Hwacha Bug?

PurpleTurtle

Shellshocked
Joined
Nov 29, 2005
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354
Location
Kansas City MO
I have been playing an emperor huge marathon 18 civ game as Wang Kon. I have been doing quite well in general but have a problem. Augustus Caesar just declared war on me and came at one of my cities with four prats and two chariots. I have two archers, a warrior and two hwacha in this city and was thinking therefore that I would soon see a display of korean pyrotechnic prowess. However, no matter how many times I reload(yes I have random seed on reload turned on) he kills all of my units and burns the city.

My beef with this is simply that an unpromoted prat(as is the case with these) has just 8 strength, yet a hwacha has 5 *and* 50% against melee. My understanding of a bonus against a unit may be faulty, but I believe it reduces the opponent's strength by the specified amount. So the prat would be a 4, and the hwacha stays a 5, this would seem to at least give the hwacha the occasional shot at a win right? Yet the prat wins *EVERY TIME*. The prat even takes no damage most of the time. The truly frustrating part is that none of the archers can manage a win either, they of course have garrison 1 and drill 1. The city has a wall and just recieved a great artist which bumped it up to 60% city defense, and all of the units have been fortified for more than five turns.

Thoughts?
 
Did you use them on offense against the romans or just defense? As its my understanding- and game exp- that the early seige units are horrible if being attacked but great if attacking.

But I dont really know atm.
 
PurpleTurtle said:
My beef with this is simply that an unpromoted prat(as is the case with these) has just 8 strength, yet a hwacha has 5 *and* 50% against melee. My understanding of a bonus against a unit may be faulty, but I believe it reduces the opponent's strength by the specified amount. So the prat would be a 4, and the hwacha stays a 5,

Well prats are extremly powerful and the bonus is applied to the unit so:
hwacha 5+2.5 against melee but does not receive defensive bonusses so all your city walls and culture and fortification are worthless and it has 7.5
prat starts at 8 and gets any bonus it might have (eg city raider promotions) so it will always have an advantage over hwacha.
the archer starts at 3 so even with defensive bonus (60% culture and wall, 25% fortified and 20% city garrison) its only slightliy above 6 and the extra first strikes wont do much damage against an attacker with 8+.
You are better of attacking those prats and not letting your hwachas await the attack inside the city where the hwachas collateral damage is no use
 
No your understanding is wrong

For this I will list attacker first

In Combat
1) get all non Strength (combat 1-6) bonuses and pile them on the defender so
Prat v. HWa= 8 v 5+50% = 8 v. 7.5 (fairly straightforward)
Hwa v. Prat= 5 v. 8-50%= see 2)

2) Now is where it gets complicated because if a Negative bonus is applied then instead of applying it through adding they apply it throrugh dividing SO

8-50% becomes 8 / (100+50%)= 8/1.5=5.666666


There are a few more things for you to consider, a Catapult gets No terrain defense bonuses, and I don't thinlk a Hwa does either, so with a prat attacking

Hw= 5+50% (melee)=7.5

Archer= 3+50% (archer city bonus)+ 60% (culture) +20% (Garrison) +25% (Fortify)=3+155%=7.65


Which actually means the Archers Should be Defending first... of course it also means Either the Archer OR the Hwacha should have a chance against a Prat. (at least in the 30%)... of course you didn't say how many times you tried this battle.

Are you sure you don't have Preserve random seed on reload turned on?. because you want that Off.
 
I am quite sure that the game is free to generate a new random seed on reloading. I was reading while playing so I just decided to reload till the situation was remedied as I was quite surprised when I lost all the combats. After about 15 or so reloads I decided to post and hit the hay.

The stranges part of all this is, with shock, cover, pinch etc in the game, and so many units having bonuses against other units, I have had ample opportunity to see those traits in action, and I actually see the combat odds and decide when and whether to attack based on that. I have never seen a % bonus against a specific type of unit do anything but reduce the other units strength. IE, a spearman attacks a horse archer with a strength of 4, but the horse archer is reduced to three. This is at least what my combat odds imply.
 
PurpleTurtle: load the game, play the turn, now enter the CombatLog (press STRG-TAB, then select that header). Check the odds given under the combats - you may find that your Hwacha had miserable odds to start with.
 
PurpleTurtle said:
The stranges part of all this is, with shock, cover, pinch etc in the game, and so many units having bonuses against other units, I have had ample opportunity to see those traits in action, and I actually see the combat odds and decide when and whether to attack based on that. I have never seen a % bonus against a specific type of unit do anything but reduce the other units strength. IE, a spearman attacks a horse archer with a strength of 4, but the horse archer is reduced to three. This is at least what my combat odds imply.

Well, the only time you get to see odds, is when you're doing the attacker. So saying what Krikkitone said, "..get all non Strength (combat 1-6) bonuses and pile them on the defender" and saying "..I have never seen a % bonus against a specific type of unit do anything but reduce the other units strength," ends up being the same thing.

If you were able to see the odds when you were attacked, you'd see that all the % bonuses would have been applied to your units (they were the defenders), even if the % bonus came from your unit (which would be increasing your unit's strength).

In any case, I second Krikkitone, which may not mean much since "correctness" isn't affected by agreement. :rolleyes: But realizing that Prat vs. Hwacha is 8 vs. 7.5, instead of 4 vs. 5, should go a long way to realizing why the Hwacha didn't seem to hold up to the Prat's as well as I guess you thought they might.

As far as gameplay goes, try it again, but this time, counter attack with one or both of the Hwacha's. You'll still probably lose the city if you can't get reinforcements there, but a "losing" Hwacha that delivers collateral damage is probably better utilized than a "losing" Hwacha that doesn't.

The lack of defensive bonuses make those Siege units pretty useless for city defense. You're really only defending the city with 2 Archers and 1 Warrior, which is likely to be eaten alive by 4 Prats and 2 Chariots no matter how you slice it. I think you knew that, though.
 
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