Extremely frustrating bug

[Kiershar]

Yesterday I start a multiplayer game. It was a free for all on pangaea... normal stuff. I start with 4 neighbors and grow quite nicely, choke 2 of my neighbor and kill one by attrition. So here i am growing cities nicely. Unfortunatly i had to work today, so i decided to whip some cats just to kill one of my neighbor and call it a day.

So I go toward Mali with my huge army. I have twice the power of everyone, my stack is about 15 cats, 8 axemens, 5 spearmen and 1 swordmen. I declare, raze the first city on my border with minimal losses and move on toward his capital.

In the process he suicide a bunch of cats and kill off a few units. I kill maybe twice what i lost while approaching his capital. So here i am on a hill in front of his capital. I have 2 cats at full health and about 8 others at about 4strength. About 8 axemans and spearmens are all around 3strength.

In his cap, there are 2 cats at ~1 strength, 1 skirmisher, 1 spearman and 1 elephant at 3 of strength.


Now heres the deal. I try to get the momentum and attack his cap with my stack. My initial stacks kills off a couple units then rest dies to a skirmisher.

I watch the skirmisher health and stats... HE HAS 0.0 STRENGHT! im going whiskey tango foxtrot? What is with this bug? and the Mali respond to me that he sees the unit at 0.0 strength and that all my troops died against him...

I ddnt have time to screenshot it, turned ended too fast and i was still in shock over what happened. But it did happen.

Anyone else ever witness that?

 

[History_Buff]

Rounding Errors, and bad luck.

The strength of your units is rounded, as so you will occasionally see units with 0.0 strengths, and units with, say 3.0/3 health that have an option for "fortifying till healed".

 

[DarkFyre99]

How many hit points did the unit have left? My guess is that it's probably one or two... I've had units at 0.0 strength, and they'd only have a couple of hit points left.

Anyhow, I do think I know what happened, and I don't think it's a bug.

(Disclaimer: what follows are very "back of the napkin" calculations, and assumes you're playing Warlords, which calculates exchanges between units based on their full strength, not their scaled strength due to damage. Your mileage may vary...)

First, from the sound of things, you didn't knock down the capital's defenses before attacking. By the time construction comes along, it'd at least be at +60%. Maybe +80% if it houses a shrine (which is possible, but unlikely, with Mansa Musa)

The skirmisher has strength 4, 1-2 first strikes, a +50% city defense bonus, and a +25% hill defense bonus. It is an excellent city defense unit for its era.

Considering the skirmisher was probably fortified, with at least city garrison I, that skirmisher is one tough nut to crack. +60% culture defense bonus, +50% city defense bonus, +25% fortified bonus, and +20% with CG1, he'd have at least a +155% bonus. Even with city raider I, that skirmisher would've at least the equivalent of strength 9. If it was on a hill, you'd be facing at least +205% bonus, with an equivalent strength of 11 against a CR1 unit. Off hand, I'd say that defending skirmisher was about twice as strong as your attacking units.

Not very good odds, to begin with. That skirmisher would do twice the normal damage to your units, while taking only half the normal damage from your own. That skirmisher was doing 40hp per successful exchange, while taking only 10hp from your units. He'd also be hitting much more often than your units would. He'd probably hit three times as often as your units.

Second, your units were damaged. From the sound of things, your units had about 60-80 hit points. That means that they could survive only two hits from that skirmisher. Meanwhile, that skirmisher could take at least ten hits from your units before perishing.

That's fine, you'd say. Your total army could survive 36 hits, while the lone skirmisher could survive ten. Even hitting three times as often, that defender should be toast...

Except for those first strikes. First strikes are dangerous when one of two conditions are met, and deadly when both are met. Those conditions? When they're used against wounded units, or when there's a large disparity in strength in favor of the unit with first strikes. Which is exactly the conditions you were attacking under.

That skirmisher probably killed many of your wounded units using his first strikes alone, without ever facing them in battle. As long as that skirmisher had at least one hit point, then he'd get at least one, and frequently two, free shots at your units before the battle began. Even if they survived the first strikes, they'd still have to face long odds in the favor of the skirmisher, and by then they were likely only one strike away from destruction.

At first glance, your victory might've been assured. But the combination of a strong defensive position, wounded attackers, and the defender having first strikes helped evened the odds, to the point where even a little bit of bad luck would doom your assault.

 

[Mutineer]

There was no bug involved at all.
Skirmisher had 1-2 hit points left, that all.

skirm str 4, 100 hit points fully healed.
1 hitpoint would be
4/100 = 0.04 strength, rounded to shown 2 digit 0.0 str.
2 hit points = 8/100, show 0.0 str.

Sorry, there no bug involve, you just lost attack.