Do I misunderstand the combat system?

[2metraninja]

1. Drill promotions. I assume that these are simply not factored in to the winning percentage... e.g. that a badly wounded Drill IV infantry will stand a much better chance of defeating that last defending full-health catapult than the odds would suggest.

I though it is the opposite - it will give you higher than the real chances when drills are involved. But I might be wrong. I like and use drill promotions very much regardless

2. Two-movement terrain modifications. Let's say that you're HA rushing a city from two tiles away. You're presented with 75% odds, but once you move next to the city you have to cross a river. The game won't provide you with the modified odds, although it does factor in the defense bonus should you choose to attack.

This was something I considered a bug till very recently - that you can avoid a river penalty if attacking across a river if it does not show in the chances. Then someone pointed me this and I checked the combat log, where it clearly shows that the amphibious penalty is added. And I was like: "WTF, till now I attacked each time and had good ratio of wins" It is Fortuna Favet Fortibus or the fore-mentioned "miraculous 5 consecutive wins @ 5%"

I think the biggest single problem with battle percentage odds are that they are shown at all. I dont remember having those in Civ1, 2 or 3. Back then you needed to know what unit can or cant win given fight and use this knowledge. Giving hard calculated percentages spoils the magic a bit for me

 

[vicawoo]

It's about the same thing with RNG as with Democracy - it's a bad system, but the best system we have for the game.



Picking that up as it's actually very interesting - i do remember that there was something with the promotions that made it actually better for the attacker to chose combat if he's attacking a very weak unit, as CR weakens the defender and does not strengthen the attacker ->

Praet vs. Archer non-fortified in a city

Combat 1: 8.8 strength, 0.8 strength gained relative to the archer
CR1: -20% for the Archer (so it's not 3 * 1.5 combat strength for him but 3 * 1.3) -> 0.6 strength gained for the praet relative to the archer

BUT that's only useful if you're only fighting very weak units like said archers, if you're fighting vs. Axes or LBs, CR becomes much better again. At least when attacking cities, ofc

Read it here @ "Defender's modified strength": http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/combat_explained.php

Your example could be true if the Archer's already damaged.

The relative strength is irrelevant, it's the defensive modifier that matters.

 

[Handel]

About CR and archers - checking the combat log shows the CR and CG promotions negate each other. And negating 25% from 3 strength reduces much less then negating 25% from 6 (or 8 for prets and macemen). But the archer retains its other bonuses like fortify and city defence and hills (if any) and if there are no catapults to reduce the defense the archer actually becomes stronger then the swordman.

Edit: Just before seconds a negligent move from my side left a chariot pants down and an enemy swordsman lost the attack with 95.9% chance to win. But the AI had a spearman too and instead of it used a swordsman so apparently the AI not always uses units with the best chances to win.

 

[pigswill]

My understanding of such things is limited. It appears that AI tends to go for highest base strength when deciding which unit goes first, among units of equal strength AI goes for highest xp/most promotions. Thus the AI is likely to attack a chariot with a CR3 sword instead of a C2 spear. I could be wrong on this however.

 

[Larwin]

So winning a game through conquest is mostly strings of good random numbers?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I flip a coin 100 times. I win 50 times. I lose 50 times. Therefore I've lost 50% x 50 = 2500%. This is absurd, probabilities only go up to 100%.

NO U ARE WRONG.

50 = 5000%, so 50% x 5000% = 250000%! You got completely screwed.

I though it is the opposite - it will give you higher than the real chances when drills are involved. But I might be wrong. I like and use drill promotions very much regardless

Drill misrep was patched out long ago AFAIK. Only siege at a perfectly exact hp/round value have lower-than-displayed odds and it doesn't happen at standard defender values (basically the game makes the siege unit win an extra round even when target is at its minhp if the damage puts it EXACTLY at its minhp or some such). Odds % are virtually always accurate.

They are also by design too large of a factor. It wasn't necessary to do it that way.

 

[pigswill]

@vicawoo. Look on the bright side. You also win 50 times. 50*50% = 2500%. That's a pretty good success ratio.

 

[Mylene]

Most odds displayed in this game are misleading ~~
When i get great artists with ~5-10% chance every second game, over years, i know these rng odds are worth almost nothing.
I have seen "accurate" rngs, and Civ4 does not have one.

 

[Thrar]

You can't dispute probabilities with anecdotal 'evidence'. Human minds are too good at seeing patterns even where none exist.

If you want to show that the RNG is bad, try setting up a city with a GP popping next turn at e.g. 10% chance for a GA. Turn on new random seed on reload and run it a hundred times. If you get a GA more than 20 of those tries, that's evidence.

 

[Mylene]

Not looking for proof and so...i know what i saw over all these years, and i saw way too many great peoples when others should have poped instead. Nobody has to agree with me, just saying

 

[Kingjester1]

One thing to keep in mind with the odds to win is that it is just a probability and that makes no guarantee about an actual combat outcome, but rather that if the combat rounds were done over many trials, they would coverage the odds displayed (not counting cases where the display is wrong, like with drill promo units). Even at 99% odds to win, you could still very well lose, it's just not as likely if you had lower odds. I know I have lost units at those odds when stack attacking a city with many weakened defenders.

 

[bestsss]

Mylene,
The pseudo generator is a standard LCG, described by D. Knuth in 3.2.1 of The Art of Computer Programming (D. Knuth is considered the father of computer science). The algorithm produces uniformly distributed numbers.

Human bias is a major contribution to the 'bad' random numbers. Many online games have significantly bad rap and mostly stems from the fact that the random is quite... well random (ref. Lineage II, Aion, 2Moons).
To overcome displeased players (based on random) blizzard used twicked random in warcraft3 - if the event fails the next one is more likely to occur.

I'd say abusing randomness in games is the lazy solution and civ4 (overall over series, dunno about 5, though) is notoriously bad at this. The AI is so poor that virtually each major decision is random based.

 

[PieceOfMind]

One thing to keep in mind with the odds to win is that it is just a probability and that makes no guarantee about an actual combat outcome, but rather that if the combat rounds were done over many trials, they would coverage the odds displayed (not counting cases where the display is wrong, like with drill promo units). Even at 99% odds to win, you could still very well lose, it's just not as likely if you had lower odds. I know I have lost units at those odds when stack attacking a city with many weakened defenders.

The display is correct for drill promo units.

Only unpatched vanilla had it wrong.

 

[Celebithil]

@OP:

The odds of losing 5 battles at 75% winning chance in a row are indeed 1 in 1024, i.e. that is very unlikely. However the chance of this happening in a game at some point is much higher, as you have many runs of 5 battles with around 75% winning chance. In your case: you started looking in the exact data precisely because you felt that you had lost too much. If you forget about that fact you will overestimate the rareness of the events you witnessed.

In a different setting this is similar to saying, when someone has won the lottery, that the chance of winning the lottery are so small, it is an extremely rare event that he would win the lottery. However, we know that someone always wins the lottery, and if you only consider this person because he has won the lottery, you will have falsely concluded that something very special has happened.

 

[Nicol.Bolas]

I am just posting this for fun...
rng mostly doesn't mess me up