Greetings. Good looking boards. Not sure if this suits here or the help forum, but it's a bit "help, the ai is killing me" so I decided on here. I've spent a couple of hours searching archives but haven't found anything directly addressing this topic, please forgive me if this has been done to death; if so perhaps someone could provide a link.
I got civ3 for Christmas. Since, I've played over a hundred hours (so I'm a civ3 newb, but I've been gaming a long time.) I'm generally not a whiner, but I'm finding this game most unsatisfying and I'm at the point of wondering if there's something in my setup that's not working as it should. So far, I've managed to win twice, both early on at chieftain, both times by meekly grovelling and scrupulously avoiding war until I became technologically advanced and could field motorised armour against swordsmen, archers and similarly anachronistic units. Now, moving the goal posts up a notch or two, to warlord (and quickly back to regent) I find that if war breaks out early, or on any "equal" tech footing, I may as well throw that game away as what appears to be a unit value imbalance between the players and the ais units once combat is entered ensures I can't win anything approximating a "fair" fight, I just lose city after city at the ai's whim until either I give up in disgust or it offers "peace".
To my way of thinking, this just isn't right, if two "identical" units have at one other, there should be a reasonable chance that either can win, no? In my experience so far, it seems that one ai unit is as effective as around three to seven similar player units, the hit point exchange ratio can be as high as seven to twelve to one, or more. Is this the same for everybody? (I'm becoming so lip curlingly annoyed about this bias that this game is in danger of being the first civ erased from my hardware before it's "played out".)
Am I missing something? Is there a logical reason why it's reasonable for one regular ai swordsman to attack and kill a stack of three (or more) veteran player swordsmen, or successfully defend against a stack of six or seven? I wouldn't mind if it was "uncertainty of battle" or the like, but "fortune never favours the human", it seems and to attempt to emulate the ais game results in laughable defeats every time. (Same type of unit or different, mixed stacks don't seem to help.) I've lost front line walled towns, fortified with (recent example) three spearmen, a swordsman, two archers and a horseman, all vets, to a single regular ai archer (which may have lost a hit point or two) and attacking that same town with the "exact same" unit(s) the ai did is never successful. I've attacked towns defended by only a few regular and/or conscript units with a force of twenty to thirty mixed veterans and elites (swords/spears/horse) and suffered kill ratios of fifteen or more to one (another game exited in disgust). I have never seen this work to the ais disadvantage. Open ground (so no terrain bias) the ais units outperform mine by a ridiculous amount in both attack and defense, without exception. I have never had less than an overwhelmingly superior force either attack or defend successfully against an ai player and "one on one" is just a joke.
Hence: what's with the loaded dice? Is this the way it's "supposed" to play? I've recently been playing the Japanese and the Americans, are theirs just lousy military or something?
Shortform details, in case it's relevent: civ3 1.16f (legal) playing warlord & regent levels, 800x600 on an Athlon t'bird 900@1000, 256MB, 64MB KyroII, sblive platinum. Win98se, all updates. Thanks for your time.
I got civ3 for Christmas. Since, I've played over a hundred hours (so I'm a civ3 newb, but I've been gaming a long time.) I'm generally not a whiner, but I'm finding this game most unsatisfying and I'm at the point of wondering if there's something in my setup that's not working as it should. So far, I've managed to win twice, both early on at chieftain, both times by meekly grovelling and scrupulously avoiding war until I became technologically advanced and could field motorised armour against swordsmen, archers and similarly anachronistic units. Now, moving the goal posts up a notch or two, to warlord (and quickly back to regent) I find that if war breaks out early, or on any "equal" tech footing, I may as well throw that game away as what appears to be a unit value imbalance between the players and the ais units once combat is entered ensures I can't win anything approximating a "fair" fight, I just lose city after city at the ai's whim until either I give up in disgust or it offers "peace".
To my way of thinking, this just isn't right, if two "identical" units have at one other, there should be a reasonable chance that either can win, no? In my experience so far, it seems that one ai unit is as effective as around three to seven similar player units, the hit point exchange ratio can be as high as seven to twelve to one, or more. Is this the same for everybody? (I'm becoming so lip curlingly annoyed about this bias that this game is in danger of being the first civ erased from my hardware before it's "played out".)
Am I missing something? Is there a logical reason why it's reasonable for one regular ai swordsman to attack and kill a stack of three (or more) veteran player swordsmen, or successfully defend against a stack of six or seven? I wouldn't mind if it was "uncertainty of battle" or the like, but "fortune never favours the human", it seems and to attempt to emulate the ais game results in laughable defeats every time. (Same type of unit or different, mixed stacks don't seem to help.) I've lost front line walled towns, fortified with (recent example) three spearmen, a swordsman, two archers and a horseman, all vets, to a single regular ai archer (which may have lost a hit point or two) and attacking that same town with the "exact same" unit(s) the ai did is never successful. I've attacked towns defended by only a few regular and/or conscript units with a force of twenty to thirty mixed veterans and elites (swords/spears/horse) and suffered kill ratios of fifteen or more to one (another game exited in disgust). I have never seen this work to the ais disadvantage. Open ground (so no terrain bias) the ais units outperform mine by a ridiculous amount in both attack and defense, without exception. I have never had less than an overwhelmingly superior force either attack or defend successfully against an ai player and "one on one" is just a joke.
Hence: what's with the loaded dice? Is this the way it's "supposed" to play? I've recently been playing the Japanese and the Americans, are theirs just lousy military or something?
Shortform details, in case it's relevent: civ3 1.16f (legal) playing warlord & regent levels, 800x600 on an Athlon t'bird 900@1000, 256MB, 64MB KyroII, sblive platinum. Win98se, all updates. Thanks for your time.
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