[PB79] End of the beginning?

[aetryn]

Every game with barbs on, a bullshit combat roll like that happens. The Civ 4 random number generator is incredibly pseudorandom, no one can convince me otherwise. Best way to be safe is to always play with barbs off.

How many barb combats happen per game? If there's more than 33 - which seems likely across all player -  it shouldn't be that unexpected to have a 3% chance succeed. This is more a problem with humans perceive probability than anything else. (See XCOM rants, many examples). But it goes beyond video games. If you ask people to flip a coin 500 times and write down the result, it's generally pretty easy to tell which people cheated and just made up the results because they don't predict enough/long enough streaks of heads or tails in a row - which, while uncommon individually, are statistically pretty likely to happen in a series of 500 flips. Instead most humans have a sense that the coin "ought" to regress back towards the average. We just seem to have a blind spot for improbable events that just do in fact happen due to sheer quantity of attempts.

If anything, most games with biased RNG cheat in favor of the player, because people have that perception that a 95% chance means I should never fail and a 5% chance means I'm not actually in much danger. I haven't looked into Civ 4's specific RNG to evaluate it, but it's named after the lead developer, so it's probably his personal take on how RNG should work - which could be either more or less than perfectly random. His latest strategy game (Old World) uses basically no RNG in combat at all - all combat is deterministic (and usually not lethal, unless the defending unit is damaged or attack by multiple attackers).

This is one reason Chairru tried to develop Deterministic Barb combat for Close to Home - unfortunately First Strikes mess it up so we don't really use it anymore.

[coldrain]

Yeah, losing a 97% fight sucks, but it happens. Luckily it was a scout that died, not a warrior guarding a settler or something. I could have moved the scout to safety, but decided to risk it for free xp. Well turns out the lion got a free meal instead.

I agree that the probability based total combat (i.e. units die from single combat action, unlike later civ games) can be annoying at times, but it is easy to get used to it. Lately I've been playing Battle Brothers, and man I tell you, the amount I've missed 60% chance hits feels like the game is trolling me at times  Fun game to play anyways, but prepare to lose your favourite characters on an Iron man run.

[coldrain]

Turn 37

This game is moving quite fast, sometimes 3 turns a day. Overview of lands (still need to lock in a naming theme):

Revolted to slavery on previous turn. Second worker has started farming the rice, cow pasture finished this turn. Nearest horses are in south. Capital is building next settler, which could be whipped next turn if deemed necessary. I usually don’t like whipping when population loss would result in losing use of good food-hammer tiles. Maybe chop instead, and whip something a bit later, once cap has grown? Next expand either to the pig/ivory, or seafood coast I guess.

[civac2]

You revolted on the second turn the settler was moving?

[greenline]

If you turn the field of view slider near the civics tab and the other tabs up to 100, you can get much easier zoomed out screenshots than zooming out regularly in-game.

[Dreylin]

If you turn the field of view slider near the civics tab and the other tabs up to 100, you can get much easier zoomed out screenshots than zooming out regularly in-game.

Personally I use Flying Camera (ALT-F) and then paste together multiple screenshots for large overviews.

[coldrain]

You revolted on the second turn the settler was moving?

I delayed revolting to see if horses would appear in a location that would make me shift around Poverty Point. I then delayed for one more turn to finish second worker at capital via chop. After that I changed civic and anarchy ended in time to start working the fresh cow pasture. Maybe I could have waited to revolt after second settler is completed?

[aetryn]

Yeah, losing a 97% fight sucks, but it happens. Luckily it was a scout that died, not a warrior guarding a settler or something. I could have moved the scout to safety, but decided to risk it for free xp. Well turns out the lion got a free meal instead.

I agree that the probability based total combat (i.e. units die from single combat action, unlike later civ games) can be annoying at times, but it is easy to get used to it. Lately I've been playing Battle Brothers, and man I tell you, the amount I've missed 60% chance hits feels like the game is trolling me at times  Fun game to play anyways, but prepare to lose your favourite characters on an Iron man run.

Yes, I love Battle Brothers, it's a fun game. Until you get slaughtered by orcs and goblins.

[coldrain]

Turn 43

Overview:

Founded third city on coast on T42. Loaned the cow for a turn and switched to netted fish now. Probably grow and whip either worker or granary next. Pottery will be done in 2 turns after saving gold for this turn. Workers will chop granaries, or start cottaging immediately? I need more anyway soon. I’m moving one warrior to keep an eye on the midpoint between Miro and me. Demos:

Additional question: Is there a way to add screenshots in such a way, that they aren't so large (and load slowly on phone)? What tags would enable this? Until now I've been using [*SPOILER] insert picture [*/SPOILER] without the * symbol to avoid sluggish loading of pics-

[greenline]

[screenshot] [screenshot]

^ add a "/" to the second tag after the "["