Having major trouble with battles.

[Crispy129]

I'm having a lot of trouble with my battles, and it has gotten to the point where it pretty much ruins the game for me. I'll do well every now and then whenever I get into a war, but suddenly I'll hit a period where I get battles that are completely unrealistic. For instance, an enemy comscript warrior attacked a large city on a hill with a regular fortified spearman inside, and won without losing any hitpoints. I've made large armies of veteran and elite troops, outnumbered them, and had better technology, but the computer's weak and cheap units consistantly slaughter my men . One time when I was messing around, a spearman won a battle against an elite tank. These are the types of battles I get so consistantly that I now expect them to happen. It ruins the game for me, because I can either give my country and money away for peace and get killed later, or attack and get slaughtered sooner.

The only thing I can think of that would explain this is bad luck, but supposedly firaxis "mainly" goes by the numbers, and only has "some" chance involved. In my case "some" means about 90%. Can someone please tell me what is going on?

Thanks,

Crispy

 

[GerrardCapashen]

Check out the combat calculator at http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3combatcalc.html. There is actually a large amount of chance in battles, and although I have never had the infamous spearman vs. tank upset occur to me, I know that the amount of chance in battles irritates some people. I think that Industrial Age units should be immune to Ancient Age unites, and Modern Age units should be immune to Ancient and Medieval units.

I have a sense of deja vu; I remember posting something very similar to this a few minutes ago. Hmm, maybe it was in the other forum.

Edit: I posted the same in the General Discussions forum in response to your other question. At least I'm not going crazy...

 

[MajorFallout]

Best thing to do to combat that, is to pound the city with artillery or catapults until the units inside the city or location is quite well damaged, then send in the troops to mop up whats left.

If the enemy is on a hill or mountain, then go to a hill/mountain next to it (if possible) and attack from that 'base of operation', you'll have better chance of killing them off.

Of course there is one way of utterly decimating an AI civs' forces by taking advantage of it's way of mounting up loads of troops in one or two squares... and that's by nuking all of them, either with ICBMs or Tactical Nukes. I did this recently, when America suddenly decided to attack me, for no apparent reason. Fortunately I knew where their expenditionary force was, which included a number of Army units and many Infantry and Mech units. So I nuked the lot of them, TWICE, just to make sure. It left only 2 or 3 very weak units, which I coould easy destroy with one Mech Infantry unit!

 

[Ecco]

GerrardCapashen - words of wisdom about the immunity system.

As far as my advice to Crispy129 - don't start wars unless you know you can win. It is great that you think you have a bigger AND better army than your opponent, but in real life the US can't attack say Latvia and not lose one life. There are people livin in that country, and you can't say for a fact that there is no possibility that some wreched farmer could dig a ditch where one of your tanks might fall into. I mean come on, you probably saw INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, where Sean Connery destroys a fighter plane with the help of seagulls. Plus, check out all those James Bond movies, where one guy singlehandedly destroys a whole division.

If your tank get screwed by a spearman, just pretend he was 007, and your tank division leader was seduced by one of those wretched JB girls.

 

[CrackedCrystal]

The worst luck I have had is a tank (with only 2hp left) die to a spearman (with 4hp, one left after battle). Fairly unrealistic, but not entirly far fetched. I can just see the spearman jump on top of the tank, open the hatch, yell "Oweyowowowey!!", and thrust his spear into the cabin.

Who knows, mabe the tank driver had too much eggnog for christmas and drove into a ditch

Seriously though, the best way to counter stuff like that is to follow MajorFallout's advice. Use artillery. Barring that, be selective of which units you use to attack with. I tend to use my verterns first (saving elites for possible leader pops when a win is at least 75% assured). Also, try not to attack with damaged units. I do not know if there is any truth to this, but it seams they do not fight as well.

 

[DaveMcW]

Damaged units fight just as well, but they have a bigger chance of dying eventually.