Info: Combat (GL)

[TCO]

Slowthinker,

1. I meant you!

2. The manual (or maybe strat guide) says that the player gets a bonus with Cheiftan level. This is easily verifieable. It's relatively common to win when attacking another phalanx with a phalanx.

3. The AI can take over your cities with a settler. Can the human do this?

4. The sentence is still a little awkward, but it's OK...

[SlowThinker]

2. I am bored of testing. Do it yourself . I suggest
a) to set hitpoints to 100 (i.e. 10 in rules.txt): the fortuity will be low
b)to use units with higher attack/defense: the defender's bonus will be relatively low.

3. I dont think so, but test it if you want to be100% sure...

Edited: a smile so that my impoliteness isnt taken seriously

[TCO]

First thanks for the backup in the other thread. I felt like I had called a howtzer in!!

Sceond, I don't have the game anymore. I gave it to my sister. She started playing it from my laptop when I visited. I had an attack of ehtics and cleaned the copy off my own drive.

Third, we don't need to test points 2 and 3 (well probably we should but I think we agree on what happens.) I was making the point more to say that the text description should include these issues from completeness than to ask for tests...

Now go back to some lackadaisickal thinking.

[TCO]

Oh and one slightly silly thing. Could you please vote for me in this thread regarding branching threads.

(I will edit this out later.)

[Marquis de Sodaq]

GP, much to answer! In order:

1) the pikeman bonus works against the horseman, chariot, knights, elephant, and crusader. Dragoons and cavalry have 2hp, so it does not work against them. Or howitzers.

2) I've answered in the other thread. Difficulty level affects ONLY barbarian attack strength, not the AI.

3) There is no known bonus to the final defender of a city. Note: the last city defender of your only city is immune to barbarian attack.

4) Helicopters can capture cities. So can settlers and engineers. Diplomats, spies, caravans, freights, naval units, and air units with range>0 (fighters and bombers, thus) cannot capture cities. All others can.

Finally, nobody tested on chieftain level, so what the manual says may be correct. Altho it is incorrect just as often...

[TCO]

Thanks!!

I tested it (well not rigorously...) on cheiftan. Some words to the effect of "On cheiftan level the human player gets an unknown amount of advantage in combat." would be sufficient.

I'm not trying to give you more work. I just want the tome to be complete.

[Scouse Gits]

Originally posted by GP
Oh and one slightly silly thing. Could you please vote for me in this thread regarding branching threads.

(I will edit this out later.)

I've heard of politicians out on the stump... but never on the branch.

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

SG(2)

[TCO]

Originally posted by Scouse Gits


I've heard of politicians out on the stump... but never on the branch.

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

SG(2)

Vote for me!! And have the rest of the collective do so also...

[Marquis de Sodaq]

BUMP

To refresh the veterans, and guide the newbies...


(MdS pats self on back)

[Scouse Gits]

Originally posted by Marquis de Sodaq

(MdS pats self on back)

... and so he should - this thread represents a great deal of work by several people, not least the Marquis.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

post 100

I've been busy over at the CivLab. While the janitorial crew mops up the blood and guts, the statisticians puzzle over a quandary.

There appears to be no bonus for a sneak attack. (!)
I lined up warriors for 200 attacks the turn following a peace treaty.

Test 1: 100 battles, default rules warriors vs warriors. The math predicts 29% victory for the attacker. CivLab results:
26 victories, 74 losses - 26%

Test 2: 100 battles, warriors vs warriors, modified to 10a/10d, 5hp,1fp. The math predicts 47% victories for the attacker. CivLab results:
50 victories, 50 losses - 50%

I calculated expected odds for various possible modifiers. Giving a x1.5fp, x2fp, x1.5 attack, x1.25 attack, etc, all result in very high odds of victory. At least 77%, far out of the range of possibilities given the test results.

I also kept track of veteran status promotion. The tests resulted in 12 and 20 promotions, respectively. The promotion seems random.

[debeest]

There's no reference to a "sneak attack" bonus in the manual or the Civilopedia or any official source I know of. When I first encountered people here talking about such a bonus, I was skeptical. Then again, I was skeptical about the level-specific barbarian attack penalty/bonus, too, and that turns out to be real even though there's no official mention of it. And I was highly skeptical about barbarian archers having a defensive value of 1, too. So I've looked for a sneak attack bonus when the situation arose naturally. I never found any indication that all the units of the sneak attacking civ get such a bonus on the sneak attack turn. However, it occurred to me that there could be a bonus just for the FIRST unit sneak attacking. I thought about going to the lab myself, and then decided that setting up the situation to test it would be too onerous. However, it now occurs to me that one could modify rules.txt to give a warrior LOTS of hit points (say, 100 instead of 1) and then just one test would give you a pretty good evaluation. Marquis?

[Marquis de Sodaq]

post 102

Originally posted by debeest
When I first encountered people here talking about such a bonus, I was skeptical...

Me, too. It was so commonly discussed that I included it in this thread. Now I guess I've proven it to be a false statement. It isn't the first notion that has been debunked by testing, that's why the lab has been so useful.

Originally posted by debeest
However, it occurred to me that there could be a bonus just for the FIRST unit sneak attacking.

That is what the 200 tests I just ran did.

(MdS sending the 178th warrior to his death)

Originally posted by debeest
However, it now occurs to me that one could modify rules.txt to give a warrior LOTS of hit points (say, 100 instead of 1) and then just one test would give you a pretty good evaluation. Marquis?

Yes, that would. I, for one, have no desire to compute a combination sum that large! I'll stick with slightly increased hit points for the battle (5hp).

[Scouse Gits]

Just to nitpick - before Slow Thinker gets to it - I think your post count is out by 1, M le Marquis. This is (I believe) post 104.

[Thoth]

Originally posted by Marquis de Sodaq

4) Helicopters can capture cities. So can settlers and engineers. Diplomats, spies, caravans, freights, naval units, and air units with range>0 (fighters and bombers, thus) cannot capture cities. All others can.

There is an exception to this. Caravans and frieghts can capture a city if they paradrop into it. I enountered this in a scenario I was playing some time ago (?Possibly Crisis of the New World Order?). The freight units had the paradrop flag set and I was able to capture cities with the freights by paradropping them into empty enemy cities.

This won't be an issue in a regular game, but it is something for scenario designers to take note of.