why do cavalry defeat infantry easier than other infantry do?

[brianshapiro]

this has been my experience in game, both have the same attack but infantry has higher defense

[dexters]

You made no mention of experience levels.

An elite cavalry is going to do better against an regular infantry vis a vis a regular infantry vs a regular infantry.

Since Cavalry arrive sooner, people who don't have sun tzu, usually have an experience gap, where their older units are primarily veteran and or elite and their newer units are veteran and regular.

[Fosse]

Also, cavalry retreat, meaning that it may seem like they do better because they aren't dying all of the time.

This actually slightly lessens their odds of beating an infantry, but makes up for that by staying alive longer.

[Hurricane]

I also get that strange impression. I guess it has something to do with the cavalry's retreat capability. Since both only have around 50% chance of a victory, you should expect them to die in heaps, but since the cavalries sometimes just retreat, it looks like infantry somehow are worse.

[Arrian]

It's probably a combination of the retreat capability and a limited sample size. Over the course of a few games, things may "seem" to work a certain way, but that doesn't mean the game is actually coded that way. I once crushed Carthage with Horsemen + Legionaries. I expected that war to be extremely bloody, but Lady Luck was with me, and I took very light casualties. But if I start next to Carthage in a new game, I'm not gonna think "ah, I can just waste 'em with horsies & swords, no problem." I got lucky that one time.

-Arrian

[brianshapiro]

nno ive experienced cavalry having a better chance of marking off damage from an infantry, same expierience level.

[Arrian]

That's just a run of good luck for your Cavalry (or bad luck for your infantry). Both units have a 6 attack. Over a large enough sample size, the chances of damaging enemy infantry would be the same (though the overall kill ratio would be different because of Cav's ability to retreat).

Other factors which could be effecting things would be terrain bonuses, fortification (or lack thereof), etc. Attacking an infantry unit fortified in a metropolis is a very different thing than hitting an infantry unit unforitifed on grassland.

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

Arrians point about the lack of samples is correct. statistically anyone of us is not going to generate enough combat to be considered relevant.
We would need at least 10's of thousands, better if it was much more to get a true deviation.
This is not to even take into account that are memories are not reliable to report the outcome.
If you think you are recalling the battle correctly, try a test.
When I use to play in tournaments (straight pool/9 ball), I some times practical aimlessly. I would finish and think back and believe I was not missing that often.
I reality I was do worse than I let myself think.
I true test was to use a drill. Play a rack with 6 balls.
Break and take ball in hand. You must now run out, no misses. You count the games and must do it 10 times in a row to move to 7 balls. If you miss at any point you start all over. Now you really know how you are doing.
When I got to 22 times in a row I would then add a ball.
This deminstrates are lack of perception.
I am sure that Civ III battles are no exception. we are a bit convient in how we "see" things after the fact.
Ask eye witness, if you still are unsure.

[Hurricane]

Of course, this is easy enough to test. Every time you are about to attack with a stack with combined infantry/cavalry, save your game. Then attack with either one, and write down the result. Reload, and do the same attack, but this time with the other type of unit. You will get excactly the same results, except for possible retreats.

This of course requires that you have "preserve random seed" turned on.

[Demerzel]

if it was real life then naturally cavalry would trounce infantry far easier than infantry would beat other infantry.

sadly certain units superiority over other units probably won't have been included in the game, so probably just the combination of factors mentioned by others above.

[Cruddy]

I wonder - is it because of the way Civ2 combat worked?

If you only had part of a movement point left to attack with, the attack was computed at a lower strength.

So an infantry moves down a road and uses up part of it's movement point, then attacks... while a cavalry still has a whole movement point left and so doesn't get the negative impact on its attack.

This is PURE speculation and I'm probably quite wrong. But it does seem to me that units with higher movement factors are better at attacking, attack strengths being equal.

[Arrian]

CivIII combat doesn't work that way. A unit with 1/3 movement left attacks at 100%.

I had forgotten about the way it worked in CivII. Wow.

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Hurricane
Of course, this is easy enough to test. Every time you are about to attack with a stack with combined infantry/cavalry, save your game. Then attack with either one, and write down the result. Reload, and do the same attack, but this time with the other type of unit. You will get excactly the same results, except for possible retreats.

This of course requires that you have "preserve random seed" turned on.

The point we are making is that the results are statistically meaningless. You will need to do this tens of thousands of times to get a true picture. A few runs is what is known as anecdotal. Interesting, but not valid.
You can not draw conclusion from such a narrow perspective.

[pedrojedi]

With 200 samples, you can have a good number of times to make a normal curve, using some probabilistic calculations, assuming an alfa error of 0,05... Which means that you can have an "almost normal" curve of results with 5% error of not being that curve correct. 10's of thousands would really give you almost the exact figure, since the exact figure for probability, well, only God knows.

edit: at least mathematically speaking.

[Master Zen]

Statistically there is nothing to prove that units with the same attack cause diferent amounts of damage. However, do to the nature of the Civ3 combat system, it is much more likely to get skewered results from combat than in Civ2. The HP system is the problem as a max of 5 is just to little to present an accurate representation of the damage levels each unit has.

Thus, just like you seem to have Cavalry do better than Infantry, and Arrian was lucky with Legions, so too I've been lucky/unlucky in some circumstances and others worked fine. In the AU SG I suffered appaling casualties assaulting a Arabia with Rome when arabia had the Great Wall. The odds were 3 vs 3 and casulaties were rough.

I really, TRULY, hope that the next civ game has a better HP system. Civ2 and SMAC's combat systems had much more realistic damage portrayal making a tank Lose against a phalanx much more unlikely than a tank losing to a Spearman...

-MZ