Are your units getting blasted?

[Conquesticus]

Well I loaded up my first game of Civ 3 the other day, and needless to say, my GPA will be dropping yet again. But, I've noticed some warfare issues that are bothering me. Just wondering if anyone else noticed the same. Since it my first game I stayed our of major wars so I could play around with the interface, etc. Of course as Conquesticus, that sort of thing can only go on for so long. So, about 710 AD I invaded the Persians, Zulus, Germans, and Russians. I exterminated the Germans quickly, and after that all hell broke loose. I'm playing as the Babylonians and use the bowman pretty frequently. I surrounded a Russian city with three bowman (it's on a coast so three is all i need), and fortified them in the hills surrounding the city. Much to my dismay Russian WARRIORS attacked and killed them all. The first two went down in single combat. The third was an elite bowman and I figured I'd get a quick win and possibly a leader. Nope, one suicide warrior attack failed, and then another warrior finished my elite bowman off. I repeat, it was fortified, and in the hills. I've also got a series of forts in the jungle between me and the Persians. Again, much to my dismay, the Persians blasted fortified swordsmen out of their forts with anything they attacked with. Some were knights, some immortals, and some were warriors. When I attack their swordsmen with knights out in the open, I lose everytime. It was so bad I had to pay them tribute to stop the war. Also, the zulus captured one of my cities that had an elite swordsman fortified in it, with a single, regular, knight. I'm playing this first game on Chieftain, too, so I'm assuming these guys aren't getting any amazing military advantages. Also, most of my units are veteran since almost all my border cities have barracks. Did Firaxis make some type of momentum programming in the game to make it more like actual war, or make it tougher when you're in enemy territory? I can't understand why a weak unit would again and again, wipe out a better unit in a fortified area. Anyone notice this, or am I the only one with elite units getting twaxxed by warriors?

[shammy]

naa.. its completely logical

i started an invason with 32 modern tanks (those cool that look like abrams)

but what happened?

after first turn i got attacked by three russian cossacks, each one destroyed one abrams from my army. next turn, i end up loosing 5 more modern tanks to medieval units.. how much damage does a musket do to modern tank armour? well i think it does much if the bullet travels nearly the speed of light.. but

i continue my invasion and loose more modern tanks to musketmen defending cities etc.. give me a break already!

I WOULD PAY REAL MONEY TO SEE THIS FIGHT IN REAL LIFE
thanks firaxis.. for the rocking combat system that causes so much frustration i dont want to play civ3 until its changed/fixer or we get an option to change it

[Kissinger]

It gets much worse...

Ive had my battleship sunk by a caravel and my m1 abrahams type tank destroyed by a ARCHER???? Right...those armor piercing arrows.....

[Madine]

My theory is this.

There isn't any kind of "armor" value. So while a tank is much more likely than an archer to get a "hit", it doesn't have any special protecion against the archer. So an archer is equally likely to hit a warrior as it is to hit a tank.

The same priciple applies to terrain and fortification. Being fortified doesn't make a unit less likely to be hit, it only increases the likelihood of the fortified unit to inflict damage on it's attacker.

The above combined with the fact that units only have about 4 hitpoints makes units much more fragile.

[solo]

And I thought this was only happening because I'm trying deity!

[yavoon]

if your tanks are losing to the ai's musketmen, perhaps u should stop playing on chieftan? really guys complaining about not being able to do an incredibly boring mopup of the map seems kinda stretching it.

the combat system is in there to help gameplay, I apologize if it doesn't let u stomp the ai 24/7 on weak difficulty settings. trust me if u have 30 modern tanks and he has a few musketmen, yer gna win, even if u lose a few tanks.

[shammy]

im playing on regent. two civilizations got stomped down within the first 150 turns and were left with 4 or 5 cities, they have remained early industrious level while i myself am in modern age.

of course i ran into multiple ancient and/medieval units since the AI doesnt disband them to shields and all cant be upgraded. the very best defence my modern tanks fought against was infantry and that was almost instantaneous death to my tanks. in OPEN, not even attacking a city.

regent has so far been the most enjoyable difficulty level for me, and im afraid to try harder.. if my units get wiped down in the battlefield to a 5x more weaker enemy.. what will happen when the odds are equal

[Conquesticus]

Wow. Well, I loaded up the game again yesterday and played from 710 to 1650 AD. I've concluded that Firaxis has programmed warfare right out of the game. I read all these reviews about how war is not as viable in this game as Civ 2, but this is ridiculous. This is worse than Civ 2, when every turn had a 65% of an enemy civ saying "you don't want to give us invention, prepare to die!" Now, you can't just wage war at all. I've come up with a few conclusions (or rules) that I believe will stick.

1. Warfare cannot exist.
With the exception of myself, no civ in this game has launched a war, allied itself with any civ, or even sabre-rattled. Why aren't these civs attacking my iron supplies or stopping me from absorbing them with culture?

2. Cities cannot be defended.
I am not kidding. Every city that's been attacked in this game has been over-run that turn, regardless of what was attacking or what was defending. It doesn't seem to matter. Firaxis seems to have programmed in a catastrophic war situation where every city that gets attacked, gets taken. Yes, that will definitely stop me from attacking the AI, but jeez, talk about no fun. So far in this game, about 15 cities have changed hands, and only ONE UNIT was killed while attacking! I just launched another war to test out my theory, and sure enough, a Russian regular knight wiped out a fortified veteran musketman and a veteran fortified knight in a walled city of size 6 in the same turn. It didn't lose a single hitpoint. Now that my friends, is one tough regular knight.

3. You cannot defeat the AI civs in open combat.
With the exception of attacking them in cities! This makes no sense! Out of 60-70 combats in the open field (I'm guessing cuz I didn't count) in this game, I've won only once, regardless of unit, forts, cities, or whatever. In my earlier post I mentioned how a fortified elite bowman in the hills was taken by two warriors. That first suicide warrior is the only time I've beaten an enemy unit in the field. Last night I had an elite Knight attack a regular Russian knight in grasslands (4 vs 2 isn't it?). Think I won? Nope. I didn't take a single point off that bastard. Then I really felt shame when another Russian knight took my nearest city (which I mentioned above). Why must I attack them in cities to get a win? And why do cities always fall? Do I have an "April Fools" version of this game? Sure it's math backing the combat sequences, but even math isn't going to screw up the game this much. It just makes no sense to see fortified middle-age units in forts or mountains getting twaxxed by warriors. Plus, all my units are veterans to start since I only build them in barracks cities. I've been playing Civ a long time, and I never thought the third installment would be this terrible.

4. Barbarians always lose.
I have yet to see a barbarian unit win a battle. Altho I did see a mounted unit withdraw from one. I thought barbarians were tougher than that?

So, where is the highly touted AI in this game? I understand that Firaxis didn't want the "Prepare to die!" situation in this game, but this is overkill. Let a man have his war for the love of god. If Firaxis doesn't come out with a patch for this, I think it's compost time.

[yavoon]

conq, ur far reaching self evident claims. are in fact contradicted many times on this forum, from ppl complaining nearly the opposite. thecomputer declares war too easily has been brought up several times. so has the all the ai's vs me effect.

its nice u consider urself the messiah when it comes to knowledge of how the ai always acts. but next time u lay down the law, u might want to see other ppl's posts too.

[Jack_www]

Originally posted by shammy
naa.. its completely logical

i started an invason with 32 modern tanks (those cool that look like abrams)

but what happened?

after first turn i got attacked by three russian cossacks, each one destroyed one abrams from my army. next turn, i end up loosing 5 more modern tanks to medieval units.. how much damage does a musket do to modern tank armour? well i think it does much if the bullet travels nearly the speed of light.. but

i continue my invasion and loose more modern tanks to musketmen defending cities etc.. give me a break already!

I am playing as the Romans, and I was the first to get modern tanks. So far no one has gotten the tech to build modern tanks.
Once I upgraded all my old tanks to the modern tank I invaded the French who just had some older tanks and calvery. I blasted through the denfenses of the French like it was a paper wall. In many cities they still had museteers in some of their cities, and was able to crush the French. During the whole war I only lost 1 tank, so I have not had that problem.

[Jack_www]

If you look at the defensive stats for the offensive units in the ealy game, the highest their denfensive rating is 2(their are some with 3 like the roman special unit the legion). So when offensive units get attacked since they have week defensive ratting they die easly sometimes. One way that you can counter this is by being the one who attacks first instead of waiting for the computer to attack you. I also like to bombard cities before I attack, this helps as well. Also try to avoid attacking units, especial ones with high defensive rattings, that are on mountains and maybe even hills.

I have been playing Civ III for a while now and I have not had that much of a problem with units dieing when they should live.
When I played as the Romans I attacked the French in the middle ages, I had some knights and cadpults attack their capital and I was able to get it. But if you want to secure a certain peice of land dont use an offisive unit, use a denfensive units.

[morb]

the only thing most of the posts on combat expose, is how utterly inconsistant and often dumbfounding the combat experience is. I think Firaxis are idiots for basicly going back to the Civ1 combat system. This is terrible in the extreme. And no, I don't buy the argument "oh, but this prevents more advanced civs from crushing the lesser ones." WTF shouldn't this happen? What's the point of even having more advanced units?

Here's what I've been struggling with for the past 3 hours. I've been trying to take out the last English city with my Russian troops. At first I thought I'd have a fairly quick victory considering I had 13 units advancing on their lowly city with only 3 defenders and 2 bowmen. So what happens? I march on toward the city, position my units around the city, put 2 musketeers to protect my 3 catapults and rush with 5 knights while positioning the 3 bowmen in with the catapults. ALL 5 KNIGHTS are beaten to within inches of death and make their escape while their 3 pikemen which started out as regulars are down 2 bars and 3 bars of yellow, making 2 of them veteran and one elite! Fine I think, I'll swoop in with an all out assult from the catapults and rachers next turn. Next turn, ALL their units heal. Before that happens though, their 2 bowmen, take out my musketeers which were keenly positioned in the hills to receive a nice defencive bonus. Of course the bowmen both retreat back to the city because they did not destroy all of the units in the catapult square, which means they will be good as new the next turn, woohoo! I spare my knights and let them heal up this turn, or they would surely be dead. Next turn, I fire the catapults... ALL miss the mark, wonderful. I hit them with the 3 bowmen, which all get slaghtered like pigs on a bucher's table. So now I've lost my task force and forfit my dignity. To add insult to injury, they captrue my catapults the next turn and haul them in to inflict even more damage to my reinforcements which arrive by this time. Another asorted army (not civ3 army) of 7 units ready to do business. My original task for them was to secure the area and make sure all english units were taken down after the city was captured (like a settler or some BS like that). Now they find themselves the main course.

This would have never happend in Civ2 or SMAC. Since the units in Civ3 don't employ "power" stats, they can sit there and take punishment all day long without taking penalties from "power drain" or in civ-like terms, haste penalties. This is a major flaw.

All is lost my fellow civvers who are in the same camp, because if you read the chat transcript, you find out that Firaxis has no intention of revamping the combat system. "its a feature" they say. Thanks. I really wish I could stick a pikeman's spear up the ass of all responsible for this blunder, using this same "feature."

oy vey.

[Inerz]

modding

I hope some genius modder can adjust the combat sys and add some stuff to make it "better":

1. someone mentioned armour (AC)...thats excellent. That means u also gotta have firepower (FP)

2. all fights first look at both units armour vs firepower. Lets say i got an archer vs abrams tank, archer and most other ancient units got armour of 1 or 2 at most. Abrams tank has armour of 4 for example. Archer has firepower of 2, abrams hase firepower of 5.

So initial combat phase would be something like this:
1st run. abrams can inflict damage on archer, because archer has 1AC which is smaller than abrams FP of 5. abrams shells rip right through their leather armor no probs.
2nd run. one archer cannot defeat one healed abrams, archer FP of 2 is smaller than abrams AC of 4. However, abrams is not invulnerable to archers. Archers can inflict maximum of 1 hp worth of damage to abrams per one fight. This is a balancing factor IMHO. IT simulates how those pathetic little archers stick their bows and rocks or whatever else sh*te in between the abrams track gears and cause minor damage.

This opens up the path for another unit stat.
armour piercing value (AP) +0 up to + 10 or whatever.
lets say :
longbowman FP3 AC1 AP+1, that means it does +1 hp worth of damage to any target it hits regardless of targets armour. Well this does kinda get screwy if it were longbow vs abrams again. But making abrams invulnerable doesnt sound right either.

[edit]

(firepower+armour piercing)*(rate of fire) value is the max amount of damage any unit can do during one attack

or instead, to determine wether unit can get damage from combat
u use formula

*if unit AC is greater than enemy FP by more than 5 points, then unit cannot recieve any damage
*if unit AC is greater than enemy FP by 5 points, then unit recieves damage only if enemy has armour piercing AP value greater than zero. The damage recieved in this case would be equal to: (enemy AP)/5 hp
*if unit AC is greater than enemy FP by 4 or less points then damage recieved by unit is modified as follows
AC - FP = 4 then only a maximum 20% of damage is recieved
AC - FP = 3 then only a maximum 40% of damage is recieved
AC - FP = 2 then only a maximum 60% of damage is recieved
AC - FP = 1 then only a maximum 80% of damage is recieved
AC - FP = 0 then damage is not modified (this means that enemy firepower is equal to defending units armour class.)

normal attack and defense ratings could be used to determine chances of hitting enemy, where large differences should give some penalties and bonuses.

[Plutarck]

A decade of civilization games and we still don't have Armor or Firepower to go with Attack and Defense.

Wouldn't it be cool if the creators of Civ-style games maybe played an RPG and realized that Attack, Defense, and Movement shouldn't be the only stats units have? Wouldn't that just blow your mind?

[narmox]

well, my units aren't getting blasted consistently. Sure, it happened sometimes that my cavalry got blasted my an archer. It also happened that the Indians' elephants got massacred by my lone horsemen, and I was really happy when it did

In my experience (haven't fought that many wars), it's not a big problem, certainly not like it was in civ1 (have I ever told anything about my phalanx that survived a nuke?) - at least so far. I haven't seen tanks yet, but I'm satisfied with the combat system so far.