Forum:Combat statistics in middle-click hover window

From Freeciv

Hi there -- first-time Freeciv player that got schooled for a while over the weekend until I managed to cram through the Combat documentation. I discovered early on that having a combat unit selected and middle-clicking on an enemy unit gives you a window with information about that unit, including the chances of winning combat both offensively and defensively. However! -- and frankly this is a bug, because wrong information is worse than none at all -- I learned after a few hours of painful losses that those percentages simply can't be trusted:

• If you are attacking a stack of units and the unit that actually defends isn't on top, it will give you percentages for the wrong unit and thus you will probably die ignominiously.
• If you are attacking a unit while at less than full strength, I'm not sure it takes that into account. In fact, the in-game help says nothing about wounded units attacking with less power; I had to find that out from the wiki.
• I'm pretty sure it doesn't take defensive terrain into account at all, which is a lethal mistake when attacking a unit in mountains.

Between these three factors, I would regularly find veteran catapults getting wiped out without causing a scratch when attacking archers. It took me 15 minutes of consistent losses to comes to grips with the fact that the listed "99%" win chance was a joke, and a lot longer to read the docs in ridiculous detail and calculate in my head what my actual chances of success were.

I wish I'd known from the beginning that fortified units in mountains are basically invulnerable at low to medium tech levels; it would have changed my play strategy a great deal. Baxil 00:56, 5 May 2009 (UTC)