Why can you not bombard units not in a city and cause collateral damage with a battleship ? You can with Cannons !

Often in War Battleships would lay fire on land units.

Am I doing something wrong ?

Battleships do not cause collateral damage. Cannons can cause collateral damage.
Your right, it makes no sense.

Because it would screw the defender in island maps

Is there a file you can edit to enable this or is that too hard ?

Why can you not bombard units not in a city and cause collateral damage with a battleship ? You can with Cannons !

Often in War Battleships would lay fire on land units.

Am I doing something wrong ?

Cannons don't do collateral damage either when bombarding.. ;) Only on direct attack. Being able to damage units without any chance at receiving damage would easily be imbalanced.
Given, it wouldn't be too bad, if ships could attack cities directly, but they would need high penalties just to stay non-overpowering at their 40 strength against production weak island cities. (as were the Battleships of Civ2)


€: considering modding, it possibly can be done - as it would essentially be the same thing that Bombers do.

Battleships do not cause collateral damage. Cannons can cause collateral damage.
Your right, it makes no sense.

Battleships do cause collateral damage but only when attacking ships. Giving them an ability to cause collateral damage to the units in coastal cities would make the navy much more important then it is now. Battleships would be alot more valuable then, especially now that in patch 3.17 siege weapons can't attack from transports. Basically after 3.17 I do not heave to fear a naval invasion from the AI, since they can't soften up the units in the city with siege they will be forced to fight every healthy defender with -50% strength.

Battleships do cause collateral damage but only when attacking ships. Giving them an ability to cause collateral damage to the units in coastal cities would make the navy much more important then it is now. Battleships would be alot more valuable then, especially now that in patch 3.17 siege weapons can't attack from transports. Basically after 3.17 I do not heave to fear a naval invasion from the AI, since they can't soften up the units in the city with siege they will be forced to fight every healthy defender with -50% strength.

The AI sucks at it, but the player still has a lot of strong options, ranging from combat II amphibious to marines to carriers with fighters, which can knock down defenses just fine!

As bad as the AI is at doing amphibious attacks, it's even worse at defending them, pretty fun.

Just ask the germans on the shores of Normandie about battleship damage.

Being able to damage units without any chance at receiving damage would easily be imbalanced.


Not really, Advance Wars does it. Granted, it is a different game, but I think Civ would be a more interesting game if they modeled combat more along the lines of Advance Wars.

"The Road to War" is the most known Mod that has this feature and its just fine.

The bombardment needed to be nerfed for it to be balanced however.

Not really, Advance Wars does it. Granted, it is a different game, but I think Civ would be a more interesting game if they modeled combat more along the lines of Advance Wars.

Yeah but in advance wars units are not in a stack. You could punch through defensive line and assault the offending long range unit directly or you could hit it with other long range unit. What do you do in civ 4 where artilery is going to be part of the stack of 50 or so units.

Flank them?

Again, I think Civ combat should more closely resemble Advance Wars. I don't think ditching the stack method of combat may be necessary, but perhaps putting caps on how many units can be in a stack would be interesting.

Flank them?

That's the idea :lol:. If you want to see an AI suicide HUGE stacks into 80% defense then this is the way to go.

Cannons don't do collateral damage either when bombarding.. ;) Only on direct attack. Being able to damage units without any chance at receiving damage would easily be imbalanced.
Given, it wouldn't be too bad, if ships could attack cities directly, but they would need high penalties just to stay non-overpowering at their 40 strength against production weak island cities. (as were the Battleships of Civ2)


€: considering modding, it possibly can be done - as it would essentially be the same thing that Bombers do.

It does make a great deal of sense historically for ships to be able to damage land units. But they should not be able to do so free of risk. I think your idea is the way to do it in the current game mechanism, treat it as a bomber attack with a range of 1. It would be a good idea to give certain units the ability to intercept the ships in the same way SAM infantry can to aircraft. Cannons and artillery and maybe machineguns could have high chances of "interception" and basic units like riflemen (and more modern units) might have a 5% chance just to add a little uncertainty and tanks should be quite good.

This use of cannons and artillery leads to an interesting question, since they can inflict collateral damage and no longer enter the tile they are attacking (in BtS) should they now be able to attack ships in adjacent tiles and inflict collateral damage on a stack of ships (and perhaps any troops they're carrying)? If it is fair for ships to give collateral damage to land units (but not direct damage) then it would be fair for certain land units to return the favour.

I would add a fortress building in a city that can retalliate against bombarding navy, because bombarding navy makes sense. The bombarding ships shouldn't be a battle ship then but maybe an extra unit that can bombard. About the fortress, it should do damage back based on the technology (catapults, trebuchets, canons, artillery, etc....).

I think Dales combat mod gives a lot more bombarding options, ie ships can bombard land and improvements, aircraft can attack buildings and population, etc. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=257210

@geny: I think battleships historically did screw defenders in island maps :-)

@Killroyan: I agree with some sort of shoot-back units that may even be of help against units passing by (a la forts in colonization). This mimicks the importance of coastal forts near waterways, eg gibraltar. If my understanding of naval doctrine is correct, it was considered a bad idea to attack coastal batteries from ships, probably due to the inherent difference in firepower and vulnerability between floating and fixed installations.

Again, I think Civ combat should more closely resemble Advance Wars. I don't think ditching the stack method of combat may be necessary, but perhaps putting caps on how many units can be in a stack would be interesting.

Off topic;

I've played Advance Wars a lot and I'd have to say I think its combat system would not go very well in Civ. The method for bombardment from it could be of value but that's certainly nothing unique to AW.

It's a good system for the sort of game it is because maps are always very small and unit numbers need to remain limited to make sure the game doesn't get too epic. In a way, AW is more chess-like than Civ, because placement of units with respect to each other is far more critical.

I think I agree with the concept of no damage to land based units from Battleship attacks. Frankly, it would be too easy. Not only that, but as has been pointed out here already, there are certainly ways for you to damage enemy land units from the sea. Bring some carriers, and bring some cruise missles. Also, capture your own Island cities and base some bombers there.

To be fair, land based units didn't really have a heck of a lot to fear from direct attacks from the sea until airplanes and rockets. The stripping of cultural defenses is more than enough to reflect the damage done by frigates and later battleships.

Not only that, but I think it would mess up gameplay. The Civ IV idea of bringing more than one kind of unit to a battle is a pretty good one. I seriously doubt that I would ever build a missle carrying submarine if battleships could bombard land units. Now, especially if seige units can't attack from a boat, I can see diverting quite a few hammers in that direction.

Gameplay > Reality

Unfortunately. I'd think it be a good idea.

Sea attacks have never been that damaging.

They are able to use a huge amount of firepower. However, the land-based defenders typically went into underground bunkers and remained relatively unhurt. The lack of effectiveness was compounded by poor spotting of the shots from a ship. It's easy to spot a shot on the open sea and adjust aim, but hard over land. You're also firing blind from a ship, since you're not likely to have any ground troops directing fire as you would with traditional artillery. Additionally, the large distances involved hampered aiming since large warships aren't really eager to go near shores that are likely mined against amphibious invasion.

Sea attacks have never been that damaging.

They are able to use a huge amount of firepower. However, the land-based defenders typically went into underground bunkers and remained relatively unhurt. The lack of effectiveness was compounded by poor spotting of the shots from a ship. It's easy to spot a shot on the open sea and adjust aim, but hard over land. You're also firing blind from a ship, since you're not likely to have any ground troops directing fire as you would with traditional artillery. Additionally, the large distances involved hampered aiming since large warships aren't really eager to go near shores that are likely mined against amphibious invasion.

It's a good point and it actually makes the gameplay of being able to bombard defenses (Walls won't hold up to destroyer shelling, and a city's morale isn't going to be high if many of its buildings are rubble) but not actually damage units. Maybe it would be more realistic if battleships could damage defenders before they reach the same era (I doubt longbows could effectively hide from 16 cannon shells for long) however if the player is in that scenario weakening the defenders is kind of moot - marines will pretty much crush everything pre-infantry with ease.

Nobody thinks such bombardment is represented by a ship's ability to reduce defenses of coastal cities to zero? :confused:

I'm pretty sure my last post indicated that's exactly what I thought...

It looks that nobody in here ever heard of cannon boat diplomacy..... TotalPackage is right about more modern times. but he's forgetting that for a long time a ship had more cannons that most of armies ( a typical XVI century warship had 300 cannons, while most of the battles of that time had 20 cannons in total... and it gone that way until napoleonic wars ). And they were used lots of times as mobile artilery ( it was far easier to transport 20 cannons on a boat than 2 in muddy roads ) from close range ( I could even quote the boxer rebelion in more modern days..... )

I do understand with boats don't have collateral, but RL wise they would seriously deserve it far more than siege atleast during the frigate/ironclad era

It looks that nobody in here ever heard of cannon boat diplomacy..... TotalPackage is right about more modern times. but he's forgetting that for a long time a ship had more cannons that most of armies ( a typical XVI century warship had 300 cannons, while most of the battles of that time had 20 cannons in total... and it gone that way until napoleonic wars ). And they were used lots of times as mobile artilery ( it was far easier to transport 20 cannons on a boat than 2 in muddy roads ) from close range ( I could even quote the boxer rebelion in more modern days..... )

I do understand with boats don't have collateral, but RL wise they would seriously deserve it far more than siege atleast during the frigate/ironclad era

That would be a very, very big XVI century warship :) I assume you mean XVII/XVIII century warships. The Mary Rose was one fo the first warship to have broadside cannon, and that ship was build in the 1540s with 78 guns.

300 cannons certainly wasn't typical for any warship. Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar had 112 guns, and hardly any ship has been build carrying more than 120 guns.

I mean XVI century ship. In 1580 the admiral ship of the Portuguese fleet had more of 500 ( ! ) cannons in the manifest ( in spite of most of them were berços, small caliber ones with rear loading, pretty similar in size and caliber to modern day mortars ... the real cannons ( the ones that deserved the name) were 48.


And that story of Mary Rose... Portuguese Caravels in the XV century already had broadside cannons and the Portuguese galleons in 1512 ( Battle of Diu ) all had broadside cannons. Now if you meant a full broadside cannons....

In addition, with the Next War mod and those "Walking Robots" they can do range attack on units and this is more what I was getting at.