why oh why do my great general defend?!

Me: city raider3 drill3 general rifleman
pretected by tons of guerrilia2 rileman.

AI attacks with grenadier, and my great generl died in defense! my combat odd was less than 50%. Shouldn't my guerrilia2 rileman be defending? They would have 80% combat odd.

On a more general question, any pointer to a guide on how do AI choose defenders?

for some odd reason it likes the 1st strikes. there was a topic about that recently. Are sure everyone was full health?

GG's should never defend, IMO. I'd patch that, if it was me. That is, not until they're the last unit standing.

I've lost a number of them that way, and pretty sure it was a deliberate move on the AI's part. It'd send out a single unit against my SOD, with the only result being I'd lose my General, because of course the rest of the SOD would annhilate the attacker next turn.

The units who defend is always the one with the best odds. I do not know the situation, but the GG unit was unfortunately the unit with the best chances to defend.

JujuLautre said:

The units who defend is always the one with the best odds.

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Not necessarily. Many times I've had my Drill 4 Rifles defending against Flanking 2 Cavalries when I had a full health Combat 2 Formation Rifle in the same tile. I guess that it has to do more with experience or something. But I don't know the exact mechanic.

If you don't have a significant tech lead, it's a good idea to use a Warrior or other low strength unit for the medic general, for this very reason. For the same reason I almost never use CR generals. Settling just seems to work out better usually.

Yeah this should go on the suggestion list for CivV. The ability to assign 'non-defenders'. Just some way to click a unit in a stack and mark them as a non-defense unit - which would chose them last if the tile was being attacked. Nothing worse than bringing a stack of 10 axemen and 3 cats to a battle and have 3 defenders pop out of a city and kill your 3 cats because they are the ones that the AI has selected to fight.

Ignorant Teacher said:

Not necessarily. Many times I've had my Drill 4 Rifles defending against Flanking 2 Cavalries when I had a full health Combat 2 Formation Rifle in the same tile. I guess that it has to do more with experience or something. But I don't know the exact mechanic.

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To be honest I'm sceptic. I'd like to see that if you cross this kind of occasion in your games

There should be a "choose defender" option. So instead of it being chosen for you, you choose who it is. It would usually be an unneeded step of micromanagement but I think when you have a great general it would be worth turning on.

I rarely use my GGs for super units for this reason. They just get killed in stupid ways.

JujuLautre said:

To be honest I'm sceptic. I'd like to see that if you cross this kind of occasion in your games

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You're right. I ran a test in WB and the Drill Rifle will only defend if the Cavalry doesn't have Flanking 2. I remember having situations where the chosen defender wasn't the best one, though. I've just thought of seeing how it goes when the units are injured. I'll edit this later to report the results.

I couldn't get a screenshot because I found out that, when you hold ALT, you get a high res screenshot and not a regular one. As I need to hold ALT to see the combat odds...

Ignorant Teacher said:

Many times I've had my Drill 4 Rifles defending against Flanking 2 Cavalries when I had a full health Combat 2 Formation Rifle in the same tile.

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A Drill 4 unit is much powerful than one with Combat 2. You don't see the First Stike ability in the combat odds, which makes it seem like they weaker. But they're not. By the time the attacking unit gets past those first stikes, they're usually so weak they're easy pickings. In the case of the OP, his Drill 3 General was definitely more powerful than a Guerilla 2 unit. Especially if they were on flat land, which he never mentioned. Guerilla only adds a bonus when they're on a Hill.

Oddible said:

Nothing worse than bringing a stack of 10 axemen and 3 cats to a battle and have 3 defenders pop out of a city and kill your 3 cats because they are the ones that the AI has selected to fight.

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That's not how it works. You or the AI can't just choose which units to attack, they always go against the one who has the best chance of winning against them. If they're going after the Cats before the Axemen than it means your Axemen are wounded.

Explorers/scouts are even better than warriors for the medic generals.

DementedAvenger said:

Explorers/scouts are even better than warriors for the medic generals.

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Except you can never upgrade them to be able to fight and get WM3&M3 on the same dude

Willem said:

A Drill 4 unit is much powerful than one with Combat 2. You don't see the First Stike ability in the combat odds, which makes it seem like they weaker. But they're not. By the time the attacking unit gets past those first stikes, they're usually so weak they're easy pickings. In the case of the OP, his Drill 3 General was definitely more powerful than a Guerilla 2 unit. Especially if they were on flat land, which he never mentioned. Guerilla only adds a bonus when they're on a Hill.

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I agree with you. In the test I ran, the Drill Rifle would always defend, except when the Cavalry had Flanking II (which gives immunity to first strikes). My first post didn't state a fact, only an impression I had. I did some tests in WB and saw that, at least in this case, the strongest defender would always defend. I too like Dril IV very much. The only problem is that I don't like Drill 1-3 at all so I usually only have Drill 4 units when protective.

Regarding the case with the OP, if they were on a hill and he had a Guerilla 2 Rifle, I think he would have had better odds than a Drill 3 unit. I haven't tested it, though, so I may be wrong. Was there any previous siege attack?

JujuLautre said:

To be honest I'm sceptic. I'd like to see that if you cross this kind of occasion in your games

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DanF5771 posted a drill IV, flanking II ironclad defending instead of a destroyer against an attacking destroyer with drill IV. If the destroyer were to defend, the odds were close to 50%. The ironclad had < 20% odds.

By the way, first strikes ARE factored into combat odds and have been for some time...that was more a vanilla problem (early on).

The game adds a flat value for first strikes (and half of that for first strike chances), and this can easily make it defend with guys who have markedly worse odds.

@OP: The reason that great generals defend is bad coding. That high combat and CR great generals defend instead of alternatives is a programming judgment error - these units are far more valuable than other units and won't have much better odds. The game should not defend with them.

If the game (properly) allows caravels to defend loaded galleons, it can (and should) allow other units to defend ahead of generals. But it doesn't, which limits great generals to super medics or specialized units like high combat + march + blitz mounted (which still won't tend to defend on most terrain or vs most units). I wish the game treated this better, because other than the medic settling seems far and away the obvious choice...and it shouldn't be like that, there should be more situations where either is a valid choice depending on what you want to do.

That's not how it works. You or the AI can't just choose which units to attack, they always go against the one who has the best chance of winning against them. If they're going after the Cats before the Axemen than it means your Axemen are wounded.

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Without any spears in the stack, chariots would target the cats directly. With charge, they'd even have winning odds. HAs get a bonus vs cats and therefore would draw the axes first (though very favorably with shock).

btw drill 4 has bonus against mounts to make the things worse

As I understand it, there is another hidden mechanic at play. That if there are multiple units of the same strength in a stack, the one with the most experience points fights first. This is good when we're talking about city defenders fending off barbs, it concentrates the experience and leads to promotions. On the other hand attatched GGs tend to have lots of experience, they get called upon more often than we intend.

TheMeInTeam said:

DanF5771 posted a drill IV, flanking II ironclad defending instead of a destroyer against an attacking destroyer with drill IV. If the destroyer were to defend, the odds were close to 50%. The ironclad had < 20% odds.

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Have a link ? Would be instructive to see that

JujuLautre said:

Have a link ? Would be instructive to see that

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It's on this thread. More specifically, this post.