Combat System

[Traun]

I have a sin to confess - I hate the battle system.
I love the game, adore it, perfect in almost every aspect, however the large portion of chance in wars and battles is overwhelming. I am just annoyed when I throw approximately ten units to take over a city which is guarded by two archers. I know backstabbing, teaming up on someone and so on are the ways to win a war, but I wish to have some fun on the battlefield.
I know there are some people out there who are frustrated by the outcomes sometimes, I know there are people for whom the battles are perfect and there is probably some portion of people who prefer not to let themselves to the dice.
I don't have any ides how to make it better, but still I want to ask you what do you think of the way that battles are currently fought.

 

[DemonMaster]

The big problem is if you remove the random element or lessen it, the game will become static, meaning that all the "Powergamers" out there will celebrate because then there is only way to go, first to get the best units will win the game, there will be no place for a peaceful/diplomatic/trading/etc. solution to the game, the civ with the best units doesn't need to go through all that because he already know that he will win anyway, his units cannot will be almost like superheroes on the field and especially the AI will have a hard time to counter such tactics.

I personally like the combat mechanics, even though strange things happen from time to time, most of the time such unusual wins/losts don't happen and if it does, it has happen numerous times through the real history too (e.g. Sweden - Russia, battle of Narva)

 

[peter450]

There has to be an element of chance, two units equally matched must have an equal chance of winning so a 50/50 chance must be used, there will always be the chance of an unexpected outcome to a battle and as the odd's go steadily more in your favour, the chances of getting an outcome that go against your expected outcome decreases a lot, 60% odd's is a victory margin with a fair chance of defeat, 90% is a victory margin with a remote chance of defeat, by using terrain etc and the right promotions you do not gurantee a victory, but you put the odd's in your favour so that the chances of defeat are low, if you gain a large enough combat advantage then the victory odd's can go all the way to 99.9 which is pretty much unloosable however if the odd's looked like this all the time combat would not be much fun as the outcome would always be known, hence why they are used only when one unit achieves total superiority over another, either through elite status (warlord) teck advantage (modern vs old) or dmg, healthy vs near dead.

If 2 archers are holding off 10 units it's because the odd's on them winning are so high, that each archer takes practically no dmg from combat, and thats down to you not the combat system, your basically trying to attack a postion with units that have such low odd's of success (must be single digit percentages), that they ultimately fail to do it, 2 arches will not hold off that many units unless the combat odd's are overwhelmingly in there favour.

Having played all the prev civ games an Alpha C i can say the combat system in every version has always been chance based, with a chance to win or loose, and a chance of a unexpected outcome happening based on what those initial win/loss chances were, the combat model in civ 4 is th best it's ever been no doubt, both in terms of getting the right balance of advantages/disavantages between units of various types and also in terms of ensuring gaining a lead in weapons teck is very advantagous but not a guranteed win button as it was in civ 2, while at the same time ensuring realword accuracy, tanks dont get killed by militia (a la civ 1)