Hey all, first post here, hope I don't offend anyone...
To look at this issue historically, we indeed do find many occurrances of battles where troops of much lower technology or with highly stacked odds against them (or both) have won conflicts. Most of the time, wars have been lost even though conflicts have been won, but that is not always the case. For example Finland managed to withstand the blaze of the red army during the first world war.
(For those with no intrest in history, skip ahead.. others, read on..)
The soviets packed over ten times the troops, tanks and planes that the finns (I usually think of it as "us," being a finn...) and fired as many artillery rounds _per_day_ as the finnish army during the whole war. Yet we managed to get a peace treaty with the soviets, just when we would have begun failing.
Thats one example of technologically almost equal opponents with huge differences in strength involved. However the tech difference has its points too. For example during the second world war, when Hungary was being invaded by soviets, a unit of cavalry actually managed to hold off against an armored assault (thats tanks for those who don't relate with the lingo..) and even managed to counter-attack until they had recaptured a bridge lost earlier. Sometimes people can go to enormous lengths...
Then back to nowadays, someone said that nuclear weapons should be thigns killing everything. While I agree that they should, perhaps, do more damage to buildings, consider what would happen nowadays should nuclear missiles be launched: Everyone would run like hell into shelters. Obviously in the modern world we are prepared for a threat of that magnitude, and when a unit represents a whole army its only logical that a missile cant wipe it out, only damage equipment, kill some people, most of it can still be used, or was fully saved from damage.
And last but not least, we have balance. Game balance that is. People complain that you shouldn't have your industrial-age tanks lose to ancient spearmen. Now as much as I agree with that, we have to remember this is a game, not an accurate description of history. If we wanted more accuracy we would need more ages, more techs and more units than you could possibly want, at least, that is if we really wanted an accurate game.
But another thing we need to consider in the gaming aspect is that because this is a game, you are playing against artificial intelligence (most of the time..). And to put it straight, artificial intelligence is no match for real, human guile, cunning or downright sneakyness. We can be real sly bastards when we want to, planning ahead and making innocent seeming preparations for things to come. Now, the computers rarely do that. They mass their troops and run them around your borders, give a couple of threats and even declare an embargo against you before attacking. Even cranking up the level of the game just makes it more challenging by making certain rules apply to you, but not your opponents, like extra unhappines, extra corruption, and so on. The computer won't stand a chance. So they have been given some other little bonuses. At least to my experience the fights seem to get unfair only against the computers. Only against computers do modern riflemen and marines and tanks take a beating from stone-age dudes wielding melee-weapons. Only against computers do their archers manage to actually inflict damage on your mechanized infantry and TOW-squads. Only against a computer have I ever managed to lose a battleship fighting a galley. And as long as it is against the computers, I can take it. Its just a part of the game being unfair to me to make it easier for the computers to even have a small chance of winning. Its the same as corruption, is it fair that the computer seems to always suffer less corruption than you? Or have you ever destroyed a civ in an island/continent far away from all others? It would seem funny that no matter how empty, and how far from others, computers still always get a couple of cities up in two turns. Also, fog of war does not affect computers, they know all that happens anywhere on the map. Is this fair? No. but its part of the game to make it more challenging. Is it any more realistic than an army of spearmen winning against an army of tanks? No, but its part of the game.. I know I can't force you to believe in what I believe, and I know that even I'm often frustrated with it as it is, I still think its part of game balancing.
McManus
(and osrry for typos/bad language, een tho I consider english almost a mother-tongue, it is 5:52 AM, and I havent slept for quite a while...
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2. 
3. :suicide:
I probably would change that to my signature but usually no one pays attention to signatures, no matter how good they are. But if you include them in your post, You may get more reactions ( like the one you gave me! ). So every once in a while I might post it.
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
Then he could hit the leaf with a spear... there:
Looking for any suggestions, even if not exact.
