Civ IV - one question

[Xanthippe]

Can a trireme still take out a battleship in hard mode?

[Stephen Zepp]

Can a trireme still take out a battleship in hard mode?

My favorite so far: "Your Modern Armor was destroyed by a Longbowman!". I was full health, too.

[MrHat]

Grrrr.

[Flashman]

Yeah, I though that this wasn't supposed to happen in IV. Kind of wierd when my Napoleonic looking riflemen and artillery are taken down by pikemen.

[Abel]

Kind of wierd when my Napoleonic looking riflemen and artillery are taken down by pikemen.

Not that surprising as the gap between those technologies in Civ 4 isn't so huge (but still pretty big). In history such examples can be found on occasion too, so unless it's happening often this can be excused.

Modern armor by longbowman on the other hand ... What's the statistical odds on that though ? Could be you just got a freak result.

[Merusk]

Yeah, I though that this wasn't supposed to happen in IV. Kind of wierd when my Napoleonic looking riflemen and artillery are taken down by pikemen.

It's all math, not technology.  Hit the "G" key before attacking and hover over the unit.  Off to the left side of the screen it gives the direct numbers 18.4 vs 20.2 and the breakdown of why.  (20% bonus fort, 20% promotion, 20% hills, etc.)   I lost many gunships to a fortified pikeman unit before I searched one of the Civs forums for an explanation.  Once I accepted that it's just a mathematical equation, I started winning a lot more.

For city assaults where you don't have a huge power advantage, bombardment is a MUST, probably combined with Pillaging.  I've also noticed if your opponent has a ton of farms, chances are he also has a ton of units.  Tokugawa just declared war on my battleship-owning modern-armor, here-comes-the-spacerace ass with his legions of Samurai.  Even after capturing or destroying 7 of his 9 cities he wouldn't give-up, and it's been an expensive fight because he had 15+ units in some cities.  That's a lot of Armor and Arty to produce and ship to the front lines (Across Egypt) at the expense of some spaceship parts that may lose me the game to Egypt.

[JoeTF]

Against unit whores, Collateral Damage is the ultimate solution. Pump three upgrades into it and just make sure your first unit will win. Rest is slaughtering of the lambs.

[StGabe]

It happens but it is very rare.  I've played a lot of games on Prince or so and tend to have a decent tech advantage.  Occasionally, yes, my rifleman loses to a longbowman, but having rifles attacking longbows still tends to be an overwhelming advantage and it is typical to have small stacks of troops take out a dozen or more enemies.  Once I get mechanized infantry I only lose if I fight against numbers like 15:1.  2 or 3 mechanized infantry can take on just about anything.

It is all just math.  When you attack a longbowman with a gunship or mechanized infantry you probably only have a .1% chance of losing.  But that one in a thousand time when you do lose is what you will remember.  And the game wouldn't be any fun if it weren't this way, which is why they haven't completely gotten rid of this.  If rifleman pwned any and all medieval units, no questions asked, then the game would resolve into a simple equation: whoever has the best tech wins.  As things stand, I like to get a  production advantage early and maraud with units like horse archers and catapults.  Then I consolidate my cities, make sure they are economically viable (usually my tech % drops to 50 during my initial expansion, and then after advancing my cities I can put it back to 90%), tech up for a while, and then push again with a tech advantage.  But this is very tricky because I can lose either if my early production advantage gets owned by better tech (an enemy with early elephants hurts) or if my later tech advantage gets owned by better military production.  If the person with the tech advantage always won then the game would be a lot less interesting.

[Strazos]

Kind of wondering why you elect for Mechanized Infantry over the more-powerful Modern Armor.

I tend to do a lot of expansion and teching until later in the game, and then start pumping Armor and Bombers. I usually totally skip artillary, as they are too slow when trying to rapidly capture cities. Just bomb the hell out of cities, and use a couple blitzing tanks to quickly wittle down the defenders. Picking up the healing talents on a few units just helps more.

Also, I was very dissappointed with the Gunships; They would be much better if they could only be attacked by certain units, al la Civ2.

Game still kicks ass.

[Merusk]

I do the same thing with the Mech Inf.  I have an assault army of Tanks, and replace them as they're destoryed but the bulk of my force is Mech Inf. (unless I'm attacking another modern-age Civ. then things get messy.)

The tanks don't have that much more attack power than Mech Inf, but take as long to produce AND can't get any defense bonuses.  They're really only good for assaults, so unless you've got a lot of Mech. Inf coming along to hold the cities you've taken, you're forced into a scorched earth policy (raze all cities) in order to prevent the ground you gained from being lost.  Plus one or two Mech Inf need to be in that stack of tanks anyway, so that they aren't completly destroyed by plane/ bomber runs or Arty/gunship strikes.

The modern combat is different from the previous games because there's so much thought put into combined arms.  I've had to watch the AI destroy me a few times and figure out why in order to learn how to more effectively fight in that age.  Losing a stack of 6 Armor in my first game and then watching it pick-apart my front was pretty embarassing, but educational.