[spoilers] Mr. Cairo PB73

[Mr. Cairo]

I'm just putting this out here as a summation of the last 10-20 turns of mine

[T-hawk]

Wasn't somebody talking about deterministic combat as a possible mod feature...

[Krill]

I'm pretty sure that deterministic combat would not have been helpful against a player which could build Artillery. A GG promoted arty with D4 would never take any damage from musketeers.

[greenline]

Could deterministic combat work like Civ 6, where there is a range of randomness for damage that's just much smaller than Civ 4 allowing 99% losses?

[Mr. Cairo]

I'm pretty sure that deterministic combat would not have been helpful against a player which could build Artillery. A GG promoted arty with D4 would never take any damage from musketeers.

well, he had a damage morale arty that never defended, so in this instance not really relevant, but yeah, as soon as he got the arty up and running, I was doomed. I have managed to kill one of his GG Arty's though.


On the topic of deterministic combat, I'm not a fan, despite my whinging. In fact, complaining about bad luck makes up a significant proportion of the posts on this forum, so I think it would be a real act of self-harm to use a mod like that.

[luddite]

I'm pretty sure that deterministic combat would not have been helpful against a player which could build Artillery. A GG promoted arty with D4 would never take any damage from musketeers.

well, he had a damage morale arty that never defended, so in this instance not really relevant, but yeah, as soon as he got the arty up and running, I was doomed. I have managed to kill one of his GG Arty's though.


On the topic of deterministic combat, I'm not a fan, despite my whinging. In fact, complaining about bad luck makes up a significant proportion of the posts on this forum, so I think it would be a real act of self-harm to use a mod like that.

Finally reading this thread now...

Yeah, I will admit that I had some very good RNG in this game. I have mixed feelings about that in civ4... sometimes it makes for interesting combat, but sometimes it's just stupid. I think if I was remaking the game from scratch I'd put some rubber banding mechanics on the RNG, but it does make for some dramatic twists and turns. It's sort of like poker where *sometimes* it's about complex strategy and *sometimes* it's just a coin toss.

You did make me very sad by killing my GG arty though :/

[scooter]

I was trying to follow what was going on for your conflict as best as I could on PBSpy and then later demographics, but man you came close to wiping out Luddite. I saw you got an early raze, but I wondered why it fizzled out. I see now you might have killed him if his AT came 1-2T later than it did. Good effort! Gunpowder/France was, for my money, the scariest combo. I was so relieved to not see you near me.

Did you consider at all rushing faster than you did? That was one thing I noticed in my test games - that 1 or even 0 settler starts got 1-2 Musketeers out so lightning fast that it was not possible to stop them.

[T-hawk]

Cairo never got into position to wipe out Luddite because he was always worried Luddite would whip his first anti-tank or artillery for defense right as Cairo's units got there. Cairo could have razed Luddite's capital with his musket rush, but didn't know that for sure and so didn't commit.

[Cyneheard]

Cairo never got into position to wipe out Luddite because he was always worried Luddite would whip his first anti-tank or artillery for defense right as Cairo's units got there.  Cairo could have razed Luddite's capital with his musket rush, but didn't know that for sure and so didn't commit.

This is "playing not to lose" behavior that is really hard to avoid. It's a hugely underrated skill: knowing when you do and when you don't need to take chances. I've done it too (there was an AW game where I never tried to do anything to Krill because I didn't know what would happen; this eventually led to one of the largest stacks of obsolete units ever at RB, that he promptly crushed over a couple of turns when he was finally ready to do it).

Cairo's only hope of winning the game was to go for the kill, and it might fail spectacularly but it might also give him a real path to victory. A long stalemate against Artillery or Anti-Tanks was just going to have both of them be in the bottom 3 every time.