CIV IV makes me sad

[ChITty]

I'm so tired of full power superior units being killed by units two notches below them only because their AI controlled units. Why even bother with the percentages? I play on Noble and when it says 70% combat odds, that seems more like 30% odds of my unit winning... just retarded. I understand that there's a good possibility of loss... but after seeing unit after unit be destroyed by a weaker unit I just want to puke.

I stopped playing CIV IV for a long while because of the crazy AI advantages (until I got warlords tonight) and again I'm reminded why it makes me want to do a zidane to my monitor after playing. Noble is balanced my ass. Somehow the AI can build up gigantico stagnant armies while remaining technically advanced. Meanwhile players are redlining their treasuries to keep their tech up to speed.

Obviously I'm going to roll the difficulty down because I'm not interested in gimmicing the game and shoe-horning the game style into a A -> B -> C rinse and repeat strat. My point is that the medium difficulty shouldn't rely on giving AI advantages, it seems very cheap to me for what tries to be such a heady game.

[Thedrin]

Re: CIV IV makes me sad

Originally posted by ChITty
I'm so tired of full power superior units being killed by units two notches below them only because their AI controlled units. Why even bother with the percentages? I play on Noble and when it says 70% combat odds, that seems more like 30% odds of my unit winning... just retarded. I understand that there's a good possibility of loss... but after seeing unit after unit be destroyed by a weaker unit I just want to puke.

I don't know about any other advantages you're talking about but as for this one. Use the world builder to recreate a specific 70% victory condition battle again and again. I believe there's a post around here somewhere form someone who did just this and found that the percentages are accurate. Personally, it only bothers me when I lose at greater than 90% and this happens so rarely that it's more dissapointment than botherment.

Obviously I'm going to roll the difficulty down because I'm not interested in gimmicing the game and shoe-horning the game style into a A -> B -> C rinse and repeat strat. My point is that the medium difficulty shouldn't rely on giving AI advantages, it seems very cheap to me for what tries to be such a heady game.

At noble there isn't any A->B->C strategy that is significantly better than others. Even at Monarch there isn't any A->B->C strategy that does this. It's very easy to fall into a routine that looks like a rinse repeat strategy when you start playing the game. Breaking out of that routine is important if you want to get the best out of CivIV.

[DirtyMartini]

My rule of thumb: never risk a unit you aren't willing to lose unless the odds are 85%+, unless/until you must do so. Anything less than 92%, feels like a crap shoot, so I avoid putting myself in that position.

Blast away with seige or disposable, unpromoted units until you've worn down the defenders. Consider any victories made by these green attackers a bonus. Mop up with your veterans, who them become even more veteran.

Always have appropriate defensive counters with your stack of attackers. If you've got a bunch of city raider maces, and you're attacked by a knight, your highest XP city raider defends even though he has no more bonuses vs the knight than the lowly, green city raider I's in the stack. Even just throwing in a couple combat I or combat II maces or a spear or two saves your attackers rear.

Not new thoughts, but bear repeating.

Dirty

[LordShiva]

Here we go again... Same movie, different cast.

[Prussia]

Re: CIV IV makes me sad

Originally posted by ChITty

...and again I'm reminded why it makes me want to do a zidane to my monitor after playing.

Wow. Now Zinedine Zidane is a verb?

[Dale]

"Oh no! I lost one unit in my war where the AI lost 15! I gotta post how retarded the game is!"

Pffft. Acceptable casualty of war.

Dale

[LordShiva]

Re: Re: CIV IV makes me sad

Originally posted by Prussia
Wow. Now Zinedine Zidane is a verb?

No, it was still a noun in that case: "do a zidane to my monitor."

It would sound better as a verb, though: "zidane my monitor."

[Gibsie]

But really, how does the AI manage to put 15 units in all its cities and not completely cripples its economy?

[Shogun Gunner]

How many times have we seen this argument throughout the series?

Civ1: Its so unfair that my battleship attacking an enemy city was sunk!!! And I think the AI is controlling those volcanos. Just when I couldn't afford to lose a city, the volcano blew up and destroyed it allowing the COMPUTER to win! Egads! Civ 1 sucks, I can't wait until Civ2.

Civ2: I had Alpine Troops fortified on a mountain - in a chokepoint. It's so unfair that I only killed 12 enemy Marines before the Alpine unit was killed. What is this, lose on one unit and the entire stack is killed? I hate Civ 2, I can't wait until Civ2 MP is out.

Civ2 MP: What is this bs? The human players are smarter than the AI? The opponents used to be so predictable! I'm actually losing battles, wars and games now. I hate Civ2 MP, I can't wait until Civ3 is out.

Civ3: What is wrong with the combat in this version? I have no idea what the odds are when attacking enemy troops? I don't want to attack unless I'm ensured of victory. I just lost a unit while destroying an entire AI civilization - that really sucks. I hate Civ3, I can't wait until they release an expansion pack.

Civ3 PTW: Didn't they learn from their last multi-player release? Civ3 PTW sucks! Human players are better than the AI players and that's no good for me. I'm losing too many games - give me the predictable AI players again! I can't wait unitl they release ANOTHER expansion pack.

Civ3 Conquests: I hate this version. It used to be that you could attack ONE enemy unit and the entire stack was destroyed. Now, it's just destroying one unit at a time. This has ruined my entire strategy - I'm actually losing units. I hate Civ3 Conquests, I can't wait until cIV.

cIV: What is wrong with the combat in this version? I don't want to know what the odds are when attacking! Since when does 70% mean 70%? I hate cIV, I can't wait until they release an expansion pack.

cIV Warlords template: I hate cIV Warlords. They changed the _____ which now causes me to lose ________. I don't like the _______ and they should change the _________ back to the __________. I hate cIV Warlords, I can't wait until they release another expansion pack and/or (circle one) Civ V.

[MightyTiny]

Re: CIV IV makes me sad

Originally posted by ChITty
I'm so tired of full power superior units being killed by units two notches below them only because their AI controlled units. Why even bother with the percentages? I play on Noble and when it says 70% combat odds, that seems more like 30% odds of my unit winning... just retarded. I understand that there's a good possibility of loss... but after seeing unit after unit be destroyed by a weaker unit I just want to puke.

As mentioned before, there's at least one earlier thread (I remember the discussion some time ago) where the percentages were tested through repeated battles with fixed reported odds, after some people suspected that the AI was winning more against-the-odds battles than should be expected. This impression was found to be false, and the combat odds do indeed give the accurate odds - the AI isn't winning any more than the odds would lead you to expect, PROVIDED that you understand something about the nature of randomness.

And herein lies the rub: most people don't understand some of the important things about randomness, which leads to false expectations. Also, there may be a common psychological mistake in play in creating this illusion of the AI getting better results than the odds would lead you to expect.

First, any truly random sequence will exhibit "steaks" - if you toss a coin repeatedly, with 50% chance of getting heads, and 50% for tails, that doesn't mean that you should expect every other toss to be tails, and every other heads - such a sequence, should it occur for, let's say 10 tosses, is extremely unlikely, in fact, just as unlikely as any other predetermined ordered sequence; the probablility of getting this regularly alternating sequence of 10 tosses is actually equal to the probability of getting ALL heads, or ALL tails in 10 consecutive tosses. A more natural random sequence will include streaks of heads and streaks of tails.

This is somewhat counter-intuitive, and this streakiness is absolutely relevant to why it may seem that the AI is winning more than it should. (And also why you can see people coming out of casinos convinced that the house cheats - after a row of losses with, say, good hands of Black Jack.)

The second reason behind this illlusion of the computer doing better than expected in random events is the tendency of humans, once they suspect a pattern, to note all things that mactch that pattern, and forget or disregard things that go against it.

So a Civ player who is convinced that the AI cheats in random events will take note of every streak in the AI's favour, but will tend to forget the streaks in the human player's favour.

This effect is known as "confirmation bias" - a very good and interesting article on it can be found at http://skepdic.com/confirmbias.html

To conclude, I think that if you test the probabilities "scientifically", through repeated battles with the same units in the same circumstances, and conscientiously tally the results, you will see what others have seen: that as the number of trials increases, the average of the wins and losses willl tend to gravitate toward what can be expected from the reported probabilities.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Gibsie
But really, how does the AI manage to put 15 units in all its cities and not completely cripples its economy?

The following stats are at Noble difficulty:
iAIUnitCostPercent: 100 *
iAIUnitSupplyPercent: 35
iAIUnitUgradePercent: 30

*iUnitcostPercent (for the player) is only 50. No wonder WE can afford so many units!

For vanilla Civ4. Not yet tested for Warlords.

[sparkyal]

Oh, and about CIV I where a BB wopuld loose. Really, I've lost a BB to a spearman in CIV I. While i believe the odds where mathmatically modeled, the truth is that it should not have been mathmatically modelled. so CIV II came out with a much superior modeling. CIV III's problem had nothing to do with war, but with corruption (IMO). While I thought the combat modeling was better in CIV II over CIV III, I really had no complaint about it.

now for CIV IV. I think this is the best modeling yet. The combat is completely new and I like the system. Sure, I've lost a modern armor to a spearman before, but that was after the modern armor had been bombed, ART'ed, destryoed numerous INF and riflemen, and had just founght a battle the turn before and wasn't fully repaired. All in all, I got good usage out of the unit. Was I sad to see it go? Yeah, it had a lot of exp, but still, considering what it did, it was a good bang for the buck.

the only thing combat wise I'd like to see are some more units. for example, a tactical nuke to be carried on a sub would be nice. And a nuke sub. that would be great.

(and canals )

sparky

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner
How many times have we seen this argument throughout the series?

Civ1: Its so unfair that my battleship attacking an enemy city was sunk!!! And I think the AI is controlling those volcanos. Just when I couldn't afford to lose a city, the volcano blew up and destroyed it allowing the COMPUTER to win! Egads! Civ 1 sucks, I can't wait until Civ2.

Civ2: I had Alpine Troops fortified on a mountain - in a chokepoint. It's so unfair that I only killed 12 enemy Marines before the Alpine unit was killed. What is this, lose on one unit and the entire stack is killed? I hate Civ 2, I can't wait until Civ2 MP is out.

Civ2 MP: What is this bs? The human players are smarter than the AI? The opponents used to be so predictable! I'm actually losing battles, wars and games now. I hate Civ2 MP, I can't wait until Civ3 is out.

Civ3: What is wrong with the combat in this version? I have no idea what the odds are when attacking enemy troops? I don't want to attack unless I'm ensured of victory. I just lost a unit while destroying an entire AI civilization - that really sucks. I hate Civ3, I can't wait until they release an expansion pack.

Civ3 PTW: Didn't they learn from their last multi-player release? Civ3 PTW sucks! Human players are better than the AI players and that's no good for me. I'm losing too many games - give me the predictable AI players again! I can't wait unitl they release ANOTHER expansion pack.

Civ3 Conquests: I hate this version. It used to be that you could attack ONE enemy unit and the entire stack was destroyed. Now, it's just destroying one unit at a time. This has ruined my entire strategy - I'm actually losing units. I hate Civ3 Conquests, I can't wait until cIV.

cIV: What is wrong with the combat in this version? I don't want to know what the odds are when attacking! Since when does 70% mean 70%? I hate cIV, I can't wait until they release an expansion pack.

cIV Warlords template: I hate cIV Warlords. They changed the _____ which now causes me to lose ________. I don't like the _______ and they should change the _________ back to the __________. I hate cIV Warlords, I can't wait until they release another expansion pack and/or (circle one) Civ V.

Don't forget the obligatory heated argument about whether Chess AI is easier or harder to program.

[ChITty]

Well, the morning after and anger has passed slightly.

Unfortunately, the belief that something is screwed up is still with me. Last night, time and time again my macemen would go down to horse archers even though I was favored. I know there's nothing anyone can say to that other than to say that tests were run validating the combat engine or that it might be randomness.

Seeing a huge AI army stack of good units appear on your border while you're left to defend with only a few more advanced units really leaves you only hanging on to those precious percentages. When they don't seem to forecast the observed results, at that moment, it drives me up a wall.

In general, having played all the versions of CIV, this one just feels too linear in it's progression to me. Get off to a bad start, for whatever reason, and there very little opportunity to regain any footing. Add to that AI vassels in Warlords and the potential all picking off smaller AIs to catch up is gone.

But really, how does the AI manage to put 15 units in all its cities and not completely cripples its economy?

^^^ Yes!

[Will9]

You could figure out your odds in civ3. In a battle between a knight (defender) and cavalry (attacker) you add the attackers attack strength (6) and the defenders defence strength (3). You get 9 so the attackers odds are 6 in 9 and the defenders odds were 3 in 9.