Strange collateral damage

[RasmCiv]

I'm playing BTS 3.17, and im invading France, playing a Ragnar.
I have my SoD besides Orleans, ready to attack.
i try to bombard his defense mith my 5-6 catapults, but every time i bombard him, the screen says:

your catapult has reduced the defense in Orleans to 124%!
your catapult has reduced the defense in Orleans to 123%!
your catapult has reduced the defense in Orleans to 122%!
your catapult has reduced the defense in Orleans to 121%!
your catapult has reduced the defense in Orleans to 120%!

wtf? even with a castle, he shouln't have that much defense bonus, should he?

 

[Al Capwn]

Did he build Chicken Pizza? (Chichen Itza)

Another possibility is if he has a ton of cultural defenses (Cathedrals, monasteries, University, also The Hermitage or other big culture wonders).

 

[Bob the Barbari]

With Walls and Castle the bombardment damage is reduced by 75%. With Catapult that would give 2% reduction per hit (25% of 8%), so something is wrong here, and the opponent definitely built Chichen Itza as his initial defence was 125%.

And btw. it's not collateral damage, but bombarding city defences. Collateral damage means damaging units other than the one you attack when attacking a stack.

 

[champ82]

Are you plaing "Better AI" mod by any chance? I played that, and yes, the AI was better, which was cool, but had a similiar experience as you, which was not.

It was almost the same. The cities had 100% (still too high) and my 5-6 cats were bringing it down 9% a turn collectively.

For me, it definetly was not cultural strength or Chichen Itza. One city I was attacking touched my border directly, so it's culture must have been terrible.

Made Civ not fun though, that's for sure. I'm not playing the "better AI" mod again - the bad outweighed the good.

 

[PieceOfMind]

champ, the Better AI mod is not meant to change any game mechanics at all. If what you are describing is not the same as in the unmodded game then it is more than likely a bug in Better AI, which you could now help us to find.

 

[champ82]

OK - I don't want to dis the mod then if it's just a bug. I forgot exactly what thread I got it from but here's a save if it that would be useful. I do hope the bugs get all worked out and I would definetly play it without them. If there's any other way I can help find bugs tell me.

 

[jake1er]

ive had this EXACT thing happen to me before i couldn't figure out for the life of me why it took me like 10 turns to bombard the city, i was also using catapults, is was his capital with a defense of 80% and everytime i bombarded each catty would only do 1%.. all the other cities in that conquest took like 1-3 turns

 

[Sarge85]

it took me like 10 turns to bombard the city,

Spies are your friend....

Sarge

 

[Levgre]

It may be a bug, did you notice that once it got to say, 50% culture, it suddenly dropped to 0?

I've noticed the same weird numbers before, and believe it may have just been a display error, but didn't observe too closely.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I loaded up that save and put a huge bunch of cats beside one of his 100% defense cities. Each catapult did reduce the defense by 2% as expected by the 75% reduction from 8%. I'm using Better AI 0.60N.

Keep in mind that units later than gunpowder show a different defense percent. I'm not sure how they adjust it exactly but if you kept using cats to bombard then checked the defense with a gunpowder unit, it could look like as small as 1% reductions each time.

But the cats are definitely doing 2% each time, and confirmed by the event text at the top of the screen.

 

[Calouste]

It's definitely got something to do with Chichen Itza. I was attacking Mansu today who had Chichen Itza in his capital, and my Cannons only brought his defenses down by 8% instead of the advertised 12%. After I captured his captital, things returned to normal for the next city, and when I was attacked by Justinian, his Cats only did 1% and sometimes 2% bombard, just like the OP mentions.

 

[champ82]

The OP may have to do with Chichen Itza but my game against the Japanese (who I am positive do not have it) isn't.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Can we please get some hard evidence of these 1% bombards happening please? The gamesave posted earlier only showed 2% defense reductions when I loaded it up, which were completely expected.

Gamesaves or screenshots please. preferably saves. Also any detail on any other mods that may be running concurrently.

Please remember that after gunpowder the defenses displayed to you will be reduced. If someone is attacking with catapults the damage may appear to be 1% per hit but that may be because you are viewing a reduced amount due to having post-gunpowder units selected.

 

[champ82]

I'm not saying I ever had a 1% reduction.

I'm not one to number crunch (for civ, or in general.) I think it's cool when people on the forums do this, though.

So...regarding my save, I'm not sure how much I expect to bombard a city with 5 cats normally (without the better AI mod) but...
1.) I am pretty sure it was more than 8% with 5 cats
2.) ALL the cities seem to have 100% culture, even cities that are bordering my territory. I thought only legendary cities w/o Chichen Itza should have 100%.

It just doesn't seem right to me. I felt a palpable (and annoying) difference in the time it took to take a city down to 0%. Never did the number crunching though, sorry.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Tokugawa gets cheap walls and castles. Could that have influenced things a little differently from other games? Attacking him in the era where he has walls, castles and his horridly powerful samurais (2 free first strikes can dominate if used well, though the AI won't use them well ), must be the hardest time to attack him. Usually any Pro leader is hard to attack though.

As for cities having 100% culture, with a wall and castle you automatically get 100% defense bonus do you not?

 

[champ82]

Hmmm.... Didn't know that about castles and walls giving 100%. I guess I'm not sure it's a bug. I'll have to mess around on world builder sounds like.