Defensive Order handled by poor AI, Option needed for player control

[Neomega]

OK, so I refuse to play Civ IV anymore, until I can have better control of the defensive order of my units.

The enemy AI seems to be a worthy foe.

However, There needs to be a way to choose which units face which enemies when defending a city. This could slow the game down, but it should at least be an option. I posted this on a thread about AI, but that one was geared towards how the enemy AI plays, not how your own AI plays...

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The game I just quit, I was doing great. The Chinese declared war on me, and I harassed their forces until I could build up a good city defense int he city I knew they were gunning for. They had 3 knights, 2 pikemen, 2 mace men

In my city, I had 2 samauri, 1 spearman, and 2 longbowmen. 40% city defense.

The knights attacked first. And who did the AI pick to defend?

MY F'ING SAMAURI!!!! All their first strikes useless against knights.... no city defense bonus like longbowmen, and 50% melee WASTED on the non-melee units!!! So the 3 knights SLAUGHTER my Samauri, then the Pikemen come in.... and waste my Spearman.... GRRR!!!! and finish off my longbowmen....

My losses, all 5 units. Their losses, one maceman. A disgrace. And I think I am done playing this game....
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To add further to the story, reinforcements were pouring in, but I needed to hold the Chinese onsluaght for a while.... If I could control defense order, I would have had my archers and spearman defend against the knights.... to act as cannon fodder, and leave my samauri to fight the 4 melee units, because they would have MOPPED THE FLOOR WITH THEIR FACES, and come out beat up, but victorious, and brimming with more experience.

their were many more units within one turns distance, and my army of highly skilled elephants and catapults on it's way to severly bruise the Chinese and win the war, as well as take Chinas Northerns cities, but the battle for this city was crucial... and at the moment of crisis... my control was handed over to an algorithm.

I never had a problem with this in Civ III, but in Civ IV, the combat is MUCH MORE complex.... and I must say, there MUST be an option to control the defense order. If not, the game is BROKEN.

 

[Sybot]

The game chose the Samuri because it was the best choice with the highest chance of winning vs the Knights. However, as you noted, this can often be bad from a strategic point of view, though it was a sound tactical decision.

I think that choosing who to use by the player is a bad idea, since it would slow the game down even more than currently in the modern era when there are a lot of units attacking. Maybe an option to turn it on/off would be best.

 

[Jinto1980]

one spearmen was the big thing in civ 3 park afew in your city and it was safe. however now archers are the defensive units check there bonus its mostly city defense and with a barracks its even better just stock up on archer types and you should be fine.

 

[Neomega]

The game chose the Samuri because it was the best choice with the highest chance of winning vs the Knights. However, as you noted, this can often be bad from a strategic point of view, though it was a sound tactical decision.

Actually, it was only sound in a mano et mano tactical decision, in the city defense as a whole, it was a poor choice. The spearman and two longbowmen would have damaged the knights enough to make them refrain from attacking for a few turns, but the Samauri, I guarantee you, with their melee defense, and two first strikes, (not to mention they were experienced) would have slaughtered the pikemen and macemen, if not by the 40% city defense alone, then by the 50% melee bonus, and 2 first strikes.

If you have ever tried to take a city without any bombardment before, you would see what I mean, 7 vs 5 is not an option. I have found it needs to be more like 2 to 1 to even stand a chance.

There has to be some way to correct this, or soon it will rear it's ugly head again, as more and more people run into it. Quite simply, the AI has no idea of the concept of "cannon fodder".

 

[Dragonlor]

it was only sound in a mano et mano tactical decision

Unfortunately, every battle in this game is one on one. The AI can't know that all of the units in a stack will attack you so it has to base it on the one on one odds. In many games I'll have half the stack attack me and the other half run off to pillage or whatnot. Regardless of any poor defensive decisions, I'll always place the blame on myself if I lose the city because I either should not have let the stack near me to begin or I was just not prepared enough to deal with each possible outcome.

 

[dribnairb]

I think there's always been a reason to stop the human selecting which unit will do the defending. Imagine you had 3 or 4 powerful (say, strength 20) units in a city, and 100 warriors (strength 1 or so). Someone attacking with 25 units (strength 10) ought to be able to win easily. If the player can choose who to defend though, he could always defend with a warrior, and then on his turn use his powerful units to attack the remaining units. In reality the powerful units should be used to defend.

The defending city only loses lots of cheap warriors and the attacker has gained nothing. I don't think this has anything to do with cIV, it's been true for all the Civ games. However, losing the split of attack/defense values has made it harsher on the defending player.

 

[karadoc]

This could slow the game down, but it should at least be an option.

Too right it would slow the game down. It would be painfully slow, and cumbersome. One of the problems is that putting it in as 'an opinion' almost forces people to do it, because it would give them an advantage.
Yes, there are times when choosing different defenders could help you. But think of it this way: It is part of offensive strategy to consider which units to attack with so as to force particular defenders.
I think it's quite silly to refuse to play the game because of something like this. It's game-mechanics issue; it's not about letting you control/not control something, it's about how the game-universe works.

 

[MarcAntiny]

Should have upgraded spearman to pikeman... problem solved. Or rushed a pikeman... bye bye Knights.

 

[jeremiahrounds]

I couldnt see doing this without upgrading the AI to pick defense based on the eventuality that everything next to the city will attack.

As it is you have the same chance to defend properly as the AI has. Thats better to me.

Dont need defenders having any more advantage then they already do in this game.

 

[Renata]

The same thing happened in CivIII, so this is not new. For example, an army defending in a city would be attacked over and over until it was dead half the time and down to a couple of hit points the rest of the time. You could have 100 vet infantry there, but if the army was there too, the cannon fodder would just sit by and watch until the army was neutralized. For that matter, elite swordsmen would get called up to defend a stack before the vet spearmen, and therefore be taken out of the leader hunt for a few turns.

The only way to deal with it then was to keep the strongest units out of defensive battles where possible. It appears to be the same now. I agree it's obnoxious, but it is possible to adapt with experience.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Hehe, in one corner we have those people complaining the defence is too easy and in the other corner those that say defence is broken as the most optimal defensive order is not used (problem is same for all combatants so it is fair).

Love the accompanyed threat of "I'm not going to play CivIV anymore" - hilarious.

Not as hilarious as the fact the A.I owned you, that is good too.

 

[ajcardall]

I've never really given it much thought, to be honest, but I doubt I'd bother with that level of micromanagement anyway. If I lose a city I don't blame it on the order of defence but on me for not having [strong] enough units defending the city. I usually manage to re-capture them within a few turns (if the city is really that important... if it's deadwood, I just let it go) and I'm happy again.

 

[jayeffaar]

I couldnt see doing this without upgrading the AI to pick defense based on the eventuality that everything next to the city will attack.

A simple way to solve the problem would be the ability to designate units as defenders. Those would be used first when a tile is attacked.

That was an option in Alpha Centauri.

 

[MeteorPunch]

This is unfortunate, but it's the best practical solution. A spearman is barely adequate vs. a knight. Like others said, if you upgraded to a pike, you would've won the entire battle.

 

[Psyringe]

A simple way to solve the problem would be the ability to designate units as defenders. Those would be used first when a tile is attacked.

Well, the algorithm could easily be changed so that it chooses fortified units first as defenders, and only chooses unfortified defenders if nor fortified units are left. This way, the command "fortify" includes "assign as defender", which imho would be the most efficient way to do that.

However, that does only partly solve Neomega's issue - the problem that the defender is picked solely on the basis of "Who has the bast chance to win *this* fight", instead of also taking into account "Which unit can be expected to produce the result best for the *following* fights", remains.

It's certainly possible to devise an algorith which works in a way Neomega wants, however this algorithm will probably be quite time-consuming because it will need to be able to look into the future (several futures) and evaluate many possible results. Even then, there will of course be combats where the AI picks a defender which the player wanted to spare. So this feature looks like a lot of programming work for relatively little gain.

Edit: Side note to Neomage: How did "bear" this feature in the other Civ games then, or didn't you play those? The problem was even more severe in previous Civs, where units mostly were either defenders or attackers (because of the split values for offense and defense), but the AI still chose the defender with the best defense value, regardless of offense values. Thus, if you had a 1-offense / 2-defense unit and a 4-offense / 3-defense unit in a city, the latter would defend and possibly be killed, leaving you with a unit worthless for counter attacks.

 

[Neomega]

Love the accompanyed threat of "I'm not going to play CivIV anymore" - hilarious.

It's not a threat. I haven't played it since that battle, and I realy do not care to. I played for almost a month straight, on huge monarch maps. Now I am done. It's a good thing really. I was wondering how I could break the Civ IV habit. Now I know. I am done.

How did "bear" this feature in the other Civ games then, or didn't you play those?

I have played every civ. And this one is diferent. Those did not have bonuses vs melee unit, or first strikes. The situation is much different. Also units are a bit more valuable in this game.

 

[Psyringe]

I have played every civ. And this one is diferent. Those did not have bonuses vs melee unit, or first strikes. The situation is much different. Also units are a bit more valuable in this game.

I don't think the situation is that much different - where Civ4 has different bonuses, the other Civ games had the split offense/defense values. While Civ4 is certainly more complex in this regard, the issue you're describing in your first part is exactly the same: The game chooses units as primary defenders without thinking about the following battles. And this was the same in every Civ. Hence my question.

Anyway, if you wanted to break your Civ addiction, and the matter decribed served as a purpose to do so, then it's probably a good thing. You may find that it doesn't bother you as much any more when you come back to the game after some time. Just a guess though.

 

[MeteorPunch]

I have played every civ. And this one is diferent. Those did not have bonuses vs melee unit, or first strikes. The situation is much different. Also units are a bit more valuable in this game.

That is a good point...maybe there should be some changes, like an option to allow specific defender types to defend - even though the are not the overall strongest, but are the best versus a certain attacker (your case here).

 

[Neomega]

I don't think the situation is that much different - where Civ4 has different bonuses, the other Civ games had the split offense/defense values. While Civ4 is certainly more complex in this regard, the issue you're describing in your first part is exactly the same: The game chooses units as primary defenders without thinking about the following battles. And this was the same in every Civ. Hence my question.

Anyway, if you wanted to break your Civ addiction, and the matter decribed served as a purpose to do so, then it's probably a good thing. You may find that it doesn't bother you as much any more when you come back to the game after some time. Just a guess though.

Care to give some examples.... I played civ 3 about 400 times, and never did I wish I could have reserved my samauri because of their melee and first strike bonus for the melee units, and sacrificed my lesser units on the knights.

I am surprised the AI ever attacked your armies..... they NEVER attacked mine.

 

[Beamup]

Care to give some examples.... I played civ 3 about 400 times, and never did I wish I could have reserved my samauri because of their melee and first strike bonus for the melee units, and sacrificed my lesser units on the knights.

One thing that always came up for me when playing Japan in C3 was that Samurai would insist on defending stacks of mixed Pikemen and Samurai. Wouldn't let me defend with the Pikemen. Continual annoyance that invariably led to unnecessary losses of hundreds of shields.

Renata gave more examples, too.