Ok, I'm having a Civ 1 flashback ... (AI bonus in battles?)

[SebastianP]

What I experience is a severe case of 1992 Civ 1 flashbacks in that I get ridiculous battle results at scale, even on low difficulty levels such as "Warlords". There's the damaged AI Medieval Infantry that kills my healthy Infantry, the AI Longbowman killing my elite Infantry, the AI destroyer sinking my veteran battleship and the 5-6 Infantry that I need to kill his one Infantry with just a single red square of life left while he keeps killing my Infantry with his Cavalry.

I may be overlooking something. If so, please please tell me !? Is this normal behavior in Civ 3?

Are Civ traits counted into the battle equation? Are militaristic nations more likely to win battles? From my two games, the first one with the Germans seemed more probable battle-wise. But the second with the Russians led to the above results. Kind of reminds me of the evil militias in civ 1 sinking my battleships ...

Any advice / help / feedback appreciated!

 

[Fergei]

What I experience is a severe case of 1992 Civ 1 flashbacks in that I get ridiculous battle results at scale, even on low difficulty levels such as "Warlords". There's the damaged AI Medieval Infantry that kills my healthy Infantry, the AI Longbowman killing my elite Infantry, the AI destroyer sinking my veteran battleship and the 5-6 Infantry that I need to kill his one Infantry with just a single red square of life left while he keeps killing my Infantry with his Cavalry.

I may be overlooking something. If so, please please tell me !? Is this normal behavior in Civ 3?

Are Civ traits counted into the battle equation? Are militaristic nations more likely to win battles? From my two games, the first one with the Germans seemed more probable battle-wise. But the second with the Russians led to the above results. Kind of reminds me of the evil militias in civ 1 sinking my battleships ...

Any advice / help / feedback appreciated!

I personally don't find Civ 3 too bad. But yes, if say a Knight (4) attacks an Archer (1) and they have an equal amount of hitpoints (say 3) it doesn't feel like the cumulative probability always kicks in for each hitpoint and the archer can win far more often than you would think in such situations. However, I've no reason to doubt it as it would take more coding to make something that didn't simply reflect the stats. I doubt developers would have expended their very limited time on such a thing. Plus, I see similarly strange combat results when witnessing AI versus AI.

In terms of the military trait, those Civs are more likely to have their units promoted (gaining a hit point) and those Civs are more likely to build barracks (so have a HP advantage on their units). Other than that I don't think the militaristic trait has an impact on individual battles.

 

[Civinator]

There was just a similar post in the RARR-thread, that you can read here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rise-and-rule-revisited-epic-mod.549166/page-70#post-16548486

And here is the response: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rise-and-rule-revisited-epic-mod.549166/page-70#post-16548684

My personal opinion: I like the current handling of combat in Civ 3. If the technological better civ would always (or nearly always) win its battles, this would be very boring for me - and in history there are a lot of examples, when the technological backwards civ was the winner against a technological highly developed civ.

 

[justanick]

the AI destroyer sinking my veteran battleship

It matters who attacks. If the destroyer attacks, then chances are almost equal. If the battleship attacks, then the attackers is likely to win.

Chances for the attacker to win a combat turn are A/(A+D), while chances for the defender to win a combat turn are D/(A+D). Combat takes as many combat turns till one of the units is down to zero HP or 1 in case of withdrawal.

A is the attack value of the attacker, D the defence value of the defender and D is usually increased by boni on defence. So killing an infantry fortified in a metropolis on a hill behind a river can be quite expensive.

 

[Quintillus]

There's a Civ3 Combat Calculator that you can download from here. It can tell you, for example, that a slightly damaged Medieval Infantry attacking a healthy Infantry on basic terrain (no fortifications/hills/etc.) has a 4.7% chance of winning. Not likely, but certainly not impossible either.

Difficulty has no impact on combat, other than against barbarians. Militaristic civs are more likely to get unit promotions and military great leaders, and have cheaper barracks, but it doesn't affect combat directly. Terrain bonuses, unit fortification, and fortification improvements can all have an impact which can add up to being quite significant, and there's a reason that is a smiley on the forum.

 

[SebastianP]

Thank you guys for the replies and the enlightment. I must have run into a series of simply unfortunate rolls then.

 

[Lanzelot]

Militaristic civs are more likely to get unit promotions and military great leaders

Only promotions, not MGLs...

 

[Quintillus]

Only promotions, not MGLs...

I could quote this in the "Today I learned" thread. Is this specified in the paper manual? From the Civilopedia and editor documentation I just see that "combat experience" is gained more quickly, which I always had assumed included leader generation, but reading it now it appears to be ambiguous.

 

[Lanzelot]

I think, I read it in SirPleb's Leader Fishing article or someplace else. So probably empirical knowledge or one of the devs posted it here, when they were still visiting this forum?!