Exhausted from bad luck

[Azathfeld]

I've finally got to the point where I just can't stand to play this game any more. After years of pulling it out every few months to spend a couple of weeks watching unwounded veteran battleships go down to regular caravels or armies of Immortals eliminated by single warriors, I have to put it down. Those are actual examples from my games, although they are nearly the worst of it. Still, every time I play I feel like I spend the whole game watching hordes of pikemen wiped out by archers while fortified on mountains, or watching barbarians eliminate every defending unit in my capital so that an opponent with a horseman can take it. I've even tried increasing everything's hit points in order to reduce the random factor, to no avail.

Does this jive with anyone else's experience, or am I alone? If everyone else is getting this sort of thing, how can anyone play this game?

I love the Civ series, and Civ 3 in particular, but it's just too ridiculous to be borne at this point.

 

[killerbunny]

Originally posted by Azathfeld
Does this jive with anyone else's experience, or am I alone? If everyone else is getting this sort of thing, how can anyone play this game?

I have read this before, but i don't really have the same problems. Of course there were fights which i shouldn't have lost and it's frustrating, but then again i've had plenty of luck in crucial situations with barbarians for instance as well. Have you ever checked the odds with a combat calculator? Most times, results are not that far from making sense, and even strong troops lose to outdated units once in a while.

Losing troops in war is normal. If you lose Battleships to Caravels, build more Battleships, that's what i would do.

 

[CaptainCommando]

I've lost battles i think i should have won, but i've also had huge strokes of luck where one of my spearmen killed like, 5 enemy swordsmen, so really, it balances out, the difference is, the computer doesn't get pissed off when it loses but a human does. Just stick with it, and try not to let it get to you.

 

[King Kruhl]

Well I have to agree with Captain Commando. The fact that your human and you react emotionally to what seems utterly absurd can make the game aggravating at times. I was aggressively over running the English once when one of my Panzer Tanks was blown up by a forgotten Pikeman that was garrisoned in 6 population city on the outskirts of their Civ.! Boy was I pissed!!!!
Sooo… reacting irrationally I stacked 30 Panzers and changed from the overthrow mode to the
SCORCHED EARTH mode. :rocket2:

I razed every city they had. After accomplishing the raping, robing, and pillaging of the English no other Civs liked me very much…go figure??

The Moral of the story…
Don’t get mad, get even. (with restraint though)

Sincerely,
King Kruhl

 

[IglooDame]

Originally posted by Azathfeld
I've finally got to the point where I just can't stand to play this game any more. After years of pulling it out every few months to spend a couple of weeks watching unwounded veteran battleships go down to regular caravels or armies of Immortals eliminated by single warriors, I have to put it down. Those are actual examples from my games, although they are nearly the worst of it. Still, every time I play I feel like I spend the whole game watching hordes of pikemen wiped out by archers while fortified on mountains, or watching barbarians eliminate every defending unit in my capital so that an opponent with a horseman can take it. I've even tried increasing everything's hit points in order to reduce the random factor, to no avail.

Does this jive with anyone else's experience, or am I alone? If everyone else is getting this sort of thing, how can anyone play this game?

I love the Civ series, and Civ 3 in particular, but it's just too ridiculous to be borne at this point.

Ummm welcome to CivFanatics, first off.

Every few weeks someone complains on the boards here that the AI is cheating in the combat results because their modern armor got defeated by a spearman. This is generally followed by about twenty generally polite posts linking to previous threads and some fairly in-depth studies by a few CFC members showing that the Civ3 Random Number Generator is acting consistently for the player and the AI.

I can sympathize with you, I've had a few goofy battle results (though I haven't seen the much-talked-about tank-defeating-spearman). It took me a while to figure out (thank you CFC War Academy!!) and apply combat modifiers like attacking across a river, fortifications, bigger cities, terrain modifiers, and "fortified-mode" units. Since I've done so, the RNG stakes in the heart have decreased a lot. It sounds like you are familiar with all those things, though, and if you're truly getting screwed by the RNG on a regular basis I'd say dump either dump the game, start reloading when a combat result really screws you (and be fair, when a combat result favors the AI reload then too), or play at a lower level where you can survive the RNG bodyblows.

 

[sealman]

Everyone remembers the string of bad luck but seem to recall the strings of good luck. It all balances out in the end.

I have had games were my full HP modern armor could not beat a wounded rifleman. But earlier in the game, my two regular muskets held off a 6 turn attack of cavalry after cavalry.

I do have to confess that I have never witnessed my undamaged modern age units losing to ancient era units. But I have seen my redlined tanks fall to undamaged spearmen as I attempt to make that last ditch effort to capture a city that turn.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by Azathfeld
Does this jive with anyone else's experience, or am I alone? If everyone else is getting this sort of thing, how can anyone play this game?

I think I can guarantee you that noone else have ever experienced "armies of Immortals eliminated by single warriors" or similar bad luck. To be honest, I don't believe you have either. I don't doubt that you've had your share of bad luck, but I beleieve you're exaggerating quite a bit. Anyway, any single battle is luck-dependant, but there is no cheating involved.

I love the Civ series, and Civ 3 in particular, but it's just too ridiculous to be borne at this point.

May I suggest a few things that may help you.

1) Wait for the C3C patch that lets each battle round be the average of several random rolls. It will make the combat much more deterministic. I think this will be in the next official patch.

2) Mod your game. There are one very simple mod that will help you: Increase the hit points of units from 2/3/4/5 (conscript to elite) to say 5/7/8/10. With more hit points, each single battle are much more likely to be won by the strongest unit.

3) Learn how to minimize the chances of bad luck: Every Battleships should go in pair or more, so that a few may bombard the enemy to take away a few hit point before the last takes it out. Similarily, don't attack a city defended by pikemen without having bombarded them down a few hit points. The attack takes longer time, but is both more realistic and you will suffer much less casualties.

4) Try to get out of your (seemingly) habit of noticing and exaggerating every stroke of bad luck. The combat model is random but fair - you have just as much good luck as bad luck. Its quite human to only remember the bad luck if that strengthens what you expect, but you'll have more fun if you don't

 

[killerbunny]

Originally posted by IglooDude

It took me a while to figure out (thank you CFC War Academy!!) and apply combat modifiers like attacking across a river, fortifications, bigger cities, terrain modifiers, and "fortified-mode" units. Since I've done so, the RNG stakes in the heart have decreased a lot.

I can fully second this. Understanding the mechanisms of the game reduces frustration, it's the same with culture-flipping or corruption.

All the information on Civfanatics and Apolyton have helped me a lot in this respect.

 

[Brewster]

I think the RNG has been the source of more complaints/gripes/beefs than any other aspect of the game. Sure, I've had some bad luck from time to time (damn spearman beat my vet tank! ) but I have had some incredibly good luck too. By the end of the game you will have experienced both sides of the RNG and so will the AI. Keep on playing and you will soon overcome your hatred (or at least take it out on the AI).

 

[Hakim]

I actually don't think I've encountered this, or maybe I just don't remember.

But as long as there is a random factor in the battles, these things will happen. The alternative would be a system where the stronger(after modifiers) unit always won and I wouldn't want that, 9/10 of the battles is enough.

Also, it's not ONE spearman defending himself against ONE tank. They're both just representations of appropriate amounts of units in the real world. If you have fantasy enough it's not that hard to imagine a situation where the tanks simply got extremely unlucky.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Originally posted by TheNiceOne

I think I can guarantee you that noone else have ever experienced "armies of Immortals eliminated by single warriors" or similar bad luck. To be honest, I don't believe you have either. I don't doubt that you've had your share of bad luck, but I beleieve you're exaggerating quite a bit. Anyway, any single battle is luck-dependant, but there is no cheating involved.

An all-Regular Immortal army (9HP) losing against an elite Warrior fortified in a mountain is not that unlikely - 1.5%. I wouldn't be surprised if it's happened one or twice.

(In principle, he could have had a 6HP all-Conscript Immortal army, in which case the chance of losing against that Warrior fortified on a mountain jumps to 10.7. But if anyone's ever build a such army, well, he/she deserved something much worse than losing it to a Warrior.)

But the real issue is whether the Army was at full health. If I tell you that I lost an army of four Tanks to a single Vet Cav, you're forgiven for being skeptical, but only till I tell you the Army was caught unfortified in open ground with two HP left. It only had a 32.8% chance of survival, so the result was perfectly expected.

 

[SuperBeaverInc.]

Don't you just love the RNG? I lost a veteran destroyer to a galley once, and you can bet I was mad.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by The Last Conformist
...But the real issue is whether the Army was at full health. If I tell you that I lost an army of four Tanks to a single Vet Cav, you're forgiven for being skeptical, but only till I tell you the Army was caught unfortified in open ground with two HP left. It only had a 32.8% chance of survival, so the result was perfectly expected.

You're right of course, but note that Azathfeld even wrote in plural: He lost armies of immortals against single warriors. Its of course possible that he had two armies with one HP left attacking a fortified warrior on a mountain across a river, and lost them both. But I still think he exaggerated slightly

 

[Azathfeld]

I'm not exaggerating a bit, by the way. I wish I'd kept those savegames for examples.

This is actually something that I've come to expect from various games. I have truly weird streaks at almost anything involving random numbers. I play a CCG wherein I consistently lose games that are ridiculously in my favor; after one such game, we calculated the odds of the various rolls that had to take place. If I'd succeeded at any one of 24 rolls, I'd have won the match, and it was approximately 1/700,000 that I'd lose. I'm more likely to be struck by lightning than to have lost that game.

That said, I also made $300 in two hours the last time I played blackjack.

I want to be offended that folks think I'm exaggerating, but, yeah, those situations are too ridiculous to be believed. I certainly didn't the first time I lost an army of Immortals, as the warrior disappeared due to being wounded below the next defensive unit, and I turn off combat animations. It was three turns before I figured out what happened to my army. In that case, the army was at full or nearly full health, although, yes, they are usually wounded when they're killed by warriors.

Anyway, what I've ultimately decided to do is just appease the AIs, play the peaceful route, and only engage in culture battles.

And when I do get into war, I'll save my game before every attack, and try every single option. Maybe if I troll enough I can take out armies with my own warriors, too.

 

[Turner]

Some people look down on reloading. . . don't be surprised if a few say something against that plan. Personally, it's your game, knock yourself out.

But make sure you turn off Preserve Random Seed when starting a game if you're going to play this way. Otherwise, you'll see the same results over and over again.

 

[Azathfeld]

Eh, let 'em look down.

I don't intend to worry about random seeds, just every once in a while "take it back" when I try a gamble that doesn't work out.

 

[Turner]

Well, my point being if you have the preserve random seed on, you will get the same result each time you reload. If it's off, then you can reload (when you want to) and not worry about the same results.

 

[Azathfeld]

Yeah, I understand, but that's a little too much manipulation for my tastes. Honestly, if I'm doing that, I might as well load up a trainer or something.

 

[redux]

I've read all this before, and I do not suffer the same problems. I truly believe, (although I get really hacked off when a tank loses to a pikeman) that the whole process is generalized, that's the point maybe of having an army before attacking. I used to have the same annoyance but I realised after time I simply exaggerated it our of pure annoyance.. After playing about 30 games now of Civ I don't think this is a "normal" occurance sorry.

 

[Renfield]

A sligthly different bend on this problem.

With apologies to those that may be offended by a real life example.

Look at the USS Cole. A state of the art war ship taken out by a rubber raft.

US troops in Somlia lost very advanced helicopters to a ragtag group of rebels.

The frustrating times in Civ are what make it realistic. Advanced units can and do lose to inferior units in the real world.

Like real military planners your challenge is to not lose to the rabble. To crush them with your superior forces.