I believe combat is rigged in this game and it ruins it for me

[Last Conformist]

People have been complaining about rigged battles since the original Civ. Forgive me if I'm getting a bit jaded ...

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Lansing
I'm afraid pitting superior units against inferior units and seeing how many they can kill is not at all the kind of "rigging" I believe is going on. What I believe is happening (among other things) is that when a fight is 50/50 according to the numbers, the computer will win much more than 50% of the time. I would guess it is closer to 75%.

I also believe that when the computer has a decided advantage, such as a destroyer vs. a battleship, it is almost impossible to kill the battleship. I just ran a destroyer against a battleship 100 times and did not win once.

So you are in fact accusing Soren of being a liar.

[TheHateMale]

Not necessarily. For him to be lying he'd have to have put an advantage in. If the patch has introduced a variation in results that isn't caused by programming in an advantage, he could be wrong, but wouldn't be lying.

[Denny]

Hope you don't mind me jumping in.
I'm a big civ and medium civ2&3er, but am really liking civ4 (i'm only on game 2, so forgive any misconceptions i may have)
Somebody mentioned a control experiment, i thought i could oblige:
Firing up excel, i made it generate (12 times, i got bored at 12) a hundred numbers, from 1 to a 100.

I assigned a 1 to any number in the first 50 numbers, a 2 to the last 50.

the counts for each test, were:
1's:50 42 37 57 48 51 47 45 51 46 51 46
2's:50 58 63 43 52 49 53 55 49 54 49 54

ok, that's what many said we should expect, but if you look at some of the runs in that, even for a test that came out fairly even (the 53vs47 test), there were runs of 11 straight wins (and shortly before that) 5 straight wins for team no2, looking at the rest of the numbers, it seems fairly even so i would have expected a huge win at the end for that side. At least 75%, like somebody was suggesting that civ is doing.

There wasn't.
In fact what i've done, is probably prove nothing except for fact that we notice sequences much more than the mundane (well, i do anyway). which probably means it isn't picking on you, honestly.

Have a play, excel, the randbetween and countif functions and copy and paste as values should be all you need.

Denny

[TheHateMale]

Something I've noticed is that with land units, any unit that moves in a combat (no enemy directly opposite, so runs over to a different one) tends to die. Has anyone else noticed this? Could well be coincidence.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by TheHateMale
Something I've noticed is that with land units, any unit that moves in a combat (no enemy directly opposite, so runs over to a different one) tends to die. Has anyone else noticed this? Could well be coincidence.

No. I think the withdraw or flanking as it's called now, isn't effected by movement as it was in previous Civ games. It's probably just another apparent anomaly that goes away with enough testing. AFAIK that was the only case of movement affecting the outcome of a battle.

I think part of it is that we hate to lose, and remember the times we lose when the probabilities were heavily in our favor, and tend to forget when we win when the odds were heavily against us. Also, we usually don't put ourselves in the latter situation too often, at least not by choice, so it's less common.

[Lansing]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


So you are in fact accusing Soren of being a liar.

No I'm not. Relax.

I am saying I don't enjoy the game very much right now because I know for certain that the combat results I am seeing are skewed toward the AI. Badly.

[Lansing]

Originally posted by Shaka II


No. I think the withdraw or flanking as it's called now, isn't effected by movement as it was in previous Civ games. It's probably just another apparent anomaly that goes away with enough testing. AFAIK that was the only case of movement affecting the outcome of a battle.

I think part of it is that we hate to lose, and remember the times we lose when the probabilities were heavily in our favor, and tend to forget when we win when the odds were heavily against us. Also, we usually don't put ourselves in the latter situation too often, at least not by choice, so it's less common.

I really wish people would stop saying this. The whole point of actually doing tests was so that I wouldn't just be *****ing about bad results because I was selectively remembering the bad ones. After many trials now I am 100% certain that something is skewed, and it isn't my perceptions.

[Soren Johnson]

Soon we will be releasing the ACTUAL COMBAT CODE in the SDK, so if there was an AI "cheat" in there, I would look pretty stupid after proclaiming that there wasn't one.

[Cort Haus]

Well, all I can say is that I've had some very lucky combats, and some very unlucky ones - and that seems about right to me.

Lansing, you don't need to tell me to relax - I'm not the one crying about combat results. If you are convinced that the AI has an advantage here, and you are not accusing the game code of deliberately cheating, then I presume you must think it's a bug.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis
Soon we will be releasing the ACTUAL COMBAT CODE in the SDK, so if there was an AI "cheat" in there, I would look pretty stupid after proclaiming that there wasn't one.

Well, that'll settle it!

[Cort Haus]

If player=Lansing then cheat(like_hell) else playfair()

[Lansing]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Well, all I can say is that I've had some very lucky combats, and some very unlucky ones - and that seems about right to me.

Lansing, you don't need to tell me to relax - I'm not the one crying about combat results. If you are convinced that the AI has an advantage here, and you are not accusing the game code of deliberately cheating, then I presume you must think it's a bug.

I'm far from crying. Get over yourself and relax.

[Hauptman]

Well I will be willing to buy the thought that the RNG just hates me. But I just have unfair fights go against me far more often than I used to it seems.

Last night for example. playing my unoficial AU game, I beelined machinery and started cranking Cho-ku-nus at about 1ad. Now a chokunu vs archer in a city gives me a small advantage (6 +25% archer bonus against 3 20% city bonus etc etc) so loosing the first is close enough to 50-50 anyways that its not too big a deal. But the collateral damaged next archer is weaker, and I'll then use another, and loose. Now the next unit (a double collateraled phalanx) is ripe for the picking, with 2 to 1 odds at 98% I then lost, again. Ok if this happened once its the unluck of the RNG. But this same senario happened 3 different times in my conquest of greece.

3 losses of superior units on 3 different occasions against 3 different cities at 3 different times all in one game.

Am I really that unlucky?

[Lansing]

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis
Soon we will be releasing the ACTUAL COMBAT CODE in the SDK, so if there was an AI "cheat" in there, I would look pretty stupid after proclaiming that there wasn't one.

That's nice, but it won't change the results that are happening to people right now. Has it crossed your mind that something you didn't intend in the code might be happening to players?