Combat questions

[ivanbuto]

Pedrunn, so would you happen to know the answers to my the Qs in my last post?
BTW if there is something that nobody is sure about, is it possible to contact Activision and do they have somebody who participated in creating CTP2 who could answer all Qs?

[ivanbuto]

I've been playing a game of CTP2, and I don't get this. When two mounted archers attack an archer, why doesn't one of the mountain archers back up the other one wih ranged fire, but instead they are both in the front row, one of them just standing there? I thought ranged units go in the front row only if there aren't enough other units to match the opponent's front row.

[Pedrunn]

VETERAN_COEF 50 #percent improvement in attack and defense of vetern units

Yes i that is the bonus

Similarly, they say that the fortification process takes "a few turns to complete". Does anybody know how many this is (I couldn't find it anywhere?) Is it 2 as it was in Civ2?

The data for this TI is in the tileimp.txt, line 500 and it takes 4 turns to complete in all the terrains that is possible to build it.

why doesn't one of the mountain archers back up the other one wih ranged fire, but instead they are both in the front row, one of them just standing there? I

I have not a clue. This also happen with archers and other ranged units. My guess is that although it move to the front the ranged unit still gives its ranged attack since the unit does attacking animation. Maybe it is something sthetic to make it look like a mass attack or just a bug. But i agree thats really is odd.

BTW if there is something that nobody is sure about, is it possible to contact Activision and do they have somebody who participated in creating CTP2 who could answer all Qs?

This comment would look like a joke if it wasnt too sad. Crapvision is no use. It bankrupt became a publisher only and totally forgot CTP2.

[ivanbuto]

Actually it works because first there is ranged fire from both sides, and only after that they get closer. And as far as I know the next round of ranged fire comes only after one of the front rows clears out.
As for fortification, I was actually wondering about how many turns it takes to fortify a unit, not to build a fortification improvement. It seems to me that it just takes one turn, but since the manual says it takes "a few turns" I was wondering if there are some circumstances under which it does take more than one turn.

Ivan

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by ivanbuto
As for fortification, I was actually wondering about how many turns it takes to fortify a unit, not to build a fortification improvement. It seems to me that it just takes one turn, but since the manual says it takes "a few turns" I was wondering if there are some circumstances under which it does take more than one turn.

If you press "f" (fortify a unit) on turn 1, end turn. Then its still digging in on turn 2, then its finished on turn 3. Thats 2 turns i guess. It doesnt matter what terrain youre on or in a city either, well ive never had any longer.

[Pedrunn]

I think you send it to fortify in a turn and in the begginning of the next turn (note that other civs can attack you in this period) the unit is fortified (when the brown wall appears).

[Maquiladora]

I think im right

I've been playing a game of CTP2, and I don't get this. When two mounted archers attack an archer, why doesn't one of the mountain archers back up the other one wih ranged fire, but instead they are both in the front row, one of them just standing there? I thought ranged units go in the front row only if there aren't enough other units to match the opponent's front row.

I think this is because theyre attacking a non-defensive unit, they both attack after each other because the regular archer isnt a defensive unit. Or it could be even because the Mounted Archer has the "ismounted" flag.

Have you tried 2 archers vs. 1 archer? See if both archers attacking stand on the front row then, if they do then its probably because the 1 archer defending isnt a defensive type unit and the game sees that theres no point in one of the archers being on the back row and one on the front defending it.

[ivanbuto]

I've experimented with this a little bit, basically just tried two ranged units versus a single other unit, and Maq seems to be right - when the opponent unit was of the ranged type, there was first ranged fire from both sides and then one of the two ranged units fought the opponend while the other was merely standing by.
When the opponend unit was not ranged, however, the two ranged units fought with one in the front row and one behind it firing shots.
Nonetheless, I thought that armies were supposed to organize themselves to their max advantage, and therefore I don't understand why it would be happening like this.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Locutus how did you work out the total Defensive capacity?

I didn't, I just figured that it would be possible to calculate it somehow and based my generic algorithm on that. The example numbers I just pulled out of my arse

I presumed it's just armor*hp and did some tests today and that does indeed seem to be the case: in dozens battles of [armor 2, hp 10] units vs [armor 1, hp 20] units both sides seemed to have a chance of roughly 50% to win and the victor always ended up severely damaged (all else equal). Battles vs [armor 1, hp 10] units always ended in victories for the armor 2/hp 20 units with rougly 50% damage (all else equal). So basically there's no need to vary HP (as mentioned earlier in the thread), as varying armor accomplishes exactly the same thing.

Presumably the same principle goes for Firepower: it's just a multiplier for damage done per hit (which is 1 by default), although I'm yet to test this. But this all was already mentioned earlier in the thread, so no real surprises here...

[Locutus]

Small update: after some further testing, I can confirm that firepower works exactly as expected.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Locutus

I didn't, I just figured that it would be possible to calculate it somehow and based my generic algorithm on that. The example numbers I just pulled out of my arse

Ah that old trick you truely are a mathmagician

Although i would say that varying HP's rather than armour seems a little more intuitive to the player. Maybe they were forced to change it after losing the Civ license. Armour is more realistic in its thinking but its not as intuitive as HP's by judging units power, although as we know now, they equal the same thing in the end. Anyway I digress, ill try and make the sim with those workings in mind and see what comes out.

[Pedrunn]

I want this as a math formula Something like:

AT(d) = Attack of the defender
DF(d) = defense of the defender
AR(d) = Armor of the defender
FP(d) = FirePower of the defender
HP(d) = Hitpoints of the defender

AT(a) = Attack of the attacker
DF(a) = defense of the attacker
AR(a) = Armor of the attacker
FP(a) = FirePower of the attacker
HP(a) = Hitpoints of the attacker


So the formula is...

[Maquiladora]

Okay heres probably the final version unless someone finds an error or something new to add.

[Maquiladora]

If i made it right this time, you can tell that Firepower(damage) rating is actually more important than armour in judging how good a unit is overall. All the stats are important but Firepower is most important, then armour, then Attack and Defence values, then any bonuses.

This is just 1v1 so its alot more complicated, but still there it is.

[Locutus]

Maq,
You seem to have made a small mistake in the last section of the spreadsheet: you defined 'Defence Capacity' as Firepower*Armour, this should be Armour*Hitpoints.

Once that mistake is correctly, or (even more so) if you look at the formulas I posted above, you can clearly see that Firepower and Armour (as well as Hitpoints) are all linear in relation to each other and thus all equally important: doubling Firepower for a unit has exactly the same effect on it's chances to win the battle as doubling it's Armour or Hitpoints (or halving the opponent's FP, HP or Armour).
You are right when you state that Defence and Attack are less important, as they are not linear: a/(a+d). However, Defence is more important than Attack (see the formula or try doubling the defence and attack values in the sim to verify) and for this reason defensive bonuses are more important than offensive bonuses as well.
So the order of importance of combat stats (in 1v1 battles) is:

1) Firepower/Armour/Hitpoints
2) Defence
3) Attack
4) Defence bonus
5) Attack bonus

In the meantime, I did more testing with the game over the last few days and was able to confirm that terrain and fortifying work exactly as we expect them to, however, I seem to have found a new bug: veteran status doesn't appear to do anything I need to do some final testing to be absolutely sure (it would be useful if others could test this as well to verify or (hopefully) falsify my conclusion), but if I'm not mistaken their chances in battle against non-veteran units of the same type are exactly 50%; the only advantage veterans seem to have over non-veterans is that they have a cool medal icon under their shield...