Caravel vs Trireme

[Baccus]

A normal battle between these two - I've just been sneak attacked by the *&^%$&* Indians. They have a Trireme, I have a Caravel. I got beaten - I would normally have thought 'fair enough, they possibly had a veteran', but because it was a trireme and I had a caravel (which I thought had a defence strength of 2 - later I found this to be 2) and because they beat me badly, I pulled up and decided to investigate. I put on cheat mode, and checked out their trireme. A perfectly normal, non-vet trireme. My ship was a non-vet Caravel. Caravel has defence 1, hp 1, Trireme has attack 1, fp 1. Even Stevens, I would have thought. Yet I have replayed this battle from my save game about 50-60 times now - and I haven't won once.
Not once - it would seem that the battle is unwinnable, as futile as me trying to defend against a battleship with my trireme. Yet if I (using cheat mode) make the indians the human player, and attack what was my caravel with the Indian trireme, I lose - as would be expected. Has anyone ever come across such an unwinnable fight? I've just gone spare and (using cheat mode) nuked the heck out of the indians, in pure fury at the unfairness of it. Oh, I'm playing on Prince level, so there should be no advantages or disadvantages on either side

 

[Ren]

I have seen this type of thing, but I haven't seen it to be un-winnable (hence I loaded the game again etc.) I've seen phalanxes beat Battleships on the defence and legions beat riflemen etc..

 

[Baccus]

Well, I reloaded every 30 seconds for about 20 minutes and lost every single battle without fail - I've not seen anything like that before. Anyway, I've played for a few more years and now I've got destroyers and blown away half of the Celtic navy (Ironclads? Pah!) Just waiting for the Indians to sneak attack my Explorer which is sat in their lands, then I shall wreak a terrible revenge!

 

[Sorivar]

What Level were you playing on?

 

[Moulton]

I had the same initial reaction to lost battles.
There is more to it... One, it seems that the random number is set at the beginning of the turn, and reset the same on a re-load, so the same action would repeat ad infinitum.
Second, in a battle, you have back and forth interchanges. Your defense is the chance that one unit will hit another. If it hits, it takes one hit point away. If it hits 3 times before you do--you lost.

 

[Sodak]

As the combat rules go, 1 vs. 1 gives the attacker only a 29% chance of winning. However, it was a sneak attack, which gives the attacker a big advantage. Limited testing didn't reveal a multiplier, but even a paltry x1.5 bonus would be enough to tip the scales in favor of the attacker. The multiplier is probably more like x2 or x4, tho.

This doesn't answer why such a bonus did not apply when you switched roles, tho...

 

[Ren]

Originally posted by Baccus
Anyway, I've played for a few more years and now I've got destroyers and blown away half of the Celtic navy (Ironclads? Pah!)

Heh heh, don't ya love it?

 

[Baccus]

Originally posted by Sorivar
What Level were you playing on?

Prince level - the one I play on for a nice, easy game

It turns out the indians lost out anyway, as I parked my now stranded explorer on some productive land. I refused to move it (and we only had a cease fire) and the indians never dared attack me again, but also refused to sign a peace treaty!

I was considering an upgrade to Civ III, if the computer has a few less 'cheating' advantages and plays a little more intelligently, but now I see the AI cheats in Civ III as well (though perhaps a little less flagrantly than in Civ II). [punch]

 

[Chump]

Yes, the "Sneak Attack" bonus does tip the favours highly in the attackers way.

 

[Ren]

And has anyone else noticed that when an aircraft attacks a ship in port (ie. in a city), it is really effective? They call it the 'Pearl Harbour Effect' there is a write up about it in my Civ2 file, I'll post it in a sec..

 

[Ren]

Here it is: Pearl Harbour (a.k.a. "Hey! You sank my Battleship!"): Ships defending in port have their firepower reduced to one. Air units attacking ships in port have their firepower doubled.