Civ III: Conquests Patch Notice

[asleepathewheel]

Will the new calculations slow down combat noticeably? Or will it slow down ancient pcs but not new ones (I have a middle of the road 1.7ghz 784rdram)

[nbarclay]

My impression is that the streakiness involved is nothing more than a matter of probability theory. For example, getting "heads" five times in a row when flipping a coin is unlikely, but if you run the experiment thirty-two times, on average you'll get "heads" five times in a row once. Given the sheer number of combats in a Civ game, and especially across multiple games for those who play frequently, it is a statistical certainty that strange things will happen to us every now and then. Since human nature is such that we notice and remember strange results a lot more than we do expected results, combat looks "streaky" even though the streaks occur neither more nor less often than the laws of probability say they should.

I hope someone from Firaxis will correct me if I'm wrong.

[Dominae]

By the way, cool avatar DrSpike (love that show!).

[alexman]

Originally posted by Dominae


Maybe I'm reading your graph wrong.

I don't think my chart is a good way to judge Swordsmen vs Horsemen.

Old way (assuming no retreat):
Horsemen defeat fortified Spearman 34% of the time
Swordsmen defeat fortified Spearman 56% of the time

New way (assuming no retreat):
Horsemen defeat fortified Spearman 16% of the time
Swordsmen defeat fortified Spearman 63% of the time

[vmxa1]

I am for anything that makes outcomes more predictable. You can adjust your play if that alters things, but at least you can plan more accurately.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by alexman
Old way (assuming no retreat):
Horsemen defeat fortified Spearman 34% of the time

New way (assuming no retreat):
Horsemen defeat fortified Spearman 16% of the time

Whoa! Horsemen are now half as effective against Spearmen as they used to be? That's bad (if your analysis is correct).

Edit: What was here made no sense.


Dominae

[player1]

Re: Civ III: Conquests Patch Notice

Originally posted by JesseSmith
* Fixed upgrade all bug (for units that do not
have the upgrade ability but are part of the
upgrade chain).

This is great news.
It's good to stomp this old bugs from vanilla civ.


Now, let me get strait.

This means that I could put Frigate and Privateer have upgrade path to Destroyer, but with upgrade flag removed, which would lead to just disabling these unit with Combustion tech (and no real upgrade).

Great add-on for moding community.

It could also be useful in base BIX rules too (same example).

[nbarclay]

I suspect that the combat change is going to get really nasty when defense modifiers start piling up - especially trying to take big cities on hills. Terrain modifiers, fortification modifiers, and so forth that were balanced well under the old combat system will tend to give the defender a much greater advantage under the new.

[alexman]

As NYE said, bombardment will be king.

Originally posted by Dominae

(if your analysis is correct).

You can see for yourself. All the tools you need are in this thread.

1) Old probability of victory of Horseman in single round of combat, q = 2/(2+2.7) = 0.426

2) From eliliang's analysis, new probability of victory in single round of combat, p = 0.327

3) Using the old combat system, you would need a unit with attack a = 2.7*p / (1-p) = 1.31 to get the same combat results as you get now with the new system. (because you want p = a/(a+2.7))

4) Use any old combat calculator to get the odds of a veteran 1.31 strong unit against a veteran 2.7 strong unit. These odds are 16%

Or you could just skip steps 1) to 4) above and use the combat calculator I attached above to get these new odds of Horse vs Spear directly.

5) Use any old combat calculator to get the odds of a veteran horse against a veteran fortified spear. These odds are 34%

[alexman]

Question: does the AI know about this change, or will it use horsemen to attack fortified spearmen on hills, thinking it will likely win (when in fact it has just 4% chance of winning)

[Stuie]

Fix the damn running-into-a-submarine-causes-declaration-of-war bug!

[/broken record]

I'm not sure I like the idea of combat being too predictable. I guess I'll have to wait and see how it plays.

[eliliang]

Originally posted by alexman
Question: does the AI know about this change, or will it use horsemen to attack fortified spearmen on hills, thinking it will likely win (when in fact it has just 4% chance of winning)

I think you mean "thinking it has a reasonable chance of winning" here, instead of "thinking it will likely win".

What we have been showing is that where something was likely before, it becomes even more likely in the new system, but where something was unlikely before, it becomes even less likely in the new system.

[Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS]

Combat

Here's some info on the "new" combat calculations. I didn't expect the change to even get any notice at all yet here I am reading post after post about it.

The combat calculations have not been made less streaky; they've been made to appear less streaky. The RNG itself has not been changed (the generator is working exactly as it should).

Think of each round of combat as the attacker rolling dice to see if they hit the defender. If the number rolled is greater than or equal to the defense value, the attacker hits; otherwise, the defender hits. The change we made was to the way the attacker rolls the dice. The attacker now rolls multiple times and the result is the average of all the rolls. This makes the combat results be more in line with what you'd expect them to be. It will reduce the luck factor because it eliminates most wild, "unnatural" runs. However, the luck is still present and it even makes lucky wins more meaningful since they are more rare. A single spearman can still beat a single tank but it's highly unlikely that a single spearman will be able to stand up to a stack of tanks (which is as it should be).

Again, though, this is a BETA patch (but several of us have been playing with it for a few months now) so things could change before the final release. I hope this info helps clear some things up .

P.S. I don't know where Jesse got the "rerolling for ties" thing because there are no ties.

P.P.S. One thing missing from the patch notes is that the '*' in the right-click menu used to denote elite units who have produced a great leader has been put back. I'm not sure where it went but it's back now.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by alexman
A single Immortal Army (attack=6) will conquer the world.

And defense of min. 3.3, with min. 12 hps...

[alexman]

Thanks for the clarification Mike!

Now can you tell us how many times the 'die rolls' are averaged? It really does affect the odds of victory.

For example, if you average an infinite number of die rolls of 1-6, you will always get 3.5. If you need 4 or more for a victory, the odds of victory go from 33% (2 out of 6) to virtually zero.