bad great generals

[ohcrapitsnico]

From my experience with great generals I have consistently found that just about all of the great general units die in combat so quickly. I remember one time one of my weak fodder units attacked on a 27% victory chance and won, next my warlord unit attacked with a 96% chance of victory and LOST. This happens to me all the time. Does anyone else have this problem?

 

[Dearmad]

I did in my first game...

 

[Toshiro126]

Me too. Very disappointing....

 

[Masquerouge]

That's because Firaxis cheated on the random number generator, they wanted to make sure your Great General would die on its first combat so that you would get very annoyed and not buy Firaxis games anymore.

 

[westward]

Somewhat on-topic: I've noticed that, since I installed Warlords, I have seemed to lose a good number of battles in which I had a 90+% percent, including a couple where I lost a Warlord unit. (yeah, I know, boo hoo.)

Still, the battles odds seem kind of... out-of-whack. Has anyone else noticed this or have a possible explanation?

 

[The Great Apple]

Welcome to CFC!

You're unlucky.

 

[Duraska]

Oddly enough, I was about to say the opposite. It seemed like my luck was *terrible* in Civ 4 vanilla (consistantly losing >75% odds battles), but in Warlords I seem to be kicking butts (and occasionally taking names). I did lose El Cid pretty early on during a praetorian rush (it was my fault though... out of 15 praetorians I *had* to choose him to attack ). However, that was a battle where I had like a 36% chance of winning, so I figured I deserved it.

William the Conquerer did quite well though. The chance to withdraw is really nice. Does anyone know if it stacks on units that already have a chance to withdraw? Would a chariot warlord or a trebuchet warlord have a really high chance of withdrawing?

 

[Masquerouge]

Somewhat on-topic: I've noticed that, since I installed Warlords, I have seemed to lose a good number of battles in which I had a 90+% percent, including a couple where I lost a Warlord unit. (yeah, I know, boo hoo.)

Still, the battles odds seem kind of... out-of-whack. Has anyone else noticed this or have a possible explanation?

On the Great General topic, my guess would be that people expect them to win all battles, when they actually do not influence the outcome at all. Given the same promotions, a unit without a general will perform just like an unit with.
Yet you will be more likely to remember when your General will die.
In my last game I had quite a few generals, and I won a good many fights with them.

Also, I am always under the impression that I constantly loose fights where my probability of winning is around 60-70%. But I also remember winning quite a few fights where I had a 20-30% chance of winning...

 

[Zoo7]

I managed to get Alexander killed on a 99.4% battle

I frequently cry about losing 90% battles too... But one should read the probabilities right. 90% means you WILL lose 1 in 10 of such battles. And surely you have hundreds in the course of a single game. Therefore, it is not surprising at all. There is just a psychological factor that makes the average person pay more attention to the 1 battle that he lose unexpectedly, than to the 9 that he wins. Or it could be a bug

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

My problem is that all my weak units designed just to soften up the defenders(dying in the process) win and unbelievably low odds while my strong units intended on defeating the enemy and gaining experience lose consistently on high odds. I wonder if the computer realizes this and turns my strategy in the garbage?

 

[DsevenO]

Somewhat on-topic: I've noticed that, since I installed Warlords, I have seemed to lose a good number of battles in which I had a 90+% percent, including a couple where I lost a Warlord unit. (yeah, I know, boo hoo.)

Still, the battles odds seem kind of... out-of-whack. Has anyone else noticed this or have a possible explanation?

I have noticed this quite a bit as well. I assume it's because I have a fundamental lack of understanding of what the combat odds really mean. My interpretation is that, for instance, 95% combat odds mean that there is a 5 in 100 chance that my unit will lose the encounter. The reason I don't think my interpretation is right is because I lost (I counted) 3 out of 10 encounters where I had 99+% combat odds. If anyone has any info on what the combat odds really mean, I'd love to hear it too

 

[Mango]

Losing 3 encounters where you have a 99% chance of winning is odd.

Unless you have fought over 300 battles.

Of course the odds of losing 3 out of 10 battles like that is quite unfathomable. It could be a bug, but it's probably more of a psychological thing.

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

My theory is that the difficulty level plays a role in it as I have noticed the higher the difficulty the more I lose, particularly barbarians. I also think it has something to do with the units themselves because my bad encounters tend to show to favor to certain units,civs, and such.But for all I know it could be the opposite of what I'm saying.

 

[Masquerouge]

My problem is that all my weak units designed just to soften up the defenders(dying in the process) win and unbelievably low odds while my strong units intended on defeating the enemy and gaining experience lose consistently on high odds. I wonder if the computer realizes this and turns my strategy in the garbage?

Yes, the computer cheats. No matter that it's more complicated to implement a cheating Random Number Generator, no matter that Firaxis is purposedly making customers unhappy by cheating on RNG, they've decided to simply screw everybody and make them loose all the fights they expect to win.

I have noticed this quite a bit as well. I assume it's because I have a fundamental lack of understanding of what the combat odds really mean. My interpretation is that, for instance, 95% combat odds mean that there is a 5 in 100 chance that my unit will lose the encounter. The reason I don't think my interpretation is right is because I lost (I counted) 3 out of 10 encounters where I had 99+% combat odds. If anyone has any info on what the combat odds really mean, I'd love to hear it too

No, your interpretation is right. 5 out of 100 does not mean that you WILL loose 5 fights for every 100 you fight. It means that, ON AVERAGE, given a sufficiently large number of fights, you can expect to loose 5 out of a 100.
10 is way too small a sample to validate/infirm a probability. If you want to make a study that will actually mean something, your sample size needs to be at least 800. Meaning, fight 800 fights with 99% combats odds, and you should have a fairly good (but NEVER perfect) idea of whether or not the odds are right.

 

[DsevenO]

Well, when the odds are even 95+% and you're consistently losing battles (lets say about 20 in 50), I don't think you necessarily need hundreds of combat encounters to establish a layman's interpretation of whether or not the combat odds are really accurate. If someone want to establish a scientifically accurate statistical analysis involving 800 encounters or so, more power to them

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

If Firaxis does let the Ai cheat then I see no purpose in the combat chance system if it isn't accurate in the least bit.

 

[Masquerouge]

Well, when the odds are even 95+% and you're consistently losing battles (lets say about 15 in 50), I don't think you necessarily need hundreds of combat encounters to establish a layman's interpretation of whether or not the combat odds are really accurate. If someone want to establish a scientifically accurate statistical analysis involving 800 encounters or so, more power to them

Yes, you do need hundreds of fights if you want to be accurate. That's just the way statistics work.
Note that you have actually lost 3 fights out of 10. That's not 15 in 50, it could theorically be 15 in 50.
By doing 10 fights only the results will vary too widely to be significant. it would be like throwing a dice 10 times, and calcullating the odds solely based on those 10 throws.

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

I do understand using a large sample size but its a no-brainer to say more often than not you lose at high probabilities when I'm consistently losing high probailities the majority of the time.

 

[The Great Apple]

The RNG does not change with difficulty levels. The AI uses the same RNG as you do.

The code is available to download, and were what I have said not the case there would be quite a fuss about it.

If you don't believe me I suggest fiddling with a game in the world builder to give many units on two sides, and run some tests...

 

[DigitalBoy]

This is mainly the reason why I avoid using Great Generals as warlords. Uber units can still be killed easily. Also, promotions take a long time to get after around 5 or 6 of them, so your units growth will come to a screeching halt at one point or the other.