Interesting tactical problem

[morchuflex]

Hello.

I have a tactical problem to submit to master warmongers.

The Dutch have unloaded 3 units (on a grassland) right next to one of my cities. The city has 3 defenders, is size 6, has walls and is built on grass. I can't bring reinforcements until next turn so the city has to survive the enemy assault one turn.

The attackers:
- 1 vet (4/4) knight (4/3).
- 1 std (3/3) horseman (2/1).
- 1 std (3/3) horseman (2/1).

The defenders:
- 1 vet (4/4) Numidian merc (2/3) non-fortified (moved from another city).
- 1 std (3/3) Med Inf (4/2).
- 1 std (3/3) warrior (1/1).

What should I do?

Theoretically, the best chances are to attack the knight with the Med Inf and one of the horsemen with the Num Merc. However, my goal isn't to destroy the enemy force right now but to survive at least one turn. Should I attack only with the Med Inf? Or simply let them attack? What do you think?

 

[Tomoyo]

I would attack with the Med Inf, then if I win, I attack with the Warrior. If I don't win, I stay put. If my warrior wins, I attack with the NuMe.

Just a gut feeling.

 

[Flintlock]

@Tomoyo, his NM doesn't have any movement points left (I assume)
Besides, it would just be better to leave it on the defensive

If you need more specific answers:
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3combatcalc.html

 

[IbnSina]

Let's see... If you just defend, they have to win with all three units to take the town - it happens about 15% of the time. If you attack with your MI, then you win about 44% of the time, and it's over - they don't have enough units to take your town. If you lose with the MI, however, they have three units against your two, with a damaged knight and a horse to face the unfortified numidian. The numidian still wins over half of the time, depending on how much damage the knight took. ... eh, I'm with Tomoyo: go with your instinct. It looks to me as if they win about 15% of the time either way, which means you keep your town 85% of the time.

 

[morchuflex]

The Numidian merc cannot attack (it has used all its movt pts to come to the city and that's also why I cannot fortify him).

Anyway, I used the combat calculator and it shows that if I stay put I only have about 5% chances to lose to all three attackers. I'm not sure wether attacking would improve the odds, but I'm willing to wait and see.

 

[Renata]

My instinct would be to stay put. Knight versus unfortified NuMe behind walls is an attack of 4 versus a defense of almost 5 (wall bonus, terrain bonus) -- advantage to you. Horse versus fortified MI is 2 versus more than 3 -- fairly large advantage to you. Horse versus fortified warrior is 2 versus almost 2 -- small advantage to them.

If you attack first, it's MI against unfortified knight: slight disadvantage to you due to the disparity in hit points. Warrior against whatever's up next will also be a disadvantage to you (best you'll face is a full strength horse, which gets the small terrain defense bonus -- if the knight's still there with enough strength left you'd have to attack it instead for even less chance).

So defend three times, two of which have the odds in their favor, versus attack twice, neither time with odds in your favor, then hold up to attacks from whatever's left, at whatever odds those happen to be? My gut feeling would say go with the former -- less susceptible to catastrophic bad luck on any particular attack, I think.

Renata

 

[wilbill]

I agree with Renata. Defend the city where the advantage is yours. Besides, the AI may not attack your city. They may head off toward a more poorly defended city. They may decide to pillage. This is the AI after all.

 

[sealman]

I would stay a defend as well. Can you also upgrade that warrior before he attacks you?

 

[morchuflex]

All right. Let's resume the story.

I decided to follow the majority's advice (although Tomoyo's seemed convincing too). And, not surprisingly, I won, without any casualty at that.

However, the battle was another occasion for the AI to show its immense stupidity: the horsemen attacked before the knight! Of course, the NM easily repelled them, and became elite in the process, which helped him to eventually defeat the knight...

In Civ1 and 2, I heard the AI used to move units in a definite order, always starting with the oldest. I guess it's still the case in Civ3... Or is there another explanation for that not-so-smart tactical choice?

 

[Charles 22]

My plan would be to just defend. OTOH, an alternate strategy would be to attack with the warrior, hoping to inflict 1HP damage on the knight, which would likely make the knight not attack on the enemy turn. The numidian mercenaries have an acute problem of doing a lousy job of defense for the power they have in my view. I can't tell you how many times I've had enemy archers inflict an elite merc with 3 points of damage or more from a fortified merc in a walled city. Having said that though I would still rely on defense here. They have to have 3 victories in a row, and it's quite likely that even if the knight defeated the merc, the horsemen would fail once or more.