How will this change combat?

[fed1943]

So,if I understood correctly,military research became more important it was for combat.
I like that.
Best regards,

[ghen]

My thinking is, now if you get behind in techs on high difficulty levels its going to be murder.. literally.

[Diadem]

First strikes do not affect the odds of hitting, or the damage per hit, of the rest of the combat. They never have. Each unit's strength is calculated pre-combat. This is then fixed during the rest of the combat. This strength determines the odds of winning a single round of battle, as well as the damage done / recieved when a round is won / lost.

First strikes are normal combat rounds, with the exception that if the first-striker looses the round, he recieves no damage. So the unit has free chances of hitting the opponent. After these first-strikes are done, then normal combat starts. But strengths are not recalculated, they never are between rounds.

This is all the same in the new and the old system. The difference is this: In the old system, the strength a unit had was dependent on how damaged it was. A 4/28 tank had only 4 strength (+ modifiers). It also had only 14 hitpoints (4 / 28 * 100). This meant that a damaged unit:
- Had less hitpoints
- Did less damage
- Had less chance of succes in each round of combat

A strenght 4 tank vs a spearman (also strength 4) was near guarenteed succes for the spearman. Both do the same damage, and have the same chance of succes per round of combat (50%). But the tank has only 14 hitpoints, while the spearmen has the full 100. Obviously the tank is in trouble. If it looses just a single round of combat it dies.

In the new system, strength is just whatever your original strength is. A 4/28 tank still has 28 strength (plus modifiers). So, against a spearman with strength 4, it is now a lot better off. The spearman still has more hitpoints, but the tank has a lot more strength. EAch round of combat the odds of the tank hitting are now 87.5%. That's a big improvement! Not only that, but he also hits harder. Each did 20 damage before, now the tank does 44 dmg and the spearman only 9 (not 100% sure about these numbers).

Before, the tank needed to win 5/5 combat rounds at 50% chance. Now it only needs to win 3/4 rounds with 87.5% chance.

That means that before a 4/28 tank vs a 4/4 spearman had a 3% chance to win, and now it has a 92% chance to win.

Obviously that's a MAJOR change.

[Diadem]

What this means for the game is this:

Wearing units down is a lot less effective. Before if you met a superior unit, you threw one or two units on it, to injure them a lot, and then you would win with the 3rd. That strategy is a lot harder now. You'll need a lot more units. Collatoral damage is also less useful for the same reason. Taking out well-defended cities is now A LOT harder.

Older units are now weaker than before. Before you could still use them, you lost a bit more, but with 2 vs 1 you would usually win. This is a lot less effective, and thus older units are less effective. Getting the good military techs is more important, and upgrading units is more important.

Cities will be almost impossible to take now, if they are well defended. Sure, take out their extra defences with catapults, but then? Hillbonus, city defence bonus, they all add up. How are you going to take a fortified longbowman with 2 city defence upgrades in a city on a hill? I think you aren't...

[BigWilly1974]

If this is true...with defended cities being a lot more difficult to take, I think it's possible that it might shift the balance of the game towards winning by non military means (anything other than Conuest or Domination).

On a standard sized map, if Space Race victory is enabled, military style victories takes work on skill levels Prince/Monarch and higher. If Mansa Mansa or another science geek has 3-4 AIs between you and he, and you can't manipulate other AIs into a proxy war, it's especially tough as you might be in a war against the clock that you can't win.

If city defense is even stronger, I'm wondering if this might push more players into pursuing non-military style victories?

[Jaybe]

If city defense is even stronger, I'm wondering if this might push more players into pursuing non-military style victories?

If they emotionally NEED to go the combat route, it may instead push more players into lowering their difficulty level.

Not a problem with me: I am a Noble player

[Backpack]

- Actually, It pushes Me (A builder by preference) towards a more militaristic (And hence more balanced) game. Conversly I think it will also balance out the warmongers a bit.

The best Offense relies more on defense (Modern Promoted Defenders in Cities). The center is not so soft and vulnerable now with proper planning (and I'm presuming the changes are used properly by the AI). Invasions take longer and you must defend your supply chain / borders more during war.

The best Defense relies more on offense (Modern Promoted Field Units). A ranging 2 move units force for defense in country, now is less effective alone or in pairs and requires more modern/promoted units.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Diadem
In the new system, strength is just whatever your original strength is. A 4/28 tank still has 28 strength (plus modifiers). So, against a spearman with strength 4, it is now a lot better off. The spearman still has more hitpoints, but the tank has a lot more strength. EAch round of combat the odds of the tank hitting are now 87.5%. That's a big improvement! Not only that, but he also hits harder. Each did 20 damage before, now the tank does 44 dmg and the spearman only 9 (not 100% sure about these numbers).

Are you suuuuure about this? My testing suggests that the combat rounds odds are still determined by the post-damage strength ratio.

Weak units *hit* harder than they used to, but they don't hit *more often*.

Anyway I'm off to test for sure, at least "statistically sure".

[Blake]

Well I made a mod to knock down tank hitpoints such that they have 3.9 strength (14 health). Tank deals 44 damage a round spearman 9, spearman needs to win 2 rounds and tank needs to win 3.

I ran 8 tank vs spearman trials.
Tanks won 3 times, spearmen won 5 times.

Good enough proof for me.

edit: ran 10 more trials, tanks won 2 spearmen 8. Good enough proof for me.

edit: note, odds of tank winning given by game = 30.4%.

Final edit:
Conclusion:
Odds are now such that approximately equal strengths means approximately 50% odds. The difference between a fight between two knights and a knight and half health gunship is that the gunship has half the hitpoints, but hits twice as hard. Altough the odds of victory are (approximately) equal, battles with damaged units involved will be more "streaky", and "rounding" will likely have a larger effect, like the 3.9str tank needing to win 50% more rounds to kill the spearman.

[player1]

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.

Actually, that's more like very wounded spearman.

[Krill]

You can still sacrifice catapults against forted longbow in cities with large culture bonus, and win comfortably. You need the units to follow up though.

I just ran through a Mali that was the rampaging economic gant of the continent with few muskets, mace, one or two pikes, and a sacrifical dozen catapults, and more on bombard duty.

(Captured pyramids gave me Police State, and I was using Theocracy and barracks for 2 promos. Oh, and Vel, this was with the Spanish, on Prince)

[DeepO]

Originally posted by 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.

Well, I haven't read the CFC thread yet, only parts... I noticed it only a couple of weeks ago. As for the poly thread: it's partly inaccurate, or at least, the first page is not updated with the info from deeper in the thread.

It's strange to get badmouthed though (well, I didn't read that part yet to be honest, I stopped half way through the first post)... the only ones with complete info are some of us testers, and Firaxis. And the final part was given to me by Soren himself, so that I could code the combat calculator precisely... not even the testers knew the FS distribution until a couple of weeks ago. So... we were the only source I'm aware off. Not a lot of solid ground to badmouth someone over.

------------

But FS aren't exactly done before combat, they cover the first rounds of combat, but nothing changes once first strikes are over.

Most basically, a first strike round differs from a normal combat round because you can't lose... you're not guaranteed to win, but at least you won't lose health.

What this tells you, is that as long as you have first strikes, you won't lose health, so your chances of winning go up. But not much in standard situations, with more or less equal strengths for both attacker and defender. The biggest difference you will see when the unit with fs would already win: in those situations, on average you'd lose less health with fs present.

In situations where the one with first strikes already has the strength advantage (and so with the highest chance to win a round), first strikes become most important. This odds for one round of battle were dependent on the unit healths, but not anymore. As such, first strikes will still preserve health, but preserving health is not that important anymore: any strong unit will remain strong, even if it's wounded.

However, first strikes are now more important on highly wounded, but strong units: Because you can't lose the first rounds (= first strikes), those are near-certain hits. Which will automatically 'wound' any opposing unit. On those units, the odds increase dramatically with first strikes.

Which leads to the rules of thumb:
- First strikes only work well on high-strength units.
- On full-health units, Combat promotions are better than first strikes (so any 'specialized' promotion like e.g. city raider is better if used in precisely that circumstance).
- For wounded units, first strikes are more important than Combat.
- For very highly wounded units (donw to half health or less), first strikes are more important than most 'specialized' promotions like e.g. city defense.

Split it out for function, and you get these rules:
- Defenders in the open can use first strikes well, but better use terrain bonuses if you can. (e.g. Woodsman II is preferred for units on forests, over a Drill promotion)
- Defenders in cities are a bit mixed: archers in cities better use city defense instead of Drill. However, if you know you will get many attacks by moderate units (say HA), and your units are already high in strength (e.g. longbows), some Drill promotions might work well. It's also sometimes beneficial to alternate between city defense an drill promotions, especially on hilly, or river protected cities.
- Pillagers can always use fs. Pillagers typically need multiple attacks before dieing, so fs is great.
- Strong attackers (tanks) can also use fs well: they are already overpowering, so keep their health longer.

Note that v152 have removed the double penalty for wounded units, so you can use wounded units where in v109 you absolutely needed to heal almost anything before using it. Still, first strikes can keep you going longer.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Erhm, Blake, after reading the following discussion after the one I quoted: at the start of the battle, all odds are fixed: whatever your strength was at that point determins the odds of winning one round. Whether you won the first round or not doesn't matter for any of the following rounds: the last one will still ahve the same characteristics.

What has changed in this patch, is that the odds for winning one round are now depending on your maximum (i.e. unwounded) strength. In v109, it were dependent on your starting (i.e. wounded) strength. The odds never went down once battle progressed, though.

As to your testing: Now I'm certainly interested in any bug reports regarding the combat calculator: I tried to make it robust, but some instances could perhaps occur where it went off-scale, so to speak. As for a tank vs spearman: trust me. If the game says 30,4%, it is 30,4%, trust me on that. You will need to run at least 1000 tests to beat the accuracy of that result (more, I think. The calculator doesn't use monte carlo's).

So... 3.9 strength tanks beat spearman on average 3 times out of 10 tries. Or, the spearman is about double as likely to win as the tank.

DeepO

[Blake]

What has changed in this patch, is that the odds for winning one round are now depending on your maximum (i.e. unwounded) strength. In v109, it were dependent on your starting (i.e. wounded) strength.

NO! The ODDS of winning a round are based on (start of battle) WOUNDED strength.
The DAMAGE of winning a round (ie FIREPOWER) is based on MAX strength.

The odds are the same as if it were the other way around, other than the rather large "rounding" issues from the large discrete damage chunks.

edit: Also it used to be a triple penalty for wounded: lower health, lower odds, lower firepower.
Now it's a double penalty: lower health, lower odds.
In any case it works out so that for two units of approximately equal strength, the odds are approximately 50%, regardless of whether that strength is wounded or unwounded.

A single penalty would be like in most RTS games where units hit for full damage-per-second right down to the last sliver of life.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Blake

NO! The ODDS of winning a round are based on (start of battle) WOUNDED strength.
The DAMAGE of winning a round (ie FIREPOWER) is based on MAX strength.

Heh... you're correct of course. I even posted this a few days back... don't know where my mind is currently. Christmas spirit, perhaps

edit: Also it used to be a triple penalty for wounded: lower health, lower odds, lower firepower.
Now it's a double penalty: lower health, lower odds.
In any case it works out so that for two units of approximately equal strength, the odds are approximately 50%, regardless of whether that strength is wounded or unwounded.

A single penalty would be like in most RTS games where units hit for full damage-per-second right down to the last sliver of life.

That was the Civ3 way, more or less. But it lead to the spear-vs-tank problem.

DeepO