I thought it picked the best defender?

[xxFlukexx]

I'm confused, I thought when an enemy unit attacks my stack it will select my strongest defending unit. This is not the case in my latest game.

French stack of 3 war elephants and 1 maceman vs my defending stack:



Now when I hit end turn I see that my archer died to an enemy maceman, I go uhhhh wtf, how did he do that?



Combat log showing the attack:



I'm guessing that the code picks my unit with the highest defensive bonuses and selects that as the defender? Or something? Because I got jacked outta copper/iron so I am just using war elephants and upgraded them to have shock (+25% vs melee) just so they can kill macemen. Even without defensive bonuses, my war elephants should be a much better defender vs that maceman.

[PeaSoup]

Your city also had 50% defense bonus, the unit list also had 40% (not sure where this one came from since flood plains don't give any bonus).

and the war elephant do not take advantage of any defense bonuses

haven't done the math, but with all the upgrades and bonuses, it should be higher for the archer.

[Nacht]

Your archer:

- upgraded to city defense II (45%)
- on a hill (25%)
- native city defense bonus (50%)
- fortified (25%)
- culture bonus (50%)
- 1 first strike

= 195% makes strength 8.85

Your War elephant:

- combat I (10%)
- shock (25%)
- no culture bonus!

= 35% makes strength 10.8

Did the maceman attack from the other side of the river? If yes that adds another 25% that the elephant doesn't recieve. Other than that the archers first strike ability apparently made the difference.

[Silver14]

If you have the save from that time you should post it so others can look at it and determine why the archer was prefered over your other units. The game does choose the unit with the best odds and I'm sure it can be explained. As the others mentioned the archer would have far more defense bonuses then then elephant and also what promotions the attacker had would be taken into consideration.

[Blake]

It's because of city raider I believe. Slightly complicated because of the subtractive nature, I think a shock elephant should still be out-defening the archer, maybe there wasn't a full hp shock elephant?

[Nacht]

Originally posted by Blake
It's because of city raider I believe. Slightly complicated because of the subtractive nature, I think a shock elephant should still be out-defening the archer, maybe there wasn't a full hp shock elephant?

There was one according to the screenshot.

[Silver14]

Can you tell what all the promotions the attacking maceman had? What if it had the formation promotion which would give 25% against the elephant?

[Axxaer]

I think that it would have been the better defender for all the reasons stated so far.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Nacht


There was one according to the screenshot.

No I mean that the other elephants got hurt in previous fights during the AI turn.

I THINK it's possible for a unit to take damage and then get healed before the start of the next turn as long as it only defended. The heal rate in the city should be 20%, enough for one round of combats worth of healing. That would also be enough to make the elephants less desirable than the archer.

[xxFlukexx]

Hmmm, so maybe the city raiders make my war elephant a little less than my archer. You can see in the combat log that the elephant and archer are all full hp and the attacking maceman has Combat I + City Raider II so ummm. Maybe it is working right, would it be like:

War ele base str of 8. Then +25% for shock and +10% for combat I and -45% for city raider II. That should be -10% on my ele total for 7.2 total defense str on my defending ele. So in that scenario we would have 8.8 vs 7.2. But if the shock goes towards the maceman umm that's be 8 for the maceman +10% for combat I and -25% for shock so that's -15% to get 6.8 vs 5.2.

Unless I have it backwards, 6.8 vs 5.2 (which would be elephant defending) is like a few thousandths of a percent worse than 8.8 vs 6.75 (which would be the archer defending)

Hmmm, so Elephants just can't defend at all I guess. Lesson learned no elephants for defense, even those dorking 25hammer archers can defend better than eles.

So nvm, false alarm, it is working correctly, I was just caught suprised when an 8 str unit could possibly be outclassed by my dorky 3 str unit who's only really in the city for hereditary rule.

Argh, what confuses me is sometimes your unit gets a + bonus and sometimes the enemy gets a - bonus. I dunno, am I doing something wrong, why would my elephant have a better chance if the +25% shock bonus was added to his str rather than -25% to the enemy maceman?

[crunch]

with city raider 2,

archer is 195-45 = +150 % = 7,5
elephant is 35-45 = -10 % = 7,2

That should explain it. If it's correct.

[Blake]

Basically units which don't recieve defensive bonuses get horrible mauled by city raiders, they would do much better defending in the open.

Anyway.

The game itself gives the odds for the mace vs elephant fight as:
8.8 vs 7.3

The archer shouldn't have been chosen, unless the elephants had taken a little damage - and, as I said earlier, that damage could stealth-heal, it would show up in the combat log but you wouldn't see the units hurt on the map.

[Robert]

This is why it should be possible to see your losing odds as well! Right now it's only possible to alt-mouse over to see what your odds are if you attack.

I hope in the next patch something like control-mouse over would do the opposite!

[Hauptman]

The computer DOES give preference to defense units defending OVER attack (or other) units defending. For example... Stack 2 frigates and 2 transports. The transport is str 16 vs the frigates 8. Guess who defends when you attack the stack, Frigates FIRST, even though they are half the strength. I have also often seen hurt defense units below str 5 defend (in the open) instead of the catapults it was stacked with. Perhaps the same is also hapening with mounted units (to a lesser degree). Stack some spearmen with catapults, and see who defends against longbows...

[MightyTiny]

Originally posted by Hauptman
The computer DOES give preference to defense units defending OVER attack (or other) units defending. For example... Stack 2 frigates and 2 transports. The transport is str 16 vs the frigates 8. Guess who defends when you attack the stack, Frigates FIRST, even though they are half the strength. I have also often seen hurt defense units below str 5 defend (in the open) instead of the catapults it was stacked with. Perhaps the same is also hapening with mounted units (to a lesser degree). Stack some spearmen with catapults, and see who defends against longbows...

In the naval example there, I think it would make sense to defend with firigates unless success with the transport would be virtually certain - that is, of course, if the transport is carrying troops.

I think that was probably the design justification for this - because while the transport would have much better chances, you stand to lose a lot more if a full transport is sunk, as opposed to a frigate.

Of course, the game should make a check to see whether the transport is carrying troops, and prefer the transport in defense in that situation IF it is empty. (Don't know whether the game does this already).