Combat Odds not working properly?

[G-Max]

1. War chariots cost 50% less hammers than praetorians. If a prat wins at 70% while the WC is more like 30% (with withdrawal of 10%), don't forget that some of that variance is made up in unit cost. It's not like surviving WC don't get promotions also.

70%?



It's closer to 85%... at worst.

2. 2 moves. 2 moves. 2 moves. 2 moves. 2 moves. 2 moves. 2 moves. 2 moves. 2 moves. 2 moves. 2 moves. 2 moves. Even at a neutral speed like normal, the value of 2 moves is obscene. 2 move units force fights in more favorable locations and FIGHT FEWER UNITS. Prats struggle to effectively fork cities; war chariots do this easily. Prats will see 1-3 additional units/city than war chariots

Facing fewer units is only an advantage when you tend to lose most of your battles. For the Prat-rusher, more units just means more promotions, which means that when you're done with your current victim and the surviving praets heal, you'll be in a better position to attack whoever's next.

3. War chariots are a lot earlier. AH ----> hook horse, compared to "food resource(s)

Rome starts with Fishing.

and you need wheel in there at some point too

Why?

Without a strong commerce resource rome will struggle to field material #'s of prats before 1000 BC or even somewhat after.

Why? A decent industrial base is all that really matters. I've conquered several neighbors prior to 1000 BC.

on trash difficulties like noble, it's simple enough to slaughter 4-5 civs with WC anyway; on standard maps that will be virtually every AI.

Standard maps?

Anything less than 18 civs is a joke.

The if you DO go up in difficulty, hitting sooner before you run into situations like "hill capitol with 5 axes" (not an uncommon sight on immortal if you declare much after 1000 BC) is a big advantage.

Again, you seem to be operating under some sort of bizarre delusion that I'm not fielding praets before 1000 BC.

4. On top of all of the above, AH is a priority early tech because of the food resources it unlocks. Even for rome it might be your priority tech with some starts. IW on the other hand...is not a priority tech. It's easy to trade for it from the AI since the AI prioritizes it, and if you don't have iron it gives you no utility for a long time, making the WC a safer unit to pursue also.

I'd like to see you pull off that chariot rush with no horses.

It requires a large investment without a guaranteed payoff (no iron = you're SoL on the rush and wind up MANY beakers behind)

no iron = I start a new game, regardless of what civ I'm playing.

However, Egypt will be done with the war and concentrating on teching before the Roman player.

First of all, this is entirely dependent upon the player. Second, don't conflate "done with the war" with "concentrating on teching".

And game speed does matter. On Normal you want War Chariots, on Marathon you want Prats.

When you're rushing, you want to play on Marathon, regardless of what civ you are.

 

[Ataxerxes]

"no Iron = I start a new game - no matter what Civ I'm playing"

You can do anything you want with the game, but it's better not to get addicted to a certain early resource. We could as easily say, "No Horses = we start a new game". Most of the players want to keep going and don't feel "none of this resource and it can't be done." If Rome starts alone on a continent, it still isn't the worst Civ even though there's no one to rush. Imperialistic helps when you have to build a lot of settlers.

When comparing Civs, you have to consider what is best in a variety of situations. Asoka is a good Axe-rusher, for example, but he doesn't have to rush.

"When you're rushing, you want to play on Marathon, no matter what Civ you are"

Game speed is set when you start the game, not when you find out if the rush is the best strategy. If I read this right, you play only on Marathon because you want to rush. Sometimes on Marathon the rush is wrong, sometimes on Normal the rush is right. I agree that if I've started the game on Marathon, I'm more likely to rush. Sometimes it just isn't in the cards - neighbors a long way off, and they're Mansa and Sitting Bull, for example.

When comparing war to peace, I merely meant that Egypt will spend fewer early hammers on the rush than Rome. They can also pursue a better domestic research path without having to research Iron Working early (it's expensive and I wouldn't want to miss a couple of good worker techs).

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

Are you serious ?

There is no way that Prats attack at "85% at worse" if they come up against a Civ with axes.

Re starting if no iron? Fair enough if that's how you like to play but to use it as an argument to counter the point that war chariots are superior makes no sense. I believe that what TMIT is saying is that if Egypt goes for AH and finds no horses he is still left with a valuable food tech and can thus look at other options without tanking the game. OTOH , beelining IW as Rome solely to get the iron resource (as opposed to also having jungled resources that need to be cleared) will seriously compromise the rest of the game if iron is nowhere to be seen (but heh,just re start)

But the icing on the cake is asking why the wheel would also need to be researched.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Because it is a wheely useful tech?

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

Actually I suppose its not needed if the re start policy is not simply limited to no iron , but no Iron in the BFC and linked by a river

My bad

 

[G-Max]

Folks, it's important to remember how this discussion got started. We're comparing a chariot rush to a praet rush. Ergo, we're assuming that the player IS rushing and that the relevant resources ARE available. I'll try to ignore most of the tangents from now on.

We could as easily say, "No Horses = we start a new game".

That's what I was assuming.

When comparing Civs

We're not comparing civs. We're discussing whether it's better for most of your units to get killed vs. get promoted when rushing.

Game speed is set when you start the game, not when you find out if the rush is the best strategy. If I read this right, you play only on Marathon because you want to rush. Sometimes on Marathon the rush is wrong, sometimes on Normal the rush is right.

And if the rush is wrong, then it doesn't matter whether a chariot rush or praet rush is better.

If I read this right, you play only on Marathon because you want to rush.

Well, I also like to play each era to its fullest, i.e, cram more combat into each century.

When comparing war to peace, I merely meant that Egypt will spend fewer early hammers on the rush than Rome.

Not if they need to crank out 3x as many units.

There is no way that Prats attack at "85% at worse" if they come up against a Civ with axes.

We were discussing Archers as defenders. If you play the Axe card, I might as well play the Spear card, and I'm pretty sure that praets will fare better against axes than chariots will against spears... ESPECIALLY if the praets are piling up City Raider promotions (-1 axe strength for CRI, -1.25 for CRII, and -1.5 for CRIII; total -3.75) while chariots can only do Combat promotions (+0.5 attacker strength for CI, CII, and CIII; total +1.5).

 

[Ataxerxes]

If you are waiting to crank out 3x as many War Chariots as Praets you're doing something wrong. The benefit of War Chariots is to attack earlier than Prats. If you're attacking at the same time Prats are better. But the WC's get online faster so you can hit the opponent before he has substantial defenses. Prats will often run into Axes as defenders, War Chariots attack before the enemy has substantial spears. Actually, on Noble you might be able to use your War Chariots out before the enemy has Archers, which will make the WC rush very easy.

Given the conditions you've given, which are highly unusual (Marathon only, restarting if you don't get your required resource), Prats are better. However, very few people play with those conditions. Most of us keep going if we don't get the resource and it's more of a risk to research Iron Working than Animal Husbandry. In a more average game (say Epic speed and no restarting) I'll take the War Chariot.

We're not trying to run down Prats, they're an excellent UU. One good thing about Prats is they don't obsolete for a long time. Although whether War Chariots are worse than stock Horse Archers depends upon game conditions.

 

[Ghpstage]

Oh dear.....

Folks, it's important to remember how this discussion got started. We're comparing a chariot rush to a praet rush. Ergo, we're assuming that the player IS rushing and that the relevant resources ARE available. I'll try to ignore most of the tangents from now on.

Tangents? The assumption that iron or horses will be available is one thing that completely invalidates your comparisons.

The risk/reward factors are crucial to a valid comparison, and going for early iron working does prove to be a very risky investment. If you try it and don't have any iron then you've just wasted a lot of on a tech thats more or less worthless, whereas AH is needed early in most games regardless of whether you will chariot rush or not so the risk for getting the tech, and therfore giving you the option to rush, is minimal at most.

Now obviously, if your going to restart if you don't have iron then this doesn't apply to you personally, but operating under those assumptions means you cannot form a comparison that will be mean anything to anyone playing the game as intended.

Similarly playing on marathon greatly warps the balance, AIs are far less capable of defending themselves as units are 3 times as fast, come cheaper and the AI doesn't realise either, and the increased unit speed marginalises the chariots speed advantage.

 

[G-Max]

Well folks, I just tried a War Chariot rush on earth18, standard speed, and noble difficulty. Not Immortal, but merely Noble. It's 850 BC, I've lost 7 chariots, and I don't have one damn city to show for it. My situation is not helped by the fact that the path to enemy territory is full of hills and forests. The enemy is building archers just as fast as I'm building chariots, and when the attrition rate is 2:1 in their favor, this is a war that I literally CANNOT win (especially when they're accumulating Great Generals twice as quickly as I am). Meanwhile, my opponents are founding cities and building libraries and whatnot, while I'm still sitting here with my ONE city that's wasting its hammers on pumping out a war chariot every 2 turns, so even if I did win this war, it would have cost me the game.

Yes, I might have done better if I had skipped Stonehenge. But seriously... Egypt's UB is a Monument variant, and Stonehenge = monument in every city. And Egypt starts next to stone. I'm not giving up Stonehenge.

Conclusion: chariot rushes are better in the short-term if you can kill your opponent in, like, the first 20 turns, but even then, they could cost you a long-term advantage. Praet rushes are better for the 200 turns or so after that, regardless of whether you're thinking short-term or long-term.

Given the conditions you've given, which are highly unusual (Marathon only

Excuse me, but I never said "Marathon only". I gave one reason why I like to play on Marathon, and I gave another for why Marathon is the best speed for any kind of rush. I never said that we'd only be talking about Marathon. I didn't even mention Marathon in any of my posts until recently.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

70%?



It's closer to 85%... at worst.

1. Losing odds vs axes in cities
2. Vs hill archer cg 1 you won't have anywhere near 85%, and will have losing odds vs swords also.
3. Your window until longbows (which wall you) is smaller.

Facing fewer units is only an advantage when you tend to lose most of your battles. For the Prat-rusher, more units just means more promotions, which means that when you're done with your current victim and the surviving praets heal, you'll be in a better position to attack whoever's next.

"More units equals more promotions"

How about "More units also equals more deaths". Let's be ultra generous and give you 80% odds on average. When you fight 10-15 extra units, you're losing 2-3 prats, or 90-135 hammers. This doesn't completely make up for the WC disadvantage on its own, but it cuts into it.

Of course, this is only an advantage at all because you're playing against an idiotic opponent (AI). Competent humans will allocate the majority of their resources into axes...and hammer for hammer prats LOSE to axes.

Rome starts with Fishing.

Cute. So if you happen to get a coastal start, you might not have to research a food tech. Then again, if you're looking at wet corn vs something like clams...well you're going to suck if you're deliberately cutting that much production out of your opening just to ASAP IW.

Why?

Are you building prats w/o iron? No. Are you getting iron without roads? Not with the vast majority of starts. So you have to tech the wheel or rely on EXTREMELY rare situations like "settle on coastal iron near capitol and now both cities have it". Even then you'd probably want roads; prats are slow and could use the help.

Why? A decent industrial base is all that really matters. I've conquered several neighbors prior to 1000 BC.

You are not consistently fielding material #'s of prats before 1000 BC with neutral (non commerce) starts. You aren't. There are hard limits on getting IW in time AND building the things. If you're killing people pre-1000 BC with prats, you are fighting low level AI. If you want it THAT way, then I can spank a monarch or lower AI closer to 2000-1800 BC with war chariots. On reasonable difficulties where any UU matters at all, sufficient #'s of prats significantly before 1000 BC isn't likely.

Standard maps?

Anything less than 18 civs is a joke.

Who's cooking the settings now?

18 civs is a) deliberate map crowding b) ANYTHING but a normal game c) only 1 of many game settings, and one of the few where prats look a little better (you cut into the 2 move advantage by just putting people everywhere so you don't have to move).

Again, you seem to be operating under some sort of bizarre delusion that I'm not fielding praets before 1000 BC.

Because you aren't, in #'s. Of course, if you're running a weak difficulty maybe the tech pace is more kind and you can. Even so, you're not moving in with like 10 prats.

I'd like to see you pull off that chariot rush with no horses.

We have to assume both resources are available; both units are useless without their resource. HOWEVER, this does not equal out. Rome puts in a SIGNIFICANT investment just to see if it has iron; Egypt discovers if it has its resource by teching a very important standard earlygame tech. It is also harder to choke egypt out of its horse.

no iron = I start a new game, regardless of what civ I'm playing.

In other words, you just accept losses when you don't have iron. Instantly.

First of all, this is entirely dependent upon the player. Second, don't conflate "done with the war" with "concentrating on teching".

You have to allocate resources somewhere and they're scarce. Having additional resources sooner in the game is not immaterial. If I capture a city that gives 10 production/turn 20 turns sooner than you, that city is providing me 200 hammers that you don't have. 200 hammers into more units. 200 hammers into library....whatever.

When you're rushing, you want to play on Marathon, regardless of what civ you are.

Of course you do, because marathon fundamentally breaks war balance (units cost less on mara and move 3x faster than normal speed relative to teching/production). However, mara is about the only place prats win this comparison, although DO keep in mind I already conceded that they win on mara.

Marathon games are so different from other speeds that you can't compare them. Literally. It's literally a different game, one that shifts the balance in favor of noobtorians, quecha, and the like quite nicely.

edit: Also note that marathon has bias in the year estimate above! HUGE bias. You will NOT get those #'s pre-1000BC on normal speed. Things scale to favor this crap on marathon. On marathon with BFC horse, you can kill people before 2000 BC consistently. Before monarch, you can kill 2-3 civs on marathon BEFORE THEY HAVE ARCHERS. Marathon breaks the game so much it's not worth comparing to other speeds.

Then again, on monarch or less mara I might be able to win domination using only keshiks.........on huge 18 civ.

 

[G-Max]

I could refute all of that point-by-point, but I'm tired. For now, I'll just say this: yes, marathon warps the game balance, but not nearly as much as difficulty does. Harder difficulties favor drastically earlier rushes because they give your opponents less time to press their research and production advantages. Notice that I'm not coming in here saying "Dude, quechuas are the best because you can win Deity every time as long as you're fighting only 1 other player on a duel-sized map at any speed other than Quick". That's a completely crap argument, and it's exactly the kind of argument that you insist on using in this thread.

Edit: I admit that I have a bias toward "bigger" games: I nearly always play with the biggest maps, the most players, and nothing banned unless grotesquely unbalanced (like superweapons in Command & Conquer) or just annoying and useless to a degree that would embarrass even Jar-Jar Binks (random events). I realize that this tends to provide human players with certain natural advantages and disadvantages over the AI, and shifts the game balance toward or away from certain strategies, regardless of the game. However, I am strongly opposed to artificial advantages and disadvantages. The idea that someone would oppose the natural shifts in game balance inherent in certain completely fair game types, but insist on artificial imbalances (as you are doing), is completely insane to me.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If you haven't killed 2 people on earth18 noble/normal by 800 BC, you're not using WC properly. Arabia and persia should be off the map. Also, running egypt on normal but rome on mara is a gross miscomparison.

But earth18 is a terrible map for comparison; rome starts with many civs adjacent to it that can be easily WARRIOR rushed...and their proximity is nothing like a random 18 civ map.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

Now that's a combination I want to see . Consistently pulling off a Preat rush while building Stonehenge and skipping the wheel

 

[G-Max]

Now that's a combination I want to see . Consistently pulling off a Preat rush while building Stonehenge and skipping the wheel

This is currently my standard approach, although I don't "skip" Wheel so much as demote it to tech #5 in my queue (BW -> Myst -> IW -> Masonry -> Wheel)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The idea that someone would oppose the natural shifts in game balance inherent in certain completely fair game types, but insist on artificial imbalances (as you are doing), is completely insane to me.

In case your pot missed its own color, marathon IS an artificial imbalance. If you want a more fair comparison, we'll have to look at each unit on each setting to get a reasonable picture, but first...

Well folks, I just tried a War Chariot rush on earth18, standard speed, and noble difficulty. Not Immortal, but merely Noble. It's 850 BC, I've lost 7 chariots, and I don't have one damn city to show for it.

We need to get your tech choices, tile micro, and control up to par. 7 chariots lost and 0 cities captured?

Or 7 chariots lost with 2 civs dead and a 3rd relegated to a crappy jungle city?

Obviously on earth18 with rome you can spank the civs that are LITERALLY on your borders NP on noble. On a map where each civ starts more equidistant, I bet you'd struggle to keep up with competently played egypt without the marathon crutch...possibly even with it depending on map. Nevertheless, I feel these screenshots show you need to learn a thing or two about using WC before you can fairly compare them, based on your experience with the exact same start.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

QED . Ouch!

 

[Archon_Wing]

I've never played Earth 18 as egypt or used their war chariots very much so I tried it on noble. But I do admit it's very annoying if they have spears. But that's not the case here.

Truly this is the insurmountable wall that makes chariots suck. My poor guys didn't stand a chance.

Spoiler :

Wait, what the hell is Asoka doing all this time?

Actually Asoka did more damage to me in death as those cities cost a ton of maintenance. But finishing the pyramids and building research resolved that pretty fast.

On another topic, the first time I played Earth as Rome, I had popped IW from a hut, causing me to mistakenly assume that Rome is just handed Europe in the beginning. Well, that's not that far off the truth anyways.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

In earth18, any euro civ is handed europe if a human is playing it (possible exception of england).

Edit: maintenance should not be a problem on noble. I will update why rather definitively later.

 

[G-Max]

In case your pot missed its own color, marathon IS an artificial imbalance.

No, it's not, because it affects all players equally. If some civs are inherently better at taking advantage of Marathon's quirks, then that's a natural imbalance. It's not any different from playing an Aquatic race in an Organic-rich Galaxy; or a Lithovore race in a Mineral-rich Galaxy; or a Subterranean, Large Homeworld, Rich Homeworld, Artifacts Homeworld race in a Tiny galaxy; or abusing Advanced Start to negate the research penalty of Feudalism and abusing Creative to negate the drawbacks of Advanced Start (not that MOO2 had any semblance of balance to begin with). It's not any different from turning the mindworms and xenofungus up to crazy levels and playing as the Gaians in Alpha Centauri.

We need to get your tech choices, tile micro, and control up to par.

Tech choices: "AH -> everything else". Am I missing something?

Tile Micro: "work the stone and marble first, then the horses, then everything else". Am I missing something?

Nevertheless, I feel these screenshots show you need to learn a thing or two about using WC before you can fairly compare them, based on your experience with the exact same start.

Does "learn a thing or two about using WC" mean "wait until you have 10-20 WC before declaring war"? Seems a bit inefficient when a single praet gets the same job done.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

A single praet? If you can take cities with just 1 you may as well start even earlier with 4 warriors.