Invincible Spearmen

Originally posted by Moonsinger


It seems to me that your troops don't want to fight for you. If I remember correctly, there is a way you can check the morale of your troops. May be it's one of those right-hand-click popup menu..I'm not sure, I have to look that up tonight.
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Morale is not directly depicted in Civ3. However, that and other factors (such as weather) are figured in with the general use of the randomizer and hp.
 
Wheather, what the hell, im definately missing something.

But I came up with something of an idea. Double the A/D/M values (not the HP however) in the second age, triple them in the industrial age, and (maybe) quadruple them in the modern age.

Right there, problem solved. You guys are too caught up in your problems, I'm going back to my colleseum.
 
I never thought I would get so many replies:goodjob:

In the game i mentioned, i did eventually overrun those spearmen, but only after airlifting 6 tanks per turn and running through the cities with 40 tanks. It seems that some units just don't do that good despite their stats. Cavalry does it the most.
They are 6/3/3 but cant kill pikemen and are killed by archers. Also, marines seem to really get the heck beat out of them unless they are doing an amphibious landing. :ak47:
 
I think that the problem with combat outcome results does exist and will be found somewhere in the implementation of "Round-Off" errors by Firaxis programs.

Round off errors exist everywhere in the game and at almost every level of play.

I think that once the random number generator is fully understood in tandem with round off we will see that these implementations generate strings of unbalanced results.

I have seen the data on series of 100 or 200 engagements between selected units and do not find these results compelling because they use a single source of the starting random seed and produce large numbers of results from that seed. In these cases, things should almost always work out to be statistically valid when you get up to the range of several hundred hit point engagements.

The engagement tests need to be conducted with sets of reasonable attackers versus reasonable numbers of defenders over multiple turns of starting random seed numbers.

As an example, of how the rnadom number generator can spin out some severely flat outcomes. I had a 2 pop town defended by two veteran spearman that came under attack by a barbarian warrior and two barbarian horsemen from two different directions. I saved the game at the point where the barbs where just 1 tile adjacent to the city and tried to counterattack the barbs with spearmen in all the possible engagement combinations. The spearmen counterattackers should have been a 1 value with 4 chances and the barbs should have been defending with 1.1 and 2 chances. Because of the random seed for the turn, not a single one of the 8 hit points of spearmen scored even one hit on any of the barbarians no matter what order I attempted the counterattack.

(For the record, strategically I let the spears just fortify in the town and defeated all the barb attackers in the next turn with a hit point of damage on one spear and two hits on the other.)
 
Originally posted by Zidane
Cavalry does it the most. They are 6/3/3 but cant kill pikemen and are killed by archers.
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That's right, fortified veteran pikemen are very hard to kill: Veteran cavalry v. veteran pikemen; 54% in city, 70% on the plain. With twenty cavalry against a like number of fortified pikemen, expect casualties. You should leverage your forces by bombarding first, or with effective use of retreat and heal -- or both, depending on the strategic situation.
 
Originally posted by cracker
. The spearmen counterattackers should have been a 1 value with 4 chances and the barbs should have been defending with 1.1 and 2 chances. Because of the random seed for the turn, not a single one of the 8 hit points of spearmen scored even one hit on any of the barbarians no matter what order I attempted the counterattack.
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The spearmen would usually have a combat bonus versus barbarians, depending on the level. Ignoring any combat bonus, each spearman has a 92% chance of hitting at least once. To miss both is one in 176. Pretty bad break, but you can expect it to happen at least once or twice in the entire six thousand year history of civilization.
 
Originally posted by cracker

I have seen the data on series of 100 or 200 engagements between selected units and do not find these results compelling because they use a single source of the starting random seed and produce large numbers of results from that seed. In these cases, things should almost always work out to be statistically valid when you get up to the range of several hundred hit point engagements.
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What you want is a more narrow distribution of results than normal. You can also double or triple the hit points of all units, this will force an increase in the number of combat rounds. Remember that statistics on random numbers are only valid for a large number of trials. ANd that also random number strings are by the very nature very stringy. We don't appreciate how stringy a truley random string is and this is how you check for falsification of data that should be reasonably random. You check for the existance of improbable strings, if there are insufficient the data was fudged.
 
Originally posted by cracker
As an example, of how the rnadom number generator can spin out some severely flat outcomes. I had a 2 pop town defended by two veteran spearman that came under attack by a barbarian warrior and two barbarian horsemen from two different directions. I saved the game at the point where the barbs where just 1 tile adjacent to the city and tried to counterattack the barbs with spearmen in all the possible engagement combinations. The spearmen counterattackers should have been a 1 value with 4 chances and the barbs should have been defending with 1.1 and 2 chances. Because of the random seed for the turn, not a single one of the 8 hit points of spearmen scored even one hit on any of the barbarians no matter what order I attempted the counterattack.
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Assuming you're playing on a difficulty where barbraians aren't handicapped, the chance of this result is 1 in 176. What this means is that such a result should occur once every 176th battle (in the long run). If the random number generator had not produced such results, then it would be flawed.

It may seem very unlikely for you that this result should ever occur, and you (and many others) conclude that there is something wrong with the random generator. But a correct random generator is not one who distributes the results evenly in the short run (even if this looks better to humans).

A correct random generator is one who really simulates real random results and therefore also shows strings of strange results as often as they statistically should happen.

This means that even if you had 5 spearmen attacking, once in every 413000 attacks you should loose all 5 without inflicting a single damage on the barbarians.
The one out of 413000 players this happens to will probably add to the whining choir, telling that this should never happen, but the way the game is designed, this should, and will happen.
 
@ Zachriel: You`re saying Cav against fortified Pikeman and that`s exactly the results I get against unfortified Pikemen - bad luck? All the time?

Seems I only have bad luck, and most others, too!

I keep a little list, noting important battles extra, and then make a little tick if I win one and feel that was lucky (like 30% chance) and a little - when I was unlucky (like 70% chance).

Until now it`s roughly 200 times - against 44 ticks.

Well!
 
Originally posted by Killer
@ Zachriel: You`re saying Cav against fortified Pikeman and that`s exactly the results I get against unfortified Pikemen - bad luck? All the time?

Seems I only have bad luck, and most others, too!

I keep a little list, noting important battles extra, and then make a little tick if I win one and feel that was lucky (like 30% chance) and a little - when I was unlucky (like 70% chance).

Until now it`s roughly 200 times - against 44 ticks.

Well!
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I don't doubt that you feelunlucky more than you feel lucky. Most players expect to win a lot more often than they loose (often forgetting defense modfiers for fortifications or terrain), and feel unlucky if they don't. Still, the only person who have really checked the numbers found that the battle calculator is correct (check link in my first post of this thread).

The 200 against 44 has only meaning if you write down the combat odds and result for each occurence. If you did, I bet that you would find that quite a lot of the 200 unlucky was a lot less unlucky than you feel.
 
Originally posted by TheNiceOne

I don't doubt that you feelunlucky more than you feel lucky. Most players expect to win a lot more often than they loose (often forgetting defense modfiers for fortifications or terrain), and feel unlucky if they don't. Still, the only person who have really checked the numbers found that the battle calculator is correct (check link in my first post of this thread).

The 200 against 44 has only meaning if you write down the combat odds and result for each occurence. If you did, I bet that you would find that quite a lot of the 200 unlucky was a lot less unlucky than you feel.
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I use the combat calculator and I assume higher terrain boni. When I say 1:1 that usually is my Archer (A=2) attacking fortified Archer (D=1) on plain, both vet. So, it should be slightly better than 1:1 but I still count it as 1:1

I`m not stupid!
 
Originally posted by Killer


I use the combat calculator and I assume higher terrain boni. When I say 1:1 that usually is my Archer (A=2) attacking fortified Archer (D=1) on plain, both vet. So, it should be slightly better than 1:1 but I still count it as 1:1

I`m not stupid!
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First, sorry if I offended you. I didn't mean to imply (and don't think) that you're stupid, but I do mean that it's human to feel unlucky more often than there is reason for in a game like CIV.

And yes, an archer attacking a fortified archer on plains should win more than half of the time, but I really question whether you used the combat calculater or roughly knew the odds every time you considered yourself lucky or unlucky. If you did I believe you would find that the average "unlucky" results had a higher chance of occuring than the average "lucky" result.

For example, as you say, an archer attacking an archer should win more often than he looses. So you may feel a bit unlucky if loosing, and counting that as an unlucky result, without counting the wins as lucky (because you expect to win). But you should loose some of those, so you shouldn't count them as unlucky unless you loose more than expected (which is a hard task to count correctly).
Since most players (and probably you too) mostly attack when they have the odds on their side, they expect to win and therefore seldom feel lucky, but feel unlucky the one in ten times they loose when the odds actually was 1:10.
 
Originally posted by TheNiceOne

First, sorry if I offended you. I didn't mean to imply (and don't think) that you're stupid, but I do mean that it's human to feel unlucky more often than there is reason for in a game like CIV.
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nono, I`m not in the least offended!

And yes, an archer attacking a fortified archer on plains should win more than half of the time, but I really question whether you used the combat calculater or roughly knew the odds every time you considered yourself lucky or unlucky. If you did I believe you would find that the average "unlucky" results had a higher chance of occuring than the average "lucky" result.

For example, as you say, an archer attacking an archer should win more often than he looses. So you may feel a bit unlucky if loosing, and counting that as an unlucky result, without counting the wins as lucky (because you expect to win). But you should loose some of those, so you shouldn't count them as unlucky unless you loose more than expected (which is a hard task to count correctly).
Since most players (and probably you too) mostly attack when they have the odds on their side, they expect to win and therefore seldom feel lucky, but feel unlucky the one in ten times they loose when the odds actually was 1:10.
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That is certainly right, but the case is that I simply count battles with odd calculated as said above (so, to my disadvantage) and then end up with percentages that are in the order of 10% too low consistently since January, and that I use the calc (not a guesstimate!) for important stuff. Like 1 defender 1 attacker, if I loose the cities`s gone.

What I see very often is this:
the enemy sneaks one archer through my lines to a city with 1 Spearman defending. Let`s check the stats:

Archer: A=2
Spearman: D=2, in city size 6 = 2*1.5. On plains (*1.1), fortified (*1.25), across river (*1.25)
all in all: 2*1.5*1.1*1.25*1.25=5,1625

A=2 vs. D= 5.0 rounded off.

I loose 1 in three, so 1:2 - not good!

btw: just found someone saying he arrived at a defence bonus of only 15% for rivers experimentally. Might explain quite a few strange things....
 
another nice occurrence, and this one very lucky:


I attack town size 6 with Immortals. Defenders all are vet Spearmen (8 HP), fortified. No river.

All my Immortals win. Remaining HP:
elite Immo: 3 of 11 (my mod)
vet Immo: 5 of 8
vet Immo: 1 of 8

then I accidently attackedc with an elite Spearman.
result: he still has 3 out of 11 HP!!!!! :eek:

This is what I call ridiculous!
 
Originally posted by Killer
another nice occurrence, and this one very lucky:


I attack town size 6 with Immortals. Defenders all are vet Spearmen (8 HP), fortified. No river.

All my Immortals win. Remaining HP:
elite Immo: 3 of 11 (my mod)
vet Immo: 5 of 8
vet Immo: 1 of 8

then I accidently attackedc with an elite Spearman.
result: he still has 3 out of 11 HP!!!!! :eek:

This is what I call ridiculous!
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This is very lucky indeed, but ridiculous?

Let's look at the numbers:
First, to be honest, I have never really learned the defense bonuses for cities, so I computed this first with a defense factor of 3 (the spearmen got a multiplier of 1.5 for being in a size 6 city and fortified) and then with a defense factor of 4 (a 2.0 multiplier).

The odds of the above result (or even luckier) is:
With defense of 3: 3/1000
With defense of 4: 2.5/10000

These are the odds for the results to happen in the exact order as you described. If it did not matter whether the first or second vet immo only lost 3 HP, then the odds would be doubled, etc.

So, what is ridiculous:
1) The fact that the odds arent zero with true random numbers?
2) The fact that that such low-odd strings of results happen according to the odds? (which I believe they do)
3) The fact that such low-odd strings happen a lot more often than they should? (which it seems to me you believe)

Or do you agree that this happens according to the odds, but think that it shouldn't happen at all? Do you think that the game should remember whether one side has had much bad or good luck, and even it out within a few battles?
 
come on, I`m lucky with the Immos and then the devil sh*t onto the biggest pile and I win with the Spearman??????? If a newbie has that kind of result against him repeatedly he`ll be pissed - quite correctly.

This isn`t rolling dices or some such game where it`s only luck, this is supposed to be a game where you plan - and if you`re smart you fare better than if you´re dumb. But this way.... no!
 
Originally posted by Killer
come on, I`m lucky with the Immos and then the devil sh*t onto the biggest pile and I win with the Spearman??????? If a newbie has that kind of result against him repeatedly he`ll be pissed - quite correctly.

This isn`t rolling dices or some such game where it`s only luck, this is supposed to be a game where you plan - and if you`re smart you fare better than if you´re dumb. But this way.... no!
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So you're saying that the game should be less random and luck dependant? Not that the random generator is incorrect, but rather that the game should be less random?

That is surely a valid view, but must be balanced with the fun of taking a chance at the cruical moment and win against better odds, and also with the fact that less random outcomes means that the faction getting a small power lead will have an even easier time.

I don't necessarily mean that Firaxis has found the correct balance, but I'm sure that I personally want it quite random. I'm bored by chess (not that I think you want a non-random battle resolution).
 
You`re right about having to take chances and all that, but:

1) the strings the RNG gives are too strange for the game, even with doubled HP. Tripled is rather OK.

2) I start to suspect that there is something in combat calculations that simply doesn`t match with Firaxis claims how it works. See the 15% river bonus in experiment vs. claimed 25%. See my long list. See many others.

All the explanations are very nice, but slowly I`m starting to think that problems with very unlucky results show up a little too often. I`ve heard all the things, and I`ve especially heard Zachriel state odds and say 'Oh very unlucky, but it happenes' - but not every frerak thing was reported here, and they happen a lot too often!

I see something smelling of Hollywood about once per game. Ups!
 
Artificial random generator just doest produce random number. Anyone saying that civ 3 random generator work ok is wrong, because informatic program are not able to produce perfect random number. Why do you think the lotery use numeroted ball for the winning combination ? because a.i. random generator are not truly random. The programm try to produce random number but its not the case, talk to a proffesional in informatic-statistic and he ll tell you same thing.
 
Originally posted by Killer

I`ve heard all the things, and I`ve especially heard Zachriel state odds and say 'Oh very unlucky, but it happenes' - but not every frerak thing was reported here, and they happen a lot too often!

I see something smelling of Hollywood about once per game. Ups!
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Sorry, not trying to be smug, but after thousands of combats, I just don't see the problem with the randomizer. I usually know in advance of combat whether I will win easily, have a slugfest with lots of casualties, or lose.

When you fight at 2-1 odds, expect a lot of casualties, i.e. you will need to have lots of reinforcements to cover your losses. Try to avoid these situations to better your chances, or use bombardment where appropriate. In earlier war games, they had three combat results, win, lose and exchange. Exchange is where each side would lose like numbers of units. The one left standing would win the combat, but of course, would be substantially reduced in strength.

Hollywood! Cool. Every once in a while, a Sgt. York unit will win repeatedly against all odds. Sgt. York was a Hollywood movie, with Gary Cooper -- but then again, he was a real soldier, too.
 
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