GGs Vulnerable?

[JKWSN]

I just had a moment - A stack of death just took out one of my Great Generals seemingly out of nowhere. Which leads me to believe that a GG makes you unit more likely to defend. Let me paint the scene for you:

I've recently moved from Warlords to BtS and after experimenting at Warlord I've made the jump to Noble. I've learned my lesson with the power graph, and in amassing large forces to go to war with instead of using commando teams I could get by with in Warlords. I've also lost my share of GGs so I'm keen on keeping them in well defended stacks, and making them more offense driven in their promotions, but it just doesn't seem to work correctly.

So I'm setting up for invading Ragnar on another continent in one of my port cities, when all of a sudden Charlemagne makes Hannibal his vassal, shoots up on the power chart and declares war on me. Now Charlie and I were on friendly terms so we're close in tech, but I know he's not that bright: he decides to attack the port that has been setting up for the blitzkrieg - a couple tanks (they still have the "new car smell"), 3 cav, 4 drill2 MGs, 16 garrison2 Infantry and assorted Infantry for an attack drive. A few fighters fly overhead for good measure and my navy is parked outside. I've got Patton commanding a tank with leadership, Drill1-4 and Barrage1. I figure I'll let him blunt his army on my city and I'll mop up afterwards.

Charlie attacks the city, which has had its defenders for a while now (25% fort) and lies on a flat plains, with paratroopers, infantry, cav and artillery. All his gunpowders have drill1 and combat2 or d2 and c1 and his cav is doing around combat3. He's also brought his dregs down to the longbows. A couple of his fighters get through so I'm down to 36% def. Patton takes care of the artillery that decide to attack, and the first few cav and the first few paras and the first few inf - and then dies. All in all, a waste of a GG but not a poor showing - he took out 12 attackers.

I go make a sandwich as the rest of this fight takes a while. I come back and see that I've lost Patton, 2 machine guns out of 4, 3 infantry out of 16 and 3 of my 3 fighters. My inf and MGs look to be at 80- 50% health. I know I built that tank for survivability and the 3 artillery that attacked couldn't have done that much collateral damage to my forces so I set up a new game to enter world builder to answer a few questions.

The verdict? There was no reason for Patton to be the initial defender at all! The Garrison2 troops should have defended the city first against the artillery not my tank general. Whether or not I got unlucky is immaterial - my defender should have been someone else - or at least have switched from Patton at some point.

I killed a ton of units, and being Imperialistic with the Great Wall gave me a replacement general - but it is the concept of the thing!

Am I misinterpreting the odds in World Creator or is there something amiss? And how the heck do I protect my GGs from it? I am sick an tired of losing GGs in the middle of a stack.

 

[meatwad4289]

Generals usually are the last to die. Except Washington who would ride up infront of his troops to rallythem and then fight along side. But thats cause they needed every man possible.

 

[Peng Qi]

I've never seen the game pick a unit that wasn't statistically favored to win, so I'd imagine you're doing your calculations wrong in some way or just got horribly unlucky and lost a high-odds fight.

This actually annoys me, as sometimes when I'm in a bad situation my best chance of defending might be 10%, and I'd much rather throw some fodder into the breech than sacrifice my best defender.

 

[Bushface]

What should happen is that your strongest defender (taking account of all promotions and situational bonuses and hit points as well as base strengths) against the selected attacker (and I don't know how the AI chooses its attacker) will be the unit attacked, and will remain the prime target until its fighting strength has been reduced by the loss of hit points to a level where another defending unit is stronger and will take over the defending role. That process will continue until either there are no further attacks or all defenders have been killed, which means that in due course the first defending unit will regain its position as prime defender. Certainly that unit ought not to be killed off before any other units are attacked unless it is very unlucky and gets killed in its first fight or gets knocked down until it is only fractionally stronger than the next in line, and is then attacked by a unit strong enough to kill it. Examination of the Combat Log would show if this happened.

 

[JKWSN]

I know how it supposed to work, but I'm not convinced it did - I set up in the world creator four towns, three with one of the units I saw defend for me and one with all 3. For the fortifiable units I added the associated counter to the attacking units (pinch and charge) to simulate being fortified for 5 turns. I brought the cities down to 36% defense, and using the odds calculator, compared the odds of all the appropriately upgraded attackers against each defender. The 2garrison infantry was the least favorable odds every time - except if I attacked with an artillery with pinch, barrage3 and city raider3 (which I made because I was getting frustrated).

Now I doubt Charlie had one of those, so I loaded a realistic artillery with just pinch and combat1 and it still saw the infantry as the best defender but...
would choose to attack the tank in the stacked city! And the artillery was what he chose to attack with first, which would have lowered the strength of the garrison making the tank the natural choice for the other attackers

I'm not running any mods and now I'd like to know if there is anything repeatable about this scenario on other people's setups or if I am doing it wrong - I think I've found a glitch/exploit.

 

[peter450]

The combat log will show you the odd's of every fight and give you a blow by blow account as well as all the bonus that were taken into account for that fight, that will certainly help you see what the odd's were, it could be you got very very unlucky.

In most game situations the strongest unit (the one with the best odd's of winning) will take the first def round, in round two it then looks at what will be the strongest unit again an so fourth until no more units attack, or all your defenders are dead.

Seeing as your using warlord units i'l give you a couple of tips, that have helped me keep them intact, i rarely loose a warlord unit now an the early ones usually end the game on several hundred XP's.

Combat odds of 99.9 are safe (or safe as they can be), i have never despite hundreds of battles lost a 99.9 fight, (however i have lost 99. somthing other than 9 on odd occasions, that .9 makes all the differance in surviving what i call a bad round, were no matter what the odd's you always seem to loose).
I never attack with a warlord unit unless the odds are 99.9.

Always keep the unit in a stack, it's were the unit should be, leading the stack were it's bonus's are most useful an were it is least likely to be picked off by a roaming unit or two, wounded units are a high target priority for the AI, blood in the water so to speak, i've experimented by moving a lower str healthy unit away from my stack on it's own & it's been untouched, i tried the same with a slightly dmged but still higher str one an it was attacked.
They'l come out of there city specifically to have a go at wounded units by being in a stack you help to negate this and it gives all the units more protection an better effectiveness, as long as the stack has some full str units in it, if the whole stack is damaged the AI may well try an take the whole stack on, were it won't if most of the stack is in strong health, so always keep some of the stack healthy as this strongly discourages attack, wounded units or stacks full of wounded units always seem to get targeted far more aggressively, you want to be doing the attacking not getting attacked put the odds in your favour by not presenting a vunrable target, dont stray to deep into enemy teritory either it's more difficult to re-enforce or pull out of.

Use terrain, always use strong def terrain, even if it means going the long way around, or attacking a differant city, a stack attacking from a forest, or hill postion if far less likely to be attacked back, and if it is, will defend much more robustly.

Mix your units up, stacked should be varied with plenty of siege weapons, the core of the stack should be your warlord an main combat units, you should continually re-enforce it with a few new combat units but mainly new siege weapons as these are what you will be loosing the most, 3 suicide siege attacks on a city you bombarded the def to 0% with as long as it does'nt have like 30 defenders, all the defenders should now be quite damaged an your warlord units should be 99.9 odd's along with most other units, if there not use your other units until some soft targets appear for your warlords to pick up more XP on, even if your warlords dont attack, because the odd's are not 99.9 there still filling an important role by being a full str an tough, which will discourage counterattacks on your stack, i've noticed the AI is very reluctant to attack a healthy stack even if it has the units, especially if that stack is on good def terrain.

The right promo's can make all the differance, leadership promo goes without saying

A swordsman is a good first warlord unit, get the 3 city raider upgrades then go for the str ones, followed by the woodsman ones, + extra moves an finally the FS when it upgrades to a gunpowder unit, hills def promo's is also a good one as mid late game most of the forest is gone

If your doing plenty of early fighting, a second warlord sword is a good bet, same deal as before get the city raider promo's but then go for the woodsmen ones then str, this means you will have 2 good warlords one who has good str so will be 99.9 in quite a few combat situations especially attacking cities, the second heals the stack (woodsmen 3 promo 15% extra healing) + gets a 50% bonus to forest def so thats a 100% tile def when in the right terrain thats a strong def deterant

By the time you get tanks your early warlords should be pretty hard with most of the terrain upgrades in addtion to all the standard choice ones, so you want to get your tanks up to speed fast go for the city raider, then extra move then str. FS should be last, since they are at there most useful on strong units since the they inflict more dmg the bigger the str disparity, combat odd's also decrease better with more str than more FS, use siege weapons to soften up the defenders an then polish 3 off at a time with your tank, it'l have a load of XP's in no time, take your time, fortify your stack an use your tank exculsively if your getting good odd's it might take longer to get the city, but you get more XP's & you gradually drain the enemy civ's reserves like this as they rush in to try an defend the city it helps prevent them from forming a new stack of units as units get diverted to try an plug defenses in a city that you pretty much have a noose around.

When fighting a rival civ if there quite weak, or you've clearly got the upper hand, take your time, if your warlords are getting the right odd's because the defenders are weak or the civ is backward, or simply your warlord units are now dead hard, then it can sometimes make sense to prolong the fighting, if he's down to his last defender, hold your stack up let him get some more defenders an then pick them off as they rush in to re-enforce, you can get a lot more kills, more XP for your units, more XP for future GG an little risk of nasty surprises from a civ who's glory days a long past.

Take a long term view with your GG their in your army for the whole game, an keep there XP when promoted unlike other units so try an get them into battle, if you need to sacrifice a unit or two, so they can then pick the remenants off an gain more XP do it, at the start there'l be mainly there to add somebackbone to the stack an pick off mid to bottom level defenders but as they grow in XP you'l find there taking on tougher an tougher units towards the end of the game, most of my warlord units are leading the assaults but it's a long proccess you got all game to do it, playing on epic or marathon if your not already is also better in terms of warfare as units stay useful for far longer.

Promo's you should never get are tactics, the reason being at 99.9 odd's the withdrawl chance is like 0.1 % and it only works on the attack, so it's no good defending an if your using 99.9 odds it's no good there either, if you use odd's other then 99.9 it's unlikely you will regularly get a warlord unit past 100xp, which is important as it's really at around 150 xp that they start to become very deadly.