deity attack bonus?

[William Keenan]

Does the barbarian attack bonus apply when they are attacking the AI controlled civs?

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Sadly, the AI is nearly invulnerable to barbarians. I don't know what its exact bonus is, but typically the barbarians need a 4:1*advantage to have a chance. Occasionally (usually if you witness an attack on the AI just after losing your own unit to barbs), the barbarians will win a more even battle. Having two barbarian knights die trying to kill an undefended AI caravan on grassland is not unusual.

* I've not uncovered any testing done to come up with the actual ratio.

[Edward]

Originally posted by debeest
Is it really official, so that we can be pretty confident it's accurate, or is it just somebody's conclusions?

I've come to trust the information on this board more than books. And heaven forbid you should believe something in the Civilopedia. However, all finbar's book's statements (except the one about science increments being adjusted by only +/- 1) seem accurate to me.

Originally posted by debeest
But I can't figure out an interpretation of the science numbers that makes sense to me. ...Can you explain?

See the ground-breaking, nobel-prize-winning work by samson (standing on the shoulders of giants) in the Great Library under "beakers". Specifically, read how your research rate is not based on how scientifically far ahead you are in general, but instead on how far ahead (or behind) you are compared to your "key civ":

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HTML/001828.html?17

And then an amazing and true formula for how your exact beakers needed are determined:

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HTML/001831.html?6

The summary being that if you're behind your key civ by any number of techs (which generally only happens if you have some free starting techs) you get a meager -1 or -2 bonus to your base. If you're ahead of your key civ, you get a +1 penalty per 3 techs you're ahead by. Since there's not limit to this penalty, you'll pay out the nose if your key civ is eliminated or never started.

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p.s.

Originally posted by debeest
Sadly, the AI is nearly invulnerable to barbarians. I don't know what its exact bonus is, but typically the barbarians need a 4:1*advantage to have a chance. ...I've not uncovered any testing done to come up with the actual ratio.

Marquis de Sodaq, your guesstimate looks a lot like the AI getting Chieftain bonuses against barb attacks.

[Rasputin]

Originally posted by finbar
The information was taken from the "Civ 2 Official Strategy Guide", p41. It's a useful chart:

Ahhh now i know why some guys play so well, they know all the maths !!!

I wonder whether this info was jsut discovered or revealed by a programmer ???