Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Turner]

I have been playing CIV 3 for the past few days having taken a break from civ in general for over a year. Unfortunately CIV 3 has reminded me why I stopped playing. Although it has awoken my lost love of CIV 2. Anyway that’s another topic.

1) How can I determine the version number of CIV 3 that I am running?


3) Is there a patch available that corrects the frustrating game play? I am running gold edition.

The version will be in the lower left hand corner of your screen. However, if you're running Gold Edition, it's probably PTW 1.27f

2) Is it just me or does CIV 3 seem exceptionally glitchy? The last game I played had me astounded at what the game was and was not doing. From frankly ridiculous combat results (rifleman consist Nanty winning vs. modern armour!) to my reputation being soured despite never breaking an agreement or initiating a sneak attack! Then there were times when standard dialogue options were not available only to become available later again (usually when it was too late!)j

Riflemen beating Modern Armor is not necessarily unheard of. Rifleman has a def of 6. MA an attack of 24. So you'd think that's 4 to 1 in favor of the MA, right? Not necessarily. The rifleman get's an automatic 10% def bonus at least for just sitting on a grassland tile. If it's fortified, that's another 50%. Across a river, another 50%. In a metropolis, it's another (I think) 100% bonus. Anyways, I ran it through the combat calcuator, the modified defensive value is 15.6. With the withdrawal chance from a MA, then you're looking at about a third of the time the Rifleman won't lose. By that I mean the attacker withdraws, or is defeated. So the chances of a defender winning aren't quite that clear. There's a lot of modifiers that go into it.

You can increase your win chances by playing smart. Don't attack across a river, or when they're on a hill or mountain. Take artillery units with you, this greatly increases your chances of winning.

4) Another one that sprung to mind, recently when playing age of discovery scenario I was not able to build a spice factory, despite having it in my city radius and having the prerequisite technology. Do I also need a road to the goods to build the factory?

I’m quite happy to go back to CIV 2 (im not sure I should even consider civ 4 judging by the prior instalments "progress"!) although I do want to give civ 3 another go.

Age of Discovery...are you playing Complete and not Conquests? Either way, Gold or Complete, you're at the highest patch level. I'm not familiar with Age of Discovery, but I can tell you that you do indeed need the resource hooked up in Civ3. By road or trade route.

And that's probably your other problem, broken rep. If Civ A goes to war with Civ B, and you have an active agreement with Civ B and are using Civ A's roads to get them there, then that cuts you off and breaks the deal. The AI sees that as 'your fault', and penalizes you accordingly. Yes, it sucks. But it makes a certain amount of sense if you think about it.

 

[vmxa]

If you think a tank losing to a rifle is bad, how about a whole stack losing to one unit in Civ2? I think most do feel the combat was not as it should have been. I tried to get them to incorporate Fire Power from civ2 to ease the rng.

To me the whole problem is the rng has too wide of a swing. You can take a given battle and test it and get results from A beats B losing no points to B beating A losing no points. That is to random. (here A could be a sword and B a warrior).

They did that in an attempt to allow backward nations to not be rolled, but they get owned anyway. All it in fact did was to annoy players. I am fine with A being better and winning all the time. I am fine with A losing at times and rarely to a really inferior unit, but I want some consistency.

I guess you will be really upset, when a tank loses to a spear. The most spoken of mismatch, you would think it was common. In fact I have not seen it, since vanilla days.

When IV came out, the top unit never lost. They tweaked it some. Too much for my tastes.

Anyway Gold and Complete are fully patched. Gold has Civ3 and PTW. Complete has those and Conquest.

As was mentioned you can get a rep hit from things you have no control over, such as a lost trade route. That is why it is wise to take care about trades, makes sure that cannot happen.

Most common is a trade where you pass over coastal waters and it is blockaded.

 

[EthicsGradient]

Well that’s cleared up a few things. However I still cant help feeling that the human player suffers some kind of handicap in battle. Since my earlier post it has become clear that I need to be more specific.

Regarding combat

A specific example. Earlier in my game as Korea I suffered tremendous loses against India’s UU. I was using Cavalry (basically dragoons) vs. the war elephant. With 6 A vs. 3D it would seem basically that I would be emerging victorious most of the time. Yet I consistently lost units in offensive engagements where I had the clear advantage. Then with a smaller advantage India’s counter attack, 4A vs. my 3D seemed to give them a clear combat advantage. This makes no sense to me. My victories were few and consistently left my units in the red which slowed my advance down considerably.

Being an old school civ player i am well aware of the bonus terrain defer to the defender. I do not engage in clumsy tactics yet i get the feeling i am playing handicapped.

Now going back to he Modern armour vs. rifleman. The city size was 9 it was settled on plains and I was not attacking across a river. I’m not 100% on the maths here as im not familiar with all the modifiers but mathematically im sure the advantage is significantly on my side. Yet this was certainly not represented in my last game.

I would like to learn more about the combat system in civ3 to try and reduce these seemingly ludicrous results. I've not used artillery units in any great deal yet so i will look in to their use.

Regarding dialogue options

Without any change in the environment from one turn to the next one turn i am given the option to forge alliances and right a passage and the next turn these options disappear! I’m not sure what’s going on.

By the way what’s rng?

 

[Spoonwood]

rng=random number generator.

We'd need more details of the units you attacked and city specifications where the units you attacked lay for a more insightful analysis. The civilopedia somewhere has a screen that lists all the terrain bonuses. Hit points also need considered, and the war elephant has a bonus hitpoint. A 1/4 cavalry against a 5/5 war elephant probably won't win very often, though I haven't done the calculations.

 

[Aabraxan]

RNG = Random Number Generator, which plays a role in combat results.

Also, on the War Elephants vs. Cavs, if I remember correctly, the War Elephant has an extra HP, too, so don't forget to factor that into it.

And welcome to CFC, EthicsGradient.

 

[vmxa]

MA Vs Tank 70.2% , actually better ( could not use more than 23 ATT) I gave rifle elite status. So it would be higher odds. So you would not expect to loss much, IF all units at full health.

War Phant Vs Cav. Cav only win about 40%, again if all full health. The extra HP is a huge item. Anyone using AC units can tell you that. On WE attacking Cav, the WE wins about 54%.

There are several combat calculators in the Utilities forum. These numbers are in 1000 tries. Remember they do not have to match you deviation from the norm.

There are a number of things that could be involved with the MPP or alliance options. Attitudes change, you no longer have the required stuff they would have ask for in such deal. It is hard to say exactly why, but nothing freaky.

 

[EthicsGradient]

I shall have to do some futher reading on the subject. The combat math does not seem as "cut and dry" as earlier versions, either that or I am missing something. From my memories of civ2 if your attack was double that of the defending units defence you always had a very high probability of success.

Regarding artillery

When used to "soften up" the defences of a city they generally tend to destory the cities improvements, is this not a hollow victory?

Regarding more random behaviour

Why is it that units capable of retreating in battle only do this a portion of the time? Im aware that this can not be done when fighting other fast units. The pedia file states that it will happen (with the above exception) yet from my experience it seems more likely to be 50-60% of the time.

 

[Aabraxan]

I don't think that artillery "generally" destroy city improvements, but they certainly do that a certain percentage of the time. On the bright side, if a city's barracks is destroyed, wounded units won't instantly heal.

I don't know what the percentage on retreat is, but I do know that there's a chance that fast units can retreat from slow ones. The other side of that, of course, is that they won't always retreat.

 

[EMan]

IIRC, a fast unit will retreat 50% of the time against a slow unit, unless the defender is red-lined, then it's 0%.

 

[ChaosArbiter]

I shall have to do some futher reading on the subject. The combat math does not seem as "cut and dry" as earlier versions, either that or I am missing something. From my memories of civ2 if your attack was double that of the defending units defence you always had a very high probability of success.

That might have something to do with the HP and Firepower in Civ2 ... Armor had 10 Attack and ... I dunno, Riflemen had 5 Defense. But Tanks had 30 HP and 3 Firepower, while Riflemen had 20 HP and 2 Firepower, so the Tank has to win 7 rounds, while the Rifleman has to win 15. Much better odds for the Tank.

IIRC, a fast unit will retreat 50% of the time against a slow unit

*Fires up Editor*
According to the Combat Experience tab of the Rules, Conscript gives you 34%, Regular 50%, Veteran 58%, and Elite 66%.

 

[Pacioli]

I need help finding a forum article that I need to read again. I haven't had any luck using the search tools (too many results). The article discussed cities at various levels of corruption (<10%, 10%-90%, >90%) and the best uses for them. Thanks for your help.

 

[Aabraxan]

Is it Everything About Corruption: C3C Edition?

Or maybe The Role of the Specialist Citizen?

 

[Pacioli]

Thanks for the reply Aabraxan. Not quite. The article I remember talked about core cities, the tweaners, and specialist farms. I'm wondering what to do with the tweaners.

Thanks for the link to Bede's article.

 

[Aabraxan]

Well, I'm not sure what article it is, but the "tweaners" are the toughest to figure out. Core cities? Easy. Hopelessly corrupt ones? Easy. In-between? You've got to look at each one and decide what it needs. That decision is partly guided by your VC. If you use CA2 (or maybe MapStat, I'm not sure), you can look at the Economy tab and see what various improvements (like a library or courthouse) would do to that city's production/science/etc. I often use the core cities and the better semi-core cities for attackers, the worse core cities make defenders and artillery (if I'm low on arty), and the specialist farms make settlers and artillery. Every city also produces a few settlers now and again, depending on its food and shield situation.

Edited to add: Those tweeners can also benefit from police & civil engineers, depending on what they're building. Police are nice for shifting shields to a "sweet spot." IOW, if I'm building cavs, and a policeman would switch a city from 19 spt to 20 spt, it gets one.

 

[Sashie VII]

Has a 5CC AW Space Victory Win on Monarch and above been recorded?

 

[Pacioli]

Valuable info Aabraxan! Your reply gets me pointed in the right direction.

I'm just learning the value of CA2. Before CA2, I had no idea of all things that could be tweaked every turn. I'm learning not to make the newbie mistake of just hitting the enter key at the end of each turn before taking a look around.

 

[Pacioli]

Do defenders receive the same bonuses for terrian, city size, etc. versus bombarding units?

 

[Turner]

I think it's halved, but I'm not sure.

Edit: No, I don't think that's right. I think it is full defense against bombardment.

 

[del62]

2 Questions

1. how do I put a screenshot into a thread
2. how do I overcome HKEY registry access exception with CIVAssistII under Vista

Hope I get some answers

 

[TheOverseer714]

I know bombarding a city is pretty useless with catapults. Even a spearman has a defense nearly or more than equal to the bombardment value of the catapult.