Catapults aren't attacking consistantly

[MarkJohnson]

I am having a hard time with catapults and collateral damage. I just had war declared on me and I waited for Napoleon's troops to walk up to my city with his small stack of doom(6 guys and 3 catapults). I skip a turn to get my 3rd catapult in place and then attack. My first catapult only damages 3 units, my second only 2, and my 3rd hits 3. Why is it on my other attacks it hits for 5 or 6 on the collateral damage? They all have just 1 collateral damage buff. His six units are 3 horse archers, 2 macemen, and 1 longbowman. None are UU units.

Is there a way to predict how many units will get hit, and how much damage?


Thanks
-=Mark=-

 

[MarkJohnson]

well, I've replayed this scenario a fw times now in hopes of building the university of sankore. Now, I decide to build a couple more catapults while he's bombarding my defenses and still the catapults are doing minimal damage and I'm taking on more casualties. Not to mention Stalin is attacking sooner. Before he'd take 5-6 turns and come in by my SE position. Now he's coming in about turn 3-4 from my SW position.

I was going to try starting back a few more turns but save has erased them. I was thinking if I had a dozen or more units by this time, I'd have avoided this war. I did have about 4 units per city and figured that would have avoided war, especially when they were pleased with me. I guess after they wiped Mansu Musa off the map, they tought they'd point the war machine in my direction.

-=Mark=-

 

[peppe1]

The collateral damage has a max damage it can apply and max number of targets. Other siege weapons are immune to this damage. It is 5 units for catapult and goes up one for the more advanced siege weapons on the tech tree. The max damage is 50% if i recall and goes up for the more advanced units.

You usually don't use catapults for defense, but suiciding them against a large stack can sometimes let your other defense hold the position.

Most AI's will be aggressive if you don't maintain a large army. I think the statistics advisory screen has the charts of your civilization's ranking among the other ones. Power is used by the AI to determine how strong you are militarily.

You can check the auto save folder for save for farther back that the game makes for you. It should be in something like 'Beyond the Sword\Saves\single\auto' when you are in the game.

Edit: This guide has details on how collatoral damage is calculated: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/combat_explained.php

 

[Bluestew0]

I was going to try starting back a few more turns but save has erased them. I was thinking if I had a dozen or more units by this time, I'd have avoided this war. I did have about 4 units per city and figured that would have avoided war, especially when they were pleased with me. I guess after they wiped Mansu Musa off the map, they tought they'd point the war machine in my direction.

Were you prepared for the war? Your comments suggest that you weren't. You were likely the least powerful and the AI decided you were the best target. You don't generally attack a more powerful and prepared civ do you? You should be happy the AI used good sense for once.

I've discussed things like this before about the AI all being friendly or pleased with me but then dogpiling my civ. From all the feedback I got it boils down to these points.

1) Spend a great deal of time studying the diplomatic model in the game. Practice manipulating it and understand what leaders can attack at certain attitude levels.

2) Although the elite players who fully understand how to manipulate the diplomatic model say it isn't necessary, I advise you to build units. Lots and lots of units. Stay at least above 50% of the strongest civ's number of troops.

Thats it. I tend to build vast armies and seldom get punked anymore. My greatest hurdle thus far (and I still have LOTS to learn) was understanding that I couldn't wait until I thought I was ready....I needed to build units all the time. Doing that has prevented a great deal of the early wars I used to get when I was utterly unprepared.

Oh, and build a bait city at choke points. Let the AI bring their stack of death and take the city. Why? Because it is easier and less costly to take the city back while destroying their SOD for perhaps a couple siege weapons. Siege weapons with the city raider promotions generally have a fair chance of withdrawing unlike attacking out in the field....they die much easier out there.

 

[MarkJohnson]

The collateral damage has a max damage it can apply and max number of targets. Other siege weapons are immune to this damage. It is 5 units for catapult and goes up one for the more advanced siege weapons on the tech tree. The max damage is 50% if i recall and goes up for the more advanced units.

My real issue is why doesn't collateral damage affect 5 units when there is a huge stack? Right now I replayed this part and this time built extra catapults. I had 5 to attack his stack of 20 with an affcet of 2,2,2,5,2. I barely scratched him. When I attacked I lost 8 units in a row and I had an extra 4-5 on this replay. Last play I only lost 2 units and only 3 catapults. This is really driving me nuts! - lol

You usually don't use catapults for defense, but suiciding them against a large stack can sometimes let your other defense hold the position.

I was going to try that and let my units heal quickly and pound him before he knocked down my defenses. But he had two other sod on the way!

Most AI's will be aggressive if you don't maintain a large army. I think the statistics advisory screen has the charts of your civilization's ranking among the other ones. Power is used by the AI to determine how strong you are militarily.

Yeah, I need to watch that advisory screen. I never use it but I did see the strongest civs and I wasn't on the list both times. I figured 4 on each city was enough. But I only have 6-7 cities compared to the other civs with around 12. no I guess I need to keep up more with the Joneses.

You can check the auto save folder for save for farther back that the game makes for you. It should be in something like 'Beyond the Sword\Saves\single\auto' when you are in the game.

Yeah, I went there in windows explorer and it shows the same. only 5 saves.

Edit: This guide has details on how collatoral damage is calculated: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/combat_explained.php

Thanks, those links helped a lot. but it still didn't mention anything about catapults hitting fewer targets with collateral damage.

Were you prepared for the war? Your comments suggest that you weren't. You were likely the least powerful and the AI decided you were the best target. You don't generally attack a more powerful and prepared civ do you? You should be happy the AI used good sense for once.

I've discussed things like this before about the AI all being friendly or pleased with me but then dogpiling my civ. From all the feedback I got it boils down to these points.

1) Spend a great deal of time studying the diplomatic model in the game. Practice manipulating it and understand what leaders can attack at certain attitude levels.

2) Although the elite players who fully understand how to manipulate the diplomatic model say it isn't necessary, I advise you to build units. Lots and lots of units. Stay at least above 50% of the strongest civ's number of troops.

Yeah, I need to watch that advisory more. I just hate losing my resources to army maintenance, but it's better than being attacked.

Thats it. I tend to build vast armies and seldom get punked anymore. My greatest hurdle thus far (and I still have LOTS to learn) was understanding that I couldn't wait until I thought I was ready....I needed to build units all the time. Doing that has prevented a great deal of the early wars I used to get when I was utterly unprepared.

Oh, and build a bait city at choke points. Let the AI bring their stack of death and take the city. Why? Because it is easier and less costly to take the city back while destroying their SOD for perhaps a couple siege weapons. Siege weapons with the city raider promotions generally have a fair chance of withdrawing unlike attacking out in the field....they die much easier out there.

Yeah, I've done that before. Trying to get my neighbor to attack me by building a city on his border and lightly defended so I don't get the negative you declared war on our friend, plus less war weariness. Works good when it works, but mostly they AI's don't fall for it. Probably because I have a bigger army when I try it.

Thanks all for the help
-=Mark=-

 

[peppe1]

The article I linked to does go over how the game selects targets.

The collateral damage attacks are run in separate rounds before combat with the main defender.
So if a relatively small stack is attacked (i think you said they had 6 units). Then one unit is removed from the available targets list, as it will fight the catapult directly. That leaves 5 targets and you have 5 collateral damage rounds. Each enemy above 50% health can be selected and they are selected at random for each round, so the same one can be selected for several collateral damage rounds.

Example from the article:

Example: A catapult (with Barrage I) attacks a stack with two full-strength muskets, a knight (with Combat I) at 54 hps, a sword at 38 hps, and an elephant at 83 hps. The number of targets is 3. The first random target is the elephant. Adjusted strengths of 6 and 8 means 8 damage to the elephant. Round 2, the knight is picked. Adjusted strengths of 6 and 10 mean 7 damage, but the limit is 4 because of maximum damage. Round 3, the elephant is selected again, and takes another 8 damage. Before combat between the catapult and the first full-strength musket begins, the stack now has two full-strength muskets, a knight with 50 hps, a sword with 38 hps, and an elephant with 67 hps. Then, the attack between the catapult and the musket would resolve as normally (described above).

One thing you should also know about combat is the attacker will always face the best counter of the enemy. You can often hold a town with a good mix of hard counters (spears for mounted, axeman for melee units, mounted for siege). Them bombarding your defenses is not a major issue, yes its nice to have the defense bonuses, but a mix of counters is all you need (or superior numbers).

Unless the enemy is pillaging it is almost always better to wait in your city especially for close battles.

I'm not a fan of the advisor screen, if you install the BUG or BAT (BUG mod + graphic enhancement mods) they will display your power ratio to the AI in the score section.

Edit: Also hit ALT and hover over the stack you want to attack to see the odds of success.

 

[MarkJohnson]

The article I linked to does go over how the game selects targets.

The collateral damage attacks are run in separate rounds before combat with the main defender.
So if a relatively small stack is attacked (i think you said they had 6 units). Then one unit is removed from the available targets list, as it will fight the catapult directly. That leaves 5 targets and you have 5 collateral damage rounds. Each enemy above 50% health can be selected and they are selected at random for each round, so the same one can be selected for several collateral damage rounds.

I caught that, but it sure doesn't seem random. Like I said above, I attacked a stack of 20 units with only 3 catapults with my 5 catapults and I got a result of 2,2,2,5,2. It seems hard to belive that it gets such outstanding luck as I got the same results in earlier battles of 2,3,2 on the stack of 6 with 3 catapults two times in a row.

[/quote]Example from the article:

One thing you should also know about combat is the attacker will always face the best counter of the enemy. You can often hold a town with a good mix of hard counters (spears for mounted, axeman for melee units, mounted for siege). Them bombarding your defenses is not a major issue, yes its nice to have the defense bonuses, but a mix of counters is all you need (or superior numbers).

Unless the enemy is pillaging it is almost always better to wait in your city especially for close battles.

I tend to not have a very good variety. I try to build as strong of unit as possible with different buffs or lowest cost units to get as many defenders as possible in a short amount of time.

I'm not a fan of the advisor screen, if you install the BUG or BAT (BUG mod + graphic enhancement mods) they will display your power ratio to the AI in the score section.

Edit: Also hit ALT and hover over the stack you want to attack to see the odds of success.

I went through all the menus and couldn't seem to find the power ratings for everyone's army. I have the BUG mod installed. I will have to see if II can find the graphic enhancement mod.

Thanks again
-=Mark=-

 

[peppe1]

The BAT mod can be found here: http://civ4bug.sourceforge.net/

F9 - 'Info Screen' has the various charts. Power should be a graph on the first page

BAT makes it a whole lot easier, here is a shot of BAT 1.1 (assume it would be in BUG as well).

In the scoreboard it shows I have 1.3 the power of one and 1.1 of the other:

 

[MarkJohnson]

Ahhh, I thought those numbers were for espionage ratios. II was looking in the statistics part of the info screen. I just overlooked the graph part thinking it would never be there.

Well, here's a screenshot of my game and you can see how pitiful I am. Some AIs don't even get a ratio, probably it is too embarrassed to show it - lol



Well, I've officially given up on this game. I continued this map and by turn 365 I get 3 war declarations and a couple turns later 1 more joins in. sigh.

I guess I'm just going to have to stick to the war machine and sacrifice a little research. I was hoping to keep it high, but I guess it just doesn't happen in these more advanced games.

Thanks for help
-=Mark=-
ps What are those numbers near the names. You have a +8 in green and Pericles has a -5 in red? I better download the newest BUG mod. must have an older one.

 

[peppe1]

Hit CTR + ALT + O to go into the BUG options. Click scoreboard tab and it covers what most of the options are.

On mine those red/green numbers are the change in score from the previous turn. It says it also includes changes based on what I have done so far this turn. Its on by default, not particularly important, but useful occasionally when there are big moves.

I play with better AI mod also, so normal game might be different, but if your power ratio gets below .5 someone will come for you (at least on noble).
I tried a peaceful game with Gandhi... without tech trading there isn't much hope to buy peace or stall without a standing army to keep your power level reasonable.