Combat odds

[Chin Too Phat]

Two of my all time favorites were losing a battleship to a settler, and get this, I once lost a nuke battle. I did not know the unit defending as I did not think a nuke could lose, but they can. And no the ai civ did not have sdi, he was backwards tech wise. And I got the bad sound when you lost a battle.

I play civ 4 with my friend and there have been times I have outright quit games because of the RNG. Just last week I lost a warrior to a wolf, (first time it ever happened to me) and I rounded out the week by losing both my exploring caravels on the same turn to attacking barb galleys. That is I lost 96% battles back to back on the same turn sinking my entire navy.

My other beef is when I bring overwhelming force I start winning the 20% battles. When I have maybe one or two guys to spare it all goes wrong. And don't get me started on new cities dieing to horrendous odds with the lone defender I sent out with the settler. I like losing newly planted archer defended cities to a barb warrior three turns after I plant it.

But really the worst thing is crippling my destroyers against wooden ships, sure I have a 99.9% chance to win and I do win, and my destroyer still has almost half its health left.....whatever. Though on the flip side I ram unit after unit with 20% odds to soften up a city to the results of no damage, no damage, no damage.......

The higher the level I go the worst the battles get IMO. I cannot support this with hard facts and numbers, but it has been my experience the higher the level the more the odds stick it to you. I currently play emp level and have success but the RNG sticking it to me frustrates me enough were I stop playing the game for six months at a time.

 

[Bonescorpion]

Watch Ray Allen shoot free throws if you want a real world comparison, he has shot 90%+ for most of his career. He will hit 20-30 in a row and then for some odd reason miss 3 of 6. Just how it is
My major complain with the odds is not the high end 80%+ occasional loss its with the 50%-60% win chance. It just seems I barely win with those odds. I tend to not attack now unless I am in the 80%+ range because the win totals seem to match better with what I would expect. Of course it is all related to short term memory.

 

[phungus420]

Wait. I don't remember exactly but I don't think that's how the odds were calculated. In any case, usually the phalanx would have been fortified and/or a veteran, boosting its odds even further.

In Civ 1,2, 3 Units had A-D-M strengths (attack-defense-movement). So a tank (if memory serves) was 12-5-2 in the original Civ, a phalanx (spearman) was 1-2-1, and 1-3-1 as a vet, and another bonus when fortified (50% again I believe). That meant a vet spearman had an effective 4 defensive strength against your rookie tanks 12, or 18 if you had a vet tank. That's like a 1/3 to 1/4.5 chance of the spearman winning. Civ2 was a little better because they added in hit points, so the spearman at least had to win 3-5 rounds depending on the vet status of the tank. Still though, my point was that +90% battles didn't even really exist in original Civ, and a tank loosing to a spear was a common ocurance.

 

[LegionSteve]

After years of dedicated Civving, a few months ago I finally did it - I got the fabled loss at >99.9% odds.



This proves 2 things:
1) the combat really is random; if you play for long enough, every possible result will happen
2) I have wasted far too much time playing this game

 

[Sic Transit Zeb]

After years of dedicated Civving, a few months ago I finally did it - I got the fabled loss at >99.9% odds.

View attachment 205131

This proves 2 things:
1) the combat really is random; if you play for long enough, every possible result will happen
2) I have wasted far too much time playing this game

wow, that's crazy.

 

[Sarge85]

Plus your entire stack was destroyed in combat outside of cities by a single lost battle, so a spearman attacking and killing your one tank would kill your whole 12 tank SoD. Actually you didn't use SoDs in Civilization for that reason, but you get the point.

Oh wow, I totally forgot that is how it went... I remember now totally circling the cities with Howitzers (right?) and ripping it to shreads. Bombers did the same thing IIRC. Once you got to Bombers and/or Howitzers -- Game/Set/Match.

Sarge

 

[Sic Transit Zeb]

Oh wow, I totally forgot that is how it went... I remember now totally circling the cities with Howitzers (right?) and ripping it to shreads. Bombers did the same thing IIRC. Once you got to Bombers and/or Howitzers -- Game/Set/Match.

Sarge

Hahah, very true. Howitzers were so amazing.

 

[Jewman]

lol i was playing rhyes and falls civlization as the russians the other day. and i decided to be a bit more historically accurate so i started throwing all my troops at completely fortified cities without any siege. Tons of infantry died but ultimately i won many 10%-20%battles in there not to mention countless 30%-40% victories.

 

[asdad]

My experience is that if anything, ~60% combat odds tend to prevail a little *too* often.
But then again, maybe I've just been consistently lucky with those with my karma debt being paid back by amphibious attacks, which I seem to lose every time unless I'm >90%. Literally, 80% means nothing when attacking with marines out of transports, to the point of suspecting that something is wrong with odds calculation or amphibious assaults.