Unit Strength?

[7EA]

I've been wondering about some of the results I'm getting when doing battles.

How does unit strenght work exactly? And does the 20 hit points that the units have in this mod have an effect on strenght too?

I just had a Trireme report a damage of 15 against an Indian War Elephant (ended up doing 18). However, the Trireme only has a ranged attack strenght of 5.
How does this work?



On another note, my battle animations have suddenly disappeared. Any pointers on that?

 

[Ahriman]

I don't know the exact formula, but basically the relative strengths of each side determine how much damage they do to each other.

The displayed amount is the average damage they'll do, but there is some randomness, sometimes they'll do more, sometimes less.

It is just the ratio that matters; if I attack your strength 8 unit with a strength 5 ranged attack, that is exactly the same as if I attacked your strength 16 unit with a strength 10 ranged attack.

So if I have a high attack value relative to your defense, then I will do lots of damage and take very little in return.

Units that are injured also deal reduced damage (10 hitpoint unit inflicts 75% damage, down to 50% damage at 1 hitpoint), but they receive the same as an uninjured unit.

The 20 hitpoints in this mod makes no difference, everything is doubled. All it does is give more granularity, so that a unit could deal 4, 5 or 6 damage out of 20 rather than just 2 or 3 out of 10.

 

[7EA]

Thank you. That was a very good explanation.

 

[Thalassicus]

All damage, health, and healing effects were doubled. This means everything is basically the same, with one exception: minimum damage. Five crossbows with Blitz could previously kill a Giant Death Robot in 1 turn, since they each dealt 1 damage minimum to a 10 health opponent. The increase to 20hp effectively halves the minimum damage.

 

[tlaurila]

Going on a tangent, naval bombardment power against units would be nice to go down quite a bit? Also the damage dealt by ranged land units to naval units would be nice to go down. And I don't think the flat terrain promotion would need to work against ships.

I always thought shooting across the shore either way should be more harassment than the deadly killing it is now. I mean my caravel easily does more damage to land units than catapults do.

 

[Ahriman]

Going on a tangent, naval bombardment power against units would be nice to go down quite a bit?

I dunno. Do we really want to make naval units weaker?
I've been playing England lately and using some naval support more, and it feels helpful, but not too strong, except in the right circumstances where lots of tiles are within range.

And I don't think the flat terrain promotion would need to work against ships.

Agreed, I think Thal was considering ways to fix this.

I mean my caravel easily does more damage to land units than catapults do.

Catapults are anti-city units. Caravels will barely scratch cities, and will take a lot of damage in return (only strength 10?). I'm not convinced caravels are underpowered, I think that it is nice to encourage a beeline for compass under some circumstances.

 

[Thalassicus]

I did some research on this last month. As far as I can tell, making the open-terrain bonuses affect only land units would require changes in the game core only Firaxis has access to.

However! I did include a -50% attack penalty for archers/crossbows against ships in v106.7. If this needs to be increased to -75% I could do so. This penalty is somewhat counteracted by combat bonuses... with a great general and accuracy 1 for +40%, the total effect is only -10%.

 

[Ahriman]

However! I did include a -50% attack penalty for archers/crossbows against ships in v106.7. If this needs to be increased to -75% I could do so.

It isn't a great solution, because it means that rough terrain crossbows are terrible vs naval units.

Doesn't ranged strength also affect how much damage you take from ranged attacks? So the penalty will end up making you more vulnerable?
I think we may have already created a problem where archers can be murdered by triremes, and crossbows by caravels.

 

[Thalassicus]

-50% attack penalty

I did it with an attack modifier, not ranged strength.

It doesn't solve the accuracy/bombard split, true, but does improve the overall durability of ships against either promotion path. This isn't a perfect solution but helps to some degree.

 

[Ahriman]

Ah! Good. So I guess we have the choice of {open terrain good vs naval, rough terrain medium} or {open terrain medium vs naval, rough terrain bad}

 

[Thalassicus]

Yes, basically.

 

[tlaurila]

I dunno. Do we really want to make naval units weaker?
I've been playing England lately and using some naval support more, and it feels helpful, but not too strong, except in the right circumstances where lots of tiles are within range.

My favored solution would be to have sea-to-land and land-to-sea bombardments units not be able to kill a unit, leaving it at 1hp. Cities should be able to deal a killing blow, though.

 

[Ahriman]

Ugh. I would hate that. It would seem incredibly artificial, like how aircraft couldn't sink ships in earlier versions of Civ, which everyone hated.
I suspect it would also be very hard to code; a ranged attack of strength X is a ranged attack of strength X.