Who defends in a stack?

[Bogdanovist]

I still havn't played a lot of Civ4 as I keep having to got to smaller and smaller maps as I find out just how slow my comp runs this game.....

but anyway, I had my first serious war recently on a tiny map with 5 other civs. I sent a mixed arms stack (a couple of knights, a pikemen, crossbowmen, a few higher level city raiding axes and swords and a cat) up against a city. The knights inside sallied out, and I was expecting the Pike to deal with them, but instead they destroyed my knights, then my crossbowmen, then they sent out axemen which beat my pikes, and then their cats took out my crossbow and their pikes clean up the rest of my melee guys. The whole stack gone in a turn!

I was quite surprised by which defenders got used. I was assuming the strongest defender (considering relavant bonuses, pike v knights etc) would be used but that's clearly not the case.

Does anyone know how it works, is it random or some other criteria?

Clearly this super combined arms stack is not the best approach though....

[cloudtoground]

Well, in my experience thus far, the computer uses an algorithm to determine the best unit in the stack. Of course, it's a lot more complicated than civ3, and certain promotions can make one unit more effective, mathematically, than the obvious choice.

[WoodenTaco]

It will always send out the best match for the defender. Your pikemen might have been severely injured, which would place them under all the others.

[stormwriter]

Combat never seems to be like a war, like you'd think when a bunch of troops go head to head. I guess it's basically a bunch of one-to-one combat, which isn't very realistic, but oh well. Having nukes when Beethoven was alive isn't very realistic either...