...the HELL?

[Shepherd]

I'm new to Civ3, just picked it up last week. I was a Civ2 fiend back in the day, and when I saw 3 on the cheap, I thought...why not?

But I'm barely into a game, and the German army is kicking my English butt.

Why?

Because my units can't beat his units.

He has a regular Archer out standing in the field. My archer attacks. His archer kills my archer.

So a horseman rides up and takes a swing. His archer kills my horseman.

So a second horseman rides up for the third attack. This time, I actually kill the friggin' archer, but the horseman is down to one life point.

My turn ends.

His turn.

Two horsemen ride up to a city, no walls, and kill two fortified spearmen in one go. Take the city.

"Damn," I think.

So on my turn, four of my horsemen attack one of his cities. No walls. I make my way through one regular spearman and 1/3 "life" off the other. Two horsemen dead, two others down to one "life." He still has a spearman with 2/3 life. Hooray! A fresh horseman arrives the next turn! Attaaack!

His spearman with 2 "life" points kills the fresh horseman and both 1-point horsemen.

Next turn, one of his archers kills one of my fortified spearmen without losing a single health. And does it again the turn after.

And this happens turn

after turn

after turn

after turn.

To the point that I save games and load them, thinking "my Archer has an attack of 2 and 3 health. His has a defense of 1 and 2 health. This must have just been a bad dice roll," but no, his archer wins every single time.

Turn

after turn

after turn.

Another case in point: he has a Regular horsman, 2/1/2, sitting right outside my city. I have two full, fresh, Regular archers active IN the city.

Guess what happens?

(a) The first archer attacks and, with his superior 2/1/2 attack vs. the horseman's 2/1/2 defense, kills the horseman.
(b) The first archer attacks and dies. The second archer attacks, and with his superior 2/1/2 attack vs. the horseman's 2/1/2 defense, kills the horseman with one life point left to him.

I reloaded the game ten times. Ten times, the same thing happened.

An attack of 2 is greater than a defense of 1. The archer should kill the horseman. The archer should not die when attacking the horseman. Two archers should not be needed to kill one lone horseman.

Similarly, two spearmen in a city, fortified, with a defense of 2, should be able to withstand more than two assaults from a lone horseman. But both die in two straight turns. Reload. Same thing. Reload. Same thing. Reload. Same thing...

I know to an extent this is a WWAAAAHHHHH THIS GAME IS HARRRRDDD post, but I'm frustrated and baffled. I'm playing on Warlord level, for Pete's sake. The game shouldn't be adjusting the units so that an attack of 2 gets beaten by a strength of one every time, or that a single horseman can destroy two fortified spearmen in a city in two turns. It's ludicrous.

Has the combat engine totally changed? What's going on here? Is there some sort of "magic power" the AI can call on?

 

[vmxa]

Yup no concept of Fire Power in CivIII or any extentions. So battles are always a bit iffy, no matter how much stronger ones units.

Reloading and doing the same battle again will not change the out come as long as the Random Seed is set to preserve. You would have to alter the sequence of events to try for a change.

When Att 2 goes after Def 1, it tends to favor the attacker, but not always as you see. If any terrain bonus or if fortified or across a river or other factors, the odds swing.

Now each round is a roll of the rng (randon number gen), but in addition to the bonus stuff, the health is a factor. If you have a regular unit (3HP unless a special unit) Vs a 4HP vet, they have an extra round. If it is an elite it has 5HP, again unless special like AC.

Oh, if a unit is in a city (size 7 or more) it has a bonus as if it had a wall. Walls are not like CivII and do not mean you are safe, only a bonus is conferred.

 

[Turner]

Sounds like someone needs to make a sacrifice to the PRNG god....

This Archer...was it fortified? On a Hill/Mountain? Across a River? You get some serious bonus' for that.

 

[brennan]

VMXA mentions the random seed, this could take some more explanation to take away your

'Preserve random seed' is one of the preferences in the Options Screen. When it is on the game will keep the random number sequence for the turn in the save file. what this means is that the combats will always play out the same way while this option is on! You can adjust the way things go by making attacks in a different order, but not by much. That is why the game repeated a couple of bad combats the same way several times over when you reloaded. If you had turned random seed off then saved, then the reloads would all have played out slightly differently.

The RNG is a *****, but it is fair. You have simply experienced bad luck i'm afraid.

Avoid bad luck by producing veteran units from a city with a barracks. Make sure you take advantage of terrain - the AI sucks at this. Use Artillery units in stacks to weaken your opponents for the kill. These are the tactics we use all the time to defeat the inferior AI...

Happy hunting

 

[Renata]

Most importantly, don't ever (well, almost never) attack with too few units. For example, two horses are not likely to both win against a pair of spears fortified in an enemy town, even on flat ground. (Attack of 2 versus defense of 2.7 after modifiers, plus the horses' retreat chance also reduces your chance of winning outright slightly (although it also reduces your chance of losing outright).) To have a solid chance of capturing the town in such a situation, you need to bring at least five or six horses. The AIs just got lucky.

Things to do to push the odds more in your favor:
- build barracks and send only veteran units. That extra hit point is major.
- avoid attacking across rivers, which adds 25% to the base defense
- bring more units when attacking towns on hills, towns with walls, or towns of at least size 7 (all +50% to base defense)
- bring more units when attacking an enemy capital, because it'll be more heavily defended
- Use swords instead of horses (attack 3), or a mix of both
- If using swords exclusively, consider adding some catapults to the stack. Cats are generally too slow to accompany horses.

Renata

 

[Vilati Timmadar]

As the others said: Bad luck. This happens. Just keep playing, it will get better.

Or maybe your computer is so fond of the Germans, that he cheats...

 

[gunkulator]

An old Civ2 habit that you'll have to unlearn is that 2 spearmen foritified in a city are not necessarily invincible anymore. Many of us have dumped spearmen altogether and just build attacking units.