Play With Fate (The random number generator)

[DarkSchneider]

Someone else made a post concerning the random number generator, and yes, it is preserved every time you reload a saved game. Although some people might consider it unscrupulous, I have found a way to use it to my advantage.

Let's imagine you are attacking a town, and due to the crazy defensive bonuses, your attack is equal to or slightly higher than their defense. So you attack, and you unit is brutally killed. Oh no, you needed that unit to win so you would have enough other units to take the town this turn! If you reload the game, and attack a different unit somewhere else (a battle you know you can win) then you can use up the 'bad' random numbers and try again on the difficult battle. As a last resort, you can send a weak unit to it's death if you know you won't be needing it anymore. If you plan the order of your battles right, you can win every one as long as you have at least 50% odds to begin with.

 

[Ephor]

Or you can just go to the world builder with a single click and give yourself an armada of modern armor and ICBMs.

C'mon, man, if you're gonna cheat, cheat big!

Loosing to a slightly stronger unit isn't unfar, it's bad planning on your part. Like in the real world, unexpected things happen and you have to prepare to have the worst luck possible every step of the way, contingency plans are the key to victory. Although, I'd still reload if I lost a helicopter to a knight, that's just silly.

 

[ytsejam02]

Sounds less and less like fate the more I think about!

Why not just suck it up and take the hit? It's not very realistic if everything goes your way.

 

[DarkSchneider]

I don't use this a lot, but I do use it in the begining, when a lot of the battles I am involved in are crucial, and I dont necessarily have a tech advantage over my opponents. I abused the heck out of it in Civ 3, but thought better of it eventually. I still think that if you have a 3:2 strength advantage that your units should win the vast majority of the time, in a real battle, even a 10% difference in strengths can tip the outcome to your favor.

 

[Lord Genghis]

A violation most foul!!!

This post cracked me up, I was reading it and suddenly got outraged. How dare he do that! Thats not challeging! RAWR!

Then I realised I was getting angry over how a complete stranger plays the game in his own house.

So anyway, the point of this post was just to thankyou for giving me a good laugh DarkSchneider.

 

[ytsejam02]

At 3:2 I don't know about a vast majority, but it's certainly a majority. If you kept track of all those types of battles, I'm willing to bet you would statistically win almost exactly what you're supposed to win.

I've done it too, but only in extreme circumstances. With Civ 3 I used to start a new game, take a quick look around, and if the initial resources weren't to my liking, I started over immediately. Sometimes it took me an hour just to literally start a game! It seems Civ 4 is a little more liberal with the resources. Not sure yet.

 

[Magian]

The most important is to have fun. I personaly prefer chalange but I've got friends who hate to lose and always cheat and play the games on easy difficulty.

 

[ytsejam02]

The most important is to have fun. I personaly prefer chalange but I've got friends who hate to lose and always cheat and play the games on easy difficulty.

Ugh, I'm playing my 1st game since buying it and decided to leave the level on the 2nd to easiest setting just to learn the new stuff. It's pretty damn boring, but like I said, I am learning.

 

[DarkSchneider]

Well, in a 3 on 2 situation, let's imagine that each person can kill half of a person every time interval. So after the first hit, it's 2 vs half a person, who is taken out before he can hurt anyone else. The best one could hope for it a 3 on 2 situation would be to leave the larger group with 1 person instead of 2.

The reason that Civ battles are a little unrealistic is that every bit of strength the weaker opponent loses hurts them more than the same ammount of strenght would hurt the stronger party. In Civ 4, many times I see one side kill 2 of the other sides units, only to have the remaining unit kill all 3 of his attackers. This simply wouldn't happen in a real battle.

 

[ytsejam02]

Sure it could. It's unrealistic to rule out anything.

3:2 should mean you only win 60% of the time. Not exactly an overwhelming majority.

I might be wrong, but I'm guessing if one person is down to 1 warrior (out of the 3) and the other still has 3, the odds don't change from the initial values. It's the only way to explain the behavior. And besides, this works in favor of the stronger troops to preserve the initial bonus.

 

[DarkSchneider]

Actually, at one point I wasn't 100% sure that the random number seed was kept, so I tried attacking a Barbarian Village with one of my units ten times in a row (reloading each time) The outcome was always the same, my unit was killed, he survived with one man, but the order in which our units were killed varied. Sometimes I would kill 2, then lose 3, sometimes I would kill 1, lose 1, kill 1, etc. It always ended up the same, but got there differently.

But, in response to the previous post, 3:2 would not be a 60% chance to win, and as far as I can tell, you do get better than 60% odds in the game, I just wish they were higher.

 

[ytsejam02]

You're right, it's not 60%, I wasn't thinking of it properly.

Either way, 3:2 doesn't represent a significant advantage. I don't see any reason why it should be higher than the statistical average.

I'm sure you're right about the random seeding. Haven't tried it though.

 

[Nilrim]

Speaking of random numbers, anyone know when the villiage reward is rolled for? Are they set when the game starts or are they rolled when you first spot them or when you actully enter them? I do know that if you reload a saved game from a turn before you always get the same results. Normally I live with what the rolls hand me but once a few games back I got like 3 maps in a row as a reward and got just a tad miffed

 

[DarkSchneider]

I have gotten different rewards from goodie huts at different times. One hut that gave me experience in the beginning gave me a warrior later on....

 

[Arkanin]

I am playing on a difficulty that is very challenging for my level of skill, so I will save before declaring war on someone or making another significant decision. If it goes wrong, I will load my game 30 turns back and go back to where I was before declaring war or doing another significant thing, and ask myself, "Why did I make this mistake and how should I have known better?" Then I try to adjust my strategy accordingly. Yes, this is "cheating", in a sense, but it helps me to learn the game better.

At the end of the day, this is just a game.

 

[Mythosaeon]

The random number generator seems to be likley linked to the turn number you are on or just the next number is qued up and used for whatever the next action is that requires a random number.

Restoring a saved game and waiting one extra turn does give you a different result for your battle or exploring a tribal village. I haven't tried using a random number generation somewhere else then going back to your exploration or battle as mentioned above. Have to experiment with that. Civ has so many ways to entertain yourself that have little to do with straightforward gameplay(much less realism...*ewwwww*)

I don't do it alot, but it's a just an entertainment game so for single player games doing it sparingly doesn't destroy the challenge and increases the entertainment by giving you a break on a few bad rolls. There's something to be said for the "ironman" approach, but some players don't find that kind of extremism actually enjoyable or have the time for it.