As promised, a Civ III combat test map

[Zouave]

I suggest everyone take Sid's crazy and stupid unit values and throw them in the trash can. Use the LWC mod on the Completed Mods Forum on this site. Although not perfect, it is much more playable and historical than Firaxis' slapped together combat values.

BTW, the entire way navies, and naval power, is treated in Civ III is even more simple-minded than Civ 2.

 

[brianboru]

Originally posted by bloodysmurf
Dan, thanks for posting the test map!

In summary: Just because you flip a coin and it turns up heads nine times in a row doesn't change the fact that your next flip has a 50/50 chance of landing heads or tails... unless, of course, the coin is weighted

-ollie-

The fact that Civ3 units have HPs (as did Civ2) should make each combat much more statistically accurate than in (say) CivI. When a spearman kills a tanks it is not a single toin coss, but a series of events one for each HP. That is why the combat results in Civ3 are very weird, worse I think than in Civ2.

My experience of this is in a seaborne invasion of Persian territory. I landed several stacks of veteran Infantry on hills. These were attacked by masses of persian veteran immortals. Each infantry was killed by between 2 and 2.5 immortals. There were enough attacks over two turns (maybe 30+) to make a good sample size and there was only minute variation in the results i.e. nearly exactly 2:1 exchange in every case.

I reloaded and tried again with larger stacks and got identical results. Eventually won by sheer numbers.

 

[Callas]

Originally posted by etj4Eagle


This is assuming that there are intrinsic "cheats" in the game that create super units. You are making a wild assumption that this is the case and therefore dismissing the test map because of that. There has yet to be any verified reporting of anything of the like occuring. As others have pointing out if you have terrible luck in taking out a certain unit, if you reload the game and try attacking a different unit you will have the same problem. Also the developers have stated that there are no special cheats for the computer in the battle code.

A wild assumption, eh? but you do not know the basis upon which I have reached my personal conclusions.

The key behaviour which leads me to think this is that *particular individual units*, across saves, across different combat orders and across turns, are extremely hard to kill.
For example; I had a veteran infantryman attacking across a river into a flood plain with an unfortified spearman (not barbarian) defending.

The spearman won, without loosing any health.

I then made a second attack, with a veteran infantryman against the same unit, this time not across a river.

The spearman won again, loosing one health.

I make the odds of this 1 in 22,222.

I then reloaded the game, and changed the order of combats prior to that event.

That *one particular spearman* again defeated a veteran infantryman. This happened consistently, upon multiple reloads and different combat orders.

I then reloaded, did not attack him that turn, played the turn and went for him two turns later.

Again, he defeated a veteran infantryman (no river, spearman unfortified, still in a flood plain).

My conclusion: the odds of *that one spearman* being so fantastically lucky across all those different permutations is far larger than the probaility of some other factor making certain units abnormally hard to defeat.

I understand the programmers have stated no biases exist. However, this means there are no biases *they are aware of*. Every major program has number of bugs, and this IMO must be one of them.

--
Callas

 

[Loopy]

Originally posted by Callas
I make the odds of this 1 in 22,222.

I then reloaded the game, and changed the order of combats prior to that event.

Actually I believe the odds work out to be roughly three times more likely than you have them to be (0.9% * 1.5%). And if that spearman that didn't move for three turns was actually fortified, it becomes a little more than 8.5 times more likely. Granted, it's not very likely, but possible.

As for reloading saves, it's not known for how many rounds combat results are saved. It's possible you weren't doing enough between turns. Post the save game if you have it, but I'm going to guess this is like all other anecdotes of unbalanced combat, and you no longer have the save game.

 

[Callas]

Originally posted by Loopy


Actually I believe the odds work out to be roughly three times more likely than you have them to be (0.9% * 1.5%). And if that spearman that didn't move for three turns was actually fortified, it becomes a little more than 8.5 times more likely. Granted, it's not very likely, but possible.

How did you reckon your odds?

Note that in the first combat, the Spearman lost no health, so you have to use the probability of that particular outcome (Elite Infantryman down to 0, Spearman unchanged at 3). In the second combat, the Vet Infantryman went from 4 to 0, with the Spearman loosing 1, so again you need to use that particular outcome.

Also, I know the bloody difference between a fortified and unfortified Spearman! he moved, but he stayed on Flood Plain.

Accordingly, I stick with my odds of 1 in 22,222.

--
Callas

 

[Hurricane]

According to the Civ combat calculator:

Vet infantryman against regular spearman, behind river in flood plains: result = spearman wins with no damage = 0.9%

Vet infantryman against regular spearman in flood plains: result = spearman wins with 1 damage = 2.6%

0.9% * 2.6% = 0.00234 %

Which is a lot higher than your 0.000045%

Anyway, neither should happen. Care to now post the savegame?

 

[Callas]

Originally posted by Hurricane
According to the Civ combat calculator:

Vet infantryman against regular spearman, behind river in flood plains: result = spearman wins with no damage = 0.9%

Vet infantryman against regular spearman in flood plains: result = spearman wins with 1 damage = 2.6%

Mistake on my part - the first infantryman was elite, the second was veteran. (I got this right in the second post, which is above).

Defender wins 0.3% in that scenario.

Also, I get 1.5% for vet infantry vs spearman in floodplains when not across river with spearman loosing one health - note only the first attack was across the river.

--
Callas

 

[Salvor]

OK so the odds were 22,222:1 and it happened.

Statistically, this should happen in one out of every 22,222 combat situations. Which is a lot more than NEVER.

How many people own Civ3? How many games do they play? How many combat situations occur in each game? A lot more than 22,222, that's for sure. So something like this happened. So what?

In a given game, I probably have about 5,000 individual combat events (I like large maps). So I would expect something like this to happen once every 4-5 games.

Also note that I'm not saying a spearman should win against an infantryman once in 4-5 games. That happens much more frequently (3-5% of the time, in situations similar to Callas'). The 22,222:1 is only if the spearman survives 2 CONSECUTIVE attacks and suffers only one point of damage, which is truly rare, but not inconcievable.

 

[macaskil]

Exactly.

Last week I won $3000 on a charity lottery. What were the odds against that?

This week I lost $2000 when a tour company went bust taking my money with it. What were the odds against that?

The way I see it I'm still up $1000 and better off than the poor guys working for the travel company.

Lighten up!

 

[Callas]

Originally posted by Salvor
The 22,222:1 is only if the spearman survives 2 CONSECUTIVE attacks and suffers only one point of damage, which is truly rare, but not inconcievable.

What is inconcievable, though, is that *the same one spearman* continues to behave in that way across diferent combat orders *and* different turns.

I reloaded several times, and re-ordered the sequence of combat; that one spearman continued to defeat infantrymen.

I then let him live, and attacked him *the next turn*. He STILL defeated infantrymen.

It's THAT which finally made me believe there is a bug or intentional behaviour here.

--
Callas

 

[Salvor]

OK, now I'm getting a better idea of what you're trying to say. Sorry if I missed it before, but it seems everyone (including you, from my perception) was way more focused on the odds than on the sequence of events.

I understand now that you changed the sequence of combat and the turn on which it occurred, and got the same results. The next thing I would ask is:

Did you change the number of attacks or just the order? For example, if you made four attacks, then attacked the spearman twice, then reloaded and did four other attacks followed by the spearman attack, the results would be the same no matter what. This is because of the saved RNG seed.

When you waited extra turns, did you also alter the number of intervening attacks? Again, due to the saved seed, if the spearman attacks came at the same point (in number of attacks made in the game), it wouldn't be surprising to see the same results.

Please don't read this as accusatory or condescending. I'm just currious to find out as many exact details of your observations as possible. Perhaps if you could attach a saved game, that would make it easier for all of us to understand what you're experiencing.

 

[Vampir226]

I think a good way to deal with the random seed issue would be to put an extra two or three workers in some location on the map. People could click on the workers and send them in different direction or have them make roads or whatever. Either way, I think this would change the seed.

 

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by Vampir226
I think a good way to deal with the random seed issue would be to put an extra two or three workers in some location on the map. People could click on the workers and send them in different direction or have them make roads or whatever. Either way, I think this would change the seed.

No, this does not change the seed. Firaxis has clearly stated that movement does not use random numbers, and neither does working. Simply because there is nothing random about it. A random number is picked from the seed only when needed.

Random numbers are sometimes used in diplomacy (not always), so the best way to use up 'bad' numbers is to bombard. I´m not sure if a random number is used if you bombard a non-imporoved tile (or a sea tile). Logically, this shouldn´t use a random number (since the bombardment always will fail as there is nothing to hit), but it could be that the random number is picked before the computer checks for possible results.

 

[David In Asia]

hi all

just browsing through this thread is making my head spin! i'm only on my second game - will there come a point in my life when all of this matters and i spend hours simulating all of those battles??!! are some of you guys programmers?

please take this post in the way it was written - lightheartedly! i'm not critisizing or making fun, i'm sure it's thanks to guys like you that we get better games/patches etc - it just intrigues me that some of you can be so much into a game.

keep it up.....i'll let you know when i return here to download dans game and, well, that will be the beginning of the end!

 

[explodin dog]

in response to dan's post about it not being able to be done:
i just got the idea that you COULD change all the units in the game so they have NO prerequiste and NO need for any resources. then change the number of shields they need to 0 or 1, start out both players with HELLA MONEY, so they can hurry production, start both out as democracies, etc.

hope this can help you somehow

 

[Offa]

Well I stumbled on this entertaining thread 2 years late. I read through hoping to find the final answer about whether the PRNG is streaky, and....

Well, is it?

Moderator Action: You could have made a new thread rather than bump an old one. Thread closed.
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