Civ6 Overrandomization.

[aieeegrunt]

You haven't seen overrandomization unless you've played Civ4. Nothing like losing a battle at 95% odds.

Ya the “spearman vs battleship” syndrome

 

[Leyrann]

Ya the “spearman vs battleship” syndrome

Wasn't it spearman vs tank? Also, I'm pretty sure I remember someone debunking that, that in reality it would never happen, and people only saw it sometimes because on lower difficulties, the player gets a number of free wins in combat, which are usually used up early on, but sometimes they'd have so little combat that this didn't happen, and then they suddenly get their free victory in a rather strange situation.

That said, disclaimer: I have never looked into this myself, nor have I come across a combat victory in Civ IV that is that ridiculous (but I don't have that many hours into the game, only like 200). And second disclaimer: Just because I'm defending the combat system here, doesn't mean I don't think it's terrible. Civ V and VI have much better combat systems. And while I don't remember the details of Civ V's combat system, I really like Civ VI's system using strength difference. It takes some getting used to, but then it becomes very intuitive, and it greatly simplifies how combat bonuses can be applied.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Wasn't it spearman vs tank? Also, I'm pretty sure I remember someone debunking that, that in reality it would never happen, and people only saw it sometimes because on lower difficulties, the player gets a number of free wins in combat, which are usually used up early on, but sometimes they'd have so little combat that this didn't happen, and then they suddenly get their free victory in a rather strange situation.

That said, disclaimer: I have never looked into this myself, nor have I come across a combat victory in Civ IV that is that ridiculous (but I don't have that many hours into the game, only like 200). And second disclaimer: Just because I'm defending the combat system here, doesn't mean I don't think it's terrible. Civ V and VI have much better combat systems. And while I don't remember the details of Civ V's combat system, I really like Civ VI's system using strength difference. It takes some getting used to, but then it becomes very intuitive, and it greatly simplifies how combat bonuses can be applied.

Ya it’s been decades since those particular games but I swear that exact thing happened to me

The biggest problem with the combat in Civ6 isnt the combat, it’s the combo of 1UPT, low move allowance and terrain restrictions that make manouvering your forces a sliding tile minigame

Play a few games as Gran Colombia, it is amazing how much combat improves

 

[Zegangani]

The biggest problem with the combat in Civ6 isnt the combat, it’s the combo of 1UPT, low move allowance and terrain restrictions that make manouvering your forces a sliding tile minigame

Play a few games as Gran Colombia, it is amazing how much combat improves

wrt. movement: I was recently reading through a thread from 2009, with the topic/title being "Better Unit Movement and Military Strategy". The Idea is:

All ground and naval military units have lots of movement points each turn (a minimum of 20). They can cross a large continent in a few years if they want. However, this raw movement power is impeded by several things: the two main obstacles being fog of war and enemy patrol zones.

I assume the ideas in that post were suggested for Civ IV (nearly a year before CiV came out), so not considering a 1UPT system, but they got me thinking of something else that could work similar but without needing a rework of the unit system or something:
- All Units have the same Movement Points as they have now,
- +1 Movement on any Map Tile that was entered by any of your Units,
- Additional +1 Movement on a Tile that was entered by 1 of your Units in the past 3-7 Turns. If an Enemy Unit enters a Tile after your Unit has passed through it, then this Bonus will get revoked.

Having Units moving faster on tiles that were moved through by your Units represents familiarity with that tile and having knowledge over it, so it's not a new environment that you need to move through carefully. And the extra movement point is for when in the past few turns 1 of your Units cleared the path for your other Units to pass through.

Ofc I'm gonna try to impelement this in 4XP now

 

[vorlon_mi]

Wasn't it spearman vs tank?

Both. In Civ3, it was spearman vs. tank. We even have a smiley for it

In one of the earlier games (I want to say Civ1, but I can't be sure), it was possible for a ship to directly attack a land unit. The integer math was such that if the battleship was weakened and the land unit was at full health, it was possible for the ship to die. Only 10 HP instead of 100 HP, something like that.

In Civ4, I have lost battles at 95% odds. It doesn't happen often, but consider:
Both Civ3 and Civ4 allowed units to stack up, 20, 50, 100 units or more on a tile. The player engages a large stack against a city with many units in it, or another large stack in the field. In just a single turn across a multi-front war, one might see dozens of individual engagements, all using RNG values filtered through combat modifiers. Weird losses will happen, as the sample sizes increase.
Both Civ5 and Civ6 have 1UPT, with considerably fewer engagements per turn and more refined combat modifiers and strength calculations. Weird losses happen much less often.

 

[rgp151]

I'm not sure if this has already been addressed, but there is an Advanced Setup option called "Balanced Start Positions" or something like that, which I find does help me reduce the number of restarts I need to get a reasonable looking start, especially with certain civs, like Japan.

 

[reddishrecue]

Both. In Civ3, it was spearman vs. tank. We even have a smiley for it

In one of the earlier games (I want to say Civ1, but I can't be sure), it was possible for a ship to directly attack a land unit. The integer math was such that if the battleship was weakened and the land unit was at full health, it was possible for the ship to die. Only 10 HP instead of 100 HP, something like that.

In civ 1 there wasn't a health bar and the battleship was the strongest unit in the game (it still might be with the exception of the missile cruiser).

In Civ4, I have lost battles at 95% odds. It doesn't happen often, but consider:
Both Civ3 and Civ4 allowed units to stack up, 20, 50, 100 units or more on a tile. The player engages a large stack against a city with many units in it, or another large stack in the field. In just a single turn across a multi-front war, one might see dozens of individual engagements, all using RNG values filtered through combat modifiers.

Civ 1 could stack up but one unit could kill every unit in the stack. Civ 4 stacks wouldn't allow that to happen and units would go to battle 1 on 1 with the unit in the stack that has the highest defense.

Weird losses will happen, as the sample sizes increase.
Both Civ5 and Civ6 have 1UPT, with considerably fewer engagements per turn and more refined combat modifiers and strength calculations. Weird losses happen much less often.

I've lost a lot of units in civ 4 with winning odds >90% including great generals with all kinds of promotions.

 

[Linklite]

I'm a little confused. People are saying that they've occasionally lost battles of 90+% likelihood of winning...isn't that exactly what the percentage is saying? You'll rarely lose, but 5% of the time you will?

 

[aieeegrunt]

I'm a little confused. People are saying that they've occasionally lost battles of 90+% likelihood of winning...isn't that exactly what the percentage is saying? You'll rarely lose, but 5% of the time you will?

It’s basic psychology

People don’t remember the 99 times they curb stomped the spearman, because it is the expected result and benefited them. They remember the one time the spearman lucked out and won

 

[Linklite]

It’s basic psychology

People don’t remember the 99 times they curb stomped the spearman, because it is the expected result and benefited them. They remember the one time the spearman lucked out and won

Sure, I get that. I'm just surprised that people are saying it so boldly and with the context. Take for example:
"I have lost battles at 95% odds. It doesn't happen often".
OK, that's...what 95% means, it happens but doesn't happen often. Do that battle 20 times and you'd expect it to happen once. Just seems odd to me to make a deal of something doing what it says on the tin while quoting what it said on the tin and saying that it did that.

 

[reddishrecue]

Sure, I get that. I'm just surprised that people are saying it so boldly and with the context. Take for example:
"I have lost battles at 95% odds. It doesn't happen often".
OK, that's...what 95% means, it happens but doesn't happen often. Do that battle 20 times and you'd expect it to happen once. Just seems odd to me to make a deal of something doing what it says on the tin while quoting what it said on the tin and saying that it did that.

I would say the same thing, but it does happen in civ 4. You say it'll happen once, I say it'll happen 2-3 times... at least 90% which are acceptable odds.

 

[leif erikson]

I'm a little confused. People are saying that they've occasionally lost battles of 90+% likelihood of winning...isn't that exactly what the percentage is saying? You'll rarely lose, but 5% of the time you will?

That is not my experience with Civ4. The RNG was streaky and you could lose 4 or 5 battles in a row at 90+ percent.

At times, it seemed one won more battles at 30% than at 70%. Wish we could do a study of some of the Civ4 succession games of the month where the players reported the odds and the results.

 

[aieeegrunt]

That is not my experience with Civ4. The RNG was streaky and you could lose 4 or 5 battles in a row at 90+ percent.

At times, it seemed one won more battles at 30% than at 70%. Wish we could do a study of some of the Civ4 succession games of the month where the players reported the odds and the results.

I seem to remember enfuriating strings like this, but again human memory is a fickle and unreliable thing

I’d like to see a more controlled and statistically valid stufy, but that is asking people to do some hella boring replays

 

[Linklite]

In my experience, it definitely seems like older games from when I was a kid had issues where you'd have runs. A bunch of failures in a row was quite a common feeling - as well as a bunch of wins. That doesn't seem to be the case these days. It could be that I'm a bit more mature...but it very much seemed like allegedly random events would have patterns. I don't understand how - it's not that hard to build an effectively random number generator - but it definitely seemed the case.

 

[Naokaukodem]

That doesn't seem to be the case these days.

Civ5 and Civ6 have both more predicatable battle outcomes - in the fashion of Civ2. I would say even more predictable than in Civ2. Civ3 was the worst in that domain : you could have an elite (5hp) see its hp go down one after the other against a levee. Even Armies (elites army : 15 hp IIRC) were far from being undestructible by common troops.

 

[Leyrann]

In my experience, it definitely seems like older games from when I was a kid had issues where you'd have runs. A bunch of failures in a row was quite a common feeling - as well as a bunch of wins. That doesn't seem to be the case these days. It could be that I'm a bit more mature...but it very much seemed like allegedly random events would have patterns. I don't understand how - it's not that hard to build an effectively random number generator - but it definitely seemed the case.

Bad RNG is definitely a thing in older games. I've been playing the classic version of the 2000s MMORPG Maplestory recently, and when I unlocked aoe skills, I noticed that sometimes if I killed a bunch of the same mobs with the same attack, their drops would often be identical - sometimes three or four copies of the same set of drops.

Civ5 and Civ6 have both more predicatable battle outcomes - in the fashion of Civ2. I would say even more predictable than in Civ2. Civ3 was the worst in that domain : you could have an elite (5hp) see its hp go down one after the other against a levee. Even Armies (elites army : 15 hp IIRC) were far from being undestructible by common troops.

Was Civ 2 combat all that predictable? It was just regular "fight to the death" which was only phased out with Civ 5, right? And old as it is, it didn't even display combat chances.

I also remember that, at least against the barbarians (not sure about other civs), it blatantly cheated. If you played on Chieftain (lowest difficulty level), and stepped on a hut that spawned 8 barbarian horseman with an early unit of your own, you had a roughly 50/50 chance of surviving the turn (where all eight barbarians would attack you). On higher difficulties, that definitely wasn't the case, though I'm not sure whether it stacked the odds against the player if you got high enough. It might have, however, as I remember that when the AI had city walls + musketmen, you needed howitzers (which ignored city walls) to be able to conquer cities at all. Anything less wouldn't be enough.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Was Civ 2 combat all that predictable?

Judging by the way I stacked my units shamelessly (and the fact the entire stack was destroyed if you lost only one battle in there), yes it was.

 

[uhu]

I’d like to see a more controlled and statistically valid stufy, but that is asking people to do some hella boring replays

While modding civ4 I used as RNG the standard cyGame.getSorenRandNum() and did during tests of my mods also some peeks on the distribution of generated numbers and found them ok.

I mean, for the plain numbers you can write a lot of them into python.log and then check them statistically.
But on the other hand, if you want to use the normal player interface, you maybe must train a horde gibbons or so ...

 

[rocksinmypath]

As a single-player game, Civ doesn't really need to be fair, and I don't have much problem with randomization, for the most part. There are a few things related to randomization that I think are bad for the game.

1. The value of an early-game scout is just so big that a scout opener is almost always the right answer. I don't have a problem with city-state first-meets being game-defining, but at least make the decision interesting. If a scout is almost always the first thing you need to build, you should just be given one. As you produce more, scouts diminish in value very quickly, so I think this change alone could make what is one of the very first decisions you'll make in the game significantly more interesting.

2. Random unit promotions are just a lazy patch on what are poorly designed features. Why do apostle promotions need to be randomized? Because if they weren't random, you know exactly which ones you'll be going for every single time. Random unit promotions might make the game more balanced, but not fun.

3. Certain randomized features just feel out of place. What I mean by this is that they don't fit the expedited board game theme that Civ has. Civ borrows many features from board games, and I think these make the game what it is and so successful: tiled map, turn-based flow and movement mechanism that works with these features, being able to convene with other players through the world congress, a very thorough guide of the rules of the game available through Civilopedia, etc. Certain randomization features don't follow this theme, however, and I think they'd be better if they did. Spying is an example of this. The game will tell you what your success rate for each mission is in percentage, but I have no idea where these numbers came from. I have a 50% chance of stealing a great work, but if I gain sources first, my spy acts as if it's two levels higher. What does this even mean? The game doesn't even tell you what the actual effect of this is, and you get to find out after you've done that mission, and now it says I have 74% chance of success. Where does this number come from? There's no board game that would implement randomization this way because all the rules, including how probabilities are assigned to random events, should be at least implicitly explained to the players because they're the ones who set up the game. When you know all the rules, you have more control of the decisions you make even if randomness plays a significant role on the outcome of your decisions. This is not at all the feeling that I get with spies. I use them because I know enough that they provide me value, but it's hard for me to ascertain exactly how much. Because the way it works is so opaque, it's hard for me to form any sort of detailed strategy around it. At least with combat, the game will tell me all the factors contributing to the combat strength of the units involved and visually inform me roughly what the effect of a combat action will be, and this knowledge guides me in how I position my units and decide how many units of different types I need to produce, and so on.

 

[UWHabs]

As a single-player game, Civ doesn't really need to be fair, and I don't have much problem with randomization, for the most part. There are a few things related to randomization that I think are bad for the game.

1. The value of an early-game scout is just so big that a scout opener is almost always the right answer. I don't have a problem with city-state first-meets being game-defining, but at least make the decision interesting. If a scout is almost always the first thing you need to build, you should just be given one. As you produce more, scouts diminish in value very quickly, so I think this change alone could make what is one of the very first decisions you'll make in the game significantly more interesting.

2. Random unit promotions are just a lazy patch on what are poorly designed features. Why do apostle promotions need to be randomized? Because if they weren't random, you know exactly which ones you'll be going for every single time. Random unit promotions might make the game more balanced, but not fun.

3. Certain randomized features just feel out of place. What I mean by this is that they don't fit the expedited board game theme that Civ has. Civ borrows many features from board games, and I think these make the game what it is and so successful: tiled map, turn-based flow and movement mechanism that works with these features, being able to convene with other players through the world congress, a very thorough guide of the rules of the game available through Civilopedia, etc. Certain randomization features don't follow this theme, however, and I think they'd be better if they did. Spying is an example of this. The game will tell you what your success rate for each mission is in percentage, but I have no idea where these numbers came from. I have a 50% chance of stealing a great work, but if I gain sources first, my spy acts as if it's two levels higher. What does this even mean? The game doesn't even tell you what the actual effect of this is, and you get to find out after you've done that mission, and now it says I have 74% chance of success. Where does this number come from? There's no board game that would implement randomization this way because all the rules, including how probabilities are assigned to random events, should be at least implicitly explained to the players because they're the ones who set up the game. When you know all the rules, you have more control of the decisions you make even if randomness plays a significant role on the outcome of your decisions. This is not at all the feeling that I get with spies. I use them because I know enough that they provide me value, but it's hard for me to ascertain exactly how much. Because the way it works is so opaque, it's hard for me to form any sort of detailed strategy around it. At least with combat, the game will tell me all the factors contributing to the combat strength of the units involved and visually inform me roughly what the effect of a combat action will be, and this knowledge guides me in how I position my units and decide how many units of different types I need to produce, and so on.

There are cases when the scout opener isn't the top play, but yes, the reason it wins is because the potential positive of what you unlock from scouting far far far outweighs what you get from anything else, unless if you just go for a turn 1 rush of an opponent (ie. as Sumeria or Aztecs or Nubia, for example). It was crazier earlier on when you got +2 from the first envoy in a city-state - I mean if you get lucky and your scout find 2 scientific CS and gets in first, you have doubled or tripled your empire science by that move, so even if a barbarian causes some nuisance because you haven't gotten a slinger out early, it's not as big a deal. I remember one game where I was near 3 scientific city-states and my science was going so far early I ended up quitting the game because it was too much.

I don't actually mind the random promotions, but would have been nice for them to be a little more balanced. For example, the Rock Band random promotions I think is great, because you get some customization, you can't just pick what you want, but also none of them are like super crazy. Spy promotions I would say are okay - basically, every now and then you get the good ones, sometimes you're stuck with the boring ones. Apostles the difference is that the good ones are so much better than the bad ones that if you get a run of 3-4 bad promotion cycles in a row, it just gets frustrating.

And then yeah, those cases where they tell you the exact odds, that just feels a little simplistic. I mean, even back in civ 4 everything was very fixed to numbers, like I remember memorizing some of the cheat sheets to know that Monty wouldn't attack you if you stayed at least at +X with them, and this other civ you needed to be at +Y to avoid that, or you need to be at +2 to trade maps with them, and stuff like that. So, for example, some of the alliance or grievance systems in the current game, at least those are pretty obvious where the + and - come from. The spy ones is basically that they have their special formula for mission difficulty + spy level + whatever, and that translates to a chart, and they just decided to give you the raw numbers rather than any sort of "this mission is a Green mission" vs "This mission is a Red mission". Yeah, maybe it would keep the intrigue more if they just kept it with a simple system, like the combat system "Decisive Victory" vs "Marginal Defeat" vs whatever. Spies also suffer from them being very expensive but very valuable - I've had games where i get my first 3 spies killed, and then just stop because I assume that I am cursed spying that game. Spies also suffer from a lot of the impacts being kind of hidden. Like I can sabotage production, and I know what it does because I've had it done against me, but it always feels a little, I dunno, empty? Like, "Congrats you sabotaged production. Now pick a promotion and go right back to work." I don't know what it should be, but I guess it being something that is 100% punitive just means I can't really enjoy it much.