No really, how does this game work?

[ElCommanchero]

Alright, I figured I had this game all sorted out. Units in hills defend best, defence pwns early offence and etc but this latest insult has just got me really annoyed at the game.

I started a tiny map, immediately ate all the Babylonians with an early spearman as they had access to wine, moved forward and reduced Egypt to one city and scouted through Rome. I ended up taking over most everything but then that last Egyptian city sent out one archer. He attacked a fortified pikeman and beat him. Annoying but plausible. I sent out a longbow man to attack the archer. Said archer, despite having half health and only 1 defence compared to 4 offence chowed down on my longbow and got promoted. He then proceeded to take on another longbow man and capture a city.
*Que Rage quit*

Is there any reason for this? Is there a patch for this sort of junk? This has happened 6 or so times in one single game and it's really annoying.

 

[Aabraxan]

Welcome to CFC, ElCommanchero!

Clearly, you've picked up on some of the terrain considerations. Units on hlls, in forests and across rivers do defend better than ones on flat, open ground. I don't know that I agree that "defense pwns early offense," though. It depends on what you're using for an attacker. If you're using spearmen as attackers (& it sounds like you did with Egypt), then yes, defense will often win. That's because spearmen are defensive units, with a 1/2/1 rating for Attack/Defense/Movement. OTOH, if youi use swordsmen, which are 3/2/1, you should win more often.

If you're playing Conquests version 1.22, then no there's no patch. However, if the 6 or some times that it happened, was that 6 different events, or reloading and playing the same battle out? If it was the latter, there's a thing called "Preserve Random Seed." If that's on, then you can expect the same result from the same battle.

 

[undertoad]

What Aabraxan said...

But there's no guaranteed win in CivIII combat. Whatever your attack strength and the opponent's defence strength, it's a random number generator that decides the result, and the results can be very strange. It's the notorious "Spearman beating Tank" phenomenon:



I've had Elite Cavalry (5 hit-points, attack 6) defeated by a Warrior (defence 1) at 1-hitpoint...

Nothing you can do about it except to attack with strength of numbers; hence the "Stack of Doom".

 

[ElCommanchero]

No I only used the spearman to attack Babylon's only warrior and defend my cities, once I got the tech I used archers for attacking. What I'm referring to is the difficulty of removing 3 or 4 spearman from a city with only archers and swordsmen. You need a pretty huge stack of attacking troops, probably double the defenders.

As to the events, it was just random oddities like defending pikemen fortified in a 6+ pop city losing to a single archer occuring a lot. I checked the values and it really shouldn't happen but it does. Maybe I've just been really unlucky so far this game.

 

[Optional]

What I'm referring to is the difficulty of removing 3 or 4 spearman from a city with only archers and swordsmen. You need a pretty huge stack of attacking troops, probably double the defenders.

And a bunch of artillery, to soften up the defenders first and to minimize your losses.
Also be careful with your elites, preferably you want to save them for the easy wins. Armies make conquering so much easier.

 

[ElCommanchero]

While I've got a thread up and going, can I just quickly ask, most of you guys here talk about trading techs with the other computer players. I always took that as a big no-no because in most of my games when I was young and didn't understand the game at all (had Civ 3 for quite a long time now) I would be completely mashed by riflemen while I was in the middle ages.

Is it actually best to trade techs for techs? I always try to avoid it, I'd trade techs for world maps, peace agreements, more than half my treasurey if necessary but never for other techs.

 

[RegentMan]

Regarding techs, try to trade techs for other techs.

Regarding combat, to determine your chance at winning or losing a battle, just think of the formula:

A/(A+D), where A is the attack value of the attacking unit and D is the defense battle of the defending unit. So in your archer vs. longbow battles, the attacking archer has an attack value of 2, while your defending longbow has a defense value of 1.

Each round, the archer has a 2/3 chance of winning. If the archer does win the round, your longbow loses one HP. Then there is another round, with the loser losing another HP. You can see that longbows are offensive units (4/1/1) while spearmen are defensive ones (1/2/1).

 

[ElCommanchero]

Problem with that theory is my longbows weren't defending
They lost a 4/1 battle twice against an archer.
A pikeman also lost a 3/2 battle but at least that was closer to possible.

It seems a lot of you think I'm not understanding the concept of attack vs. defence values, I know spearmen are defenders, that's why I'm annoyed with the game, there were layers of them defending and losing in situations where if it was reversed, I would lose the assault.

 

[Hellfiredoom]

Yeah, we all know and have felt the RNG bias for the AI. Everyone will tell you it's just the luck of the roll, but I KNOW the computer cheats.

 

[Ataxerxes]

While I've got a thread up and going, can I just quickly ask, most of you guys here talk about trading techs with the other computer players. I always took that as a big no-no because in most of my games when I was young and didn't understand the game at all (had Civ 3 for quite a long time now) I would be completely mashed by riflemen while I was in the middle ages.

Is it actually best to trade techs for techs? I always try to avoid it, I'd trade techs for world maps, peace agreements, more than half my treasurey if necessary but never for other techs.

Trading tech for techs can help a lot. If you give up half your treasury, you've compromised your ability to research the next tech.

Try this - when you complete a tech (not a major military tech!) trade it to all the AI's on your turn. That way, you may get 2 techs in the deals and a lot of gold and gold per turn, enabling you to research faster in the future. That way, you've compromised their future research (they have to pay you instead of researching). This is why it's good to research a tech nobody else has. Remember, if you trade a tech to one player, they might trade it around themselves. Why should they get the benefit? After a couple times of this, you'll be the only one researching at a decent pace. Then stop trading when they can't give you much and have no techs to trade you.

 

[Rodrig0]

And why on earth would you let an archer near your cities, especially when you were in the MA and had longbows, and the AI only had archers? Like when he beat your last longbow and took your city. If you had a longbow there, why didn't you attack the archer? Sounds like you were scared of the archer's first 2 wins, and rather defended that city with a longbow (1 def vs 2 off), than send the longbow out to attack the archer (4 off vs 1 def). You were asking for it.

I recently had that spearman vs tank oddity. I made a post where linked to the evidence here

That way, you may get 2 techs in the deals and a lot of gold and gold per turn, enabling you to research faster in the future. That way, you've compromised their future research (they have to pay you instead of researching).

That depends on what kind of infrastructure your/their empire has. If it is focused on commerce, with more markets and banks than libs and universities, it might be better to focus on making more gold to the treasury and paying for techs, than trying to research techs by yourself.