Civ III: Conquests Patch Notice

[WarpStorm]

How about a dial-a-variance setting? One that lets the player choose a number at the start of the game from 1 (the current scheme) to 4 (the beta described here) or maybe even higher. Let us choose according to our tastes. I'd probably choose 2 under that scheme.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
Personally, doubling up rather than quadrupling would have given a better feel. It would give results closer to the mean, but with a fair amount of variance.

I agree.

I'm starting to think of this as being akin to a mod issue... in the developing C3C AU Mod, I have been very much an advocate of GOING SLOW.

Going from 1 iteration to 4 seems a huge leap (as evidenced by the outpouring posts both here and at CFC)... yes, this is a beta patch, but wouldn;t it be better to go slow, from 1 to 2, than jump all the way to 4 and perhaps have to dial it back?

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Is that maniac in your avatar you, MZ? Oh, and before you ask, the buxom blonde in mine is not me, and neither my wife.

sorry for the late reply (missed your post among the plethora of debate over the new combat), it's actually Jason Lee in "Mallrats". . My pic is in the picture thread in the SPDG forum or at MZO so it's not really a state secret either.

(although I guess if I made a similar goofy face I might resemble him... )


now, back on topic,


I used to be a big advocate of making the game less luck-based, but I see the problems of doing so. Once looking at the odds, it's practically impossible not to notice that a big part of your victories (especially horseman victories at first) are just plain luck. Take away that luck and you cease to roll the die, and just end up matching up the resepective A/D points.

This reminds me of the last game I played, with the Arabs. I ended up doing an massive (60+) Ansar rush on two civs simultaneously, eventually, one of them got Muskets. Their capital (size more than 7) was defended by over 5 muskets but about 10 Ansars were enough to take it. Later, I had to take a hill city with muskets, and though it was tougher, imagine if the game weren't as lucky? I would have probably lost my entire Ansar army taking those two cities under those conditions.

Finally, I agree with Nathan that the "streakyness" was just an illusion, frankly I never noticed a particular streak that couldn't be attributed to mere probability. I know there has been talk about the RNG being purposely streaky I doubt that has been the case.

[Nor Me]

Edit: That doesn't make sense either

[Promethus]

Why does everone assume the seed is only generated once? What if it generated for each round combat?

[eliliang]

Originally posted by Promethus
Why does everone assume the seed is only generated once? What if it generated for each round combat?

[WarpStorm]

Prometheus, do you know what the seed does? It is used to start a PRNG with a predictable sequence of numbers (if you know the algorithm it uses).

[Cryptor]

EDIT: I didn't notice Mike clarified the combat system. But my gut feeling is that the actually probabilities will be similar to mentioned below, with the initial system. I still see no need for any change.

Originally posted by JesseSmith
Combat System "Less Streaky"

The Change was having the random number generator (rng) calculate the Results 4 times instead of 1.

Possible Outcomes: AttackerLoses, AttackerWins

If there is a tie, it retries.

This forces the combat system to be more accurate and less "streaky"

GPT in PTW - Worked.
GPT in Conquests - Broken.

Corruption in PTW - Worked reasonably well.
Corruption in Conquests - Broken.

Combat in PTW - Worked.
Combat in Conquests - Worked.
Combat in Conquests beta patch - ?.

I did some calculations based on the new combat system as described by JesseSmith, and came up with these results, based on combat between two veterans. Ratio is the ratio between the stronger unit after bonus against the weaker unit after bonuses (for example, spearman 2, fortified (+50%) defending on grassland (+10) = 3.2 v archer 2 is ratio 1.6). Probabilities following is the probability of stronger unit winning combat.

Ratio, Traditional, Conquests Beta Patch.

1.2, 0.598, 0.725
1.4, 0.677, 0.863
1.6, 0.739, 0.934
1.8, 0.788, 0.969
2, 0.826, 0.985
2.5, 0.8917, 0.997
3, 0.929, 0.9995
4, 0.967, 0.99997
5, 0.982, 0.999996
6, 0.990, 0.9999994
8, 0.996, 0.99999997
10, 0.998, 1.00000000

Consider a Vet Tank (16) attacking a vet spearman fortified in forest (2 + 50% + 50% = 4). Pre patch, the tank won this battle 96.7% of the time. Which I think is a reasonable figure. Theres an off chance that a group of spearmen could sneak behind enemy lines, and use their spears to poke holes in the refueling trucks, or use their spears to break the refueling trucks windows and take over the trucks. When the tanks run out of fuel, they could park the refueling trucks near the tanks, sabotage them and set fire to them by sparking a fire by rubbing two spears together, burning the occupants of the tank alive.

The above sequence of events is unlikely, but it is possible given the uncertainies of war and 3% chance is a reasonable figure. There's only so much ammo to go around, and if the spearmen have the cover of terrain, they could effectively infiltrate the logistics supporting the tanks with mass numbers. One only has to look at the Russian defence against Germany in WW2 to see how effective massive amounts of "spearmen" (more like hoe men actually) against tanks.

Post patch, the chance of spearman winning the above battle is 3 in 100,000. I'm baffled how this is less "streaky". If tanks are winning this battle 99,997 times out of 100,000, the average streak I can expect is around 33 thousand battles. How that can be construed to be less streaky is beyond my intellect, but then again, the world has gone mad.

I will address the realism front, as some people feel it is important. There's more to the outcome of a battle then technology. Sure, technology plays a significant role, but not an entirely deciesive one. The classic model acknoledges and models this fact, giving higher technology a significant or even decisive advantage in one on one battles, whilst allowing mass numbers to defeat technologically superior units particularly if they are deep in enemy territory and damaged.

So please, if possible, don't break one of the best parts of Civ 3 with this patch, by making combat a boring, almost deterministic affair. At least have an option "Do you want combat to be boring and almost deterministic?".

[ducki]

I agree with many that this seems a very radical change, but we must bear in mind the following:
Our satisfaction and enjoyment of the game is Firaxis' livelihood. They are not going to randomly(heh) throw in a goofy fix and ignore our concerns.
Second, and more importantly, I doubt 4 was randomly picked. I'm sure they've done at least some degree of internal testing before even considering releasing the patch in BETA form.
Finally, I'd bet dollars to donuts that at least one of the coders working on this understands PRNGs and probability. That's just an educated guess, but still an important point.

So, while I agree that it seems radical, I think we should try it out before getting too riled up about it. We all greatly appreciate the release of the patch in BETA form I am sure, but some of the discussion is starting to sound like complaints against a finalized, released patch.

Maybe I'm just reading it wrong, but just as Theseus mentioned being conservative in making change, perhaps a little conservatism with regards to critique is in order, at least until we've actually had a chance to see the change in action.

Then again, I could be wrong.

[Cryptor]

Originally posted by ayronis
Let us not forget that this is only a beta-patch. If it turns out to be a grand failure, I'm sure they would change it back. I don't perceive this 'test' as a bad idea, since we can still undo the changes if we don't like it.

The thing is, I've brought Conquests, and have yet to played a game. It has two game breaking bugs, namely.

- GPT bug.
- Forbidden palace and secret police increasing corruption bug.

After they fix these bugs, I agree, they can experiment as much as they like, as we can just avoid the experimental patches. However the current situation is akin to someone saying to you "you can choose whether I shoot you in the head, or shoot you in the leg". Unless you've got a death wish, that person is effectively forcing you to accept the shot in the leg.

Same thing here. With this "beta-patch", they are effectively forcing us to use this expermental combat feature, which I think is flawed and almost as game breaking as the above two problems. The new combat system is a shot in the leg, and GPT bug and corruption bugs are a shot in the head. As much as people say "its only a beta you don't have to use it" they are effectively forcing us to take a shot in the leg.

Its quite easy to avoid placing this pain and suffering on its customers,
(1) release two patches, one with the bug fixes and one with experiments.
(2) make experiments like this new combat system, optional.

Whether they do this depends on whether they care or not about their customers enough to make a trivial change, which is yet to be seen.

[kring]

Originally posted by ducki
I agree with many that this seems a very radical change, but we must bear in mind the following:
Our satisfaction and enjoyment of the game is Firaxis' livelihood. They are not going to randomly(heh) throw in a goofy fix and ignore our concerns.
Second, and more importantly, I doubt 4 was randomly picked. I'm sure they've done at least some degree of internal testing before even considering releasing the patch in BETA form.
Finally, I'd bet dollars to donuts that at least one of the coders working on this understands PRNGs and probability. That's just an educated guess, but still an important point.

So, while I agree that it seems radical, I think we should try it out before getting too riled up about it. We all greatly appreciate the release of the patch in BETA form I am sure, but some of the discussion is starting to sound like complaints against a finalized, released patch.

Maybe I'm just reading it wrong, but just as Theseus mentioned being conservative in making change, perhaps a little conservatism with regards to critique is in order, at least until we've actually had a chance to see the change in action.

Then again, I could be wrong.

Well said.

I plan on checking out the change before I decide if it is a good, bad, or indifferent change.

[Sarxis]

Do any of you even know exactly how the combat system works?

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Anun Ik Oba
Do any of you even know exactly how the combat system works?

Just from what Mike said on page 3 of the thread. IOW, it is all speculation based on insufficient data, taking what Mike said to be the LITERAL, FULL explanation.

Which I doubt it was, based on their past posts. I didn't see any programming code or time-consuming pseudo-code of the current version.

Really! Some people should pull out their Hitchiker's Guide and read those comforting words on the cover.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Cryptor
The thing is, I've brought Conquests, and have yet to played a game. It has two game breaking bugs, namely.

- GPT bug.
- Forbidden palace and secret police increasing corruption bug.

After they fix these bugs, I agree, they can experiment as much as they like, as we can just avoid the experimental patches. However the current situation is akin to someone saying to you "you can choose whether I shoot you in the head, or shoot you in the leg". Unless you've got a death wish, that person is effectively forcing you to accept the shot in the leg.

Same thing here. With this "beta-patch", they are effectively forcing us to use this expermental combat feature, which I think is flawed and almost as game breaking as the above two problems. The new combat system is a shot in the leg, and GPT bug and corruption bugs are a shot in the head. As much as people say "its only a beta you don't have to use it" they are effectively forcing us to take a shot in the leg.

Its quite easy to avoid placing this pain and suffering on its customers,
(1) release two patches, one with the bug fixes and one with experiments.
(2) make experiments like this new combat system, optional.

Whether they do this depends on whether they care or not about their customers enough to make a trivial change, which is yet to be seen.

i don't think you're being quite fair here.

the patch was sceduled somewhere around mid-end january. but the community asked for a beta patch... and we got it.

so the choice isn't headshot or legshot, but legshot or patience.

yes, there may be some changes that could turn out too radical. yes, maybe it's a big mistake. but that's what beta-versions are for: to test features _before_ they get released officially.


these changes do seem a bit too drastic for me. but: firaxians have tested it for several months. and except if they tested it only on too weak levels (where they permanently had a tech advantage), they will have seen if the changes makes sence.

i just hope that that bit of luck you may need for that annoying musket-city-on-the-hill isn't too unlikely.

on verra...

[MrWhereItsAt]

/me would love it if, when we all get the patch, people focus on the good for a change

Won't it be enough that we are getting a wide-ranging patch that fixes the only two large common complaints only just over a month after the US release, and exactly a month after the ROW release?