A slight concern about the new combat system

[Roland Johansen]

I've read a number of things about the new combat system that sound great. For instance that units have different bonusses towards certain other units (pikemen have a bonus vs mounted units) and that some units cannot attack other units (a pikeman cannot attack a fighter).
However, I've also read that they changed the basic combat system, something that I do not like. Copied from the lastest Civ4 preview (july 19 2005):

In Civ IV, the amount of damage a unit does to another unit is now out of a scale of 100, even though that's more or less hidden from the user. The amount of damage a unit does is relative to its different strengths. So now when a spearman attacks a tank, he may hit three times, but that's only going to take off a quarter of the tank's hit points. Meanwhile, a tank hitting a spearman only has to hit him once or twice, and he's gone entirely.

If I've read this correctly, it means that a unit with strength 6 attacking a unit with strength 3 will not only be twice as likely to score a hit (unless they also changed this from Civ1,2,3, which I doubt), but will also do double the damage per hit. The reason why I think this is a bad idea is because it makes the combat results more difficult to predict, it makes combat less transparent, less intuitive.

If you see a unit with strength 6 in civ3 then you know that it is about twice as strong as a strength 3 unit. If a unit of strength 6 attacks a unit of strength 3, you'd expect the strength 6 unit to win and to have lost approximately half of its hitpoints. Of course the random number generator wil produce varying results, but the above mentioned result will be the most likely result.
In civ4 a strength 6 unit will be four times as strong as a strength 3 unit. If a unit of strength 6 attacks a unit of strength 3 in civ4, you'd expect the strength 6 unit to win and to have lost approximately a quarter of its hitpoints. If you see two units with strengths A and B, then you need to square the quotient of A and B to find their relative strengths in civ4. While this calculation is not extremely difficult, it is not intuitive. Players who have not thought about the Civ4 combat calculations might wonder why their strength 3 units are performing so poorly against strength 6 units.

Because of the many previews that talk about ending the spearman defeats tank results, people might think this new combat system will be the cause for this. But that is just the influence of advertisement. Spearmen can still defeat tanks under this new combat system. If Firaxis would add something that would prevent extremely outdated units to damage modern units, then that would prevent the spearman defeats tank result, but this new battle system will not do this.

People might think it makes the spearman defeats tank results less likely to happen, but that depends greatly on the strength values of the tank and the spearman in civ4 and the number of hitpoints that units in civ4 have. You could also make the spearman defeats tank result very unlikely using the civ 3 combat calculations by increasing the attack strength of tanks in civ 3 from 16 to 50 for instance (of course you'd need to increase the stats of all the other units in between spearman and tanks) or by increasing the number of hitpoints of units in civ3.

So, I really don't see why they added this stronger units cause more damage feature in civ 4 combat. It makes it less intuitive and adds nothing.

 

[Commander Bello]

I cannot agree with you, Roland Johansen.

The spear vs. tank problem was due to the fact that if the tank didn't hit the spear, it automatically took a hit by itself.
Now, since the attrition rate is between 1 and 100, the one hit of the tank will cause much more damage to the spear, than it did in Civ3, where one hit just caused 1 hp damage. So, for a elite spear the tank needed 5 hits.
As I read the new combat system, even one hit of the tank may be enough to kill off the spear. In turn, missing one hit may still cause the spear to have a hit at the tank, but this will have less impact.
So, the tank will have MUCH higher chances to kill off the spear than it did before.

I agree, though, that still there might be a slight chance for the spear to kill the tank, but this seems to require quite an unusual streak of RNG results.

Furthermore, I got the impression that this new combat system makes for more "predictability" based on the unit strenghts. A stronger unit now seems to have much better chances to kill the weaker - although "funny" results still might happen.

So, we seem to get predictability but not pre-determination of combat results, which is fine for me.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I cannot agree with you, Roland Johansen.

The spear vs. tank problem was due to the fact that if the tank didn't hit the spear, it automatically took a hit by itself.
Now, since the attrition rate is between 1 and 100, the one hit of the tank will cause much more damage to the spear, than it did in Civ3, where one hit just caused 1 hp damage. So, for a elite spear the tank needed 5 hits.
As I read the new combat system, even one hit of the tank may be enough to kill off the spear. In turn, missing one hit may still cause the spear to have a hit at the tank, but this will have less impact.
So, the tank will have MUCH higher chances to kill off the spear than it did before.

I agree, though, that still there might be a slight chance for the spear to kill the tank, but this seems to require quite an unusual streak of RNG results.

The spearman vs tank problem in civ3 was mainly due to the fact that the relative strength of the units was 1:8 (strength 2 on defence vs strength 16 on offence). Since units in civ3 only had a basic number of 3 hitpoints, the tank could die with with three rolls of the die each with a 1 on 8 chance. Increasing the number of hitpoints or the difference in strength could make the spearmen defeats tank result very unlikely. (strength 32 tanks with 6 hitpoints against strength 2 spearman with 6 hitpoints gives a probability of about 1 in a 100000, using a combat calculator)

We absolutely do not know how unlikely the spearmen defeats tank result is in civ4, but it will again depend solely on the relative strength of these units and the number of hitpoints of each. Whatever the probabilities will be in civ4, I can create a tank in the civ3 editor that will be far more likely to beat a spearman than the tanks in civ4 will be. So really, we don't need this new combat system for that.

Furthermore, I got the impression that this new combat system makes for more "predictability" based on the unit strenghts. A stronger unit now seems to have much better chances to kill the weaker - although "funny" results still might happen.

So, we seem to get predictability but not pre-determination of combat results, which is fine for me

You can also easily make combat more predictable using the civ3 combat calculations by just adjusting the strength values a little. In civ4 a combat between a strength 6 and a strength 3 unit will evolve similar to a combat between a stength 12 and a strenght 3 unit in civ3. Only in civ3 you can directly see that the unit of strength 12 is four times as strong as the unit of strength 3, while in civ4 the unit of strength 6 is four times as strong as the unit of strength 3.

If I understand you correctly, you like it that a unit looks twice as strong but performs as a unit that is four times as strong because that is more predictable???

 

[Akka]

Bah.
The only thing needed is to display the firepower in plain text beside the power level of the unit. That's all.

 

[Commander Bello]

[..]

If I understand you correctly, you like it that a unit looks twice as strong but performs as a unit that is four times as strong because that is more predictable???

No, you completely misread my point.
I do like the idea that a stronger unit seems to be much more likely to kill off the weaker one, which I feel is how things went in history (under the assumption of equally skilled commanders, both units being well supplied and so on...)

About the "feeling" of the stat numbers: I would guess that this is just a matter of getting accustomed to it.
I will agree with you that we are not expected to be able to just transfer our experiences from Civ3 to Civ4. But I really think that a more or less experienced player will only need one or two games to get a feeling how good his chances are using unit A against unit B.

 

[nullspace]

I think the main problem is that it's just very hard to predict the probablility of winning based on the units' stats. It's easy to see which unit has the advantage, it's the one with the higher power after after all bonuses have been added in. But it's very hard to tell if you have a 60% or 90% chance of winning without doing some complicated statistical mathematics.

What I'm hoping for is that when you attack, you get a display of the powers of both units (including all bonuses) and a listing of the chance of success. This would go a long way in making the combat much more predictable, and it would educate the newbies as to why their horsemen keep losing to spearmen.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Bah.
The only thing needed is to display the firepower in plain text beside the power level of the unit. That's all.

But why reintroduce the concept of firepower as one can just as easily heighten the strength values of the varying units with the same result. Why have two values for units as one value can have the same effects on combat?

No, you completely misread my point.
I do like the idea that a stronger unit seems to be much more likely to kill off the weaker one, which I feel is how things went in history (under the assumption of equally skilled commanders, both units being well supplied and so on...)

About the "feeling" of the stat numbers: I would guess that this is just a matter of getting accustomed to it.
I will agree with you that we are not expected to be able to just transfer our experiences from Civ3 to Civ4. But I really think that a more or less experienced player will only need one or two games to get a feeling how good his chances are using unit A against unit B.

History, hmm. I don't see what that has to do with it. How can you say that (using the Civ4 preview values) a spearman has strength 4 and a swordsman strength 6 in history. They are just values that are used to calculate the result if the two units meet. If you think that the swordsman is the stronger unit and should win by a larger margin, then just increase its combat strength, don't change the combatsystem.

In civ3, if a unit has a strength value twice as high as another unit, then the weaker unit will (on average) lose hitpoints twice as fast. That is nice and easy to use. I'm not against change or something, but the change doesn't add anything. The same combatresults that are reached using the civ4 combatmodel can be reached by using the civ3 combatmodel. Only the civ4 combatmodel doesn't have the nice relation between combat strengths and hitpoint loss.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I think the main problem is that it's just very hard to predict the probablility of winning based on the units' stats. It's easy to see which unit has the advantage, it's the one with the higher power after after all bonuses have been added in. But it's very hard to tell if you have a 60% or 90% chance of winning without doing some complicated statistical mathematics.

What I'm hoping for is that when you attack, you get a display of the powers of both units (including all bonuses) and a listing of the chance of success. This would go a long way in making the combat much more predictable, and it would educate the newbies as to why their horsemen keep losing to spearmen.

I agree, that would be very nice!

 

[The Last Conformist]

OP's too long to read, but as I understand it, it's basically a reintroduction of CivII's HP and firepower system. Hardly cause for much concern, is it? Heck, it's present in CivIII on a small scale, in the quise of HP bonuses.

 

[Commander Bello]

[...]
History, hmm. I don't see what that has to do with it. How can you say that (using the Civ4 preview values) a spearman has strength 4 and a swordsman strength 6 in history. They are just values that are used to calculate the result if the two units meet. If you think that the swordsman is the stronger unit and should win by a larger margin, then just increase its combat strength, don't change the combatsystem.

I never said that history tells us about the numerical value of a swordsman or any other unit.
I just said that history has proven that under equal environments, the stronger unit is supposed to win the battle. Period.

In civ3, if a unit has a strength value twice as high as another unit, then the weaker unit will (on average) lose hitpoints twice as fast. That is nice and easy to use. I'm not against change or something, but the change doesn't add anything. The same combatresults that are reached using the civ4 combatmodel can be reached by using the civ3 combatmodel. Only the civ4 combatmodel doesn't have the nice relation between combat strengths and hitpoint loss.

In Civ4, the stronger unit will take less damage by missing a hit at the weaker unit. So, you don't have to play around that much with hitpoints and combat values to get rid of the "spear vs tank" issue.
Where is the problem?
The combat system will be changed, as there are the promotions, the special abilities of units and some kind of paper-scissors-stone concept.
Nevertheless, you will easily be able to identify the assumed winner of a battle, as this will very likely (much more likely than in Civ3) the stronger unit (taking all modifiers into account).
Yes, the have taken out a certain portion of the randomness of combat results, as this has just proven to be too random. What is wrong with that?
Will it be that hard to get accustomed to a new combat system?

Personally, I don't think so. As far as the 1 to 1 battle is concerned, it will just become easier.
About the battle of stacks, there is an interesting discussion going on in another thread.

 

[Jaca]

And I guess striking power and the chances for a hit may start to diverge during promotions throughout the game. So how would one take that into account without a such distinction? As far as I understood it, it all seems just fine.

Kind regards,
Jaca

 

[Roland Johansen]

OP's too long to read, but as I understand it, it's basically a reintroduction of CivII's HP and firepower system. Hardly cause for much concern, is it? Heck, it's present in CivIII on a small scale, in the quise of HP bonuses.

Only a slight concern as in the threads name
But I also think that in Civ2 the firepower was not needed, it could just as easily be replaced by higher combat values.

I never said that history tells us about the numerical value of a swordsman or any other unit.
I just said that history has proven that under equal environments, the stronger unit is supposed to win the battle. Period.

Ah, that period at the end really strengthens your argument
But, to be serious, I was trying to explain that it is very difficult to use history to argue that a strength 6 unit should win 80% of the time if confronted by a strength 4 unit. It really doesn't mean anything. If you say that a swordsman should win 80% when confronted by a spearman because the swordsman has proven to be a much stronger unit in history (it's just an example), then you should fit combat values in the game that lead to that result and preferably keep that combatsystem as easy as possible. The same results can be reached by using the civ3 as the civ4 system. Only the civ3 system has the nice relation between expected hitpoint loss and unit strength. It's easier to see the real relative strengths of units in civ3. (relative strength meaning: how many units of type X do I need to defeat a unit of type Y).

Yes, the have taken out a certain portion of the randomness of combat results, as this has just proven to be too random. What is wrong with that?
Will it be that hard to get accustomed to a new combat system?

Your assumption that I like the "randomness" of civ3 combat is wrong as in my personal mod I've changed the values of units so that combat results are slightly more predictable. That is not the reason that I started this thread.
But the fact that the civ3 combat model can be easily modded to reach the same results as what they're aiming for with the civ4 combat model (without the unit vs unit bonusses and such which are a great addition) while retaining the simplicity that 2 strength 3 units equal one strength 6 unit makes me wonder why they introduced this new combat model. Maybe because it sounds like a good change and as a selling point to the people who hated the spearmen defeats tank results in civ3. But it is just a hype, advertisement, nothing is really added by this new combat system. Nothing that also could be done with the old system.

And I guess striking power and the chances for a hit may start to diverge during promotions throughout the game. So how would one take that into account without a such distinction? As far as I understood it, it all seems just fine.

How? Just increase the unit power. It will have the same effect on combat results.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Only a slight concern as in the threads name
But I also think that in Civ2 the firepower was not needed, it could just as easily be replaced by higher combat values.

Indeed. I'd personally prefer a cleaner combat system with just attack, defense, and HP.

The thing that worries me a little is the "hidden from the user" comment. I like transparency.

 

[Jaca]

How? Just increase the unit power. It will have the same effect on combat results.

In principle, he chance of a hit and the fire or strikinf power should not be one-to-one related, but you must be right here. So let's see if I understood it correctly? You have a certain basic unit strength, a certain amount of hit points - which is scaled but graphically and thus here "symbolically" represented by a number of units on the map - and some combat bonuses depending on promotions, the type of adversary and the tile the adversary is on - and it's state (is he fortified, and if so, for how long?). The latter is important for instance for defence purposes and together with the basic unit strength of both units it will determine the chances of a successful strike, whilst the basic unit power determines how much hit points are lost in case of a successful strike.

So basic unit strength and hit points should be sufficient, plus of course the bonuses for the terrain and for the adversary one is facing.

Then again, if basic unit strength and striking or fire power are the same, I have no real objections against this. It's consequence is, as Commander Bello points out, simply more chances the stronger unit will win, even when attacking units in a forest or on hills, which is fine by me. The fact that one also has the 'Accuracy' promotions with the siege units seems to be add more realism too. All in all, it feels more realistic then in CIV III, and not less predictable.

Kind regards,
Jaca

 

[Jaca]

But the fact that the civ3 combat model can be easily modded to reach the same results as what they're aiming for with the civ4 combat model (without the unit vs unit bonusses and such which are a great addition) while retaining the simplicity that 2 strength 3 units equal one strength 6 unit makes me wonder why they introduced this new combat model.¨

So let's see if I understood it correctly? You have a certain basic unit strength, a certain amount of hit points - which is scaled but graphically represented by a number of units on the map - and some combat bonuses depending on promotions, the type of adversary and the tile the adversary is on - and it's state (is he fortified, and if so, for how long?). The latter is important for instance for defence purposes and together with the basic unit strength of both units it will determine the chances of a successful strike, whilst the basic unit power determines how much hit points are lost in case of a successful strike.

No what happens if the attacker misses? He looses a number of hit points equal to the strength of the defender, or not? In that case 2 strength 3 units do not seem to be equally strong as one strength 6 unit, but just a little stronger, as negative numbers on the hit point bar are not carried over to the second unit. All in all, not everything is completely clear for me in this new combat system yet.

How? Just increase the unit power. It will have the same effect on combat results.

In principle, the chance of a hit and the fire or striking power should not be one-to-one related, but you are probably right here. And so basic unit strength and hit points should be sufficient, plus of course the bonuses for the terrain and for the adversary one is facing.

Then again, if basic unit strength and striking or fire power are the same, I have no real objections against this. It's consequence is, as Commander Bello points out, simply more chances the stronger unit will win, even when attacking units in a forest or on hills, which is fine by me. The fact that one also has the 'Accuracy' promotions with the siege units seems to be add more realism too. All in all, it feels more realistic then in CIV III, and not less predictable.

Kind regards,
Jaca

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I agree that if a strength 3 unit only damages 1/4 of a strength 6 unit in an attack then that is WORSE for the combat model.

It would be much better to have a strength 3 unit do 1/4 damage to a strength 12 unit.

Now that could be done one of two ways
1. damage done per hit equal, chance of hitting depends on strength (Civ 3 model, and to a lesser degree Civ 1)
2. damage done per hit depends on strength, chance of hitting equal

If they revive the civ 2 model, then it just gets annoyingly complicated because to figure out a units True Combat value you had to multiply the Attack or Defense rating by hp and fire power... In Civ3 they improved that by standardizing fp and hp so they were basically the same for all units...
a Knight is twice as good as a Horseman on offense (in a battle not counting the 'leading up to battle' portions) easy to calculate 4 over 2

They should keep that easy to analyze nature of combat as much as possible. If they want to eliminate spearman defeats tank there are 2 ways of doing that
1. Change the stats (increase the Tank attack decrease Spearman defense)

This changes how much damage is done when a tank runs over a spearman on Average


2. Change the standard number of HP, if Both the tank and the spearman had 20 hp, the spearman's chance of defeating the tank would go from ~1% to something like one in a million literally (I don't have a combat calculator but if someone wants to confirm those)

This is better because it does Not affect how much damage a tank does to a spearman on Average, it only reduces the chance of a fluke result. I think that is ideal because that means that battles are more predictable. Higher value units always win, but large numbers of low value units may decrease their health enough to win. (which is required to get prevent from tech being a snowballer)




In any case, IF they went with equal hitting chance (ie its a coin flip who gets damaged) but strength determines how many hp are taken off then they will have basically done the second solution, if hp go up to 100 now. make battles require more hits..makes results more predictable.

I seriously hope they do that because it reduces the accessibility when combat even Before special abilities requires complex calculations as opposed to a simple I have a total 20 in Strength he has a total 30.... in our battle he should take about 2/3 damage. (of course the Actual unit strength depends on the unit types battling, but that will have to be taken into account ayways, I don't want to have to square my unit's strengths as well to get their true strength.)

 

[Roland Johansen]

This post will contain a detailed analysis of an example of the civ3 vs the civ4 combat model and therefore might not be very interesting for people who don't like mathematics. Of course I don't know the exact workings of the civ4 combat model as the game isn't finished yet. I'm basing this analysis on the information from previews. This post will only consider the basic combat system so terrain bonusses, unit vs unit bonusses, city defence bonusses and other bonusses are not considered.

In civ3 we have attack and defence values which are going to be replaced with one value in civ4 which is modified by unit vs unit bonusses (which is a good thing in my opinion, but not a subject of this thread). If I'm talking about a unit of strength 3 combatting a unit of strength 6 in civ3, then I mean that a unit of attack strength 6 is attacking a unit with defence strength 3 or a unit with attack strength 3 is attacking a unit with defence strength 6. If I'm talking about a unit of strength 3 combatting a unit of strength 6 in civ4, then I will assume that no unit vs unit bonusses and terrain bonusses are influencing the combat.

Consider combat between a unit with strength 3 and 6 in civ3.
Both units start with an equal number of hps.
The unit with strength 3 has a probability of 1/3 to win a round of combat, the unit with strength 6 a probability of 2/3. The loser of a round of combat loses one hp, the winner loses no hps. We may expect that the unit with strength 3 loses hps twice as fast as the unit with strength 6. If the units would have a very large number of hps, then one might expect that the unit with strength 6 wins and has approximately half of its hps left.

Consider combat between a unit with strength 3 and 6 in civ4.
Both again start with an equal number of hps.
Again, the unit with strength 3 has a probability of 1/3 to win a round of combat, the unit with strength 6 a probability of 2/3. But now if the unit of strength 6 wins, then the unit of strength 3 loses 2 hps. If the unit of strength 3 wins, then the unit of strength 6 loses only 1 hp. Now the unit of strength 3 loses hps twice as often and if it loses hps it loses twice as many hps. So we may expect the unit with strength 3 to lose hps four times as fast as the unit with strength 6. If again the unit would have a very large number of hps, then one might expect that the unit with strength 6 wins and has approximately 3/4 of its hps left.

Now one might say that civ4 combat thus favours the stronger unit and is thus a method to stop the spearman beats tank problem of civ3 (in the sense to make it less likely to happen, not make it disappear). What I'm trying to say is that the more intuitive civ3 combat can get the same combat results as the civ4 combat model by just adjusting the unit values a little.

To show this, consider combat between a unit with strength 3 and 12 in civ3.
Both units start with an equal number of hps.
The unit with strength 3 has a probability of 1/5 to win a round of combat, the unit with strength 12 a probability of 4/5. The loser of a round of combat loses one hp, the winner loses no hps. We may expect that the unit with strength 3 loses hps four times as fast as the unit with strength 12. If the units would have a very large number of hps, then one might expect that the unit with strength 12 wins and has approximately 3/4 of its hps left.

This shows that the combat results of a battle between a strength 3 and a strength 12 unit in civ3 is very similar to the combat results of a battle between a strength 3 and strength 6 unit in civ4.

So, I do not understand why the people at Firaxis thought it was a good idea to add this 'firepower' type thing as the same results could be reached with the civ3 combat model.

The above results also show that in civ3, 2 strength 3 units are comparable in strength to one strength 6 unit, while in civ4 you need 4 strength 3 units to create a force comparable to one strength 6 unit. I think the civ3 basic combat model is more intuitive and offers the same options to make the spearman beats tank result very unlikely.

 

[Commander Bello]

[...]
1. Change the stats (increase the Tank attack decrease Spearman defense)

This changes how much damage is done when a tank runs over a spearman on Average

No, it doesn't.
It changes the probability for the tank to hit the spear, nothing else.
In case the tank misses, it will loose 1 hitpoint. In case both are regulars, the tank just has to miss 3 out of 5 times to get killed.

2. Change the standard number of HP, if Both the tank and the spearman had 20 hp, the spearman's chance of defeating the tank would go from ~1% to something like one in a million literally (I don't have a combat calculator but if someone wants to confirm those)

I agree, but this makes combat really long. In the worst case, it could take 39 combat turns to decide who is going to loose (not too much likely, but nevertheless...)
I did this in a mod of mine and it considerably slowed down the game, as all fights took much longer then. Definetely not good on over-huge maps with lots of units and lots of fights.
[...][/QUOTE]

 

[Commander Bello]

[...]
So, I do not understand why the people at Firaxis thought it was a good idea to add this 'firepower' type thing as the same results could be reached with the civ3 combat model.

The above results also show that in civ3, 2 strength 3 units are comparable in strength to one strength 6 unit, while in civ4 you need 4 strength 3 units to create a force comparable to one strength 6 unit. I think the civ3 basic combat model is more intuitive and offers the same options to make the spearman beats tank result very unlikely.

I agree with your analysis of the combat results.
Nevertheless, we face a change in the conception, which I personally think is a good one.
Allow for a (admittedly very weak) comparison:
If you were to be in the ring with Mike Tyson, it is very likely that you would loose. Even if he would miss you and by that offers the chance for you to hit him, most probably this would do much less harm to him than a hit of him would do to you.
If the two of us would go into the ring, the result would most probably the same, although together we would have more weight and maybe could even lift more than him alone.
Nevertheless, one hit of him would literally kill one of us. The next hit would kill the next poor guy.

What I want to express: the paradigms have changed. We may like it (as I do) or we may not (as you seem to do). Nevertheless, we will have to get accustomed to it and I think, we will easily be able to do so.
Furthermore, with this new conception, the calculation times shouldn't be very different from the ones as of Civ3, but the results seem to become "better".
As I pointed out in the posting above, increasing the combat stats in the Civ3 model just changes the probability of having a hit. But a miss still would mean the weaker unit to do the same damage as the stronger one, which to a certain degree is "unrealistic".
Increasing the hitpoints would drastically increase calculation times, and still the weaker unit would be enabled to do as much harm as the stronger one.

 

[vbraun]

2. Change the standard number of HP, if Both the tank and the spearman had 20 hp, the spearman's chance of defeating the tank would go from ~1% to something like one in a million literally (I don't have a combat calculator but if someone wants to confirm those)

This kind of thing was considered for a patch for C3C. It worked like this:
Every battle happened 4 times. So in order for an attacker to hurt the defender once it would have to win 4 times. So what would happen is say a swordsman attacks a Spear:
We have WWWLW (W=win for sword, L=loss) The spear would then take a hit. The same thing would happen again, and again. This prevented a Spearman from beating a tank, but it also made it easier for a swordsman to win against a spear. (Think about the impact with immortals *shudder*)
In the end it was tossed out becasue it made it to easy to win when ever a a unit had a greater strenght then the other.