By the way, my biggest issue with Civ 6 warfare is is the fact that cultural control doesn’t affect road movement. Thus one of the biggest defender advantages of superior logistics is largely negated.
|
[SPOILERS] Cornflakes Returns to Civ 4: Forget 1UPT, STACK OF DOOM!!!!!
|
|
So like Civ VI it ultimately comes down to movement: the big edge of a Great General and Great Admiral isn't so much the combat bonus (although that helps) but the fact that you can move faster with them and land first strikes or catch exposed armies. In fact, pretty much the reason I won PBEM12 is my fleet had a first strike and Archduke's didn't. Obviously VI is more about unit vs unit warfare than stack vs stack, but the principle is similar.
I'm sad your dogpile on Wetbandit didn't work all those months ago - I think its failure is a big part of the reason the game has gone on so long; none of the other contenders seems to want to risk themselves getting gutted the way you have.
I Think I'm Gwangju Like It Here
A blog about my adventures in Korea, and whatever else I feel like writing about.
Well folks, it's been fun but it looks like I'm about to be voted off the island. JR4 just declared war and invaded with Tanks:
Against which I have the following forces under my command: Hey, that actually doesn't look as scary as what Wetbandit threw at me a month ago  only 40 collateral immune units, and of that only 11 machine guns  I actually think I can break this! Looking around a bit more, I'v had a knight roaming around in Superdeath's territory that found this:As much as I would like to think that Superdeath is staging to help finish off JR4's stack after I go in, the settlers convey "Vulture" instead. But in my position I survive on hope alone ... and MAD. Unfortunately for JR4 I think MAD will rule the day here. I thought Superdeath would be the first to invade and I had been planning to hold the capital as my last stand rather than one of the backlines cities. The empire has been run into the ground already so delaying the last stand by 5 turns will only yield about half dozen infantry. Two, maybe 3 drafts each and a whip. But both of those cities can be approached along hills. The 25% defense bonus will more than cancel out a few more infantry in my attacking forces. I'm still of the same opinion and I therefore moved everything towards Great Unconformity except two infantry in each city. Superdeath is building another railroad for me on PINK_SQUARE which will allow my entire military except for those 4 infantry to hit JR4's stack next turn. In a perfect-for-my-survival world Superdeath will mop up, and then keep his distance on the MAD principle that if he invades then Donovan can hit Superdeath in neutral territory. I sent Donovan an Iron-Iron trade to alert him to prepare for action. I give myself a 90% chance of wiping JR4's stack but a 0.5% chance of survival. (9.4% chance that Superdeath chooses not to mop up JR4's stack for some positive diplo and just eliminates me directly, and 0.1% chance that Donovan stabs me in the back and captures my territory).  I miscounted the JR4's collateral immune units. I wasn't expecting to find catapults invading at this stage of the game so that's another 25 collateral-immune units. I'm facing for 67 total collateral-immune units, plus about 110 other units. If I save my 27 knights for last I could potentially flank away some of the siege (effective up to Cannon).On my side I have 35 catapults and 7 freshly-upgraded cannon for collateral (I think that gives me about 150-200 hits of collateral damage). That's actually ... not as scary as I had hoped. For hitters I have 58 infantry available. I was hoping that I'd be able to collateral the tanks down to the point where I could take them 50/50 but I don't think I'm going to get there. One saving grace though is that my siege should all attack tanks directly so I'm bound to get a few hits in there, even with it being strength 5 cat vs strength 28 tank. Let's be optimistic and say that my infantry go 50/50 vs tanks ... My first 22 infantry will get blazed down by Machine Guns, leaving me 30 to attack tanks. That kills half of the tanks and redlines half of the remaining. I'm then facing a dozen artillery that are higher base-strength than anything I have remaining .................. Yeah, this attack out isn't going to be ultimately successful. But it won't be any better if I wait and let myself get hit first with JR4's collateral. And as mentioned above, might as well hit on flatland rather than waiting and hitting against the hill bonuses. With an attack this hopeless I'm not going to spend the time attacking unit-by-unit. Just stack attack by unit type probably in this order: catapults > cannon > Infantry > Rifles > ancient junk > knights. And then cross my fingers that Superdeath mops up and leaves me in peace 
How does stack on stack combat work in Civ IV? Here's what I know: Every unit has raw combat strength, which is pitted against another unit and hit % and damage are calculated. Combat is in multiple rounds and continues until one unit is dead or (sometimes) withdraws. From spectating games for about a year now, I know that siege units (catapults, artillery, bombers? That kind of thing) cause collateral damage, harming multiple units in a tile, with the number increasing as tech does. So you suicide in the cats/cannons/etc. and damage as much as you can, which then gives your combat units better chances in the main fight.
Two things I don't understand still: how does the Flanking promotion (often mentioned with cavalry) work, and how do units like Machine Guns interact?
I Think I'm Gwangju Like It Here
A blog about my adventures in Korea, and whatever else I feel like writing about.
Flanking promotion gives units and increased chance of withdrawing. Mounted units all get an inherent ability (like 10% or 20%) to withdraw and survive with a sliver of health. Each level of Flanking promotion increases that chance.
Withdraw is important because any mounted unit which survives combat either via victory OR withdraw causes “Flanking Damage” which is like collateral damage specifically for siege. (Siege is normally immune to collateral damage). Unlike collateral damage, flanking damage can actually kill siege, although it takes multiple hits of flanking damage to kill. Machine guns participate in combat same as other units with a few qualifications - can only defend, never initiate combat - immune to collateral damage (except from Cho-Ko-Nu, and crossbow in the latest mod, and I think Bombers can damage them as well) - huge +50% bonus vs gunpowder units (including infantry) ... combine the huge bonus with immunity to collateral and they are great stack defenders in this era. JR4 should have brought more MG’s to counter my infantry-heavy stack. “Stack Attack” is a game option for convenience. Combat occurs as normal 1v1, but with stack attack enabled you can select multiple units and order them to attack at the same time. The game resolved all combats in sequence as if you continued to throw units forward one at a time. I could actually select all 200 units with ALT+click (or double click on the stack) and make the battle last 0.5 seconds. Or use CTRL+click to select units by type and make the battle last last 2-3 minutes, or I could send the units in 1-by-1 and make the battle last 1-2 hours 
Threw everything into the meat grinder. Heavy damage but not many kills. I took some screenshot so I'll go through them and see if anything is worth posting. Probably just the before/after demographics for power and the before/after military adviser showing Aztec units. We'll see what Superdeath decides to do ... whether he wipes the Aztec stack trading wrath-until-game-end for a couple cities, or plays nice and bides his time.
Here's some body counts for the lurkers:
Yellow numbers are the Aztec units killed. I killed a grand total of 17 units. I had just whittled down the HP of everything to the point where I was getting slightly favorable odds by the end. I really needed (two) dozen artillery to throw at the stack first, but alas. According to PBSpy I lost the capital and one other city, so I assume JR4 advanced in force and slaughtered the valiant victors.
I haven't played single player for a long time, but I decided to give it a shot since I'm pretty much eliminated from this game ... and the Civ 4 PBEM is moving very slow. First map I rolled had no resources visible whatsoever even after moving the scout, and moving the settler the only thing I saw was dry wheat. I decided to play the hand I was dealt. After moving 4! turns, 2 tiles per turn the only resource I found was a single plains cow (adjacent to 4 floodplains, so at least I could manage to feed the capital long term). After settling I realized that I inadvertently left RtR mod loaded when I intended to play base BTS. I unloaded the mod, started a new game, and rolled this
 This ... might be the one of the best starts I have ever seen  Riverside corn to feed double riverside plains hill gold! Plenty of riverside to cottage including two floodplains, and ivory for another early happy. I feel like this is cheating, but ... play the hand I'm dealt?
|
