Unit Healing

[AngryPants]

That is nice work by the OP.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Nope, I actually observed this one time. There was a barbarian archer that I almost managed to kill(but not quite). It went down to .5 strength. Next turn, it jumped up to 1.7 strength next turn due to the promotion. Then next turn it healed again. EACH turn, it did something(either pillaging or moving). I mainly noticed this because I was planning on doing one of two things:
1) the turn(or two) of inactivity for it to heal, so I could produce a better defender;
2) it keeping on coming, but damaged at least.

Now when it got to my doorstep fully healed faster than I expected I said "WTF!" , and reloaded the autosave and watched it advance.

So unless I was really out of it, that was NOT due to the promotion.

It may be that barbarians don't become ineligible for healing when they pillage. This would make sense - to make barbarians more annoying to the player. They do lose eligibility if they move though I'm pretty certain as I have checked that myself. The only other thing I can think of too is that they may get different healing rates in enemy territory.

Could you post a save at all and save me some effort of constructing a scenario for a test?

EDIT Until I see any evidence to the contrary, for now I can only confirm that barbarians do NOT get special treatment.

 

[Roland Johansen]

never mind.

 

[Innawerkz]

Great Post! You answered the one question I always wondered: Can a Medic heal the square it ends on when it moves. Thanks!

A medic unit can heal land, air and naval units.

For the sake clarification & accuracy: Unless this has changed since the 1.52 patch, the coast stops the ability to heal between units.

My specific scenario is a Transport with Medic II could not heal units on the adjacent land square. This question was posed within the Strategy & Tips section and confirmed by DaveMcW that this was not possible.

I'm pretty sure it was 1.52 when the question was posed.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Great Post! You answered the one question I always wondered: Can a Medic heal the square it ends on when it moves. Thanks!



For the sake clarification & accuracy: Unless this has changed since the 1.52 patch, the coast stops the ability to heal between units.

My specific scenario is a Transport with Medic II could not heal units on the adjacent land square. This question was posed within the Strategy & Tips section and confirmed by DaveMcW that this was not possible.

I'm pretty sure it was 1.52 when the question was posed.

Thanks Innawerkz.

Honestly I didn't test the Medic II promotion a lot, supposing it would work just like Medic I in all situations except that it worked on different tiles. I'll check that though. Thanks for bringing my attention to it in any case!

I'll mention it in the article for the moment.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I constructed these two tests/examples. If you like, skip the examples and go to the conclusions

Example 1:

I placed two barbarian knights (knights are good because they have strength 10 making it easy to tell HP) surrounded by mountains and inside my territory. Both were at 2.0/10 health. There was a farm underneath them, and they both had enough xp for a single promotion.
After setting this up, this is what happened on the following turns.

1st turn: Both knights had 6.2/10 HP and one of them pillaged the improvement.
Explanation: Both healed 5HP (because they didn't move on the turn I placed them using world builder) then 50% of the remaining HP due to promotion
2nd turn: One of them had 6.2/10 still and the other had 6.7/10.
Explanation: One was ineligible for healing due to pillaging on the previous turn. The other healed 5HP in enemy territory.

Example 2:

Set up a barb axeman with 1.0/5 health and let him loose in my territory with lots of improvements. He went through pillaging left right and centre, and he still had 1.0/5 health. The axeman never pillaged and moved on the same turn - this has nothing to do with healing but I have seen people claim this can happen. It must be a bug if it ever does happen.


Conclusions:
I think these tests are enough to confirm that barbs do not get special exceptions to their healing rules for pillaging or moving. They heal at 5HP per turn in enemy (your) territory.

PopTarts and KillerCardinal, if you have gamesaves of barbs disobeying these rules can you please post them, as I have been unable to reproduce what you have said. My tests only ever confirm barbs get the same treatment as AIs or humans. For PopTarts, I assume the explanation for your situation was that the barb got a promotion like Roland suggested.


As Innawerkz pointed out, a unit with Medic II cannot heal units across the land/sea boundary. If a Medic II ship is in port, it can heal lands units beside it, but not if it is just sitting on the coast somewhere.
Ships with Medic II can heal units in ships that are adjacent. Units in the cargo of a ship with Medic II can heal adjacent ships and units in adjacent ships.
To make this a lot simpler, I have added this comment to the Medics section in the article.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Units with Medic II cannot heal units across a land/sea boundary. Ships in port are considered to be on the land side of the land/sea boundary.

 

[Zombie69]

It went down to .5 strength. Next turn, it jumped up to 1.7 strength next turn due to the promotion. Then next turn it healed again.

Desiregarding everything else, an axeman having 1.7 strength after a promotion is in itself impossible. You go up 50% after a promotion, so you must have at least 2.5 strength. Since the barbarian already had 0.5 strength, it should go up to 2.7 strength after the promotion.

I'm pretty sure you just didn't check properly.

 

[Zombie69]

Example 1:

I placed two barbarian knights (knights are good because they have strength 10 making it easy to tell HP) surrounded by mountains and inside my territory. Both were at 2.0/10 health. There was a farm underneath them, and they both had enough xp for a single promotion.
After setting this up, this is what happened on the following turns.

1st turn: Both knights had 6.2/10 HP and one of them pillaged the improvement.

How do you explain the fact that they got more than 50% healing with the promotion? They should have gone up to 6.0 HP, not 6.2.

 

[PieceOfMind]

How do you explain the fact that they got more than 50% healing with the promotion? They should have gone up to 6.0 HP, not 6.2.

They didn't heal more than 50%. I didn't mention they also received the 5HP healing (due to not moving on the turn I placed them using world builder). They therefore healed to 25HP first, then healed half the remaining HP (37.5) to 62.5 = 62HP.

I edited post #26 by mentioning this.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Desiregarding everything else, an axeman having 1.7 strength after a promotion is in itself impossible. You go up 50% after a promotion, so you must have at least 2.5 strength. Since the barbarian already had 0.5 strength, it should go up to 2.7 strength after the promotion.

I'm pretty sure you just didn't check properly.

It was an archer not an axeman in the example.

 

[Thalassicus]

L = 5 if in enemy territory
L = 10 if in neutral or friendly territory (but not a city)
L = 15 if in home/allied territory (but not a city) or in a city during resistance
L = 20 if in a home/allied/friendly city not in resistance

I was somehow under the impression that it was 10% 20% 30% from enemy to home territory...thanks for the information!

Here's two things for under Observations:

- Tanks can't be promoted with March or Medic.
- Medics will triple your healing in enemy territory.

 

[arthurv]

... just upgrade your medic cavalries!

 

[KillerCardinal]

PopTarts and KillerCardinal, if you have gamesaves of barbs disobeying these rules can you please post them, as I have been unable to reproduce what you have said. My tests only ever confirm barbs get the same treatment as AIs or humans. For PopTarts, I assume the explanation for your situation was that the barb got a promotion like Roland suggested.

Unfortunately, that was quite awhile ago so I don't have a save. I am also more than willing to admit that I may have been seeing things, or have misrembered (or that there was a bug in the previous patch before 1.52) as it was more than a month ago that I saw this. If I see it again, I will make a save and post it, but as you have already tested it, I am betting that you are right .

 

[Zombie69]

It was an archer not an axeman in the example.

Indeed, sorry about that!

 

[jeejeep]

Great article, normally i wouldn't think of taking such a deep look at something that at first glance doesn't seem so important.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Great article, normally i wouldn't think of taking such a deep look at something that at first glance doesn't seem so important.

I know exactly what you mean jeejeep but I started experimenting with some of these things because I wanted to know for sure exactly how it worked. After I had some findings I figured I may as well make them available to others because it wasn't a very well understood aspect of civ4. I'd heard a lot of things like 5% enemy, 10% neutral, 15% home territory etc.

Also, I wanted this article to answer the odd questions that arise occasionally. Especially beginner questions about whether medic bonuses are cumulative and how the March promotion affects units. In these regards the in-game and with-game documentation was ambiguous and rather lacking.

By the way, the tests I used were quick and simple. Had they been otherwise I may not have had the patience to make the article.

....

arthurv, you're right. Unit upgrade paths allow some units to have promotions they shouldn't be allowed to have.

 

[Older than Dirt]

Thank you so much, PieceOfMind! Now, I have peace of mind. Healing advancing units has been one big problem for me, but using this well organized material that you have graceously compiled, will allow my armies to blitz much more effectively.

 

[pixiejmcc]

Brill article on a subject that would be all too easily overlooked

 

[Olleus]

A very handy guide. Thank you for taking the time to make it.

 

[offworld]

Good informative article. One question though. About the Red Cross national wonder. Does it give the medic I promotion to units that cannot normally receive this promotion (choppers tanks)?