Okay, I wound up saving and reloading about a
dozen times last night, all for the
same battle, something I'd normally
never do, but for some reason this thread, especially someone's post about "experimenting with odds" came back to haunt me.
Here was the sitch: Prince level, Elizabeth, continents, standard speed.
It's 1820 and my Redcoats, Cavalry, and Cannons have predictably rolled over Roosevelt's Longbowmen, Knights, and Catapults. I've taken all but one of his cities: Philadelphia stands alone, defended by two Riflemen, one with 3 City Garrison promos, one with two. (Yeah...somehow, late in the war, Roosevelt either researched or tech-traded to get rifling, then upgraded. No big. I have a stack of 20 tea-sipping, Level 2/3 Redcoats.)
Now, I'm running Police State and Nationhood, but even so, war weariness is starting to become an issue. I want this war over and I don't want to fight another one for a while--until I have tanks and bombers. BUT I only have one unit, a Redcoat upgraded from an Axeman with three City Raider promotions, that's near Level 5 (15/17). Of course I want to build West Point when the war is done. The other units closest to Level 5 are at 10/17.
And to boot, Caesar is also at war with Roosevelt (a fact I had engineered and exploited). He's hanging around with a stack of Cavalry, obviously waiting to take Philadelphia for himself if I weaken it enough without taking it. He wouldn't make peace with the poor American unless I gifted him the recently-discovered Assembly Line tech. Since he was about to become my next-door neighbour and possible next target, I wasn't inclined to do that. Just for added fun, his Cavalry are pillaging the countryside (which will soon be mine, grrr), so Philadelphia is starving and down to 3 pop--perilously close to the point were there will be no choice about razing.
You see my predicament? I needed that Redcoat to quickly fight
one last battle that would be hard enough to earn him two XPs, but not so hard that he'd die. Oh, plus, he'd gotten badly hurt (down to 0.8) in his previous battle getting to 15/17 and was still healing.
So I wound up trying different scenarios--letting him heal an extra turn, leaving the city's defenses at 5% or bombarding them down to zero, weakening the defending Riflemen with Cannon (or not), attacking with 60% chance of winning, 70%, 75%, 83%, etc.
Tweak. Save. Fight. Die. Reload. Tweak. Save. Fight. Die. Reload.
I certainly learned a lot about not just odds, but hit points. My boys finally came through with 0% city defense and collateral damage to both Riflemen from two cannons, putting both city defenders at around 10-11 strength. Odds in my Redcoats' favour had to reach
93.1% for them to not die in the attack on one of the weakened city garrison units while still earning the two XPs.
As Spock would say, fascinating.
As I said, I would normally never do this. In hindsight, what I
should have done was play out similar scenarios with all my Redcoats throughout that war to ensure I had several Level 5 units (and more dead ones too, no doubt) by the end. I relied too much on the cannons to weaken the city defenders--in fact, the cannons didn't just causing collateral damage, they often
killed the defenders. As a result, the Redcoats did not earn as many XPs as they needed, nor did they even have enough chances to do so.
That's the thing for me: I don't like to cheat in this game, but if I do, it had better be justified by my learning something from the experience so I don't have to do it again.
, as a human i dont expect myself to be able to maintain control of everything as an AI does. In reality you would have advisers and stuff. I might hire a local homeless person to be my Deputy, to watch out for this kind of thing in the future. Pay him in tobacco or something.
