Is this working as intended?

The enemy has about 20 units two-three generations behind mines, they have pikemen/catapults/musketeers; I have tanks, gunships, bombers, marines, infantry. I send it 10 unit stacks total to this defended enemy city...

Why is it that PIKEMEN are destroying my tanks? or grenediers/catapults shooting down my helicopters? this is ********, if your not up to age, you should be crushed, why does the game compensate for crappy AI? (I was playing on normal). To top it off, a civ I had almost 0 contact with (other then donating them tech for cheap) declares war on me and sends out melee horsemen came in through two different cities and out classed 3 machine guns / 1 riflemen in one city, and 4 grenediers, a machine gun, and an infantry men in a different one. Really annoying/ stupid.

 

One reason is you are thinking of this GAME in REAL LIFE terms and it's not a real life simulation, wasn't meant to be, never was stated it was. It brings merely the "illusion" of our own civilized trek through time, but, it stops there when it turns into a GAME. Therefore, your tank isn't really a tank, nor your helicopter a helicopter, it's merely just some eyecandy covering up some "numbers" numbers that aren't the ultimate superior number in the game, just a higher number than some of the older numbers before upgrading them through techs.

Once of you get out of this "it's not realistic" syndrome, then you and others can enjoy the game for what it really is, a GAME of CHALLENGE, nothing more, nothing less and it certainly isn't about Civilization in the sense that we have come to know and understand it. The Civilization aspects of it are for mere HISTORY LESSONS, things that happened in an historical time frame to our own civilization history, but, once again it stops there because it is a GAME.

Always remember just because you have superior base numbers for your units, you still don't control the "random luck" of the die roll and of course the advantages that the AI get as you go up in difficulty. Once again this is a game of CHALLENGE, nothing else, so, be happy that you are challenged and quit trying to make the game into something it is not. It's not an historical simulation, it's not reality, doesn't even pretend to be, what you think it is or should be is not what the designers had in mind. Play the GAME by ITS rules, not yours.

 

Look at it this way, those pikemans you are fighting against with tanks are really modern day pikemans, they still have the same name, but they've gone through a thansand year of perfectionning themselves. you wouldn't expect that after a thousand years of evolution the pikeman is still the same old pikeman, would ya?

 

Increase your difficulty -- there's your solution.

 

Hmm... it may just be bad luck a bit like Ravinhood is saying, but I suspect that's not the only reason.

In my first game, I'm fighting longbowmen/macemen/musketmen with cavalry/artillery and have never lost a single unit. Though this may just be my first game, but the difference in units I'm experiencing is not as great as yours and yet I'm winning the whole way. The game seems very fair to me so far. I suggest you attack slower and use artillery more.

 

Look at your combat logs and see if the math is working out correctly.

 

For starters, I just don't believe you. I've tested this multiple times and I've only found the rare case now and again when a Pikeman can take out a tank or machine gunner and this always only happens while defending a city with say 40-60% defense bonus. In the field I'm able to slaughter dozens of ancient units from Musketmen to Pikeman with a tank without ever loosing a single tank and this is on Prince difficulty.

If I had to take a stab at it, your nothing but a troll.

Peace out!

 

I have a better question - why are there 68 threads about each whine people come up with? Can't you at least keep the place tidy by sticking to one thread per whine?

 

You're attacking cities with longbowmen and musketmen with artillery and never lost just ONE unit? I find that hard to believe tbh.

 

artilleries are made to die, so other units can live.

 

This is a problem I think. Would be great if it could be tweaked a bit.

You have your higher technology unit, or perhaps you have same technology but favourable tactics (e.g. spears vs. horsemen), and they're fortified in a city so have nice defences and stuff. Enemy will take that city with two units. The first unit attacks and loses, but your unit has taken damage and their power is reduced in proportion, so not only is it low "health" as it were but its now considered a weak unit. It has not lost half of it's effective strength. It's lost 3 quarters of its effective strength; half of its "health" and half of its "fighting ability" = 3 quarters of it's effective strength. The second unit now attacks and your unit, which before was twice as strong as the enemy, is now half as strong as the enemy, so it dies.

*Edit* to make this clearer, what I'm saying is that a unit of power 10 versus 2 units of power 5 should come out even, but in fact the 2 units of power 5 will always win because after the first battle, the power 10 unit will be down to 1/4th effective strength. The power number on the unit display shows power has halved, but this number determines both the health and the fighting ability of the unit, so the effective strength of the unit is 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4.

This would be fixed if *immediately* after a unit won a combat, it were healed... uuh... well basically, it needs to be healed up to the square root of the proportion of it's original power. So if P is original power and n is current power, it needs to be healed by [square root (n/P) - n] power.

At least, I *think* it's because the power is being dropped too much after a victory. Not 100% certain. But there's definitely something needs tweaking in there.

Whatever it is, it skews war away from technology and completely overshadows tactical considerations like forts and defences.

This isn't good. Historical accuracy aside, from a gameplay perspective you should be rewarded for developing technology, you should be rewarded for thinking about your tactics.

It's particularly frustrating because the first thing the AI tends to do in a war is zerg one of your cities (and then raze it) and there's not really any way you can protect against that. You can't maintain 10 units in each of your border cities.

Also forts need to add more defence. 25% I'm sure is in error... hills is 50%, so forts should be at least that.

Also softening up enemy units in cities should not require that you sacrifice your artillery unit. Need to be able to bombard without attacking (you can do it to reduce city defences, but not to cause collateral damage it seems). This was a great feature of SMAC and I'm not sure why it's been curtailed in Civ4.. maybe accidentally? Maybe I'm being dumb and missing some interface button?

 

Actually a 10 strength unit attacked by a 5 strength unit will go down by

1/2*((3+2)/(3*2+1))^2
or about 1/4
to 7.5...of course the next 5 will take it down more than 1/4

 

Well that's that theory out the window Must be something else then...

Out of curiosity, can you tell me where those numbers came from? I didn't really look in detail at the combat calculations yet

 

I have fought two wars so far, one with cavalry v. Longbows, one with cavalry and tanks v. Riflemen and Grenadiers. Both times I did as I should, which is roll over the opposition. Yes, My tanks seemed to take a little bit more damage then I felt they should, but they were still effectively unstoppable.

Compared to Civ II, where I had battleships getting sunk by Phalanx units, I am much happier with the combat system.

 

So far I've never lost a tank to a pikeman or a gunship to a spearman, though I've heard this is happening. Personally I haven't found anything wrong with combat yet, as long as your units are at full strength and the city they are attacking is weakened to 0% capturing it should be easy. I think a lot of these problems are from players not paying attention to their units health. Even tanks lose some health fighting pikeman, if you fight enough without withdrawing to rest they will be destroyed.

 

I've lost units against the odds (and I win against the odds sometimes too) but I almost never lose units against overwhelming odds (like tank against pikeman). I'm sure it can happen, but it's not going to happen regularly. Chances are this was not tank vs pikeman straight up. It was probably more like tank vs pikeman with every conceivable defensive bonus (on a hill with full fortification and in a high culture city that hadn't been bombarded, etc).

 

There's a combat thread in the Strategy and tips section (those numbers I used were the average drop...so it would be off for any actual battle)

Here's a 'Zergling success chart'
First column is number of strength 10 units attacking
second column is the strength of a unit they should be expected to take out... (again based on each attacker doing average damage..your results may vary wildly)
1;10
2;16
3;21
4;25
5;27
6;32
7;35
8;38
9;41
10;44
11;46
12;49
13;51
14;53
15;56
16;58
17;60
18;63
19;65
20;67
30;86
40;104
50;121

so 5-6 knights attacking in one turn could take out a tank
9-10 could take out a modern armor if it had no First strike

 

Well, I've noticed that during a time of war, the AI switches to Vassalage and Theocracy to create units, which is a great idea. That's +4 xp added to another +4 xp from barracks. If they are aggressive that's good enough for combat 1 and cify garrison 1 and 2. One victory can give them city garrison 3.

Added up with all the garrisons that's +75% defense, plus fortified +25%.

For a musketeer, that'd be 19.8 with combat 1.

Is there any city defense leftover, say 20%, its a small number, right? 21.6
It is also on a hill? 23.85

These are just possibilities, but if you at attacking with only 10 units against 20, you'll need a medic and patience. I'm guessing you went in and one the first wave and then the next turn you attacked with the stack again and got wiped.

 

What I was seeing was gunpowder level units wiped out by swarms of longbows and horse archers. I was the fortified one. It was just something that struck me as odd. I need to look at the numbers a bit more, but possible other sources of this (apart from my own paranoia)...

- Perhaps the gunpowder level units need to be a little higher power in relation to archery level units? Think not, if I'm recalling the numbers right you're looking at ~5-6 vs ~14-16, which should be plenty.

- Perhaps learning gunpowder had made my own walls obsolete?

 

Why do you think they left you with walls? I don't and I've seen the AI tear mine down in many fights.