Could someone please tell me exactly how First strikes (and First strike chances) works in detail regarding combat odds. I did a simulation myself with 2000 swordsmen vs 2000 longbowmen, and found 238 more surviving longbowmen = 12,7% more survivors.
Is there an article that explain First strikes and Collateral dmg in detail?
(regarding first strikes, the computer doesnt show us the odds of combat regarding this)
I always like the
Combat Explained article by Arathorn.
Basically, a first strike is a combat round where only one side has a change to deal damage (or not).
Collateral damage is a 50% damage round (so around 10 hitpoints damage) to a lot (5-8) of other defenders in the tile. The collateral damage doesn't hit the main defender and it is applied independent of who wins the battle. Because losing a fairly small number of hitpoints already strongly influences the chances of a unit in combat, this is an effective way of weakening the opposition. It makes subsequent attacks a lot easier.
Then the war weariness concept that is implemented makes no sense to me. I capture enemy cities, and MY weariness goes up? What sense does that make? Because that is what is happening. Thanks.
There is some logic behind the war weariness mechanics in civ4. The basic idea is that citizens tend to be a lot more forgiving for battles that are being fought to defend your own country than for battles that are being fought to conquer enemy cities. In the first case, it is clear that the soldiers are dieing to defend the country, in the second case, the reason why the soldiers are dieing is a lot more suspect.
In Vietnam, the Americans suffered a lot of War Weariness and the North Vietnamese did not. But the casualties of the North Vietnamese were around 10 times as high as the American casualties. I guess some American presidents must also have thought: 'Why are the people complaining? We're winning!'. However, it's very hard to explain why soldiers are dieing in this foreign country.
I won't say that the civ4 war weariness is functioning 100% logical or that I completely explained the Vietnam War Weariness, but the example does explain why the civ4 war weariness mechanic makes some sense.
In civilization 4, you get war weariness when you're fighting in areas where your opponent has cultural influence, when you conquer enemy cities, when you launch nukes or when you suffer a nuclear attack (less than when you launch nukes).
But still, there are no calculations done around fist strikes, and it is invisible in the game. After my calculations there seemed to be 1/8 better survivability with first strike.
