Helicopter lost battle vs. Rifleman. Blah!

[brown_mudante]

I personally think it's insane that anyone would play Civ IV on a level where they have modern helicopter gunship technology and their opponents have probably yet to achieve the medivel era.

Consider it a "you're playing on way too easy a difficulty level" tax.

I played on Noble level billy boy

 

[Ace4nyC]

I have had my helicopter destroyed by a pikeman and even archors. This is insane.
Was that pike about 2 miles long? or was that archor shooting rockets out of his bow?

what did you do that poor pikeman nuke his home town 10x ?

 

[Uncle_Joe]

I'm actually surprised that the developers havent actually gone back and done something about this after all this time.

I dont mean actually making it so that more modern units always trounce older units as in Civ2. I agree that that would make the game even more of a tech race than ever before and the first one to certain tech milestones would basically be unstoppable (certainly not a lot of fun in a MP situation either).

However I'd still like to see units 'evolve' over time so that Warriors, Spearmen, Archers etc change into something more plausible as the game progresses (like Militia, or Resistance Fighters, or Irregulars or whatever). Their unit strengths could remain identical, but just change the icon and the name. Then the problem doesnt seem so strange.

I'm sure most people wouldnt object as much as having guerilla bands or irregulars destroying their helos as having a phalanx taking one down.

 

[CitizenCain]

Either that ... or it's a unit that simply hasn't been upgraded yet (happens all the time), or you're starting at an easier level and working your way up as you learn the game and find the level that best suits you.

Unfortunately, not all of us are as perfect as you and can find the optimal level straight away.

Not what I'm asying at all, but thanks for playing. Clearly, if you have occasion to complain that your tank is losing to an Axeman, or gunship to an archer, or whatever, it's because you are winning so badly it's not even funny anymore. Rather than complain about the laws of mathematics (Civ IV combat is really nothing more than an odds calculation with a RNG seed after all), you should either be happy that you're the one with the huge advantage or decide that beating up on phalaxes with the Phalanx Missiles gets old fast, and move up in difficult levels.

Clearly, if you're "working your way up" in difficulties (as you suggested), you should definitely keep moving, at least until you're not fighting bronze age battles with modern technology.

 

[CitizenCain]

I don't know why Firaxis keep these stupidities in the game. I think in Civ4 these kind of things are even more highlighted and I just get that dumb feeling of the game when such thing happens.

It's almost as unrealistic as the very idea that a bronze age civilization could be competing with a modern era one, huh? Get over it. People have been complaining about this phalanx/tank thing since Civ I, and what it really comes down is that there is no realism whatsoever to the very idea of a phalanx unit trying to go into battle against a division of modern armor (or even the idea that the two things would exist on the same planet, at the same time) and if the game is creating this situation, it's because you're playing at such a low level where you can't possibly lose. So you either need to bump up the difficulty level, or just stop complaining because you're playing the game in a way it was not intended to be played.

I played on Noble level billy boy

So? It must be time for you to jump out of the kiddy pool and go swimming with a real difficulty level, billy boy.

 

[Dida]

what did you do that poor pikeman nuke his home town 10x ?

I sent 4 gunships and 1 battleship to attack that city with 2 pikemen and 1 archor and 1 rifleman. At the end of the battle, all my gunships are destroyed, poked down by brave pikemen wielding 2-mile long pikes and shot down by magical archors shooting lightning out of his bow. At the end I just bit my teeth and told my battleship to come home.

 

[Dida]

I personally think it's insane that anyone would play Civ IV on a level where they have modern helicopter gunship technology and their opponents have probably yet to achieve the medivel era.

Consider it a "you're playing on way too easy a difficulty level" tax.

Oh I understand, you are that smart guy that always play at the optimal difficulty and always make sound judgement and comments.

 

[brown_mudante]

It's almost as unrealistic as the very idea that a bronze age civilization could be competing with a modern era one, huh? Get over it. People have been complaining about this phalanx/tank thing since Civ I, and what it really comes down is that there is no realism whatsoever to the very idea of a phalanx unit trying to go into battle against a division of modern armor (or even the idea that the two things would exist on the same planet, at the same time)

Never heard of Cortez who succeeded to destroy Aztec empire with only 200 soldiers armed with iron swords, plate armour and primitive guns?

 

[meowsqueak]

I prefer to think of the units as generalisations. The knight wouldn't take out the helicopter with his lance - instead, perhaps the knight dismounted, tied a rope across a narrow gorge, got back on his horse, got the attention of the chopper pilot, took off down the gorge and the chopper was silly/unfortunate enough to pursue and fly into the rope, causing it to crash. It's pretty unlikely, but it is possible and you can come up with a limitless number of such ideas to explain the occasional unlikely victory. At no point have I considered the knights just stand there and get slaughtered - that happens to most of them but there will always be a few smart ones.

Use some imagination if it makes it easier to stomach. It's a numbers game and the names and graphics of the units is just 'theme'.

 

[CitizenCain]

Oh I understand, you are that smart guy that always play at the optimal difficulty and always make sound judgement and comments.

Not even close.

But let me ask you a question... what is the point of playing at such a low difficulty level that you're 2,000 years more advanced than the other civs... and then complaining about the results of being 2,000 years ahead of everyone else?

Wouldn't it seem like a better idea to play at a level where you're not that ridiculously far ahead if you're really bothered so much by the results of being 2,000 years ahead of everyone else?

 

[brown_mudante]

Oh I understand, you are that smart guy that always play at the optimal difficulty and always make sound judgement and comments.

Yeah, judging from his comments he probably plays on chieftain level, that's why he is so angry about this stuff.

 

[brown_mudante]

Not even close.

But let me ask you a question... what is the point of playing at such a low difficulty level that you're 2,000 years more advanced than the other civs... and then complaining about the results of being 2,000 years ahead of everyone else?

Wouldn't it seem like a better idea to play at a level where you're not that ridiculously far ahead if you're really bothered so much by the results of being 2,000 years ahead of everyone else?

I have impression that you don't play Civ4 at all. What are you grumbling about? "Noble level" is the level where neither player or AI have advantages, that's "even" level, nobody cheats.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Sigh, another spearman-vs-tank thread. Just with a slightly different flavor, that's all.

Like the others have said, it all boils down to two possibilities:
1> The rifleman was actually typical of the units your opponent could field.
In this case, you were so far above him technologically that the game was already over, and you were just in that abstract "mopping up" phase that gets so boring. Try a higher difficulty level if you still want the AI to be competitive at this phase of the game.

Now, maybe the rifleman had exactly the right promotions for the circumstances. If he had Woodsman I and Woodsman II, for instance, and you attacked him in a forest, and he was fortified, those bonuses stack up very quickly. The numbers difference between a gunship and a unit of riflemen isn't THAT huge, especially if the rifleman is defending in good terrain. And there plenty of real world examples of this; see also: Afghanistan (vs Soviets) and Vietnam; before you start bragging about the night vision or thermal imaging capabilities of our helicopters, you should go try using one of those systems in something outside of ideal conditions.

2> The enemy actually had the technology for better units, but simply hadn't upgraded this specific one.
This was a big issue in Civ3, and it's one I hope a modder fixes in the near future.

The way I proposed to fix it was like this: When you unlock a new unit in a chain, the cost of upgrading each previous unit in the chain gets lower. The N-1 unit upgrades to the N at normal cost, the cost to go from N-2 to N-1 drops by half, and anything below N-2 automatically upgrades to N-2 for free (even if it's not in a town at the time).
That is, to take a Civ3 example, your infantry chain went Spear-Pike-Musket-Rifle-Infantry-MechInf. When you get the tech for Muskets, the cost to go from Spear to Pike is halved (although you can't actually upgrade halfway, of course). When you get the tech for Rifles, any spearmen automatically upgrade to pikes for free. So, by the modern era, you wouldn't see anything below riflemen still in play.

 

[CitizenCain]

Never heard of Cortez who succeeded to destroy Aztec empire with only 200 soldiers armed with iron swords, plate armour and primitive guns?

Yes, I have. And that's not even close to the same thing as the difference between a military unit from classical Greece and a division of modern armore.

Also, unlike you, I actually know the real story behind that. And it wasn't that Cortez and his 200 men conquered the empire, it's that Cortez and his 200 men were believed to be gods... which made it very easy for them to cause internal dissent in the Aztec empire, forment civil war and ultimately lead a massive army of other indiginous tribes and nations against the Aztecs.

In short, what conquered the Aztec empire wasn't 200 men with horses, armor and guns... it was 200 men with horses, armor and guns... leading a huge army of people that the Aztecs had pissed off by using them for human sacrifices.

That concludes our little history lesson for today. You're welcome.

 

[Johnny_Vegas]

You guys have to use your imagination. Imagine a tank unit invading a city defended my archers. Do you think the archers would just run out into the middle of the street and start plunking arrows at the tank?

No way.. The tank rolls in, the guy pops out of the hatch and starts firing his machine gun to take down these pethodic little archers. After killing all of them, he is about to go back into the tank, but alas there was an archer left, he leaps from a 2nd story rooftop, slits the gunner's throat, grab's one of the gunner's grenades and tosses it inside the tank.

Anyway, its a game, they aren't really archers and tanks, they are units with numerical strength values. The laws of probability in such a game sometimes favor the weaker unit, its called chance.

 

[CitizenCain]

I have impression that you don't play Civ4 at all. What are you grumbling about? "Noble level" is the level where neither player or AI have advantages, that's "even" level, nobody cheats.

And I'm getting the impression you don't play it very well if you think playing at "Noble" level is your uber-trump card that's gonna show me up. Billy boy. And, yeah, I play Civ IV plenty... I've even posted screenshots, so I have no idea where you get your impressions from.

 

[Garand]

Really, why complain if you lose ONE gunship to a rifleman if your tanks are destroying everything else in sight? Every war has casualties, period. Look at the Gulf War - we lost a lot of people just to mechanical failures in aircraft and such. Just chalk it up to the odds of war and be extra brutal to the resisters for losing a helicopter.

Anyway, it's not totally unbelievable that a 19th century rifleman could shoot down a chopper. Unlikely, yes. But not impossible.

 

[CustodianV131]

Luck is a factor in the combat outcome. Very realistic i.m.o.

Still its not strange to be mad about it... that's also very realistic.

 

[Zhahz]

Always remember it's a game - not a real life combat simulator! Being a game there are rules (and they aren't that frickin complex since popups in the game give you full numerical breakdowns of bonuses and penalties for unit vs unit).

Gunships are base 20. Riflemen are base 14. Give that rifleman any bonus such as being fortified, being in a city, etc, and it's right up near 20 or higher. Even with out bonuses 20 vs 14 isn't always going to be a given.

I would suspect that in this situation that it wasn't a straight 20 vs 14 - more likely the rifleman was fully fortified (+25%) and probably had terrain (usually +50% for hills, forests, or jungles, for ex) and other bonuses too. It could easily be a suicide attack for a gunship vs a rifleman if the rifleman has multiple bonuses (gunship vs fortified rifleman in a city on a hill = dead gunship).

The only way gunships are screwed, IMO, is that mech inf doesn't count as armor (gunships are +100% vs armor).

 

[Gorillagorilla]

It happened today when I was playing. I think that helicopters are generally underestimated in the game, they sould be more stronger and powerful. How could some rifleman from 19 century shoot down Apache helicopter for example?
And that just one single rifleman unit? That's nonsense.

This is admazing, I was reading a thread this morning where someone was saying helicopters are to powerful, and now someone is saying that they aren't powerful enough I love the irony on these boards. I signed up today to be able to post and join the demo game.

Did the rifleman have any promotions?