Worst Wonder Ever!

[CharlieChuck]

Leo's upgrading defenders more than attackers has (for my playing style anyway) the big benefit.

One Phalanx manualy upgraded to a Musket would cost 20s (incl 10s disbanding old unit), and another 25s to upgrade it later to rifleman, at 45shields each unit upgrade, Leos (400s?) pays for itself with only 8-9 units. I know a lot of playing styles don't use many defenders, but it also saves the hassle of remembering to upgrade.

It also upgrades dips to spies, so you can in effect pre-build an army of spies.

Maybe Leos is more beneficial to a Space ship game rather than early conquest?

 

[Clausewitzian]

>Leo's upgrading defenders more than attackers has (for my playing style anyway) the big benefit.

Yeah, upgrading warriors to fortified Pikemen behind city walls should give even vet knights pause. In my early days of play I used defensive units exclusively because basically, that's what the players guide told me to do. I found it very dissatisfying. So I developed a battle doctrine and strategy identical in many respects to what this forum advocates.

I don't know how it is against human players, but basically, against the AI, shields invested in defensive units are a complete waste of resources, because it is far easier to destroy a unit in the field by attack than by passive defense.

Only city walls can redress this problem, and their cost plus the defenders cost will usually amount to a fair clip more than the cost of a decent attacking unit. And that's just for starters.

Pikemen + city walls = 20 + 80 = 100s
vet knights + barracks = 40 + 40 = 80s
With Leo's
1 Warriors + city walls = 10 + 80 = 90s
1 horsemen + no barracks = 20 + 0 = 20s

Multiply that by whatever number of cities you have. Assume 20 cities:

Pikemen: 20x100 = 2000s
vet knights: 20x80 = 1600s
with Leos's
Warriors: 20x90 = 1800s
Horsemen: 20x20 = 400s

So you initial inlay costs (leaving out Leo's) actually favor knights and with Leo's, well... Leo's may not be the best wonder, but it sure as heck is one of 'em (the lack of barracks with Leo's does require a shift in war doctrine though. Also observe that in this instance you potentially can build 3x (Leo's costs 400s) as many attack units for the same cost with Leo's contra going the vet knights route).

Imagine trying to deal with a barbarian uprising with your vet knights riding to the rescue, coming back and fortifying for a 1 turn heal, attacking again and eventually capturing the barbarian leader for 150g. All of this at a safe distance from your city. Thrilling game fun!

Then do the same sitting with your lone pikemen taking a pounding behind city walls from a horde of terrain pillaging barbarians at attack factor 150% with a chance of population dying and super slow healing. No matter what the outcome, you know it's going to be stressful. And bad. Very bad. The only question is how bad.

An empire with 20 cities isn't ever going to do anything with its pikemen in the event of war. In fact, you'll dread war.

Should an AI civ declare war on your vet knights civ, all of a sudden those 20 cities can concentrate an army of 20 vet knights into one place at one time very quickly indeed. That AI civ is either going to cease existing or it's gonna start begging for peace. And you haven't even gone into war production mode yet, with each city automatically producing more vet units. You'll find yourself actually enjoying these little warfares on the way to space flight...


Cheers

 

[Ace]

Knights do not upgrade to Crusaders. They are independent lines till the discovery of Leadership when both Knights and Crusaders upgrade to Dragoons. Before that I think horsemen upgrade to Knights, where as chariots become elephants and then crusaders.

Oops. Must remember to engage brain before engaging keyboard.

However, my point still stands. The Vet Knight (6-3) and the Vet Crusader (7-1) both upgrade to a non-vet dragoon (5-2). Granted the dragoon may become vet after a successful attack, if it survives. But than its only marginally superior to the vet Crusader.

That said, I go for Leo's because I rarely build vet units unless I need em for a specific task. But all those warriors that upgrade to rifleman make great seed units to apply to SS parts. It's also nice to get all the obsolete units in bribed ai cities upgraded for free. And its extremely nice to prevent the ai from getting those same free upgrades.

 

[Clausewitzian]

Ace, aren't you underestimating the fact that Dragoons have 2 hitpoints whereas Knights and Crusaders only have 1?

At the very least, it means that the practical attack and defense values of Dragoons are higher than they look at first sight and it remains to be seen whether your point still stands.

For instance, a bomber attacking a battleship results in identical attack and defense values, yet attacking a battleship with a bomber is going to cause the bomber some serious grief, vet or no, due to the battleship having twice as many hitpoints as the bomber. In fact, even with a vet bomber with an attack higher than the defense of the battleship, my money's going to be on the battleship.

Maybe Ardi knows the exact calculations to tell us how much higher those hitpoints make the dragoons attack and defense in practice.

 

[Ace]

Not really. Yes they do have two hitpoints, which doesn't really effect their attack or defense strength. It effects how much damage they can take before they die, but that doesn't change the attacker vs defender odds. If the vet unit has better odds, it will still have a better chance to wipe out a weaker unit.

 

[Clausewitzian]

Mathematically, that's equivalent with saying Dragoons have ten extra goes to inflict damage on their opponent. You'd better believe that has a major impact on the odds, just as attack and defense factor does.

 

[CharlieChuck]

I've just done a basic bit of maths (at work), assuming I'm calculating things right, it appears to make a difference.

take an attacker HP1 attack 6, defender HP1 defence 9:

In a perfect world of random numbers, the attacker should win 6 out of every 9 battles, the defender winning 3 ( or every 3 battles attack wins 2, defender 1). In 15 battles the attacker should have beaten the defender (defender loses 10 hitpoints), the attacker will have lost 5 hit points.

second case, HP2 attack 6 , against defender HP1 defence 9
again, attacker will still win 6 of every 9 battles, but they will both run out of hitpoints on the 30th round. In effect this has made the 2hit point unit the same fighting strength as the 1hit point.

Whether it's as simple as assuming the 2 hitpoint unit is 1.5 times as "powerful" as it's 1HP equivalent, I don't know?

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

Not really. Yes they do have two hitpoints, which doesn't really effect their attack or defense strength. It effects how much damage they can take before they die, but that doesn't change the attacker vs defender odds. If the vet unit has better odds, it will still have a better chance to wipe out a weaker unit.

:no: HP doesn't change the odds of a single round, but it definitely changes the odds of winning the entire encounter. It depends on the relative differences in the odds, but in general the dragoon will do better even w/o the vet status due to the extra hit points.

A non-vet dragoon has a better chance than a vet crusader of winning a battle against just about any opponent it may face in that time frame. For example, against a fortified non-vet musket (D=4.5, hp=2), the vet crusader will win just under 1/3 of the time. The non-vet dragoon will win just under 1/2 of the time. Or consider a Vet pikeman behind Walls - in this case the comparison is not even close. The vet crusader will be struggling mightily against a 12 defense and will lose about 98% of the time. But the 2 hp for the dragoon not only gives more HP for the fight but it also invalidates the pikeman bonus, so the 'goon will be facing a defense 6 instead of 12, so the it will slice through it about 65-70% of the time.

 

[Clausewitzian]

Charlie, glad you gave it a go. Looking it over, in your example, attack = 6, defense = 9, the attacker has a 6/15 chance of winning the first round. The formula being att/(att + def). Should make sense, if you think about it. If a defender has a higher defense than the attacker has an attack, that defender should be winning more of the time, not less of the time.

After that, the math gets complicated pretty quick.

Still, I can't help myself, so I have to give it a go. To prove it does have an impact, assume attack = 1 and defense = 1.
If both give up after losing just one round, attacker has 1/2 chance of winning after the first round of combat.
If however the attacker only gives up after 2 lost rounds and the defender already after one then the odds of winning become 1/2(win) + 1/2x1/2(lose, then win) = 3/4.

That's equivalent with the attacker having an attack of 3 over the defenders' 1 if both give up after just one lost round. That's the basic principle of the thing. Getting Tim's quantative numbers lie beyond my capabilities.


Cheers

btw, I didn't know Dragoons negated the pikemens' bonus. I assume all mounted units from Dragoons onwards do. Thanks for the info.

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

Getting Tim's quantative numbers lie beyond my capabilities.

I know that these numbers can be determined mathematically, but the calculations are beyond my capabilities. I use a spreadsheet that I got from this site that estimates battle outcomes by brute force - it simulates the calculations over and over and presents the results. Look for Kobayashi's Battle Outcome Simulator (KobaBOS) in the Civ2 reference section. (It requires Excel with the Analysis ToolPak add-in activated). put in the attack/defense, hp and fp for each unit and go. Hit F9 to recalc a few times and get a wider sample. I've considered beefing this up to include input values for terrain, fortification, vet status, etc.(so I don't have to calculate the factors on my own), but I'd have to do a lot more research on the way these factors all work together.

btw, I didn't know Dragoons negated the pikemens' bonus. I assume all mounted units from Dragoons onwards do. Thanks for the info.

The pikeman bonus applies against any attacker with movement=2 and hitpoints = 1, so any gunpowder (2hp) unit negates the pikeman advantage. (I'm pretty sure this tidbit was also gained from Kobayashi's research. If you search around in the scenario creation forum, I'm pretty sure there's a thread about it.) In a lot of ways this makes sense - Pikemen lose their advantages against attackers on horseback if the rider can just stop a few yards away and shoot the guy holding the long sharp pole.

 

[CharlieChuck]

Charlie, glad you gave it a go. Looking it over, in your example, attack = 6, defense = 9, the attacker has a 6/15 chance of winning the first round. The formula being att/(att + def). Should make sense, if you think about it. If a defender has a higher defense than the attacker has an attack, that defender should be winning more of the time, not less of the time.

Sorry, that was a typo, I meant to say the attacker wins 6 for every 9 the defender wins, which is A/(A+D), the calculations as they stood were on that basis. But I've also read since then, that if there is a tie the defender wins, so this would not be correct anyway.

I agree it does get confusing after that point.

Just to note, In Kobayashi's BOS, It gives the attacker about a 40% chance (on average).
Getting back on topic a little bit, I did a comparison of Vet crusader / rookie Dragoon against various defences (from Kobayashi's)

% Chance Success
......................Defence
................8..........6...........4

A Crus........18.......53.......88
T Dra..........28.......66.......95
K

The dragoon should out perform the vet crusader.

 

[darkafar]

Have never built the Great wall! Consider it useless. Against AI, usually only several cities face attack, it is too expensive. I’d rather build city walls in these cities. It’s expensive, and its effect doesn’t last.

 

[6K Man]

I have never built Sun Tzu's or the Oracle. So I must not like them. I might build Sun Tzu if I played a different style of game, though.

Eiffel - useless
Great Wall - almost useless
Manhattan - more trouble than it's worth.

 

[neutrino]

I think the greatest payoff of the Leo is instantly upgrading settlers into engineers (if you have already researched Explosives), followed by defensive units (phalanx and pikemen into musketeers, followed by warriors and phalanxes into pikemen). I think a human player gets more out of the Leo, since he is going to have lots of settlers and defensive units and upgrading these two usually fits right into the development of his civ.

 

[Ace]

A further payoff from Leo's is the upgrades when you subvert an AI city. All those warriors/planlax/pikemen/archers/legions and setlers are transformed to riflemen and engineers with a few more advances.

 

[Terrapin]

I think the big payoff from Leo's is turning triremes and caravels, which have attack power, into galleons which do not. Saves rebuilding all the ships so your ship chains don't cause riots under rep/dem. I will go so far as to stockpile some Triremes then later caravels while researching up to navigation so I can get my ship chains up and running ASAP.