C3C, some thoughts and possible glitches

[regnar]

Hello all, I just got C3C in the mail, I had played CIV 3 awhile ago when it first came out and quickly lost interest as some of the bugs and what I termed unrealistic changes to the game. I am serving in Afghanistan and saw the advertisement for C3C on the internet and figured it would be a great diversion when I am not working here (which isnt much time). It seemed that alot of the problems I had with the original game seemed to be addressed or so it said. Well after playing quite a bit of the time there are still alot of issues I have with the game. One of the biggest is the corruption, this hasnt seemed to change at all from the original game and I know this is a computer game but it should make an attempt to come as close to reality as possible. I can understand corruption being modeled in the game but to make it as devestating as it is is just ridiculous and completely unrealistic. It is really frustrating at having a great city placed as far as resources and seeing it is going to take you 60+ turns to build a granary.

Also I dont know if this is a glitch or what but I am currently playing the earth scenario on a huge map, it is around the late 1880's I have a pretty modern naval fleet built up, there still are about 12 other civs including myself ( I am the Germans). Well it is pretty frustrating to see my Russian computer opponent with about 5 destroyers just annihilate my fleet. These super destroyers beat anything they have fought, they have destroyed three battleships, 2 carriers and the only battle I have won is when they have taken on another destoyer. When the battles took place each ship was undamaged each had the same experience level and yet every time I sortie a battleship out there, one destroyer will come along and knock it off, or for that matter any capital ship. This is ridiculous and I am hoping this is some sort of glitch. Anyone else have this sort of experience in this game?

 

[Deatvert]

no glitch on the ships it's just a bad RNG,

 

[regnar]

I would chalk it up to random luck as well but it continues to happen so it is not random anymore, I have counted now 7 times where I have sailed out a battleship and 7 times a destroyer has attacked and destoyed it, again same experience level and on one time the attacking destroyer had only 3 green bars so it was damaged. Now this has happened not only to battleships but cruisers as well, this is a bit ridiculous as there are not going to be to many if any times when a destroyer is going to go head to head with a battleship and come out the winner, I can understand once maybe twice but it happens every time.

 

[ssvensson]

I have this incredible noob question (although I've played civ for almost a decade now) regarding this problem!!

Does the level ur playing affect the outcome of a battle? Meaning is the AI units relatively harder to defeat at higher level than on e.g. chieftain - on equal circumstances?

 

[Lopex]

I read somewhere on CFC that the difficulty level does not affect the odds of winning or losing battles in Civ3.
I also have the idea that this effect was in place in older Civ versions but it could be that I was extremely unlucky while playing at higher difficulty levels...

 

[regnar]

Any other thoughts or advice on what I think is a glitch, as it continues to happen and is severely pissing me off?

 

[USC]

Regnar,

It's called randomness. A natural part of randomness is that, given a long enough series of trials (e.g. of battles), occasional "weird" things become normal. An example from another context -- the changes are 32 to 1 of any given series of five coin-flips being all heads. That's pretty low chances! But flip enough coins, and you WILL see it... flip more, and you will see it again.

What's more, if we have a community of tens of thousands of coin-flippers (civ-players), there will be the occasional player who saw e.g. three runs of five heads in a row in a very short time -- because the number of total trials viewed (all the people flipping coins -- playing Civ -- times all the flips -- battles -- they see) is extremely large.

What's more more, there are human perception quirks that sometimes make "streaks" seem "streakier" than they really are. A classic example here is when you have already seen four heads in a row and you say to yourself, "boy, if a FIFTH heads in a row appears now, then that's REALLY crazy!" In fact, the chances of a fifth heads is 50%, just like it was at the start of the run -- but it will "feel" more crazy because of the gambler's fallacy (the erroneous feeling that odd series of events must become less likely as they continue).

So no, it's not a bug -- it's randomness working as it should. Just thank the same randomness the next time you fight an even-strength opponent three times and come out all three times in a row without a scratch.

Or play some other game with less randomness.

Or mod up all units' hit points, thus reducing the randomness, in your copy of Civ 3.

USC

 

[NobleLeader]

An elite weak unit against a regular strong unit has its chances.... Those destroyers surely are elite and your naval unit maybe are regular.

 

[JustBen]

It seems uncanny. It's not the RNG -- at least not as far as I've heard. I'm tempted to write it off as luck. Have you tried blasting them down to redlined-status and then going in to fight? If you got 7 losses in a row after that, then I might be more inclined to believe that something shady is going on.

Of course, since you have Conquests, once you've redlined a ship you might just as well bombard it to death. But in the interest of science, let us know.

 

[NiteCreature]

I encountered the same problems. After building a few of those big AEGIS cruisers or Battleships, i decided to stop production on them and build destroyers. Every other ship than destroyers is blown out of the water by.... Destroyers! grrrrr...

 

[regnar]

Like I said originally the units are all veteran, there is no difference in the experience level of the units mentioned. I under stand about random number generation but this has gone beyond five times now, it is happening on a continual basis, if this is the way they want the game to be balanced why even insert capital ships or any other ship except destroyers.

Also another note and this one has probably been beaten to death in previous posts but if I have a Panzer going against a musketman or a pikeman of for that matter a war elephant there should be no chance of loss whatsoever, come on this is garbage having modern units lose to unit of antiquity. PLease make this game a tad more realistic, this is the third mod to the basic game and these basic improvements are still needed.

 

[The Last Conformist]

If those Destroyers have been attacking your ships all the time, that's not particularly weird, act'ly. Attack 12 vs effective defense 13.2; works out at a 0.55% chance for seven straight wins for attacking Destroyers against Battleships.

The Tank-getting-beaten-by-Spearman issue has been argued to death more times than you can shake an armour-piercing spear at, and I can no longer bring myself to particularly care. If you're losing Panzers to Spearmen, you're winning the war anyway, and shouldn't be complaining!

Edit: And for the record, there's no problem or glitches with the RNG. You may not like the way relative unit strengths are set up, but the system is working exactly as intended.

 

[dozenlong]

War Elephants historically were not that good...

However, they didn't have them like they did in Return of the King!