Does terrain affect attack strength?

[Flavor Dave]

Here's what I don't get--why couldn't Microprose just make the game mesh with the manual?

It's nice to know now about the lesser power of the pikeman. I don't know how many times I've expected a fortified pikeman in a forest or on a river defeat an elephant (should happen, at X2, even if the elephant is a vet.)

Also, we had a big discussion long ago, and the consensus from guys who tested it out was that bonuses aren't cumulative.

A rifleman, fortified on a river, and a vet., should be

4 + 2 (fortified) +2 (River, forest, jungle, swamp) +2 (vet) =10.

NOT

4*1.5*1.5*2=18. Think about it--in your experience, how would this hypothetical rifleman do against cavalry? In the first example, the rifleman has a slight edge against non-vet, slight disadvantage against non-vet. And that's what I see.

In what theben says, the rifleman would almost never lose even against a vet, and would stay at least "yellow" against a non-vet. That's not what I see.

[Seeker]

I thought the fortified bonus was only 25%, or +1 to a rifleman.

[Theben]

Flav Dave,
There's an error in your calculations. It should be 4 * 1.5 * 1.5 * 1.5 (not 2)= 13.5, not 18. That's a big difference. A vet attacking cavalry has a 12, which is close to the defender. So mostly it'll lose, but occasionally it'll win. Which fits in with my experience. Non-vet cavs almost always lose which also fits the formula.

[Flavor Dave]

whoops. I'm tempted to delete my post, destroy the evidence. I know what a vet does, don't know why I made this mistake. Got it right the first one.

Still, I stand by my point, that in the old thread, the consensus was that the hypothetical rifleman would have defense of 10.

I saw the other, bumped thread, which indicates the opposite. I'm not sold.

[geofelt]

I think civ2 uses the same approach for all augmented calculations. shield production, trade, and also defensive strength. The confusion is that the vet status is intrinsic to the unit. A vet phalanx is 3, a vet rifleman is 6. You get this by multiplying by 1.5, or adding 50%--either works the same. After that, the bonuses for terrain, fortification, and walls are additive, based on the base value either vet or non-vet. I suspect that the AI may use the same calculation on attack, adding 200% when attacking from a mountain. I do hope someone can test this.

[Sieve Too]

I did some experiments on defensive bonuses way back in the last millenium . I gave each unit 100 hps to reduce random number bias. Bottom line: defensive bonuses multiply together.

Although the original post seems to have vanished, a summation can be found here:

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum1/HTML/000629.html

All my tests were done by varying the defender and his terrain. Attackers were always on grass so I don't have any data on whether attacking terrain makes any difference.