Constantly unluky with resources and combat

[Montoya]

I have been a player of Civ since Civ 2 came out. So far I have been a fan of all of them, being Civ2 still my fav. All of them have nussances tho.

Civ 3 and 4 might be the less played of the lot. 3 because it never ran well in Linux, which is my OS. Still, I am revisiting now and man, I am getting frustrated with some of the mechanics. It could have been in my opinion such a cool civ2 follow up, as it has many quality of life improvements... (and the palace mechanic, which loved compared to the throne room!)

-From all the years I have played this game, and possible hundreds of matches, I can only remember once finding coal! Some of the games there was no coal at all, so couldn't even trade it.

-Combat. Man, this is frustrating... I know the sort of "pikeman killing a tank" meme, but this game might be the worst of all... Every single war, even when I outclass in tech I always get annihilated! Yesterday and enemy swordsman killed six musketmen, six longbowmen, two cannons, one defending knight, and two attacking knight before getting killed. And enemy had a swarm of those... x,x. And this is constant... the only chance I have to survive wars is to somehow manage to have a choke point city in the border and feed it defending units with 3-4 other cities... no matter if I rush technology and using defending units two eras ahead of the enemy.. and I am talking about holding them because they run out of movement, not because they get killed (just replacing my losses)!

This game I always play in easy. My units still get killed, but at least enemy aggression is much lower.

[[NN]Natmeris]

Usually I find this is from not understanding the combat system. I'd say the majority of the time, the combat plays out how one would expect but its not a for sure thing of course to add some suspense. I rarely see a pikeman kill a tank or a spearman. As far as swordsman, that isnt completely out of the ordinary as swordsman is 3 attack and musketman is only 4 defense. That's pretty close in probability. Battles play out in terms of rounds. Every round of fighting the different percentages face off against each other. If the lower chance wins, that is just what happens. The best you can do is increase your odds of winning, which I think is fun.

[Montoya]

Originally posted by NNNatmeris:

Usually I find this is from not understanding the combat system. I'd say the majority of the time, the combat plays out how one would expect but its not a for sure thing of course to add some suspense. I rarely see a pikeman kill a tank or a spearman. As far as swordsman, that isnt completely out of the ordinary as swordsman is 3 attack and musketman is only 4 defense. That's pretty close in probability. Battles play out in terms of rounds. Every round of fighting the different percentages face off against each other. If the lower chance wins, that is just what happens. The best you can do is increase your odds of winning, which I think is fun.

Hey, thanks for the reply. To be honest, each Civ has his nussances, and I was venting my frustration. Civ2 (my favourite) drives me nuts with the "areas of control", and stupid AI blocking my units from moving or settling. Civ V with the annoying lack of "autorenew trade route", or at least a button to repeat the same route...

But Sometimes I can't but think that Civ 3 cheats in favour of the machine. The case of swordmen/musketman ended in a 80/20 chances of dying, which I think are not right. And many units got killed in that test!
Also, the coal. Man, many games and as I said, I only hit coal once. The actual strategy of explosive expansion of my empire started with Civ3 and my futile tries of hitting at least one unit of coal for my empire when I discover steam engines.... Maybe the problem is just that they don't add enough resources.

[helix2]

Oh I agree with the original poster here. I had A/I 4/1 longbowmen regularly slaughtering my 6/6 Guerillas, no matter who was attacking, and regardless of terrain.
I also run into a dearth of resources. Only one of a critical resource on an entire map of the largest size is common.

[mrnuetron]

It has been said that Civ 3 is the greatest modding game just religion and coporations and maybe spock commentary would make in a most perfect game.

[rodrigo]

What i often see are people ignoring defense multipliers.
Attacking a spearman in flatland with a Tank (16 atk) gives you 99.4% win ratio.

Same battle, but now the spearman is fortified, across the river, in a city brings the win ratio down to 92%.

That means that you will lose 1 every 9 fights... Which is rare but it will definitely happen very often - especially if we take into consideration the fact that most civ3 battles are stacks vs. stack (like, you normally attack a city with 10 or 20 tanks, not with just one).

[EnemigoDeLaMafia]

The resources sometimes might be a bit scarce, but I have never seen a game not spawning a critical one like coal. Mind you, it might require you to completely conquer a civ, but there will be coal somewhere.

The AI cheats in many ways but not the combat, I understand. From reading your post I interpret that you attacked said swordman?

There are a lot of bonuses to defense. If he was on a city, or a hill (or a city on a hill) that's a 50%. With walls thats another 50%. A city with +7 population gets bonus. If he was fortified he gets a bonus, if he was accros a river he gets a bonus.

Troops can more than double their defense under certain circumstances.

Now, the musketeers are strictly defensive troops. You should not attack with them. For attacking you'll really want to use fast units as they have a chance of getting away.

Finally, use artillery. It can save you so many lives. As you increase the difficulty, the more artillery is needed. Eventually allowing you to have fights with 1 hp units. Many times this will allow you to defeat more advanced foes, and most importantly, keep thr bulk of your army alive.

Artillery kind of scales with the era. So to be effective you'll want each era particular one. Don't disband the older ones, just save rm and upgrade. Catapults tend to miss a lot but once you start getting trebuchets they can help a lot and it gets better from there.