Combat questions

[ivanbuto]

I understand the general idea behind the armor and strength, but how exactly does this work?
Strength is the same thing as firepower, right? But armor and hit points are different. What is the difference?
Maybe a specific, very simple example. Say an two archers attack a hoplite (all units 100% healed). So as I understand it first there will be a ranged shot from the archer in the second row. He has ranged strength 20, the defending hoplite has defense 15. The hit points are set at 10 for all units (why?). The archer has firepower 1, and the hoplite has an armor of 1. So what happens, how much do we subtract from the hitpoints of the hoplite? How would this be differenct if firepower or armor were altered for the respective units?
Next, the archer in the front row battles with the hoplite. As has been pointed out, there is an attack-defense in both directions.
So my overall question is I guess how exactly one puts firepower and armor into the equation with attack and defense ratings?
Thanks for any help.

Ivan

[Pedrunn]

Does anyone know the combat formula? I am pretty sure i have seen it once and now i am curious

[Maquiladora]

Okay ill have a crack.

Armour: The armour rating indicates the unit's ability to withstand a successful attack. The higher the rating, the less damage a unit takes when hit.

Thats taken directly from the manual, a very powerful stat obviously. Strength is the same as the old firepower yeah, its even called firepower in units.txt.

Hit points are basically the green bar above every unit and these are taken down in attacks by the corresponding strength(firepower) rating of the attacker. It also depends what armour rating the defender has and whether the defender has bonuses of city walls terrain blah blah.

In your example lets say the hoplite is stood on open grassland, unfortified, no tile improvements and the 2 archers attack him from the same open grassland etc.

One archer moves to the back because thats where ranged units go when they have someone to defend for them directly in front, the other archer defends and assaults on the front line. First the archers attack, one attacks with ranged strength of 20 from the back, the other attacks with attack(or front line assualt) rating of 10, because hes on the front row, both have 1 strength(firepower). The hoplite defends with 15 defence and armour 1.

The combined archers attack is 30 vs 15 defence for the hoplite. The chance of the archers successfully hitting is twice as much as the hoplite defending it. The archers also attack with a total of 2 strength, because each archer has 1 strength(firepower). The archers hit and cause 2 HP damage. The hoplite now has 8hp.

Now the hoplite attacks the archer on the front line. Hoplite has 10 attack vs 10 defence for the archer. The archer at the back just shouts abuse. Hoplite also has 1 strength and the archer has 1 armour. The hoplite has roughly (and often randomly) around a 50% chance of hitting the archer, and the archer has the other 50% of defending it, doh. The hoplite may or may not do damage.

The battle wages and the archers win obviously. The front row archer has about 5hp left out of 10hp (on average) and the hoplite is dead.

Someone correct me if im wrong, because its not unlikely.

[ivanbuto]

So if, in the above example, the hoplite had armor 3 instead of 1, how exactly would that affect things? At what point exactly would we factor this in?
Thanks,

Ivan

[Maquiladora]

I was hoping you wouldnt ask that.

This is my guess:

When the 2 archers attack then, and get a successful attack, remembering they have 2 strength(firepower) combined, but now the hoplite has 3 armour, so the archers would only do 1/3 of the damage they were doing before. Which is (1/3)*2 = 0.666 ... So for each successful attack the archers make, they would take away 0.666..HP instead of 2. Now dont ask me if this rounds up to 1, but i would guess it does.

[ivanbuto]

Thanks. So the idea is that the damage done to a unit based on successful hit will be the firepower of the units(s) who do the damage divided by the armor of the unit who suffers the damage, and this amount (rounded in some way perhaps) will be subtracted from the unit's HP. Is this correct?
Another question I have is that for example if an archer attacks a hoplite, since the firepower and armor are 1 for both, whereas they both have 10 hit points, we should see at least 10 hits if one unit is to be destroyed. Yet we see less in the battle view. So is the battle view just sort of an abbreviated version of what really goes on?

Ivan

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by ivanbuto
Thanks. So the idea is that the damage done to a unit based on successful hit will be the firepower of the units(s) who do the damage divided by the armor of the unit who suffers the damage, and this amount (rounded in some way perhaps) will be subtracted from the unit's HP. Is this correct?

As i understand it, and the way i think of it. Maybe someone has a different idea...

Another question I have is that for example if an archer attacks a hoplite, since the firepower and armor are 1 for both, whereas they both have 10 hit points, we should see at least 10 hits if one unit is to be destroyed. Yet we see less in the battle view. So is the battle view just sort of an abbreviated version of what really goes on?

Ive wondered this before too, and it must be shortened in some way. Even when you add 100 hit points for each unit, the battle will be long, but not nearly enough to show every round. Basically the [Archer attacking/Hoplite defending] and the [Hoplite attacking/Archer defending0 happens simutaneously on screen, or something similar.

The battleview shows how your stack formation changes as units die and who they fight next, so its still very useful.

[Locutus]

The battleview only shows the result after x rounds of combat, where x is a number which can be set in the Advanced Option, IIRC (I think it's 5 by default).

As far as the whole combat system goes, that's actually the only part of the BradyGames Strategy Guide that's at least remotely useful. There's a small chapter (~15 pages) devoted to combat and it explains the system fairly well with a number of simple examples and precise calculations, including how terrain and city improvements and stuff weigh in - exactly the sort of stuff you'd expect from a strategy guide. Only too bad that that's the only chapter like that and too bad that it completely fails to mention Firepower and Armor But I think Maq explained those concepts adequately so that doesn't really matter.

Anyway, all things considered the Strategy Guide is a worthless piece of crap that ain't worth the paper it's printed on so I certainly don't recommend that anyone buys it (if it's still available anywhere - probably not). The only reason why I have it is because I got it for free from Activision (yes, it's so bad that the not looking a gift horse in the mouth rule doesn't apply here - in fact, they didn't even ask or warn me in advance that they were sending it, the DHL man just dropped it off one day; if they had informed me, I would probably have kindly requested them not to bother).
So far there didn't seem to be much of an interest in this matter but now that there is, I can see if I can scan the relevant pages and put them online somewhere, if that helps anyone.

[HuangShang]

im confused now

[ivanbuto]

Yes that would be nice Locutus if you could post that.
Also, there are two #s not clear to me in Units.txt:
PowerPoints
and FoodHunger (this one seems to be 0 for all units)

BTW all these #s can be modified right? I don't understand why they put 10 HP for all units. Certainly a spy should have much less HP than a tank for example.

[Pedrunn]

PowePoint is a left-over. It was suppose to give the military rank but this was not implemented.

FoodHunger is something i never tested if it worked or not. Since any unit uses it. Yet if it does it means how much food the unit will require every turn (like some civ2 units). All the units of CTP2 has this value set to 0 since the unists only require production.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by ivanbuto
I don't understand why they put 10 HP for all units. Certainly a spy should have much less HP than a tank for example.

I think the designers and game balancers maybe did this because after armour firepower and strength was factored in they thought it was balanced enough, and it is, it produces realistic results, but it makes air and sea units less useful because an infantry unit can kill a bomber etc, which it shouldnt really. But then it wouldnt be CtP2 if you couldnt edit this yourself.

[Locutus]

As the strategy guide is ridden with mistakes and omissions I can't guarantee it's 100% accurate but I put the chapter on combat online. It's 16 pages, about 1.5 MB a page. I tried to make them as small as possible but if I make them smaller than they are, they start to become unreadable. The core and most useful part of the chapter are pages 69-74 (starting with 'Concerning the Art of Combat'), so if you're on a slow connection don't bother with the rest. The other pages are just for those who want to know what the rest of the chapter discusses and maybe have a good laugh. (Even if you just download the core pages, you don't have to miss all the fun: check out the 'useful' table in the top-left corner of page 69 )

The first page: http://ctpmodmakers.250free.com/stratguide/page65.PNG
The last page: http://ctpmodmakers.250free.com/stratguide/page80.PNG
(If you can't guess what the URLs of the pages in between are, you're probably better off buying the whole guide )

ZIP file with all the pages (23 MB): http://ctpmodmakers.250free.com/stratguide/chapter3.zip
Edit: this file may be corrupt, I'll test it and upload it again if it's not okay - probably a good idea to wait with downloading until I've updated it

ZIP file with pages 69-74 (8 MB): http://ctpmodmakers.250free.com/stratguide/combat.zip

[Maquiladora]

Maybe they just wanted to fill that top corner with something... anything. Thanks Locutus.

[Locutus]

I guess the same applies to those other 288 pages