Attacking/Defending

[Zin]

Can somone explain to me the concept of attacking/defending? How are the chances of success and so forth worked out - and how does the unit's attack and defence attributes contribute to this?
7/10 times when I attack an enemy town with a spearman (2/1) with something much more advanced, such as a Mustketman (4/3) I fail.... How is this possible? What kind of bonuses does fortification give?
I am relatively new to Civilations 3, and I have not played the previous 2 either. Can someone with extensive knowledge or experience please comment and/or explain the concepts Thanks.

 

[Setsuna]

Who knows?

In CivII this wasn't a big problem because of Firepower. Aside from that the problem could be almost anything now.

 

[Zin]

So I assume you are experiencing the same such bias as well?

 

[Setsuna]

Me, you.. many others. Look around on this forum.

I'll get you started.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7796
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7790
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7543

 

[Xerxes314]

Nobody really knows, but the conventional wisdom goes like this:

Each unit has a number of hps, usually 3. During each round of combat, the attacker has an attack value/(attack value+defense value) chance of dealing a point of damage to the defender. If the attacker fails, then he receives a point of damage.

Attackers NEVER receive bonuses.
Defenders receive many bonuses as listed in the civilopedia. The most important of which are:

+25% for being fortified

+50% for being outside in a fortress
+50% for being in a town with a wall
+50% for being in a city
+100% for being in a metropolis

+100% for being on a mountain
+50% for being on a hill
+25% for being in a forest or jungle
+10% otherwise

also pikemen get a bonus against cavalry

So roughly, a 3hp undamaged musketman (2/4) attacking a 3hp fortified spearman (1/2) in a city has a 2/(2+3.7) = 35% chance of victory. So 7/10 is pretty close.

A simple random number test yields a success rate of only 24%. Anyway, the moral is that musketmen should not be used to attack.

Xerxes

 

[Xerxes314]

For anybody with an interest in ruining their enjoyment of the game with statistics, I made up a crude calculator. If anybody expresses interest, I'll finish it up by adding unique and sea units. Of course, you can emulate that by manually inputting attack/defense values. Sea defenders always have a +10% bonus. Also, I think city size and improvements also increase the defensive value of a city. I'll add that too.

http://www.columbia.edu/~sdc2002/civulator.html

Xerxes

 

[dozenlong]

Very cool...I'm a math guy, I like this stuff!