin drops if it happened to AI troops as well. But it doesn't. Enemy troops lose a reasonable amount of strength when they win, an amount to what you (I) would say: "Yes, there are always casualties, I counted with it." But when the table turns, and I'm attacking, it is a totally different story. Again, it is the frequency I experience these unlikely strength drops in combats with almost obvious results that really bothers me.

Anyone can comment if this is normal or are there ways to avoid the mentioned situation ?

Edit: Just realized this is the Warlord forum. These results happened in the basic Civ 4, but I doubt Warlord combats are much different.

[Stolen Rutters]

Originally Posted by Boodler

There is one more thing that really annoys me in combat: The strength my units lose when I win a battle with 90+ % chance of winning (not sure about the odds, but something like a pikeman vs. horse archer). I wouldn't mind if - in the mentioned case - my pikeman's strength went down from 6 to 5.5 or 5 maybe even 4. But when I frequently see the combat strength dropping to figures like 2.1, 0.8, 1.3 etc; in such situations, it really kills the fun of the game.
Let me go further.
Maybe I would accept these high margin drops if it happened to AI troops as well. But it doesn't. Enemy troops lose a reasonable amount of strength when they win, an amount to what you (I) would say: "Yes, there are always casualties, I counted with it." But when the table turns, and I'm attacking, it is a totally different story. Again, it is the frequency I experience these unlikely strength drops in combats with almost obvious results that really bothers me.

First strike means you do more damage in combat, win or lose. That's the only thing I can think of. Archers and Longbowmen are common in AI armies. Do horse archers have first strike (Drill)? Can't remember.

edit - no they don't. I don't know what's up then. I have had attacks where I take the enemy down to 0.1-0.5 alot when I only dropped a little. I don't really know the combat rules in that case.

[Meatbuster]

90% means you win 90% of the time, not "you will be damaged less 90% of the time". That 90% win ratio could be like:
20% - your unit wins battle with low life
30% - your unit wins battle with medium life
40% - your unit rolls over the enemy
5% - your enemy wins battle but almost dead
3% - your enemy wins battle with moderate life
2% - your enemy rolls over your unit

Just an example.

[ezwip]

I feel ya. Once I finally get that level II Jungle Forest Upgrade on my Scout he gets bit by a lion that he used to kill with ease. I run from the barbs. Get yourself the great wall right away, and end the drama.

The game does cheat though. Bismarks battleship cut right through the continent and right through my capital last night, on land, and appeared on the other side of the map, where he commenced to barrage my shipyard. He must have skipped about 8 turns with that shortcut. I haven't upgraded though maybe it's an old glitch.

[Stylesrj]

Enemy ships cheat. I had a set of fishing boats two tiles away from a galley, The Galley had 2 movement points. It moved those spaces and on the same turn after running out of movement, it pillaged my fishing boats, even though it was out of movement points (it had no promotions, and I circled the globe first) and it pillaged my improvment. As a revenge attack, I got my caravel around and sunk the cheating ship. So how does a ship with 2 movement points move two tiles and pillage an improvement? Don't tell me the fishing boats were one tile away or the ship had a navigation promotion, I was attacking the English, not Vikings!

[Meatbuster]

Well I don't know, the likely answer is still "the ship had a (hidden) navigation promotion". Anyone can get navigation 1, it's only 2 (hidden) promotions away.

[Charles 22]

Originally Posted by Dnomal

When you get a promotion u regain health, that would explain it.

Yeah, I didn't think about that. The barbs lose so often to my attacks and are so often un-promoted, that I never think to look at their promotions before or after something like that happens.

[Stylesrj]

The ship didn't have a single promotion. It never had a Drydock (he was in the Classical Age, unless Drydocks are built then which they are not) and his ship never was in combat until my Caravel sunk it. No hidden promotion, nothing. Blatant cheating I tells you!

[Charles 22]

I don't think this falls into the auspices of cheating, but I don't feel like starting a whole thread on it, and it is intriguing nonetheless.

This is what happened. I had my capital with 2 great generals adding experience to new units, such that they come out with 11 total points. I had a catapult that was created before the secong GG, which probably was created somewhere else, nonetheless only had two promotions at the time of using him. I used him first against a stack that was fairly daunting, the best of which were knights. HE attacked with .04 odds and WON!!!! But as strange as that seems that wasn't the weird bit.

The next turn comes along and he comes up for promotion, except he was up for TWO PROMOTIONS. Mind you, I use promotions immediately, so it's not like they were saved up; of that I am certain. So how did he get two at one time? Did his fighting whilst in the a city with two GG's (not active GG's as I described earlier) give units with a promotion a second one? Or did his winning after such ridiculous odds give him like 10 expierence points? I did see a unit earlier in the game, in open terrain unassociated with a GG get 3 exp pts. and I know that's a pretty rare occurrence (rare enough that I had not seen one before that time). I wonder how that catapult got promoted twice like that. None of the other attackers, and there were many, got the oppurtunity to hit a promotion after their fights. It's very rarely I will have battles for the capital with GG's providing intrinsic experience to "new" units, so maybe thsi isn't so odd. What do you guys think?

[Jaybe]

@Charles
A catapult with 2 promos has from 5 to 9 XP. Going to 17 XP is not hard to imagine, as I've seen 8 XP gained from a single combat from a situation similar to yours.

[Charles 22]

Originally Posted by Jaybe

@Charles
A catapult with 2 promos has from 5 to 9 XP. Going to 17 XP is not hard to imagine, as I've seen 8 XP gained from a single combat from a situation similar to yours.

Ah, okay thanks, but that certainly was radical. Good to know they are actually being promoted on the basis of the difficulty of their battles. I used to think they were always just getting 1-2pts. irrespective of the difficulty. Too bad that happened to a catapult as it's doomed to die at the artillery stage if not earlier .