A Bitter Protest

Hello everyone,

I have been a Civ fanatic almost half my adult life and an ardent follower and buyer of all Civ games and expansions...

But I have to admit that nothing had prepared me for the disappointment Bts has been - to the point where I am actually thinking uninstalling it and never having to deal with it again...

Is it my impression or have the game designers deliberately weighed the odds in combat against the human player?

I mean, regardless what I do, how advanced my units are or whatever it seems that the opponent has the edge to the point that the game is no fun anymore...

Recent example: It is 1700AD and I am at war with Aztecs. After amassing approximately 8 Cuirassiers, 10 melee and ranged units (musketmen, macemen, pikemen ) plus 5 trebuchets, I decided to attack an Aztec city with 2 musketmen and 1 pikeman (20% defenses - no wall).

It became so ridiculous I gave up as even after reducing the defenses to 0 for every musketman I lost about 1 1/2 cuirassiers but still I took over the city...

The 'fun' began when the Aztecs counterattacked... Oh, how much lovely it was looking at enemy war elephants crushing my cuirassiers like M1 Arbams against medieval knights!

And the best part about it was that there was no logic in the defense as the game AI was stacking my units defensively in such an arbitrary way, it became ridiculously biased.

So, what is the game strategy with war in BtS? Apparently stack'em as high as they go for losses are a standard of 50% regardless of tech advancements?

Thanks but no thanks

Oh great, another one of those.
The combat system is completely transparent, all the numbers are there for you to look at and if you continually don't succeed against the AI in combat then you are using the wrong units/tactics. Read the manual and the Civipedia (especially not the unit's values and bonuses) and try again.

The computer always lets the strongest unit in a stack defend (no matter if it's you defending or the AI). Strongest vs. the specific attacker, that is.

Oh, and just for the record: There is no advantage for the AI in combat vs the human. Neither defensive nor offensive. At no difficulty level. Never.

Todd Hawks said:

Oh great, another one of those.
The combat system is completely transparent, all the numbers are there for you to look at...

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Hm... Well, we see odds, but not results. Not exactly "transparent".

Todd Hawks said:

Oh great, another one of those.
The combat system is completely transparent, all the numbers are there for you to look at and if you continually don't succeed against the AI in combat then you are using the wrong units/tactics. Read the manual and the Civipedia (especially not the unit's values and bonuses) and try again.

The computer always lets the strongest unit in a stack defend (no matter if it's you defending or the AI). Strongest vs. the specific attacker, that is.

Oh, and just for the record: There is no advantage for the AI in combat vs the human. Neither defensive nor offensive. At no difficulty level. Never.

Click to expand...

You are probably right...

On the other hand, 4 Cavalry Units against a city with 0% defense and one rifleman and at the end of the day only one cav unit remaining is a little excessive in my - one of 'those' as you like to call it - way of thinking...

Hmmm where's that icon?

A thread to check out for you! http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=255572

On the other hand, 4 Cavalry Units against a city with 0% defense and one rifleman and at the end of the day only one cav unit remaining is a little excessive in my - one of 'those' as you like to call it - way of thinking...

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I understand that a lot of people are having problems with the combat system in CIV IV BTS, but honestly I don't see it. I think I've been on the loosing end of a war once since playing BTS, and that was for only a couple rounds. However to say that loosing that many cavalry against rifleman is excessive, really in my opinion is not that excessive. Granted the numbers say it should be less, but that's where the risk factor comes into play. For example at the real Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon's cavalry forces were completly destroyed by a smaller British rifleman company.

If these combat problems are such a big deal to many, play at a lower difficulty level. Noone needs to know that you went down a notch. Just reasses your warmongering, and try and improve on it. I wouldn't abandon CIV IV esspecially after investing so much time and money into the franchise.

It's like I say, don't use fifty when fifteen will do... use one hundred and fifty, and watch the world burn under your flag!!!

Oh, a thought - remember war elephants get a big bonus vs mounted units, so they're SUPPOSED to tear through mounted units. Elephants are, what, strength 8? Can't remember if it's 50% or 100% bonus vs mounted, but either way you're looking at 12 or 16 str units against your guys - that's a tough fight to win, especially in a city probably in unrest (so no culture bonus) and since mounted units don't get any other defensive bonuses (terrain/fortification).

with that said, I've had runs that make me believe the computer's not playing fair - but last few games I had the opposite, several wins with poor odds... guess what comes around goes around...

Although I can appreciate what you mean (after losing multiple consecutive battles with 60-70% odds in my last game), I'm inclined to believe that it is, in fact, rotten luck and not any sort of biased system that hands victories over to the AI.

It's called a statistical fluctuation. People post these threads all the time after one incident where something bad happened to their stack of doom. And interestingly, they never post "Hey I captured the enemy city when I was so underpowered... the game mechanics must be broken". Somehow, they always manage to forget when they captured that city at 10% odds. When the same thing happens in favor of the AI, well they must be cheating!

Cuirassiers will have trouble against Elephant units. Elephant units have advantage against mounted of 50%. Why are you using Cuirassiers as your primary defense unit in a city? That is stupid. also, if you have trebuchet, why did you attack with Cuirassier first? I think it is obvious that the combat system is not flawed, but your stupid attack strategy. Before you complain about BTS, read a few combat threads and learn how to play.

Basic rule: unless you have other reasons to not do so, always attack with the siege units first, to pre-damage multiple defenders with collateral damage. It pushes your odds of victory way up. That way, the only units of mine that tend to see less than 85% odds are the catapults and trebuchets. All my other units just get promoted, and promoted, and promoted, 1 to 2 XP at a time. (Well, I will lose one, every once in awhile, but I was amazed at how my combat log changed when I started using collateral damage to my advantage.)

Was the city on a hill?

Did the defenders have fortification bonus, and promotions?

Your strength 12 Courassiers could easily have been going up against strength ~18 Musketmen. Add in some luck going the defenders' way this time, and your attack gets decimated.

You can view the odds and play-by-play of each individual encounter in the combat log.

One thing the nasty early "Barbarian uprising" event showed me was the bad luck cuts both ways--one time, a lone warrior beat off two barb spearmen to save my capital and game.

Event Horizon said:

Hm... Well, we see odds, but not results. Not exactly "transparent".

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You see exact results based on the odds.

20% chance to win = you have a 20% chance to win!

Losing 5 80% win chances in a row = a 0.2^5=0.032% chance to lose... that happened, no less

In fact, unless you do an extensive Worldbuilder test (and people have done so, finding no anomalies whatsoever*) that includes numerous tries, and thus show that the odds were actually wrong, then there's nothing to complain about, really...

Show me proof of you losing 5 battles in a row with 80% chance to win each, and I'll tell you "wow! You must have been unlucky, there's only a 0.032% chance of that happening!".

Defiant47 said:

Show me proof of you losing 5 battles in a row with 80% chance to win each, and I'll tell you "wow! You must have been unlucky, there's only a 0.032% chance of that happening!".

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Of course, if he fights 5 battles 1000 times, there's a 27.3% chance he'll lose all 5 battles in at least one of those trials!

(Or, if a thousand people each try one set of 5 such battles, there's a 27.3% chance at least one of them will have 5 losses)

MyOtherName said:

Of course, if he fights 5 battles 1000 times, there's a 27.3% chance he'll lose all 5 battles in at least one of those trials!

(Or, if a thousand people each try one set of 5 such battles, there's a 27.3% chance at least one of them will have 5 losses)

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True, but I was more thinking along the lines of... dammit, you're too right! I've managed to type up and erase an excuse about 3 or 4 times, but yeah, you're right (trusting in your math).

Popmaniac said:

You are probably right...

On the other hand, 4 Cavalry Units against a city with 0% defense and one rifleman and at the end of the day only one cav unit remaining is a little excessive in my - one of 'those' as you like to call it - way of thinking...

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Rifles (14) have 25% bonus vs mounted dont they? That's better than the 15 of cavs already. Fortification bonus? Terrain bonus? And on top of that, maybe a city defender promo or 2.

Decent battle results, i'd think.

I don't think we should be flaming the OP, like some people seem to be doing. I don't think he totally understands the fighting mechanics.

Like everyone else has said, the AI recieves no numerical advantage over the human. Their is a reason for everything, and sometimes it just comes down to bad luck

- A pike in the stack of curriasers would have stopped those phants.
- A city once taken is always vulnerable. Better to take a city on as hill if you have Monty around, (and bring the pikes)
-Monty always has big stacks. Better to let him come to you and waste his stacks on your defence units on a forested hill. Then attack that city.

First of all, indeed I thank you all for your posts.

Second, it was never my desire to flame - if I did attribute this to some exasperation.

Like mentioned before, I am no Civ newbie - or at least I'd like to think so (perhaps some members here will agree to my last part!)...

Having written all that, I must stress that I never encountered such difficulties with other versions of Civ4 (or obviously older versions).

Now, maybe that was the original intent of BtS - i.e. to make it a more combat-oriented version of Civ4, but I still fail to see the logic with many battles.

Incidentally, you are right about the Elephants (on the other hand War Elephants vs Mounted gunpowder units? Hmmm) - but still there are quite a few issues remaining that just cannot get the 'game bias' view out of my mind. Especially when enemy units attack a stack of my own. (Enemy Cuirassiers wiping out my Cavalry on first assault? Hmmm again!)

Still, I'll keep on BtS for a while and give a more overall assessment...

Damn, if it weren't for those Corporations I would have never installed it in the first place!

Not trying to be mean, but I really don't see what "logic" in BtS is so hard to understand.

1. Elephants are the counter units of mounted units, so definitely your stack of cuirrasers will get decimated. This is logical.
2. In my experience the AI might have some bonuses here and there, but their units won't suddenly popped up out of no where, so in other words those elephants are already there before your attack. It's your problem that you didn't spy to know they existed and put in a couple of pikes to protect your stack.
3. You likely did not use trebs to attack the city defenders. I believe you try to save them but this is not how seige weapons are supposed to use in Civ 4, and I fail to see why this is something special in BtS since in vanilla and Warlord seige weapons are even more commonly used for bombing the city defender.
4. Montzy are well known to build tons of units. What's so new?