My Elite tanks defeated by a veteran pikeman

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I've beaten a Modern Armour with a Hoplite before...

I consistantly use old longbows to kill tanks and modern armor.
 
Yeah the RNG can work for you as well. In desperation I've thrown stacks of swordsmen at fortified infantry and captured the city before sometimes with minimal casualties.
 
The random thing sucks.
Yesterday: 3 elite legionaries attacking a town (pop 3) defended by regular spearmen.
All 3 legionaries lost without a single enemy unit injured. That's too much "random" for me.
Solution 1: re-load the game and do something different on that turn. It may be seen as cheating, but you do it only to correct such oddities. It's up to you not to abuse that trick.
Solution 2: mod the game. give every level x2 hit points (4,6,8,10). Double the rate of fire of every bombard unit. This will also double the number of rolls made in a combat (at least i suppose so). For statistical reasons, this should lower the probability of unrealistic combat results.
 
tR1cKy said:
The random thing sucks.
Yesterday: 3 elite legionaries attacking a town (pop 3) defended by regular spearmen.
All 3 legionaries lost without a single enemy unit injured. That's too much "random" for me.
Solution 1: re-load the game and do something different on that turn. It may be seen as cheating, but you do it only to correct such oddities. It's up to you not to abuse that trick.
Solution 2: mod the game. give every level x2 hit points (4,6,8,10). Double the rate of fire of every bombard unit. This will also double the number of rolls made in a combat (at least i suppose so). For statistical reasons, this should lower the probability of unrealistic combat results.
That was very probable, especially if you were attacking a fortified place. Legions are not super-attackers, as you may think.

Welcome to CFC.
 
morchuflex said:
There is more to be said:

<snip rant on why a luck factor is bad.>
You want better gameplay? Spearmen defeat tanks so the game doesn't become a race to tanks and a war isn't a game of meticulous micromanagement aka "Enemy has 2 riflemen at 3 and 4 hp, 1 pikeman at 3 and 1 infantry at 4 plus 1 drafted at 2, that is a total of 3.54^6 defense points, so I will need 5.3^4 attack points, which is exactly 12.2 tanks, so if I send 12 tanks and one infantry the infantry will take the city, not lose any hp, and will be able to defend it perfectly."

You want realism? Spearmen still beat tanks. More often, in fact, and you have to research Bottom Hull Anti-Spear Fortification to stop it.

Just. Shut. Up. 'Spearman wins vs. Tank' is a joke that's so old, it's nearly sacred here at CFC. Complain and you will be flamed :p
 
tR1cKy said:
The random thing sucks.

Solution 1: re-load the game and do something different on that turn. It may be seen as cheating, but you do it only to correct such oddities. It's up to you not to abuse that trick.
Ah. Of course, I now fully expect you to reload when your 2hp tank defeats two fortified veteran infantry and takes a city.

And draw up the line of what percentages you will and will not accept as being "out of line". Forcing random numbers to stay within, say, one standard deviation is the only thing out of line here. You can't. Re-roll all the numbers outside it, and the standard deviation shrinks.
 
SoWhat3 said:
i hate spearman beats tank sindrom
I hate folks complaining about it. :crazyeye:

My view on this has been stated well by others: if you understand the game mechanics (i.e. how terrain, city, and fortification bonuses work) and consider them in your tactical decisions, the truly whacko events are pretty rare. And if your entire strategy can be shredded by one whacko event, you are not playing as well as you think you are.
 
Erik Mesoy said:
You want better gameplay? Spearmen defeat tanks so the game doesn't become a race to tanks and a war isn't a game of meticulous micromanagement aka "Enemy has 2 riflemen at 3 and 4 hp, 1 pikeman at 3 and 1 infantry at 4 plus 1 drafted at 2, that is a total of 3.54^6 defense points, so I will need 5.3^4 attack points, which is exactly 12.2 tanks, so if I send 12 tanks and one infantry the infantry will take the city, not lose any hp, and will be able to defend it perfectly."

You want realism? Spearmen still beat tanks. More often, in fact, and you have to research Bottom Hull Anti-Spear Fortification to stop it.

Just. Shut. Up. 'Spearman wins vs. Tank' is a joke that's so old, it's nearly sacred here at CFC. Complain and you will be flamed :p


Umm, I just want what's FUN. Stop being such a firaxis fanboy. Believe it or not, loosing a tank to a spearman, is NOT fun. So you're right, if I happen to be lucky and I am the one who had the defending spearman that won, I wouldn't reload, but I really don't think the AI will give a crap. I don't give two ****s about what's 'fair', I just want a good game experience. Who cares if its at the AI's expense? Its not like it cares.
 
You can just use your brain. That should give you a big edge over the AI.
 
Tomoyo said:
You can just use your brain. That should give you a big edge over the AI.

You missed my point entirely. The 'edging out the AI' would only be a possible byproduct of changing the rules in the manner we were talking about. It was indirect, and unfortunate but none-the-less predicable outcome of such a change. Maybe in Civ 4 or 5 they'll have amended the AI as to upgrade its units once in a while. The 'fun' factor didn't derive itself from cheating the AI, like you implied I said.
 
Grav said:
Umm, I just want what's FUN. Stop being such a firaxis fanboy. Believe it or not, loosing a tank to a spearman, is NOT fun. So you're right, if I happen to be lucky and I am the one who had the defending spearman that won, I wouldn't reload, but I really don't think the AI will give a crap. I don't give two ****s about what's 'fair', I just want a good game experience. Who cares if its at the AI's expense? Its not like it cares.

So what your basically saying is that you like winning everything you think you should win. As in you believe that tanks cannot lose to spearmen, so your tanks should always win. You get no joy if one of your spearmen miraculously wins an enemy tank? If you can't handle the small dissapointment of unusual losses then you should go play the game at chieftain level. There you should have all the fun you want at the AI's expense.
Hitler believed his troops were invincible, and he invaded the (at the time) technically inferior USSR. And see what happened to him.

McM
 
The USSR was not technically inferior, they were already beginning to build and deploy superior tanks when Barbarossa started. They were extremely inept, unprepared, and unorganized, however. This turned all the way around later in the war.

"Firaxis Fanboy", lol. I would apply this label to those who blindly defend all of Firaxis' gameplay implementations. Firaxis themselves have admitted certain aspects of the game are "unfun" such as the horrible, time wasting pollution model. Constructive criticism is better than flaming, however.

It is a valid point that the low HP combat model can be very frustrating, and seems to have been adopted by Firaxis as an easy way to make things a bit better for the AI, one might say they took the easy way out, but coding a really smart AI is an enormous job. Let's all hope they heed all the complaints about spearman vs tank, and bring a better way of combat to civ4.
 
Grav said:
Umm, I just want what's FUN. Stop being such a firaxis fanboy. Believe it or not, loosing a tank to a spearman, is NOT fun. So you're right, if I happen to be lucky and I am the one who had the defending spearman that won, I wouldn't reload, but I really don't think the AI will give a crap. I don't give two ****s about what's 'fair', I just want a good game experience. Who cares if its at the AI's expense? Its not like it cares.
Hack your tanks to have 200 attack. Give them 20hp. Then you win. And why not make a big red "WIN" button while you're at it?
I am not a 'firaxis fanboy'. I am defending a game mechanic that you are scorning without a (imo) decent reason. Here's my take on what you said:

well said:
Firaxis bribed you to argue against me. It's not fun if I lose a unit. I'll cheat if I like because the computer can't complain. My idea of a good game experiance is to stomp over the AI because they are powerless, and I metagame in a big way.
Tell you what. I'll play you at Wesnoth. And you choose whether or not we can reload for bad battle results. I'll win, not because I'm reloading more, but because I'm a player good enough to handle surprising losses.


Final Word:
You ought to go and read the Realms Beyond philosophy.
 
If you go by the word of the RBC philosophy, what he is doing is completely fine, because:
RBC Thingy said:
If it feels like cheating, it probably is
Sorry if I quoted it from something else (maybe this was from LKendter?), but it means that, to each, his own.
 
satchel said:
I hate folks complaining about it. :crazyeye:

My view on this has been stated well by others: if you understand the game mechanics (i.e. how terrain, city, and fortification bonuses work) and consider them in your tactical decisions, the truly whacko events are pretty rare. And if your entire strategy can be shredded by one whacko event, you are not playing as well as you think you are.

I attacked a town(=0%def) from seaside (no coastal defence either) with four marines all veteran (so all 4 hp) with two spearman, all regular, at least before i attacked them. I lost three marines to one spearman.
In the same turn my nuclear sub was ATTACKED in midocean by a galley and was left with only 1 hp.
By the end of still the same game, i decided to attack Rome city with ICBM's, the city had 6 units. 3 icbm's nearly killed off 4 units and no improvements whatsoever.
Still in the same game i attacked a town with stealth bombers, 5 carriers loaded, so 20 veteran bombers against 1 city, two units. It took me 4 turns to take out the city...Now talk again about boring, watching about 70 airraids to kill off 2 units
Civ is a strategy game and if u cannot depend on ur units to do a decent job it's no use whatsoever to produce them.
In modern era i've given up to make any military moves since my modern units are clearly not up for the job. And that makes the game extremely boring to me, since i can only win culturally, diplomatically or maybe just by hitting the next turn key.

Edit: did i mention this was all on chieftain lvl?
 
doc mabuse said:
Civ is a strategy game and if u cannot depend on ur units to do a decent job it's no use whatsoever to produce them.
Yep, it's a strategy game. In case the enemy defends with ancient units and you attack with tanks, you could care less about a tactical loss. Really.:)

If there's no use in producing units, you could try a 'non-military' variant.:)

Other than that, you could mod your game as mentioned at your pleasure.
 
Erik Mesoy said:
Hack your tanks to have 200 attack. Give them 20hp. Then you win. And why not make a big red "WIN" button while you're at it?
I am not a 'firaxis fanboy'. I am defending a game mechanic that you are scorning without a (imo) decent reason. Here's my take on what you said:

Tell you what. I'll play you at Wesnoth. And you choose whether or not we can reload for bad battle results. I'll win, not because I'm reloading more, but because I'm a player good enough to handle surprising losses.


Final Word:
You ought to go and read the Realms Beyond philosophy.

We're talking about a computer game here, not "realms of possibility." You took all of what I said completely out of context. Its not even worth arguing with you anymore about it because you seem to be mentally constipated, unable to accept that the holy civ just *MIGHT* have a flaw. I don't want to play your crappy online nerd game wesnoth, I just want to play civ with a decent combat model. Aside from stack kills, the civ 3 combat model is a huge step back from civ 2's. They could have made it better, but they didn't have the time. They also could have included scripting for scenarios, but they didn't have time. They could also have bothered to play test the late industrial/modern era (in the original civ 3, fighters didn't work... at all), but I guess they didn't have time for that either.

Get over yourself and see the facts. The combat system sucks, they were lazy about it, but now we can just hope they fix it for civ 4. What really amazes me, is that you try to defend their apathy with "oh, its *supposed* to be this way." Ya, good luck with that, you seem to be complacent with mediocracy. :goodjob:
 
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