Odd odds...

Odd odds... (Full Version)

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Octavian -> Odd odds... (12/18/2021 8:27:17 AM)
I am still struggling heavily with the odds display before battle starts. Two things irritate me: 1. It is not unusual for me to add combat units and get worse odds. This also happens if they attack from a different angle and is not due to overstacking or the like. I HAVE read the manual and played lots of DC games before, but something as odd as these odds hasn´t crossed my gaming life before. 2. As a result and since the odds are tangling around madly if I add this or that unit - which often enough I can´t make any sense of it tactically - I end up by just randomly adding or leaving out this or that unit, until I get the odds I want to see. This is so ridiculous and frustrating for me, that I am on the edge of stopping to play the game. Any help appreciated...

Khanti -> RE: Odd odds... (12/18/2021 10:32:18 AM)
Read carefully all the stats before battle. Yes, carefully. It answers questions. This is not as easy as attacking from different hexes. https://zippyimage.com/image/kill.HuGxn Cumulative modifier shows at glance whether attack is easy one, or not. In the end there is modified offensive power. Which is the only one that matters. The rest shows why that matters ;-)

carll11 -> RE: Odd odds... (12/18/2021 1:47:32 PM)
Khanti, is that the Sigma symbol?

carll11 -> RE: Odd odds... (12/18/2021 1:50:00 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Octavian I am still struggling heavily with the odds display before battle starts. Two things irritate me: 1. It is not unusual for me to add combat units and get worse odds. This also happens if they attack from a different angle and is not due to overstacking or the like. I HAVE read the manual and played lots of DC games before, but something as odd as these odds hasn´t crossed my gaming life before. 2. As a result and since the odds are tangling around madly if I add this or that unit - which often enough I can´t make any sense of it tactically - I end up by just randomly adding or leaving out this or that unit, until I get the odds I want to see. This is so ridiculous and frustrating for me, that I am on the edge of stopping to play the game. Any help appreciated... I have the same issue, for some reason when I reselect the order of which units attack first second third etc., the odds change as well.

Jagger2002 -> RE: Odd odds... (12/18/2021 3:15:25 PM)
When I am looking at an attack, I am often looking more at the defenders readiness, morale and occupied terrain more than odds. I see the odds as a ballpark and the higher the better but the stamina of the defender is very important as well. Low stamina defenders often won't hold vs even low odds. High stamina defenders are dangerous.

Octavian -> RE: Odd odds... (12/19/2021 7:31:33 AM)
I know the importance of the Sigma-Result and all that. Still I encounter very strange odd-changes if you add this or that unit to an attack. I can´t make any sense of the fact, that even a very bad unit, let´s say a battered panzer battailion attacking into heavy forest, why not being very effective, should indeed lead to a drastic reduction in Sigma-Result. Wouldn´t they make at least a little contribution to an attack??? Sorry, I don´t get it and even thorough reading of all the dozen factors doesn´t make me more clever. This game is over-convoluted with figures, the player can´t make sense of in a practical matter. Please don´t get me wrong. I am a strong supporter of DC-series and Vic and I still carve out major victories against challenging AI, cause I know what to look for, but it is stupid for me to just guess and play around with the battle odds instead of making informed decisions when I play a strategy game. Any help still appreciated.

Octavian -> RE: Odd odds... (12/19/2021 7:32:16 AM)
I know the importance of the Sigma-Result and all that. Still I encounter very strange odd-changes if you add this or that unit to an attack. I can´t make any sense of the fact, that even a very bad unit, let´s say a battered panzer battailion attacking into heavy forest, although for sure not being very effective, should indeed lead to a drastic reduction in Sigma-Result. Wouldn´t they make at least a little contribution to an attack??? Sometimes adding (!) a single (!) unit can lead to a reduction of say 3241 attack to 1490 or something the like in the Sigma-result. Sorry, I don´t get it and even thorough reading of all the dozen factors doesn´t make me more clever. This game is over-convoluted with figures, the player can´t make sense of in a practical matter. And I also suspect there is a bug in the way the odds are calculated before the battle starts. See also the other comment here, that sometimes you get different results depending on the order in which you add units to a battle. That is definitely not working as intended. Please don´t get me wrong. I am a strong supporter of DC-series and Vic and I still carve out major victories against challenging AI, cause I know what to look for, but it is stupid for me to just guess and play around with the battle odds instead of making informed decisions when I play a strategy game. Any help still appreciated, I would hate giving up on that game.

pedro0930 -> RE: Odd odds... (12/19/2021 8:03:19 AM)
My guess on why adding unit sometimes reduce the predicted odds is because for example, adding tanks into a attack into heavy forest lower your predicted terrain bonus/penalty. The predictor doesn't weigh the unit size correctly/accurately, so it lowers your overall sigma. You can always just ignore the predictor and use your intuition and develop your own heuristic. The predictor is only introduced in Shadow Empire. Before, there is literally no tool that tells the player how a battle will go. You figure out some rule of thumb. Look at the enemy entrenchment, readiness, terrain, and decides if you like the odds. And sometimes the outcome is still unexpected, then I'll go into the detailed combat report and quickly click through some rounds to see maybe the enemy just got some lucky rolls or a factor I didn't consider played a role.

Octavian -> RE: Odd odds... (12/19/2021 8:22:32 AM)
Thanks Pedro. But in sum what you are saying is, the predictor doesn´t work correctly. And that is my point, too. And that is meant far away from the prespective of liking to have a predictor that is a 100 percent guarantee of the outcome. I am very aware of the fact of necessary dice rolling and that´s a good thing, since I don´t like to play chess, when I play a wargame. But the predictor should at least in itself make some sort of sense and not force me to click around madly until I see odds with which I like to take the risk of an attack. So, still I hope, I am overlooking something in my experiences of the odds-calculator or: I hope for a patch in that regard.

Khanti -> RE: Odd odds... (12/19/2021 9:05:01 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: carll11 Khanti, is that the Sigma symbol? Yes. Sigma, uppercase Σ, in general mathematics is used as an operator for summation. About the odds. In Vic's games you can have an individual result of attack 1000 versus defense of 1 and result is a miss and defender won. Or you can have your defending unit result of 1000 and attacker had 50, but result was KILL. I always say it's not sensible, although mathematically correct. This way you get strange individual (soldier to soldier) results which translates into the final line.

warnevada -> RE: Odd odds... (12/19/2021 9:40:57 PM)
The current version of the odds calculation is not working correctly which leads to some very strange results. But there is one combat factor in Vic's games which even when working correctly can yield unexpected results. That is the Max Attack factor. It simulates so many attackers that they get in each other's way leading to poor results. There is a Max Attack parameter in the game; I believe it's set to five. So when an element is attacked the first five times it's at full effect, but every attack after that is less effective. This why adding a unit may decrease the odds because you're actually adding ineffective fire. This is mostly encountered when attacking a small defender. When I say small it's in terms of number of elements not strength. So for example if you're attacking a unit with three Tiger tanks with units having 50 elements in them, only 15 shots will be fully effective and 35 will be penalized each combat round.

Octavian -> RE: Odd odds... (12/20/2021 1:26:57 PM)
Having a calculation that doesn´t work at all, doesn´t seem to help. Wild guessing and testing is a serious drawback in having fun with the game. Hope Vic notices and has some remedy for this.

carll11 -> RE: Odd odds... (12/20/2021 2:39:21 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: pedro0930 My guess on why adding unit sometimes reduce the predicted odds is because for example, adding tanks into a attack into heavy forest lower your predicted terrain bonus/penalty. The predictor doesn't weigh the unit size correctly/accurately, so it lowers your overall sigma. You can always just ignore the predictor and use your intuition and develop your own heuristic. The predictor is only introduced in Shadow Empire. Before, there is literally no tool that tells the player how a battle will go. You figure out some rule of thumb. Look at the enemy entrenchment, readiness, terrain, and decides if you like the odds. And sometimes the outcome is still unexpected, then I'll go into the detailed combat report and quickly click through some rounds to see maybe the enemy just got some lucky rolls or a factor I didn't consider played a role. Also there are just so many rounds units fight in a 'combat phase', so that batted old pzr unit taeks up rounds that could be utilized by another unit already committed thats more cohesive, higher vigor, better suited to terrain etc..

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