How will this change combat?

[xxFlukexx]

Taken from today's patch(btw there's a new patch out, yay it looks awesome!):
- Firepower in combat now based on max strength

This looked real interesting to me. Before we could line up our siege weapons and suicide them on defenders and then mop them up with almost any unit. But now if defending units can still hit hard, well then that could mean much harder invasions.

I'm interested to see people's opinions on this new change in regards to city assaults and is the ingame combat odds calculator going to be corrrect now?

[Badtz Maru]

It will make defense a lot easier and the Withdrawal promotion a lot more useful (as it is, units that withdraw after losing are pretty much worthless until they are healed up). I wish I had this last night when the Germans wore down my 5 defending axemen in a border city with wave after wave of weak units.

[Yuufo]

If I'm correct, this means that a tank having 4.0 / 28 hp will no longer behave like a full health spearman.

I think this is a major change, because in too many occasions you just had to throw one or two units to soften the defender, then it became so weak that he could be easily killed. The philosophy of this change is that, for example, one Longbowman is MORE than two bowmen. It could have huge changes in combat, because swarms of obsolete units will have to be really enormous to counter tech-upgraded units.

[Krill]

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=4209308#post4209308

Read from that post down. DeepO was the guy who coded that combat calculator, and he knows a hell of a lot more about the issue than I do...

EDIT: that is it, I can't get that damned url to attache...

[Blake]

Wonder what the effect on First Strikes will be...
Seems to be both positive and negative, first strikes being less damaging due to not decreasing a "first struck" units strength&firepower, but also more powerful for an injured first strike unit - the first strikes still hit just as hard.

[Cort Haus]

People don't like Spearman beats Tank - until they're the one with the Spearman.

[Dominae]

Re: How will this change combat?

Originally posted by xxFlukexx
This looked real interesting to me. Before we could line up our siege weapons and suicide them on defenders and then mop them up with almost any unit. But now if defending units can still hit hard, well then that could mean much harder invasions.

I'm relatively certain that it worked this way for siege weapons in the release version (collateral damage was based on the defender's full Strength value). The patch is applying this mechanic to all combat units.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Yuufo
If I'm correct, this means that a tank having 4.0 / 28 hp will no longer behave like a full health spearman.

It never behaved like a full health spearman in the first place, a 4/28 tank behaved more like a warrior.

You really have to spend some time with this new system to get a good feeling for it again, but it comes a lot more natural. Tanks are supposed to be strong, and they remain so. tanks attacking spears are supposed to be overpowering, and they keep that, even when wounded to 4/28. However, if a spear can get 1 lucky shot against the tank, it will still die.

This is the difference: spears vs 4/28 tanks never needed to be lucky: they would always win. Now, the spear will have a low chance of hitting the tank (as the odds for one round are depending on the 28 (possibly modified) strength, and not 4 wounded strength), but the same is still true as before: if it hits once, it does so much damage the tank dies.

You can still use obsolete units to take out wounded modern units, but you can't roll over everything with a bit of collateral damage anymore.

Very important to stress is that there is no difference in how full health units work. And this is what you need to plan for, how you deal with wounded ones is an ad-hoc decision you take on the battle field.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Blake
Wonder what the effect on First Strikes will be...
Seems to be both positive and negative, first strikes being less damaging due to not decreasing a "first struck" units strength&firepower, but also more powerful for an injured first strike unit - the first strikes still hit just as hard.

The less damaging part doesn't really belong here... all promotions are treated the same way.

There are 2 effects for first strikes that I see.
- keeping your health in between battles (during one interturn) is less important than before. It used to be so critical to stay above 50 hp, that is more or less gone. FS certainly is less interesting because of that
- OTOH, wounded units with first strikes make powerful attackers, where they were simply fodder before. Without FS this would also work, but the risk would be even higher. Add a couple of FS, and units remain strong no matter what their damage is.

It has changed... FS are still best used on attackers you want to keep moving. It used to be so that you avoided all damage, now you take the damage and keep on running towards your goal.

FS was also best used on overpowering defenders, now it's a good general defense thing (e.g. crossbows, longbows, and archers are still helped by FS if they are out in the open) because the FS keep hitting at the same strength, even if the defender is severely wounded.

Looking at the odds, it seems like a Combat I promotion is about as powerful as a Drill I when the units in question are full-health. As such, a Combat I is more impotant as it will lead to e.g. Pinch. or Medic. Wounded, however, the Drill unit will have a higher odds rating in most cases compared to a combat unit with similar stats.

FS are still important when battling with wounded units, whereas other promotions are better when your units are full health.

DeepO

[Diadem]

Originally posted by Blake
Wonder what the effect on First Strikes will be...
Seems to be both positive and negative, first strikes being less damaging due to not decreasing a "first struck" units strength&firepower, but also more powerful for an injured first strike unit - the first strikes still hit just as hard.

But it never worked like that. Strength was calculated before combat and stayed the same during combat. A 'first struck' unit lost health, but not firepower.

Combat between full health units is not affected in any way by this change.

What is affected is combat between damaged units. In the old system a unit that was already damaged before combat started had a lower strength, and thus less chance to hit, and less dmg per hit. Now, he keeps his full strength, and thus his full chance to hit and damage. But he does have less hitpoints, and thus he dies faster.

In the old system, a tank with 4/28 lost almost always from a 2/2 warrior. The tank still had more strength, but not too much, and the warrior needed only 1 hit, our of 5 or so combat rounds. Now, the tank still dies in 1 hit, but odds of getting hit are a low lower, and he needs less combat rounds to kill the warrior. I haven't done the math yet, but I think the tank will have > 50% now.

[Blake]

I'll be perfectely honest. I read both the Poly and Civ Fanatics combat threads and have absolutely no idea exactly how it works or did work.

It was my understanding that first strikes acted strictly "pre-combat", so the first struck unit entered combat with reduced hitpoints and thus reduced firepower. But I think that was from the poly thread that got badmouthed for being inaccurate in the CF thread. Bah.

[snafuc4]

It was my understanding that first strikes acted strictly "pre-combat", so the first struck unit entered combat with reduced hitpoints and thus reduced firepower.

TBH that's how it appeared to me; now with the 1.52 patch it would seem that the above is correct except for the 'reduced firepower' bit..

[Mujadaddy]

First strikes are by no means "pre-combat" --- they give you "free wins" in combat rounds, ie, rounds you can't lose HP during... (if you win, damage as normal; if you lose, you don't take damage) ... there's nothing "precombat" about that...

[Blake]

Wait.... ugh... stupid.

Probability of winning round: THIS is still dependent on damage.
In other words, warrior vs 2.0str tank - the warrior has a 50% chance of winning every round, granted it gets hit for 50 when it loses a round and only hits for 7, but it only has a 7% chance of hitting a full health tank. In other words, it's still much harder to take off the first 10 hitpoints than the last 10 hitpoints. (over multiple combats, in other words it's easier to kill a unit with 10 hitpoints than to reduce a full hp unit to 90hp)

So First Strikes are weaker than I was thinking... the first strikes might hit for just as much, but the chance of first strikes connecting gets reduced with damage.

I believe mathematically, the statistical effectiveness of a damaged unit was previously modified by the cube of it's health (50% health = 12.5% effective) and now it's the square of it's health (50% health = 25% effective). With the measure being "A half health unit will deal 25% of the expected damage of a full health unit"). This does seem like a fairer effectiveness/damage curve, while still leaving collatoral QUITE effective.

Btw it seems to be impossible for a unit to win in a single combat round, firepower seems to be effectively capped so the damage is never much higher than 50. Altough prehaps already damaged units can be 1shot KO'd. In any case I think this makes very injured but higher tech units more vunerable than they otherwise would be.

[Blake]

edit: mispost.