Strange city assaults

[Humakty]

I've just played a monarch game, anf started in a bad startpos, at the middle of a continent, surrounded by IAs, so I couldn't help and got invaded several times.

On the first time, Charadon came around with a bunch of level 2/3 units, and targeted a 10 % defense city. With all bonuses taken into account, it meant a +55 % for me, and a +40 % for him with his rare 'elite' units, and +20% with his weak units. My fighters (warriors and swordsmen) had copper, and his sons of asena had no weapons. So I had a nice advantage, but lost a little more units than him, over a rather long siege.I finally won the war thanks to a much larger production input.

Then, later, the Lanun decided I was no more worthy to live, and threw a bunch of copper chariots onto copper axemen (3) and an archer (1). The odds were worse for the attacker, + 20% for him, and + 85 % for my axemen, +90 % for my archer. My troops were steamrolled without the lanuns loosing a single chariot.

So I wonder : Am I really unlucky ? (I know I shouldn't swear that much) Or is the AI ignoring city defense ? And has someone else got the same feeling ?

 

[Earthling]

I wish I could help you out... however the combat log has never worked for me in a single patch/version of FfH! (I'm not running any other mods, and by now I've learned to live with it - lose a battle on defense and I just don't know what the odds were but I keep going.) If anyone knows a fix to this that would be nice (did you check your own combat log...?)

 

[Tyrs]

I've gotten that feeling before as well. It almost seems like the game favors the attacker, but I've had the same happen both way.

 

[Kenjister]

The combat log was disabled several patches back. It is sorta annoying not being able to see how you lost those rare units, but since I never used it otherwise, its removal's definitely worth it if it sped the game up.

I have won several battles with my fodder troops that way before, and also lost several. Probably just back luck.

 

[JonathanStrange]

A central starting position usually generates an interesting game as you're easier to start a fight with than that far-away island civ: so you're not unlucky, so much as in the way.

Of course, if you're perceived as being a weaker civ, the A.I.'s been known to take the time to march to wherever you are anyway. Have Beastmaster, Will Travel.

It is strange but not uncommon to see an enemy who really wants your city to ignore the odds and throw unit after unit to get it. That's odd: sometimes they'll seem to know they can't win and fade back; other times they just don't care.

Perhaps the maintenance costs of their troops is killing them anyway so they may as well attack. Perhaps the enemy civ has calculated your civ is the weaker one overall and ignoring the fact that particular city they're attacking is not especially weak.

I miss the combat log too; I've always liked to see who did what to whom.

 

[renardargent]

Combat Log is disabled to enhance game performance. It can be restored manually by editing the CallBack defines.

The team knows what we want!

 

[Thunder_Gr]

I've just played a monarch game, anf started in a bad startpos, at the middle of a continent, surrounded by IAs, so I couldn't help and got invaded several times.

Then, later, the Lanun decided I was no more worthy to live, and threw a bunch of copper chariots onto copper axemen (3) and an archer (1). The odds were worse for the attacker, + 20% for him, and + 85 % for my axemen, +90 % for my archer. My troops were steamrolled without the lanuns loosing a single chariot.

So I wonder : Am I really unlucky ? (I know I shouldn't swear that much) Or is the AI ignoring city defense ? And has someone else got the same feeling ?

Chariots have high withdrawal rates and first strikes,IIRC while your axemen haven't.
And I am really curious, how do you know the chances they have on the attack? The chances are not the same if you are the attacker when they attack you.
For example, if you are on a desert tile, they will get +25% when they attack you, but when you attack, this is not calculated.

 

[Humakty]

Knowing the strength of an attacker is quite simple : put your cursor on him; look at his promotions. In that case they had combat 1 : +20 %. Maybe I was darn unlucky, as it never happened to me before to have such crushing defeats, with so favorable odds. I must admit this thread was created mostly out of frustration, I haven't played enougth to determine a general trend, more precisely bugs in the combat resolutions.

I must add my four units were all killed instantly, no withdrawal from the chariots : four attacks, four deads, clear and simple.

Going back playing, hoping Fatum will go my way...

 

[cabbagemeister]

It's very difficult to draw any conclusions from a sample size of four. If you really suspect that city defense is being inappropriately ignored, I suggest you set up a better and more controlled test.

Go into WB. Give yourself a city with an appropriate amount of cultural defense. Stock it with 40 bronze axemen. Give 40 bronze chariots to the Barbarians (so you know they'll attack right away) and place them right outside your city. Run the game and see how many chariots kill how many axemen. If you like, turn off "preserve random seeds when reloading" and reload to try again. if you think the problem might be with application of building-based defenses rather than with cultural defenses, change your city around and try again.

If you present results from 40 or 80 battles that are widely discrepant from expected results, people will start listening to you. Results from 4 battles won't convince anyone.

 

[Ranos]

This happe sometimes. I have lost 10 battles in a row (both in FFH and Vanilla Civ) that I should have won and I have won 10 battles in a row that I should have lost. Sometimes the RNG goes for you, sometimes against you. In this case, you were just unlucky.