THREE longbowmen in army die to ONE conscript rifleman? Save game!

[SuiteSisterMary]

Here's a saved game. The apoly tourny actually. Anywho, beside the surrounded chinese city of Tatung, you'll find an army of longbowmen; two vet, one elite, IIRC. Anywho, use it to attack Tatung, right away. Watch it DIE to a SINGLE CONSCRIPT RIFLEMAN, who only loses ONE hitpoint!!

The combat system itself is probably fine; it's the damn pseudo-random number generator that looks to be at fault!

This sort of thing isn't unusual.

[Ludwig]

Actually, most of the people claiming the combat system is backwards would say you have it backwards.

They would say that it is entirely appropriate for the rifleman to have killed all of those units. Actually, they'd probably be disappointed that the rifleman unit didn't charge forward and exterminate your entire civilization without assistance, due to their tech advantage - which, as everyone knows, makes you invincible and impossible to meaningfully attrit.

[Excelsior]

Well, depending on the size of Tatung (I haven't looked at the save yet) the odds of that happening are roughly 2.1%, 6.9%, or 13.4%, so it is not that unlikely.

[Venger]

Does the conscript ever promote after victory during the fight?

Also, you are attacking with a 4 strength unit against a 6 strength, plus fortification, plus a terrain bonus, so 4 versus what, 7.5 or 8? If it has city walls or is size 7 or higher, that's another 50% bonus. Ah screw it, let me load it...

Well NO WONDER DUDE! That 6 strength rifleman is fortified and has a +50% bonus due to the city size, plus 10% due to terrain (stupid to have flat land give a terrain modifier). That's attacking with a 4 against about a 11 or so. Bad luck? Yes. But not as bad as some might think.

Streaky? That's yet another story. My rules have double HP so I saw a little better results than you did - not much though, unless you soften the city up with the cavalry you have RIGHT THERE you won't take the city. If you use the cavalry, you should take the city. Your mileage with your HP rules may vary...

And as Ludwig mistakenly points out, yes you should expect to lose alot of bowmen attacking a rifle unit - although not for the reason you are seeing. I don't recall history showing a rifle regiment entrenched in a city losing to a bunch of arrow slingers, even outnumbered 3 to 1. Care to dazzle us with your military history genius Ludwig?

Venger

[Ludwig]

The situation never arose, to the best of my knowledge. The Dervishes who overcame the British in the Sudan weren't arrow-slingers; they were slightly better equipped than that.

While "arrow-slingers" faced Napoleonic-era equivalent infantry in the field on occasion, I am not familiar with any SIEGES laid by arrow-slingers. Although maybe some budding Kipling can come up with an instance where this occured during the colonial period in India, which is just about the only place I can even see the potential for such an event. Native Americans in the US never laid siege to anything larger than a village. [Actually, even in these instances firearms were available to the irregular forces generally depicted as arrow-slingers in silent-era films.]

Arrow-slingers besieged and overcame musketmen, OTOH, during the Pueblo Rebellion in northwestern Mexico [now the southwestern US].

How well armed were the Boxers during the rebellion that bears their name? I'm not sure. Maybe there were individual instances of particularly poorly equipped boxers using numerical superiority to isolate and overwhelm Westerners, but I'm not certain.

[Venger]

Originally posted by Ludwig
Maybe there were individual instances of particularly poorly equipped boxers using numerical superiority to isolate and overwhelm Westerners, but I'm not certain.

This is the key I think to out of era combat - I've been on both sides of it, and numbers should be the deciding factor when older, less capable units fight a much more advanced unit. I'd rather depend on using tactics and numerical advantage than an unrealistic and artificial combat handicap.

Yes, I've had to defend against the Zulu tanks of death in Civ2...and I did. But it wasn't easy. Many Bothans died to bring us that victory...

Venger

[Ludwig]

Now that I'm thinking about it, if you push it back to musketmen there are more instances.

Native Americans laid siege to musket-equipped westerners during King Philip's Rebellion, with French assistance during the French and Indian War, and on a limited basis during Tecumseh's rebellion. These "sieges", though, would have been of "Pop 1" or "Pop 2" cities, given the population density of the US in the times and places where these events occured. And they pretty much went 0 for 3 in the wars, though, although King Philip and Tecumseh did have some early successes on the basis of surprise.

The Portuguese and the Arabs went at it pretty good in East Africa at one point in time, but I guess you'd need an "arquebuesier" unit for that.

The Dutch had occasional difficulty in occupying their territories in Indonesia - again, primarily in the "musket" era.

In Japan just before the Isolation, some enterprising soul whose name escapes me [Tokugawa? Nobunaga?] made 100,000 copies of some Portuguese firearms and proceeded to conquer his Japanese rivals and a good part of the Philippines before social considerations led the Shogunate to turn back the clock to the era of the sword - did he ever lose a battle in the course of doing so? Perhaps.

But all of these examples are musketmen, not riflemen. I still haven't thought of a riflemen example, really.

[SuiteSisterMary]

I agree, the army should not be able to take the city (actually, I don't agree; the english longbow was more accurate and more powerful than a civil war era rifle, I believe) but they should have been able to take the one CONSCRIPT RIFLEMAN out (twitch twitch)

[Venger]

Should've? Maybe according to the game mechanics. But I think the game mechanics actually have these units too close in strength - I'd like to see the riflemen with a better set of stats actually. Since you were attacking at a 1-3 disadvantage, losing isn't really all that bad.

Again, soften them up with the cavalry - it won't promote the unit and the cavalry will not be destroyed. Then attack the weakened unit. Should be all she wrote for the city...

Venger

[GePap]

Conscripts do advance

In general, conscripts, like all other units unitl elite, do get to advance if they kill an enemy, even conscripts.

[Zylka]

Realistically, that conscript should have killed all 3 longbowmen. It should have then moved on to kill another 10, and furthered its usefullness by jumping out of the screen and killing you

Happy civing...

[Calorman]

Originally posted by Venger

Again, soften them up with the cavalry - it won't promote the unit and the cavalry will not be destroyed. Then attack the weakened unit. Should be all she wrote for the city...

Venger

The cavalry will be destroyed if they drop the enemy unit to 1 hp because they won't withdraw when damaged. Yet another bad side effect of the 'streak' combat rounds. This is how I lose most of my cavalry (during sieges).

[kimmygibler]

Anything can happen. You could have an army of 50 tanks lose to a warrior. It doesn't mean the game screwed up.

[Venger]

Originally posted by Calorman


The cavalry will be destroyed if they drop the enemy unit to 1 hp because they won't withdraw when damaged. Yet another bad side effect of the 'streak' combat rounds. This is how I lose most of my cavalry (during sieges).

Happened to me a couple times, frustrating but rare enough not to bug me much. Usually I'll soften the defender with artillery and then then march on him with the cavalry - not too often do I get that last second loss with promotion...

Venger