Elite Troops die easier

[eighty]

Wow! Let me get my club! I wanna hit the dead horse too! Sorry, I tend to have a sarcastic streak.
Anywho, this post, since it has gone on so long deserves some further comment.

First, Ozy I admire your tenacious ability to cling to belief in the face of onslaught. Faith, I suppose.

Second: using reverse logic (if Firaxis were logical evil conspirators, as previously suggested), conscripts would be the hardest to kill. Interestingly enough, as others have mentioned, they can become harder to kill through promotion. Ironically, they are no longer conscripts once promoted so the point loses validity on a technical if not practical level.

Third: Use those knights on some other game against Impi and post that save game. That would take care of the spurious effect of retreat against the test.

Fourth: There has been some mention of personal bad luck. Research suggests that belief can in fact affect supposedly random events. Theoretically, if you believe you are unlucky, you will be (its not that simple, but that's the basic). Anyone interested in the exact research can email me at eightyland@yahoo.com.

Very interesting post, all!

 

[eighty]

Oh yeah, and Nice One, I forgot to mention as an aside: if you want to pursue your question about your head, try an interesting meditation technique. This creative visualization process allows you to link yourself more fully to the world.

imagine that you have no head, that the world, life and the universe it attatched to your neck (its easier at first with eyes closed). Your head is no longer there and you are a part of the all. Its fun! Give it a try, you might like it!

 

[TheDS]

You came up with a really cool save there, but I think they were wrong to have you retain the "random" seed. A game will have to be created in which there are let's say 10 potential combats between every combination of experience. This would be Elites against elites, vets, regulars, and conscripts, vets against elites, vets, etc etc...

THEN, enable the random number generator to function and save that, and then perform the battles, keeping track of who wins and who loses each battle. Individual combat rounds are probably not all that important in this particular study.

Once you've gotten complete results and reloaded the game 10 times, you will surely have the proof you require: that Firaxis slipped in a little something that makes elite attacks fail more often than they statistically should. Whether intentional or not is another matter.

Tho I've made light of this whole thread, I do suspect that there is something going on.

Eighty:

Scott Adams included something along those lines in one of his Dilbert books. Look for it in the author's notes, took up a few pages, but I can't remember which Dilbert book it is in.

I was quite feared in my gaming group when we played Risk or A&A (until everyone decided to gang up on me) because they knew I was good at figuring out the best way to play such games. So I go into my games feeling confident of victory, and I always visualize the dice coming up the way I want (as Scott Adams suggests). But all the talent in the world won't protect you against a vengeful set of dice, and if you always roll low in Risk or high in A&A, it doesn't matter how big of a lead you have or how good you are. You lose.

In a game I'm working on, I have arranged it so that a player who always rolls crap can still beat a player who always rolls good.

So I have to agree with the much earlier suggestion of balanced randomness; a unit that wins a combat round has a slightly lower chance of winning the next one, until it loses a round, and then the penalty resets itself, until another streak. Likewise, I also feel that some combats should never be lost. Yes, under the right circumstances, a spearman could cripple a tank, but a company of spearmen would lose to a company of tanks every time, and that's the scale of Civ3 operations.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by TheDS
Yes, under the right circumstances, a spearman could cripple a tank, but a company of spearmen would lose to a company of tanks every time, and that's the scale of Civ3 operations.

Isn't that exactly what happens? A hundred tanks attack a hundred spearmen and lose maybe one or two.

 

[Ozymandius]

During the German invasion of Poland in 1939, cavalry were anihilated by German tanks. Some enterprising Polish footman dug holes until a tank would pass over them, mounted the rear deck of the tanks and used molotov cocktails to disable German armor. .... I don't know though if the successful Poles were conscript, veteran or elite molotov throwers.

 

[sumthinelse]

Originally posted by TheDS
You came up with a really cool save there, but I think they were wrong to have you retain the "random" seed. A game will have to be created in which there are let's say 10 potential combats between every combination of experience. This would be Elites against elites, vets, regulars, and conscripts, vets against elites, vets, etc etc...

THEN, enable the random number generator to function and save that, and then perform the battles, keeping track of who wins and who loses each battle. Individual combat rounds are probably not all that important in this particular study.

Once you've gotten complete results and reloaded the game 10 times, you will surely have the proof you require: that Firaxis slipped in a little something that makes elite attacks fail more often than they statistically should. Whether intentional or not is another matter.

That's the kind of answer I post too. I could turn off Ozy's "preserve random seed" flag in is saved file (yes, I know how to do that) and try 100 attacks with the elite, reloading each time, 100 with the vet, 100 with the regular. I would bet money that the elite would survive more (the odds of elite knight vs. regular pikeman fortified in a city aren't that great) because it has a 66% retreat probablity and will even win sometimes.

But all my work would be futile. You will find that many people who believe that elites die easier also believe that emperical tests with different random number seeds are inconclusive, no matter how many trials you perform. They will say, "maybe you just got lucky/unlucky."

 

[Ozymandius]

My original post should have read SOMETIMES Elites die easier. I can now see the random seed kicking in differently because it can take an extra hit point. If Elites always die easier I would never get a leader. I just wanted to know why an elite would occasionally die when a vet would take a city and a regular would survive. I think the reason has been given. And from past experience my elites win many more battles than my regulars or vets. It is the aberration I could not understand but I HAVE SEEN THE ERROR OF MY WAYS. AMEN