First game and combat is a slaughter

Sherlock

Just one more turn...
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I'm playing as the Aztecs. Created a bunch of Jaguars and they are useless. I'll have three units, throw them all at another unit and they'll all die.

My guys were built in a city with a Barracks. Is it because my targets are fortified? Is fortification that powerful? Are the Jaguars just a crummy unit?

And what's the deal with archers? It's a ranged unit, can't I attack from two tiles away? I can't see anyway to do that and anything I try just moves the archers next to the enemy and they get wiped out.

Any suggestions?
 
Jaguars kind of suck in that they're worse than a normal swordsman if you use them as one.
Fortification is strong, especially in a city. If you're attacking a city usually you'll want to have siege bombard it so the defending units don't get fortification bonus.
Ranged units can't attack from multiple tiles away.
 
Any suggestions?
My first suggestion is to step back a bit and focus on learning some game basics. Warfare is more than just slamming units into other units. Also, I'd consider it last or even not on the list of basics you first need to learn to find success with this game.

What level are you playing currently?

Whether Jags are a crummy unit or not is really irrelevant for the most part. Yes, on higher levels Jags have limited to little use. Jags are a weaker Swordsman that come with an expensive tech the player rarely techs. Jags have some interesting uses in some cases, and can be effective on low levels. Regardless, on high difficulty, by the time one trades for Iron Working a weak swordsman not going to do much on its own without siege weapons.

So basically in the very early game one might perform some kind of rush attack with a sufficient number of units like axemen or chariots to get the job done. A little later Horse Archers can be quite an effective rush unit. Otherwise, one waits for siege units or bulbs their way to Curs.

If you are playing on...say..Noble level or thereabouts, you can do a lot with axemen or chariots. early. Granted, you have to tech Iron Working yourself on Noble, but Jags can be effective. You just have to build a sufficient army to get the job done, and expect to lose some units. Also, it helps to prevent the target from hooking up metals or pillage metals asap.

Archers do not have ranged attack in the base game. The only units with any kind of range attack are air units or nukes. Some mods though do give archers a range attack. Archers are most effective in city defense. (I rarely build them and rarely ever tech archery, except for Horse Archers)

I recommend following some games here like Noble's Club or some of the on-going shadow games to learn, or conduct our own shadow game here (normal settings).
 
Jaguars are great if you want a fortified unit on jungle but sadly bad at attacking cities/units in open play. They may be okay as part of a stack. Weak against axes due to melee bonus axes have.

If i am at war i will always use a stack of units to attack a city. Usually 2-1 ratio attack/defender. On immortal my stack will be 10-11 units early game (before 1000bc). Much more later game. Come 500bc you usually want catapults to weaken cultural defences. 7-8 catapults can weaken defences and save your best units from dying in combat.

Early game horse archers work well attacking into archers but you need numbers to win. Axe rushes can also work on lower levels.
 
The strength of Jaguars isn't that they're great at attacking cities, their strength lies in their versatility and consistency. Being a resourceless unit means you can always build them, whereas with normal Swordsman if you don't have access to Iron you're completely unable to build them. Even if you're in a situation with no strategic resources at all Monty can still Jagpult - use a combination of Jaguars and Catapults to first weaken city defences and defenders, then send in the Jaguars to clean up the weakened units - to attack, and because this is a 100% guaranteed strategy from turn 0 you can start planning for it as soon as the game starts. It's admittedly not an optimal setup, Iron Working is not a cheap detour to take when going for a Construction attack and Jaguars aren't the best offensive units (especially against a target with axes), but it's better than teching Archery and using Archers with Catapults if push comes to shove. The ideal situation would be having access to either Copper (for Axes) or Ivory (for War Elephants).

The other strength of Jaguars is in their free Combat I (since Monty is Aggressive) and Woodsman I promotions, as this makes them potentially the strongest medic units in the game. A Jaguar needs two promotions to take Woodsman III, which is as strong a heal as Medic III in the unit's tile with only two promotions and without an attached Great General. Of course if you do get more promotions - and a Great General - you can stack Woodsman III and the Medic promotions on the same unit, which allows your army to basically shrug off everything short of actual death. Of course people usually use a mounted (or other 2:move:) unit as a Great Medic - a unit that's given an attached Great General to invests solely in the Medic, +1:move: and maybe the +50% withdraw chance promotions - since having a medic that can go from one front to another quickly is hugely valuable and Medic III alone is generally enough. But if you want to play around with a unit that can put hospitals to shame in the classical era, Jaguars allow you to do that.
 
' Ranged units can't attack from multiple tiles away.'

Well if that's true it's not really a ranged unit, is it? If you have to be right next to someone's tile to attack you're really just a melee unit.
 
Some questions:
What type of distance do you think is represented by a single game tile?
In your opinion does the AI in VI handle getting pummeled to death from distance well?

Combat in civ IV is resolving and RNG based. If it wasn't both of those things, the braindead AI wouldn't pose a threat.
 
There is a lot of missing context. What were you trying to trying to attack with your Jaguar? What result were you expecting? Were you expecting a different result if you were using the standard Swordsman instead? Assuming you use the mouse to target your enemy, a tooltip tells you the exact statistics determining the fight, along with your probability of winning. Did you check it? We can tell you exactly how this probability is calculated.

Combat takes place on the world map and not on a special combat map. The distance from tile to tile is to the order of at least 100 km. It does not make sense that a ranged unit can attack from hundreds of km away, especially in the Classical era. Ranged typically have one or more first strikes. These are special combat rounds occurring before normal combat where the ranged unit scores hits if successful, but nothing happens if not.

Absent context, I will make up a scenario.
ADDED:
Assuming - Out of the Barracks we took a Cover promotion.
5.0 Jaguar Attacker
0.5 Combat 1 Promotion
1.25 Cover Promotion
6.75 Total Strength

3.0 Archer Defender - No promotions
0.75 - 25% fortification bonus (5 or more turns of fortifying)
1.50 - 50% hills bonus (25% normal + 25% for archer on hill)
1.50 - 50% forest bonus
6.75 Total Strength

Coincidentally it worked out dead even. That means each strike hits for 20 points of damage, and 5 strikes are needed for a kill. Each side needs 5 strikes to win. Strength is even, so strikes are resolved at 50% probability.

Case 1 - The first strike misses (50%) and combat is dead even.
50% Archer wins
50% Jaguar wins

Case 2 - The first strike hits (50%) and the archer needs one less strike to win.
63.7% Archer wins
36.3% Jaguar wins

Overall:
56.85% Archer wins
43.15% Jaguar wins

So this case is still pretty even, and it appears very unlikely this was the scenario of sending 3 Jaguars after a unit and getting killed.
 
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The range aspect of archers is more or less represented in their innate First Strike ability, which gives them one free round of combat where they can deal damage to the enemy without risking getting damaged in turn per level of First Strike. It's not a decisive advantage in all situations, but there's definitely points where you're better off investing in Flanking II (which gives immunity to an enemy's First Strike) than Combat II because an enemy defender is going to turn you into a pincushion no matter how well the fight goes otherwise, and there's also some unique units that play around with having either first strike or first strike immunity
 
If you reckon that each tile represents at least 100km square that's very long range archery.
 
I wouldn't read too much into unit catergories. They are designed for combat promtions and so unit x works better against certain types. E.g HA 50% bonus against catapults. What would be point in catapults if archers can do same thing?

This is not civ V and the combat system works very differently. Archers are designed to defend cities not wipe out stacks. Only the CKN actually do collateral damage and even then they can't actually destroy units with that ability. They need to attack a unit to use this ability.

Units like nukes and missles should work differently as they are a 1 use weapon. Bombers and fights work as they can be intercepted and damaged when they attack. I actually think the combat system works quite well.

Pointless assigning 100km per tile as it's a game and the idea a city covers 250km E-W and N-S is silly.
 
Coincidentally it worked out dead even.
The Cover promotion on the Jaguar actually doesn't boost the Jaguar in this scenario, it penalizes the Archer. IIRC only Combat promotions directly boost a unit's strength regardless, other promotions will penalize the defending unit if they're on the attacker and buff the defending unit if they're on the defender. It's not the most well explained or intuitive system, I'll admit.

In short, the Jaguar only gets 5.5:strength:, whereas the Archer gets 6:strength: with 1 First Strike. The game's combat calculator claims this is a ~27% chance of outright victory for the Jaguar, which - in short - is as depressing as it is because of the 0.5:strength: the Archer has over the Jaguar, as well as the First Strike round. This is indeed an example of how Jaguars are straight worse than regular Swords in terms of combat, a regular sword with the same promotions has ~62% chance of outright victory thank to it's higher base :strength: putting it's total above the archer. But the strength of the Jaguar isn't in it's 5:strength:, the Jaguar's strength is in being able to be build without Iron. If I throw a Catapult at this archer and wound it down to 1.4:strength:, the Jaguar goes up to ~97% chance of victory compared to the Swordman's 99%. Basically just as good, but the Jaguar isn't dependant on me having Iron, it's cheaper to build in terms of :hammers: cost, and it gets easy access to Woodsman III if I want a Great Medic-strength medic for my army with only two promotions and no Great General. Is it a game-changing UU that would make me build an army of Jaguars instead of Axes if I had Copper available, or Ivory for War Elephants? No, no and definitely no, Jaguars are nothing compared to something like Rome's Praetorians, but they aren't without their niches either.
 
My memory is a bit fuzzy on this, but you might get 2 tile range with modern artillery in civ4.
 
The strength of Jaguars isn't that they're great at attacking cities, their strength lies in their versatility and consistency.
If you are playing at Prince or below Jaguars are perfectly fine and they look cool :) You do need to take on board what else has been said in this thread though.

Post a T0 save here and write out your thoughts then wait for feedback before moving on, take it very very slow - one turn a time at the beginning.
 
Civ 5/6 are games that only allow one unit per tile. Because of that limitation, it made sense to make ranged units be able to attack from a tile away. Personally, I hate that one-unit-per-tile concept because it tends to create carpet full of units occupying each tile that creates annoying traffic jams and slowdowns. There is also the lack of feeling of actually commanding a large army or defending against a large enemy army. Stack combat has its downsides too, but I would take that downside over 1UPT any day.

Like others said, the ranged units work in a way that resemble ranged combat through the promotions and unit abilities. Turning off fast combat and actually watching the combat unfold sorta gives a good idea on how first strikes work as well. To me, this is the more sensible approach to combat, but your opinion may differ.

You should really study how combat works through unit promotions and bonuses, either via fortification, terrain bonuses or unique unit bonuses. Just slamming units into enemy units blindly without such knowledge may not be beneficial. As for the Jaguar... in my humble opinion, its only usefulness is the lack of resource requirement. It still requires Iron Working, which most people would almost never self tech. I like playing as Mr. Featherhead, but Jaguars are just... meh to me.
 
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