1.29 and PTW: Closer but still not great

[muxec]

What is download UPL?

[Papa Chubby]

Hey Dom, what I said was not mean as an attack on you personally, and the point about you whining. Well that was Trip. I personally believe that there is always a place and time for critiscism, if that is not the case, then I certainly ain´t the right person to judge the issue. What I meant to imply, that while it is always good for you personally to rant and shout. It would be far better to keep the critiscism constructive, if you don´t like something, try and come up with something that would improve it and would suit your taste. Other than that you are free to write everything you like, but then again, so am I.

[Jon Shafer]

I didn't mean Dom. Just another famous whiner from around these parts. I apologize for any confusion.

I think that constructive criticism is great... sometimes that's the only way to improve on things. However, incessant whining about things that won't change simply for the sake of whining is what I hate. People have better ways to waste their lives...

[Wittlich]

Originally posted by muxec
What is download UPL?

What are you talknig about Muxec?

[Excelsior84]

Originally posted by DrFell
Sorry to be nitpicky, but this is actually wrong... it should be 1/64 (1/4*1/4*1/4) for two regular units. 1 in 64 losses for the swordsman doesn't exactly seem like an unrealistic value for a swordsman attacking an archer. Maybe next time you should bring along more units, no?

Ahem, sorry to be nitpicky, but this is actually wrong. The odds calculation is significantly more complicated than that. What you have found is the odds of the archer defeating the swordsman without taking any damage. I don't know how to calculate the exact odds of a reg. swordsman being defeated by a reg. archer, but I wrote a program a long time ago that determines it empirically (by running the combat through a random number generator 1,000,000 times).

From this, I determine the odds of a defending reg. archer defeating a reg. swordsman is actually very close to 1 in 8.

[Excelsior84]

Re: 1.29 and PTW: Closer but still not great

Originally posted by Dom Pedro II
As far as I know, randomness in combat hasn't even been touched in 1.29 or in PTW. The best we have is the "preserve random seed" toggled off, which doesn't help if you don't want to have to reload the game 20 times just to get an equitable outcome in a war.

If you don't like the pure randomness of combats do what I did a long time ago, change the hitpoints. In the example of a regular archer defending against a reg swordsman, at 3HP each the odds for the archer is 1 in 8, which is rather high, in my opinion. Tripling the HPs lowers this probability to roughly 1 in 50, which is far more to my liking. You will, of course, still get screwy outcomes, but far fewer of them. The only real disadvantage I see to this is that combat takes longer, though you can set combat to only show one round.

[lockstep]

From this, I determine the odds of a defending reg. archer defeating a reg. swordsman is actually very close to 1 in 8.

To be more specific, it's 12.374% if there is a 10% defense bonus and 10.352% if there is no defense bonus.

http://www.columbia.edu/~sdc2002/civulator.html

[Excelsior84]

Ah, thanks. A new website for my favorites list.

[Dom Pedro II]

Excelsior, i was in fact wondering if increasing the hitpoints would perhaps balance out the system a bit more. Thank you very much. I'll try it.

[Catt]

Re: 1.29 and PTW: Closer but still not great

Originally posted by Dom Pedro II
I had hoped the patch and PTW would resolve some of these issues, but they haven't seemed to address them. They fix minor annoyances, but I think the bigger problems remain. Regretably, I doubt these aspects will ever be solved.

Dom Pedro II - some will inadvertantly attack you rather than your arguments when your posts label as "problems" or "deficiencies" legitimate game design decisions by the game designers. Each of your examples of a "problem to be solved" is not actually a problem - it is exactly how the game designers wanted the game to function.

The real "problem" is that Firaxis designed and built Firaxis' Civ III rather than Dom Pedro II's Civ III. The editor goes a long way towards allowing you to design Dom Pedro II's Civ III, but, you're right, some things are hard-coded and won't allow modification.

Catt

[N. Machiavelli]

Only one small problem with their 'Civulator'. It doesn't take into account building and individual citizen bonuses when calculating the defense value of a unit in a city. The number of citizens and buildings are calculated when coming up with the defense bonus. I do not have the editor here at work, but it's something like +1% per citizen and +4% per building or something like that. These bonuses account for alot of 'odd' results when attacking a city, like a modern armour losing against a fortified pikeman in a city.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Dom Pedro II
Oh, and this thread wasn't SUPPOSED to be whining about Civ3 as much as it was supposed to be whining about how inspite of the hype, 1.29 and PTW really aren't doing all that much... they're putting in all the bells and whistles without doing any work under the hood.

Well, ok perhaps you can say this about 1.29, but how much info is available to judge about PTW yet?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by N. Machiavelli
Only one small problem with their 'Civulator'. It doesn't take into account building and individual citizen bonuses when calculating the defense value of a unit in a city.

You're right, but there's also the indirect method for using this program. Take the attack strength, calculate the modified defense yourself, fill in the two fields (ignoring everything else but experience levels) and 'Civ-ulate'!

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Excelsior84
Ahem, sorry to be nitpicky, but this is actually wrong. The odds calculation is significantly more complicated than that. What you have found is the odds of the archer defeating the swordsman without taking any damage. I don't know how to calculate the exact odds of a reg. swordsman being defeated by a reg. archer, but I wrote a program a long time ago that determines it empirically (by running the combat through a random number generator 1,000,000 times).

From this, I determine the odds of a defending reg. archer defeating a reg. swordsman is actually very close to 1 in 8.

The exact calculation is as follows:

The probability of a regular archer (at full health) succesfully fending off a regular swordsman (at full health) while taking no damage:

1/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 = 1/64

The probability of a regular archer succesfully fending off a regular swordsman, taking one point of damage:

1/4 * 1/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 +
1/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 +
3/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 = 3 * (3/4) * (1/64) = 9/4 * (1/64)

The probability of a regular archer succesfully fending off a regular swordsman, taking two points of damage:

1/4 * 1/4 * 3/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 +
1/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 +
3/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 +
1/4 * 3/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 +
3/4 * 1/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 +
3/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 = 6 * (9/16) * (1/64) = 54/16 * (1/64)

The probability of a regular archer succesfully fending off a regular swordsman:

1/64 + 9/4 * 1/64 + 54/16 * 1/64 = 1/64 * (1+9/4+54/16) = 106/16 * 1/64 = 0,1035 (10,3%)

Of course, this is theory, as every single type of terrain gives the defender at least a small defense bonus, as others correctly pointed out.

This is exactly what The Civilization Calculator says (see http://www.columbia.edu/~sdc2002/civulator.html).

I tried to show how the calculation is done (it could be expressed in a more elegant way using combinatorics, but that would be difficult to understand for those that do not do much math), but if it is not as self-explanatory as it seems to me, just tell me and I will explain the formulas in more detail. You can figure out any combat result probability in this way.

I believe that those complaining about archer being able to fend off a swordsman should realize that there is pure math behind the combat logic. 10% (or 12%) is quite a good chance, it's one in ten (eight) times... that's pretty much what I see happening in my games. However, people have the tendency to better realize exceptions to the rule than when the rule applies as expected.

Oh, well... in my last game, I lost my badly wounded elite battleship (1hp) to a fresh veteran galley (4hp)... Yup, I should have had it repaired before attacking that wooden vessel... Hubris...

Also, one of the arguments often seen around here is that "a spearman can defeat a tank". That is a bit misleading statement. A spearman can sometimes fend off a tank succesfully, but is almost totally unable to attack it succesfully.

[JoeDaddy715]

it's funny, trip always whines about people whining.... Isn't that whining too???