How can diplomats (and triremes) win in combat?

[Revenant]

Having just lost a chariot attacking a barb diplomat on forest (about two minutes ago) I have to wonder if it was ever figured out how this can happen. Surely 0 defense means absolutely no chance of winning? Same with triremes. Defenseless? Not always

 

[jpciv]

Just a guess, but perhaps the offense/defense strength numbers are additions to some non-zero base probability of success that each unit has at birth?

BTW, situations like this just cry out to justify the save-game cheat, LOL!

 

[Revenant]

In this case the barb diplomat was on forest so maybe there's some guaranteed defense bonus given. After the chariot died I did kill the diplomat with trireme in the same turn. Risky I know but dammit I wanted that gold


This one time I saw a veteran mech. inf. attack a barb dip on plains and lose. Talk about

 

[void]

The game would need to have at least some special code to handle barbarian diplomats. Maybe the normal battle code is not executed at all?

 

[jpciv]

I'm not even sure why there are barbarian diplomats at all, other than to provide us with gold. Have you ever had a city or unit tempted to switch sides by a barbarian diplomat? I haven't. For that matter, I don't think I've ever had an AI civ try this tactic on me, although I use it on them all the time...

 

[Revenant]

I've never had units bribed by barb diplomats but I have had a city improvement destroyed by one. After the legions that came with it died the diplomat was trapped, with no free squares it could move to (surrounded by sea tiles) so it entered the city and performed industrial sabotage

 

[Revenant]

I'm currently playing Jpciv's southeast asia map and just had my trireme (with settler on board) attacked by a Chinese ( who I haven't even talked to) trireme and won

I guess bad luck isn't restricted to the human player.

 

[trada]

Although manuals may indicate otherwise barb diplomats and all triremes have a defensive value of 1.

 

[Revenant]

Well that solves that mystery. Thanks Trada

 

[Whelkman]

I think Microprose simply didn't feel like designing a new sprite for such a limited purpose. Like void, I believe that the barbarian leaders (and barbarians in general) have their own instruction set and are essentially unique units that happen to have recycled sprites.

 

[Revenant]

That sounds plausible.

On the Atari St version of the game, my brother wrote a program that allowed the player to change which Civ you were playing. It was possible to change to the barbarians but any cities in disorder would never come out of it, and every battle would result in a loss. Even with a game specifically prepped (allowed the barbs to capture almost all my cities, then become the barbs) 30 legions died trying to attack an ordinary phalanx in an ordinary city. I guess whatever barb mechanics would normally have been used were invalid when the player was the barbs. Even the cannons (from a late game guerrilla uprising) couldn't beat anything.