Combat bug???

[Thinker]

Tell me what I'm missing here. (By the way, I'm an experienced player of all three Civ games, so this isn't a rookie mistake, I hope.)

I had a walled city (yes, I could actually see the wall) with TWO FORTIFIED regular Spearman (1/2/1) defending it. It was attacked by two warriors (1/1/1) which were both admittedly verterans. I cannot understand the math that each warrior attack defeated each of my spearman all in the same turn and the warriors took only 2 hp damage each. Based on my rough math each mini-round of combat gave them a 20% chance of success (2 defense, +1 for wall, +1 for fortified) versus 1 attack= 1/5 chance!?!

Well you say, this is just the chance of combat, they got lucky right?

I reluctantly accepted this until several turns later, another warrior walked all over another walled-city-defending spearman, exact same situation. Question- If I take the time to build walls and defend a city with spearman against warriors and this fails, what reliable defense is there in the early game? Unless someone can explain this I have to believe there is a combat balance bug.
I would love for someone to step forward and show me the flaw in my statistics or game mechanics. Help, I'm afraid to start another game until I know its FAIR!

Thinker

[zulu9812]

Was the city on a hill? Surrounded by mountains? Acrossa river? The terrain hasa n effect on the battle outcome.

This will calculate the odds of winning a combat for you:

The Civilization Calculator

[Ethelred]

Re: Combat bug???

Originally posted by Thinker
Tell me what I'm missing here. (By the way, I'm an experienced player of all three Civ games, so this isn't a rookie mistake, I hope.)

I had a walled city (yes, I could actually see the wall) with TWO FORTIFIED regular Spearman (1/2/1) defending it. It was attacked by two warriors (1/1/1) which were both admittedly verterans. I cannot understand the math that each warrior attack defeated each of my spearman all in the same turn and the warriors took only 2 hp damage each. Based on my rough math each mini-round of combat gave them a 20% chance of success (2 defense, +1 for wall, +1 for fortified) versus 1 attack= 1/5 chance!?!

They got lucky AND your math is wrong.

There is no +1 attack or defense at all in the game. You got 25% for your spearmen for being fortified. You got more for the wall, 25% or 50%, I forget which. You did not get even one +1 all together. Still those were lucky warriors although you may have missed seeing them become elite during the battle as well which would mean that they could have lost 3 hits each not just two.

Build barracks so you have veterans. The extra hit is worth a lot and might have won the battle that way.

[Pythagoras]

Re: Combat bug???

Originally posted by Thinker
Tell me what I'm missing here. (By the way, I'm an experienced player of all three Civ games, so this isn't a rookie mistake, I hope.)

I had a walled city (yes, I could actually see the wall) with TWO FORTIFIED regular Spearman (1/2/1) defending it. It was attacked by two warriors (1/1/1) which were both admittedly verterans. I cannot understand the math that each warrior attack defeated each of my spearman all in the same turn and the warriors took only 2 hp damage each. Based on my rough math each mini-round of combat gave them a 20% chance of success (2 defense, +1 for wall, +1 for fortified) versus 1 attack= 1/5 chance!?!

Well you say, this is just the chance of combat, they got lucky right?

I reluctantly accepted this until several turns later, another warrior walked all over another walled-city-defending spearman, exact same situation. Question- If I take the time to build walls and defend a city with spearman against warriors and this fails, what reliable defense is there in the early game? Unless someone can explain this I have to believe there is a combat balance bug.
I would love for someone to step forward and show me the flaw in my statistics or game mechanics. Help, I'm afraid to start another game until I know its FAIR!

Thinker

Well the civulator says that there is an 11% chance of a warrior beating a spearman fotified in a city, beating 2 each time... Id say 1% or maybe .5%. Its low, but not in the range of impossibility. So its going to happen. If you start seeing it happening more, then there's a problem

[W4r_Machine]

NOt too post another useless thread...

I've noticed that the AI randomly attacks me without my advisor telling me that a particular civ declared war on me. This happened in more than one game. Also, AI just go after sea going vessels. This all happened while I'm at peace with them although they're annoyed with me.

Is that a bug or AI's strategy to lure me into battle, which I did the 3 times it happened.

Yeah, about this AI odds of winning, sometimes the odds are stacked against you the whole game. A recent game I played(last night), My 2 tanks got hammered by a riffleman.

[SpencerH]

Thinker

This is a common experience so your comments have come up many times here in the 'tank vs warrior' type debates. As has been pointed out there is a small statistical chance that the warriors should win (and in this case they did) and that this small chance explains our common experiences. This is accepted by some but not by others (myself included). I believe that in some combats the random number generator is not random and these skewed combat results are not as uncommon as they should be statistically. Proving that is hard to impossible to do though.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by SpencerH
I believe that in some combats the random number generator is not random and these skewed combat results are not as uncommon as they should be statistically. Proving that is hard to impossible to do though.

A test was set up and run on CivFanatics. A number of people tried the same .sav file with a bunch of preplaced units so a lot of of combats could be run in a short time. Someone from Firaxis made the map, I can't remember the name. Know who just can't remember his name. Anyway the reason it is imposible to prove your suspicion is that your wrong.

All testing has shown the combat routines to behave as they are supposed to. No test has shown any 'special effects' going on. The feeling you get is the same that causes people to bet on the red after ten black hits in a row at Vegas. Its literaly in your mind. The human mind sees patterns so strongly it detects them where none exist.

[Thinker]

Originally posted by Ethelred

The feeling you get is the same that causes people to bet on the red after ten black hits in a row at Vegas. Its literaly in your mind. The human mind sees patterns so strongly it detects them where none exist.

I honestly appreciate and understand your argument. But be honest yourself, what is the feeling you get when you see three fortified spearmen (1/2/1) behind walls fall each to three individual attacks by verteran warriors (1/1/1), all within several turns of one game!?! This is not betting on a future event, this is understanding probability and knowing when its not what it should be.

Since my first post I have come up with a possible explanation which addresses my experience but not every strange combat result.
(By the way, I give respectful consideration to the previous poster who said that the game is not always random, come on!, just read the list of bug fixes in the THREE patches, who are we trying to fool here? Am I the only one who was disgusted by the "Domestic Advisor sorting undo" bug fixed by the first patch? How did the "playtesters" miss that? Don't get me wrong, I love this game and would love to see the fourth patch fix everything so I can justify buying the expansion set, but right now Firaxis has some obligations to fill.)

Anyways, I think the bug could have been with the city walls. First, I've noticed that there HAVE been bugs with city improvements working properly (yes, I was using v1.21, but see above parentheses.) Second, I had observed another descrepency in the game before the combat event I described, which at the time I dismissed as a small bug. I had built a wall in my capital city which displayed in the city screen BUT DID NOT DISPLAY AROUND MY CITY ON THE MAP SCREEN. I will have to check after this post whether it displayed on the "city view", good question if you are asking it, I just thought of it. I now theorize that an inconsistent bug occured where the city walls were not working in this particular game. Check the Civulator, it explains the event nicely, I had every reason to think I had walls but the game was not recognizing my effort. It also matches nicely the pattern of bugs seen previously. The question now is, has anyone else suspected that city walls, at least at times, are not being recognized?

Also, thanks for the responses so far, they helped and were informative, at least half the time

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Thinker
I honestly appreciate and understand your argument. But be honest yourself, what is the feeling you get when you see three fortified spearmen (1/2/1) behind walls fall each to three individual attacks by verteran warriors (1/1/1), all within several turns of one game!?!

I don't know from personal experience. I don't build walls.

Annoyance if it did happen.

This is not betting on a future event, this is understanding probability and knowing when its not what it should be.

That is NOT the case you originally described though. Its a highly extended version and suddenly you have added an extra spearman. Now its individual warriors instead of a pair. Now its several cities instead of one.

Let me know when this hypothetical situation occurs.

The odds of it happening are very low. Vastly lower then the original situation. I don't think you will see it unless you set up that situation a LOT of time. I would guess the odds are far less than one in a thousand. Maybe less than one in ten-thousand.

Since my first post I have come up with a possible explanation which addresses my experience but not every strange combat result.

It was simply a low probability event. If I play long enough I may yet see a tank beaten by a spearman. Haven't seen one beaten by a pikeman yet. Close though.

(By the way, I give respectful consideration to the previous poster who said that the game is not always random, come on!, just read the list of bug fixes in the THREE patches, who are we trying to fool here?

None of the patches involved the random number generator. If you want a bad standard random number generator you need to go back to AppleSoft which was Microsofts first comercial basic. It started repeating after 10,000 numbers in a row.

Am I the only one who was disgusted by the "Domestic Advisor sorting undo" bug fixed by the first patch? How did the "playtesters" miss that?

Others are equally disgusted. I was mildly annoyed. Its a glitch not game breaker. Depends on how many cities you have I suppose.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game and would love to see the fourth patch fix everything so I can justify buying the expansion set, but right now Firaxis has some obligations to fill.)

They filled them. The game runs the way it supposed to now. The only problem I am aware of is the odd instances of units fireing on workers. I can't recall it happening to me but I do know how to work around it. Reload from an auto-save. The problem is that no one had been able to make a save that would give a repeatable case. One seems to have been posted yesterday though.

I now theorize that an inconsistent bug occured where the city walls were not working in this particular game.

City walls just aren't worth much. They don't make much difference in Civ III. They were VERY usefull in Civ II. Not here though. The warriors wouldn't need a great deal more luck with wall than without.

Check the Civulator, it explains the event nicely, I had every reason to think I had walls but the game was not recognizing my effort.

Thats possible I suppose but they just don't help all that much. Thats why I don't build them. Its a waste of production. The only thing I build walls for is to stop a barbarian horde. They make enough difference on the lower levels against barbarians.

Most people just aren't going to run into that possible bug. Walls just aren't that usefull and a lot of people don't build them. As soon as the population reaches 7 they are gone. Frankly walls are under achievers in the game. They were very usefull prior to the fall of Constantinople.