Info: Combat (GL)

[darndt]

I would like clarification on some rules.

1. I just want to confirm -- the fortified bonus can only benefit land units, right?

2. Do naval units ignore the fortress defense bonus?

3. Do howitzers ignore the fortress defense bonus?

4. When the attacker ignores city walls (air, naval, howitzer), does a defender fortified in a city with city walls get the x1.5 fortified bonus?

5. When the attacker ignores fortresses (air, naval?, howitzer?), does a defender fortified in a fortress get the x1.5 fortified bonus?

6. The main post says that fighters in unwalled cities can scramble, but I get a "fighters scramble" message whether the city has city walls or not (and whether the fighter is fortified or not). I'm using v1.1.1 for Mac.

By the way, in section 3.2a it says "see posts 15 thru 17 and post 19", but those posts have been removed.

I want to know because I'm writing a Civ2 combat calculator. This thread is very useful, to say the least! I want to have it take into account as many situations as possible. I've already done a lot of the coding, and I should have a useable version ready tomorrow or in a few days.

I tried running Boco's calculator (in Excel v.X for Mac OS X) but I can't load units. I'm writing my program as a pure Java application, so it should run on any OS (Windows, Mac, whatever) that has Java 1.4.1 installed. (On Mac, Java 1.4.1 is only available on Mac OS X, but I play Civ2 under Classic so I don't mind).

Some features it will have:
- Load all units from any file with units info in the same format as in RULES.TXT.
- Configure and edit unit information (much like in Boco's calculator, but I want mine to be nicer and easier to use).
- Show all the calculation details and draw a probability distribution graph.

Thanks,
David Arndt

[duke o' york]

Nothing avoids fortresses. No matter who is in or outside the fortress, then the fortress will affect the defender. Howitzers do not get the "ignore" bonus against fortresses, which can often be the only way to defend against them successfully.
Boats can fortify in cities, but obviously not on the open sea.

[SlowThinker]

(I will disagree with duke)

1. I just want to confirm -- the fortified bonus can only benefit land units, right?

Yes. Although you can fortify a boat or a plane in a city, it will have no effect.

2. Do naval units ignore the fortress defense bonus?

No, the bonus is in operation.

3. Do howitzers ignore the fortress defense bonus?

I am not sure, but suppose no.

4. When the attacker ignores city walls (air, naval, howitzer), does a defender fortified in a city with city walls get the x1.5 fortified bonus?
5. When the attacker ignores fortresses (air, naval?, howitzer?), does a defender fortified in a fortress get the x1.5 fortified bonus?

Of course.

6. The main post says that fighters in unwalled cities can scramble, but I get a "fighters scramble" message whether the city has city walls or not.

I have a 'newer' version (after revisions) on my disk and there is 'fighter positioned in a city' only. I think marquis forgot edit it. Is it in both html and Word version?

You can test anything quite easily if you set hitpoints to a high number (12 is the max) in rules.txt.

[darndt]

Originally posted by SlowThinker
I have a 'newer' version (after revisions) on my disk and there is 'fighter positioned in a city' only. I think marquis forgot edit it. Is it in both html and Word version?

It's changed in all 3 versions on Civ Fanatics. I didn't know which version to use so I just used the one at the beginning of this post.

You can test anything quite easily if you set hitpoints to a high number (12 is the max) in rules.txt.

I know, and I'll probably do some of that. Just wanted to avoid testing things that were already known.

Thanks for the help. In my program I made a few other assumptions, most of them probably correct. I'll list them here for now, and probably test any unresolved ones later.

7. Section 3h-iii suggests that the attacking unit is considered a fighter based on it's having range = 1. Are you sure it's not the "can attack air units" flag instead?

8. The in-game messages are accurate about when a fighter scrambles. For instance, I assume that fighters do not scramble vs missiles -- missiles are defended against with fortified (for ground units) and SAM Missile Battery bonuses instead.

9. The SDI Defense bonus vs. missiles only applies in cases where a SAM Missile Battery is present and active.

10. A unit from any domain can have the AEGIS Cruiser defense bonus, and that the multipliers are x3 and x5 as in the manual. I think that the multipliers may have been changed in a patch, but I haven't checked this out yet.

11. Ground units fortified outside a city get a defense bonus vs. naval units.

12. To activate the fighter vs. helicopter special case, I assume that the attacking unit can be any domain, and only needs to have it's "can attack air units (fighter)" flag active.

13. Naval and air units in cities do not get a terrain bonus.

Thanks,
David Arndt

[Bloody Monk]

Originally posted by darndt

I know, and I'll probably do some of that. Just wanted to avoid testing things that were already known.

9. The SDI Defense bonus vs. missiles only applies in cases where a SAM Missile Battery is present and active.

Thanks,
David Arndt

Not true, Dave. SDI gives 2X defense bonus -v- Cr Msl even without SAM. Hope this helps.

Monk

[darndt]

Originally posted by duke o' york
Nothing avoids fortresses. No matter who is in or outside the fortress, then the fortress will affect the defender. Howitzers do not get the "ignore" bonus against fortresses, which can often be the only way to defend against them successfully.

14. Then does the fortress defense bonus apply even when the attacker is an air unit?

[Bloody Monk]

Originally posted by darndt

14. Then does the fortress defense bonus apply even when the attacker is an air unit?

Fortress is covered in the beginning of the paper. It says,
"This improvement gives no bonus against an attack by an air unit."

(Are you referring to something else, or, are you suggesting the paper is wrong on this point??)

Monk

[darndt]

Originally posted by Bloody Monk


Fortress is covered in the beginning of the paper. It says,
"This improvement gives no bonus against an attack by an air unit."

(Are you referring to something else, or, are you suggesting the paper is wrong on this point??)

Oops. Sorry, I guess I missed that. I have no reason to think the paper is wrong.

[gunkulator]

Originally posted by darndt


7. Section 3h-iii suggests that the attacking unit is considered a fighter based on it's having range = 1. Are you sure it's not the "can attack air units" flag instead?

A fighter is any non-missile with range=1. This allows multiple attacks per turn with the restriction that the unit must take off and land on the same turn. Air units in a city with "can attack air units" flag will scramble regardless whether they are fighters or bombers.

13. Naval and air units in cities do not get a terrain bonus.

Not sure about naval units but air units definitely get a terrain bonus.

[darndt]

Originally posted by gunkulator
Not sure about naval units but air units definitely get a terrain bonus.

Do you know whether air units outside cities get a terrain bonus? Come to think of it, do they get a fortress bonus?

[Bloody Monk]

Originally posted by darndt

Do you know whether air units outside cities get a terrain bonus? Come to think of it, do they get a fortress bonus?

You are asking some good questions. Most of the answers are probably somewhere in the thread. Or they SEEM to be inferred in differing ways.

Terrain effects are not a factor for the attacking unit. And defending air units outside a city (and not in an airbase) would be bombers in the AIR, would they not (fighters would have crashed)?? I don't think there is a terrain bonus for air. Perhaps you have something else in mind in forming this question.

In post 70, Marquis says only land units get the defensive bonus from being in a fortress.

Xin Yu and DaveV speak to terrain effects in a city on air and sea units in one of the threads listed under Credits near the bottom of page1.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2402

Hope this helps.

Monk

[darndt]

Originally posted by Bloody Monk
Terrain effects are not a factor for the attacking unit. And defending air units outside a city (and not in an airbase) would be bombers in the AIR, would they not (fighters would have crashed)?? I don't think there is a terrain bonus for air. Perhaps you have something else in mind in forming this question.

Or helicopters. (I also just tested what happens to air units in a city that is destroyed -- they're destroyed too).

I don't have anything else in mind. Although terrain bonuses for air units don't make much sense, they could exist as a bug. Or maybe someone thought that, for example, helicopters could benefit from being able to hide behind hills, so they enabled the terrain bonus.

In post 70, Marquis says only land units get the defensive bonus from being in a fortress.

Xin Yu and DaveV speak to terrain effects in a city on air and sea units in one of the threads listed under Credits near the bottom of page1.
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...&threadid=2402

Thanks for the help!

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Thanks, all, for keeping the discussion going between my monthy Apolyton visits!

Originally posted by darndt
It's changed in all 3 versions on Civ Fanatics. I didn't know which version to use so I just used the one at the beginning of this post.

Call it messy. It might be in there because I either CTRL-Vd something instead of CTRL-Xd it. The walls should not warrant any effect on scrambling, IIRC.

7. Section 3h-iii suggests that the attacking unit is considered a fighter based on it's having range = 1. Are you sure it's not the "can attack air units" flag instead?

With certainty, the range is what makes an air unit a fighter. Any unit can have the flag.

12. To activate the fighter vs. helicopter special case, I assume that the attacking unit can be any domain, and only needs to have it's "can attack air units (fighter)" flag active.

Any unit can attack a helicopter (except subs?). The special bonus is for the range = 1 air units.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

I just reread the adjustments section regarding the scrambling fighters - this is not a typo! The circumstance it describes is when the fighter is the primary defender of the city - tho not being attacked by an air unit, the bonus may be activated anyway.

[darndt]

I did some testing on the unresolved items I listed above. Items not listed have been resolved already in this thread, except for number 8 which is a reasonable assumption anyway. Predicted battle outcomes are from my new combat calculator, which I plan to release soon.

3. Howitzers ignore fortresses. For this I did a test with a non-veteran Howitzer attacking an unfortified veteran Mech. Inf. in a fortress on Plains. Without the fortress bonus, the Howitzer should win essentially 100% of the time, but with the fortress bonus the Howitzer should only win 49.44% of the time. I did 15 battles and the Howitzer won every time.

10. "x2 on defense vs air" flag can be used by air and land units.

AEGIS Cruiser defense bonus vs non-missiles appears to be 3 as it says in the manual. I did a test with a veteran Stealth Bomber attacking a non-veteran AEGIS Cruiser with 16 hitpoints remaining. A multiplier of 3 predicts 47.5% wins for the Stealth Bomber; 2 predicts about 93% wins, 4 predicts about 16% wins. In my tests the Stealth Bomber won 11 of 21 battles.

For the AEGIS Cruiser defense bonus vs missiles, I conducted a test where a veteran Cruise Missile modified to have 40 hitpoints attacks a non-veteran AEGIS Cruiser. I did 100 repeats (hey, I was curious) and the Cruise Missile won 62 times. A multiplier of 5 would predict 52.92% wins for the
Cruise Missile, and a multiplier of 4.5 would predict 68.97% wins. A multiplier of 5 seems more reasonable because it's a round number and it's the same value as in the manual.

11. Ground units fortified outside a city do get a defense bonus vs. naval units. Ironclad attacks Riflemen (not in city, on grassland, both non-vets). Prediction in 88.73% wins for the Ironclad if no fortified bonus, but only 13.14% wins with the fortified bonus. Ironclad won 0 of 10 battles when Riflemen were fortified.

13. Naval units in cities do get a terrain bonus when attacked by land, sea, and air units.

Veteran Ironclad attacks non-veteran Ironclad in a port on hills. Prediction is 99.33% wins for attacker without terrain bonus, 1.85% wins with terrain bonus. Attacker won only 2 of 25 battles.

Non-veteran Fighter attacks non-veteran Ironclad in a port on hills. Prediction is 98.54% wins for attacker without terrain bonus, 32.19% wins with terrain bonus. Attacker won only 5 of 14 battles.

For an attacking land unit, the following thread (also linked to above) says the terrain bonus is in effect.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2402

Merry Christmas,

David Arndt