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asleepathewheel
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listening too long to one song
Mar 2002
time: 00:30
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the problem is that we might be without either rubber or oil, thus no tanks. It depends on what role we take (if any) in the gwnd alliance. it might be much better to just build 30 marines and a pack of ships for protection, let the larger gwnd forces tackle the interior, we just siphon units on the perimeter.
sucks the turn order, rp's spying will be woefully innaccurate.
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asleepathewheel
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listening too long to one song
Mar 2002
time: 00:30
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gads! No one would ever consider invading us if we were defended by an army of nude RPodians! I like it... as long as I don't have to look at another save.
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DeepO
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supporting Candle'Bre
Jan 2002
time: 06:30
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For the moment, we don't need extra units. And while I agree with getting another 13 gpt, I wouldn't throw our extra knights away just yet. As mentioned before, in case we don't have oil or rubber, and we somehow acquire SP, we might need cavs.
So, let's hold the knights for the time being, and disband some WCs... we don't have the cash to upgrade these to knights or cavs anyway.
ZOC: I thought every unit could only be hit once per tile it crosses, and every unit (and fort) could only try to hit an anamey unit once. They don't add up, I thought, but perhaps it might increase the odds, I don't know.
DeepO
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vulture
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Leeds, UK
Jun 2001
time: 05:30
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I've had to do some code re-writing to put the effects of artillery into the stack combat calculator. On the attack, I've assumed that artillery pits its attack strength against the defenders modified defense (the value it would normally use in combat), and fighting a number of rounds equal to the rate of fire. So the actual 'artillery' unit with ROF of 2 fight two rounds of combat with its strength of 12 (vs e.g. an infantry with defense 11.0 unfortified on plains). If there is no lethal bombard for this combat type, results once the defender is on 1 hp are ignored.
On defense, and bombadr unit gets a single shot (ignoring ROF) at those same odds - bombard strength vs attackers defense on the terrain they are attacking from. I'm not convinced this is correct. The first part seems right - I don't recall seeing an attackers losing 2 hp to defensive bombard when attacking a unit stacked with artillery - but the second I'm suspicious about : catapults seem to be far more effective on defensive duties than this calculation would imply. Maybe they use the unmodified unit defense, or something...
EDIT: the code doesn't use bombard optimally (which would take far too much work IMHO). e.g. if all defenders are at 1 hp, bombard units will still be used, when it would be better to keep them spare in case a defender wins and gets a promotion - and can be bombarded back to 1 hp again. I suspect the effect is relatively small except in special cases though.
Last edited by vulture on 24-02-2004 at 18:01
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vulture
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Leeds, UK
Jun 2001
time: 05:30
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So, I've done two sets of tests to try and see what patterns emerge, and to test the code.
Firstly, I pitted two test stacks against various numbers of infantry. Stack A was 17 cavalry. Stack B was 8 guerillas (or infantry, same cost) and 8 artillery. Both stack have the same shield cost (1360 shields). Attacks are against 4, 5 or 6 infantry (a pretty narrow range, but enough to show what is going on I think).
code:
no. of AAA BBB loss ratios
infantry att dead def dead att dead def dead A B
4 3.68 3.96 2.44 3.75 1.21 1.54
5 4.52 4.74 3.60 3.91 1.18 1.09
6 5.22 5.11 4.42 3.52 1.10 0.80
'Loss ratios' are the ratio of shields lost by the attackers and defenders in each case, although the losses in numbers of units aren't significantly different. One thing to notice is that the artillery / infantry (guerilla) combo always kills less than the cavalry force, but does so at less loss to our forces. It's much like having retreat - you give up some of your victories in return for giving up a far greater number of your losses. So against a weak invasion stack, arty and slow movers are better than pure cavalry, since they conserve our forces more efficiently. But with our two sdtacks, you can see that around the 5/6 infantry mark the cavalry still have a decent chance of only leaving one guy alive (or no-one), while the mixed stack is running a pretty good chance of leaving 2 or 3 units alive. As the invasion force gets bigger, the problem gets worse.
IMHO the value of cavalry being able to deal with bigger stacks more than offsets the slightly higher losses incurred in dealing with small stack (which are crushed regardless - the question just being how many losses we take in the process).
The second test was to look at changing the ratio of artillery to guerillas in stack B, against 4 infantry. This yielded no great surprises. With a pure guerilla stack, average enemy dead were 3.95 vs 6.62 of ours. with a 50/50 mix those bcome 3.75 enemy dead vs 2.44 of our - our losses cut by a factor of nearly 3, with very little change to enemy losses. With 12 artillery and 4 guerillas, enemy losses are 2.99, ours 1.01. That's the best 'exchange rate' we get in this scenario, although we would be running a very high 'risk' of 1 or 2 (or even 3) 1 hp infantries hanging around. The ideal artillery / guerilla ratio depends on how much emphasis you put on destroying the enemy right now vs the epmhasis put on conserving strength. For me, the 50/50 mix is reasonable as an all-purpose force. With cavalry instead of guerillas, I'd guess a slighly lower fraction of artillery, since the retreat of cavalry is more or less equivalent in function to bombardment: perhaps 30:70 force mix, although I'd have to run some tests to get a better idea. I'll try and do those tests shortly and put up the numbers for everyone.
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vulture
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Leeds, UK
Jun 2001
time: 05:30
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Second round of test done - this time with 10 attackers as a mix of cavalry and artillery, vs varying numbers of defenders (2-10 infantry, unfortified, open ground). In the tables, no. of cavalry is given; no. of artillery is 10 - no. of cav.
Firstly, the average number of friendly / enemy dead in the combat:
code:
Infantry
C 2 3 4 6 8 10
a 2 0.369 / 1.603 0.480 / 1.320 0.610 / 0.960 0.699 / 0.623 0.745 / 0.431 0.762 / 0.361
v 4 0.555 / 1.905 1.034 / 2.157 1.275 / 1.699 1.432 / 1.087 1.502 / 0.785 1.516 / 0.715
a 6 0.871 / 1.945 1.576 / 2.446 1.956 / 2.218 2.189 / 1.459 2.260 / 1.142 2.275 / 1.076
l 8 1.336 / 1.961 2.121 / 2.598 2.612 / 2.579 2.940 / 1.841 3.018 / 1.499 3.033 / 1.432
r 10 1.835 / 1.972 2.654 / 2.706 3.237 / 2.878 3.681 / 2.234 3.775 / 1.857 3.785 / 1.792
y
This on it's own isn't much use - it is essentially what we saw before. For a given enemy stack, increasing the fraction of bombard units in your force decreases enemy casualties, but decreases friendly casualties to a greater degree.
Another not-very-illuminating table is the ratio of losses : enemy losses divided by friendly losses:
code:
2 3 4 6 8 10
2 4.34 2.75 1.57 0.89 0.58 0.47
4 3.43 2.09 1.33 0.76 0.58 0.47
6 2.23 1.55 1.13 0.67 0.51 0.47
8 1.47 1.22 0.99 0.63 0.50 0.47
10 1.07 1.02 0.89 0.61 0.49 0.47
This also tells us the fairly obvious: as we put more artillery in the force (at the expense of cavalry) we do better and better at inflicting more casualties than we receive - although this may be at the expense of inflicting enough casualties to hurt the enemy at all. Note the last column - all values are the same for the simple reason that every cavalry that attacks has to face a completely health opponent, so all fights are at the same odds, and give the same loss ratio.
In reality (well, in the game) we want to achieve both conservation of our own forces, and destruction of the enemy, and find some balance between the two. We don't want to get a great exchange rate, but leave most of the enemy alive. Nor do we want the enemy body count as high as possible if that means throwing away three times as many troops as he loses. One very crude measure of 'combat effectiveness' can be found from multiplying the loss ratio by the total number of enemy killed (which is in effect enemy_dead^2 / friendly_dead). THIS IS A VERY CRUDE MEASURE. It takes no account of the health of the surviving defenders, the other uses of units (especially artillery), ability to survive a counterattack, and it may well be that e.g. enemy_dead^1.93 / friendly_dead^0.632 is a better measure to use - this is just a hurried attempt to see what falls out when we crunch some numbers.
code:
2 3 4 6 8 10
2 6.96 3.63 1.51 0.56 0.25 0.17
4 6.54 4.50 2.26 0.83 0.46 0.34
6 4.34 3.80 2.52 0.97 0.71 0.51
8 2.88 3.18 2.54 1.15 0.74 0.68
10 2.12 2.75 2.56 1.36 0.91 0.85
How much this means remains to be seen. Taken at face value, it tells us the following. If we are much stronger than the enemy force, we basically need just enough units to kill N 1 hp defenders (which is slightly more than N attackers), and the rest of the force should be artillery. When the enemy is about 1/3 of our numerical strength or more (using infantry, cavalry, artillery only), there is some optimal balance between cavalry and artillery that gives the best results. Any invading force stronger than that, and we're best off with an entirely cavalry force; otherwise we give up too many kills for very little return in saving ourselves.
The point is, in this test it appears that the window where a mix of cavalry and artillery is useful is very narrow. A weak force will be seen off by anything. Even if a force does fall in the narrow window, it is still weak enough to be seen off regardless; the question being at what cost to ourselves. If the force is a genuinely significant invasion force, we need every real attacking unit we can get, and the artillery are more of a hindrance than a help (ignoring their value in defensive bombard).
So I'm going to be very controversial here (and annoy Theseus no end) and say that since we only have resources and time to build a fixed number of units, we should stay away from building any more bombard units, since our enemies aren't now going to invade us unless they are landing a significant force - one that is far out of the window of artillery usefulness.
(Actually, I'm playing devil's advocate to some extent here - the value of artillery isn't going to come out here necessarily. As can be seen from the last two tables, as we put more emphasis on survivability of our units vs kiling the enemy, the window of usefulness widens to the point where artillery is almost the only useful thing to build. So the debate is really about how much value we put on these factors (survivability vs killability) and what kind of size of invasion force we are likely to be up against, and how it stacks up against our ability to manufacture defensive units).
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DeepO
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supporting Candle'Bre
Jan 2002
time: 06:30
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very interesting analysis, vulture!
Something I didn't know... and of course, artillery has more use then purely offensive (one thing not explored here is that it is one of the ways of damaging ships, something cavs can't do), but still...
As always in civ, it boils down to number of troops. The only real way to wage a war is with far superior numbers (of shields, not of units), even if that happens locally. As such, I think we'll want to have bombard units with us in any invasion. Of course, ships and airplanes can also help. In invasions, the survivability ascends the killability, as you need to ship reinforcements from elsewhere. In defense against invasions, we might think otherwise, and want to deal with invaders fast at all costs.
Other aspects of combined arms forces are of course also the defense of stacks. You can't simply put 10 cavs in the open field within reach of the enemy, and expect them to be there next time you look. You can put 10 guerilla + 10 arts in enemy territory. So we'll always need slowmovers, which means we'll always need arts as well.
But that's beside the point. Nobody is suggesting to go invading with an all cav-army, but you've shown they can have their uses. So we better don't throw them away just yet.
I still think that we would do well to disband 13 of our WCs (maybe keep the elites, but even their use is limited). That's 13 gpt... which we later could use to upgrade some other units. We're short of cash...
DeepO
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DeepO
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supporting Candle'Bre
Jan 2002
time: 06:30
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Just out of principle, let's disband the vets before disbanding the elites... you never know.
There's one side of Civ warfare that vulture's analysis doesn't do justice, and that is if you have inferiour units, you just need a multiple of what the other guy has. In that sense, all our obsolete WCs will come in handy if we ever find ourselves on the receiving end of a marine invasion.
But, as already been said above by others, there is only one good way to counter an invasion, and that is to destroy any ship which comes too near for our tastes. We need a navy more then we need infantries in our cities. And bomber support. The main tactic I tried in scenarios like the Alamo (MT3 or 4, before the AU games took off) was to bombard the support vessels with bombers until the transports showed, destroying these first with ships. This way, you don't 'waste' destroyers on taking out destroyers, if all you really want are the troops on the transports. Those enemy destroyers can be handled after the transports are sunk.
So, let's disband some WCs or warriors for all I care to get as much gpt as possible, and build our coastal cities so they can produce our navy when the techs become available. We will need a lot of ships in a very small time window if we want to be safe.
DeepO
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vulture
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Leeds, UK
Jun 2001
time: 05:30
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quote:
Originally posted by Theseus
Ummm, great work vulture, but either I'm an idiot or just very confused. 
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Why can't you be both? 
quote:
Shouldn't the test be Infantry (btw, preferably on high ground) against either Arty/Guerillas or KNIGHTS?
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The units involved in the test don't make much difference - at least not at the level of testingbeing done here. The broad principles remain: if you value only 'efficiency' (getting the best possible loss ratio in your favour) then you want to build almost nothing but artillery; if you value only the number of enemy dead, no matter the cost in your own losses, build absolutely no artillery (and no fast movers either). With almost any kind of balance between the two, there is a range where artillery is useful, depending on force compostion, defence modifiers, force sizes, production capacity, reinforcement delivery rate, risk to production centers, etc. There are too many variables, in all likelihood, to be able to get useful answers out without dealing with very specific situation.
Another problem: we know we want some kind of balance between killing the enemy, and conserving our own force. One issue is deciding just what that balance should be, which is going to be very situation dependent. To pick two examples from the Vox war: In the seige of Arashi, force conservation was our strength. We just sat around and bombarded the immortals into small, ugly pieces because they couldn't hurt us, weren't about to be reinforced, and so we had no reason to risk anything is destroying them. And artillery was very useful. Meanwhile, at the end of the war, the capture of Elipolis was the other extreme. It was a gamble without a huge chance of success, landing a small force to try and capture Elipolis while it was still almost undefended. In that case, the invading force was almost entirely expendable - we wanted to capture the city at any cost to those units, and replacing one of them with a catapult to lower their losses would have been deeply stupid - our chances of taking Elipolis would have dropped drastically.
The second half of this problem is, even if we could get some kind of definite agreement on just how much emphasis to put (in game) on conservation vs killing, how does that translate into the model I've used here (or any other model). I've weighted conservation and killing 'equally' - multiplying the two together. Does anyone have the slightest idea what that means in game terms? I don't. It may turn out to be an extreme emphasis on killing everything that moves. It may equally well be an extremely cautious approach. We have absolutely no idea what a sensible value would be, or what these values mean in-game.
Which is why the whole exercise can only be used to draw very vague conclusions.
quote:
And also, to DeepO's point, Arty have the added bonus of aiding in naval defense (and of course, land defense).
Also: Disband the friggin' WCs. |
Agree on WCs. The cost of keeping them isn't worth it anymore; we could use the extra gpt.
How much can arty help vs shipping in practice? Vs the AI, sure, but against human players I'd expect very few opportunities where the ships are left that close to shore. Now bombers are another matter entirely, when it comes to dealing with boats. Entirely agree with Theseus that a heavy naval and air presence is vital to our defence.
I'd actually suggest setting up an 'understanding' with everyone that any transport that we see on our turn that is potentially able to drop off troops or launch an amphibious attack the following turn will be considered an act of war, and will be attacked. Prior arrangements to have single transports moving allowed. Anything not capable of carrying ground troops (e.g. destroyers) not included in the prohibition. Other nations can defend their waters in a similar fashion.
This would give us at least one turn to try and hit an invasion in the water, except for GoW invading from Port Isolation obviously. But it could save us vs Lego and ND. (With ND, it would set up almost the entire 'gulf' region as a place where warships can happily co-exist, but transports are not allowed except by prior agreement, once they've settled to the coast.
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Cort Haus
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London
Apr 2002
time: 05:30
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If we design a military to defend Stormia we may find that what is needed is one to assault Lego, and vice-versa. Either we build something that has to do for both, or we try and read the geo-political tea-leaves, which is hardly an exact science.
ND have seemingly turning their back on current GS-GoW initiatives to weaken Lego - perhaps even helping Lego to the Wonders that GS is busting a gut to build. However, they must have a plan to hit Lego at some stage unless they fancy their own chances of a SS - but for that you'd have to favour Lego with their massive infrastructural lead and Ind' workers.
Or, ND might want to eat GoW, then GS, then nibble a bit of Lego for Domination. You'd expect Lego to intervene against that, though.
GoW will be chatting with ND soon - tonight perhaps. They are better placed than GS to understand ND, and to get commitments from them.
I think the bottom line is that if ND want to hit Lego in the late-industrial, Stormia is not going to be under threat when Marines come online. On the contrary, we will be invited to join the assault on Lego.
If ND continue to persue short-term interests by working with Lego, they become a potential threat rather than a potential ally. The GAUL principle offers security for Stormia, but if ND don't play, that leaves Lego so strong that for GoW as well as us things start looking hopeless. With no reasonable hope of victory by rational play, they might as well go out with a bang and have a war or two - just for fun - while Lego surge for the line. RP would be easy meat, and GS the obvious follow-up target. So with no GAUL, GoW become a possible threat too.
Conclusion : we will have more reason to require a heavy defensive military without GAUL than with it.
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asleepathewheel
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listening too long to one song
Mar 2002
time: 00:30
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Does ND have Mil trad yet?
Don't be suprised if this isn't the turn that ND attacks GoW or the turn before they attack. WE've seen teams hold the save before for a while in such a situation.
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DeepO
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supporting Candle'Bre
Jan 2002
time: 06:30
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arts for naval bombardment: you're half right... art have a range of 2, which means we can set up traps where their ships have to end the turn within 2 tiles of the coast. I proposed something similar as a protection of RP against GoW, to funnel enemy ships between our ships and the coast, where they can be hit by cats and finished by our ships. The same applies to arts, of course.
Bombers will always be better for naval bombardment, with the only problem that they need to be rebased to reach something, while artillery on RR gets everywhere. And we need flight, of course.
ND: I'm not sure they are planning something evil. They simply have a lot of land to fill. I still don't get how GoW would give them so much. If there will be a cav war, it will very likely be between GoW and ND... and as they both have little reason to betray the other, I don't see it happening.
As to attacking us before attacking GoW: again, I'm not sure. naval invasions are difficult, and we are in the advantage here as we are small... Lego has a tougher time defending (although they have about the same coastal tiles). Currently, our army still is stronger then GoW's, this might also become a factor later on. And perhaps they think now that we're still the team to watch out for, while for us its obvious that both ND and Lego are in a far better position.
DeepO
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Theseus
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The warmonger formerly known as rpodos. Gathering Storm! Apolyton Spirit!!
Apr 2002
time: 00:30
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I'm on it. I'll PM Arrian too, and see if he likes my Blue Team - Red Team idea, also.
And,  , I might PM some of our other illustrious teammates too.
"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in Legoland, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
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24-02-2004 04:49
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