[question] Does Cover I/II promotions work against city attacks?

kaspergm

kaspergm

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I remember in one of the patches a while ago, that the developers claimed to have fixed Cover I/II promotions. This was great news to me, and I frequently upgrade my siege weapons with these promotions in the hopes of having them survive (longer) within firing distance of cities. However, recently, I heard someone say that Cover promotions don't work against city attacks, but only against attacks from normal ranged units (and, I guess, other siege weapons). Can anybody confirm or deny this? Wasting promotions going through Cover I and II if it doesn't work against city attacks is obviously very bad.
 
It really doesn't feel like it. I had my cover 2 cannon last night severely hurt by a city attack, then the crossbowman in it did rather low damage to it. like 30 dmg vs 15

This seems to be really, really hard to test, too because barbarians, my favorite dummy test subjects will not take cover 1+2 when promoting their units. However, when I tried to attack that dummy barbarian with 20 promotions (that only showed shock 3, city attack and rough terrain 3) his strength was listed as 16.88 with +45 open terrain defense bonus.

16.88 is exactly 211% of 8, and 111% - 45% from shock 3 is 66% - exactly what Cover 2 gives.

It's still very broken. Very, very much so. But it does seem to work.
 
Quineloe said:
It's still very broken. Very, very much so. But it does seem to work.
Click to expand...
Thanx for your reply, but I'm at a bit of a loss with regards to how to understand that quoted part. You say "it's broken ... but it works". That seems to contradict itself?
 
It doesn't show up on combat analysis, that part is broken. The promotion wasn't even visible on the units, that part is also broken. The strength however was clearly shock 3 + 66%, so that part was also broken.
 
Quineloe said:
It doesn't show up on combat analysis, that part is broken. The promotion wasn't even visible on the units, that part is also broken. The strength however was clearly shock 3 + 66%, so that part was also broken.
Click to expand...
Ok, thanx for clarifying. When you say it didn't show up, was that simply because the promotion panel was full all the way to the left, or was there empty room and it still didn't show?
 
No, it only showed Shock and March 3, City attack. That's only 7 promotions on a unit that doesn't have any default modifiers taking up space.
Maybe it was just a display bug, because I clicked "promote" 20 times to make sure the AI would pick everything.
 
Okay... the cover promotions are not broken... what is broken here is the default "promotion" for Siege units. No Defensive Bonuses means exactly that... so picking Cover with a Siege (or mounted or armor or any other unit that has No Defensive Bonuses) is wasted. It completely deactivates any bonuses on defense whether it be terrain, nearby GG or other Promos. You'll get NO positive modifiers when defending with these units (Tested this with IGE when wondering why my Trebs were being one-shotted by cities with Cover II).

To correct this for my mod-in-progress, I've replaced the functionality of No Defensive Bonuses setting <NoDefensiveBonus> to false and adding <RoughDefense> of -25 to offset the 25% bonus for rough terrain. Now it effectively becomes No Defensive Bonuses From Terrain but still allows a unit to gain benefits from other promotions, fortifying, being in a fort/citadel, near a Great General, etc.

I also debated the idea of adding Defensive Penalty back in (still in game in Pedia but unused by any unit) for Siege but their lower CS compared to RCS takes that into account, I concluded.

Although I am still debating add a RangedDefenseMod to all siege equipment to protect them more from city bombardment and cowering archers forcing Mounted/Armor (and Melee/Gunpowder to a lesser extent) to do their intended jobs and overrun them.
 
Barghaest said:
Okay... the cover promotions are not broken... what is broken here is the default "promotion" for Siege units. No Defensive Bonuses means exactly that... so picking Cover with a Siege (or mounted or armor or any other unit that has No Defensive Bonuses) is wasted. It completely deactivates any bonuses on defense whether it be terrain, nearby GG or other Promos. You'll get NO positive modifiers when defending with these units (Tested this with IGE when wondering why my Trebs were being one-shotted by cities with Cover II).

To correct this for my mod-in-progress, I've replaced the functionality of No Defensive Bonuses setting <NoDefensiveBonus> to false and adding <RoughDefense> of -25 to offset the 25% bonus for rough terrain. Now it effectively becomes No Defensive Bonuses From Terrain but still allows a unit to gain benefits from other promotions, fortifying, being in a fort/citadel, near a Great General, etc.

I also debated the idea of adding Defensive Penalty back in (still in game in Pedia but unused by any unit) for Siege but their lower CS compared to RCS takes that into account, I concluded.

Although I am still debating add a RangedDefenseMod to all siege equipment to protect them more from city bombardment and cowering archers forcing Mounted/Armor (and Melee/Gunpowder to a lesser extent) to do their intended jobs and overrun them.
Click to expand...

what about the siege tower that starts with cover I?
 
Doctor Doom said:
what about the siege tower that starts with cover I?
Click to expand...

EDIT: Removed comment because it was based on incorrect information. See following posts.
 
I tested this in multiplayer hotseat where player one controls all civs, much easier and more precise than adding exp to barbs.

Cover one and two provide defense for all units except for siege versus city attack. Terrain and terrain promos also provide defense for units that can get defensive bonuses.

Cover one and two on siege units provide defense against non city ranged attacks. It would help versus the archer but the city will not care.

The ikhanda bonus promotion for Zulu stacks defensively with everything else. Drill 3 + unique Zulu promotions + cover 2 + rough terrain was slightly stronger than Shock 3 + unique Zulu promotions + cover 2 on flat terrain.

I did not try siege towers or rams.
 
KmDubya said:
Cover one and two on siege units provide defense against non city ranged attacks. It would help versus the archer but the city will not care.
Click to expand...

Wait, what? They actually get the bonuses with No Defensive Bonuses now? I'd just run my test with IGE a few weeks ago and never saw any positive modifiers on any unit that had No Defensive Bonuses (parked a few near a city gave them promos and made them a different empire so I could test firing with Archer and City). Apparently either I missed an update (kept auto-updates disabled for other reasons) or something else interfered. Regardless appears I might be mistaken and have drawn erroneous conclusions...

Now if what you are saying is true it further compounds my issue with siege being hammered by cities if Cover does nothing against it... come to think of it my melee units take far less damage from cities than my ranged units, perhaps city attacks are considered melee instead of ranged. I'll also have to test air strikes to see if they qualify as range for Cover.

EDIT: Also going to twink with CityDefense setting under Promotions and see how it works and if it's worth adding to Cover/Siege units.
 
I just checked again and found that archers with cover do not get protection from city attack.

Great generals do provide defense for siege and archers versus city attack.

Now I only checked with melee units, I did not check gunpowder in case they are different for some reason.
 
KmDubya said:
I just checked again and found that archers with cover do not get protection from city attack.

Great generals do provide defense for siege and archers versus city attack.

Now I only checked with melee units, I did not check gunpowder in case they are different for some reason.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you're right. I was mistaken. It also appears Cover gives no bonus vs Air Strikes and siege units were getting other defensive bonuses (nearby Siege Tower for one). Going to have to dink with the promo settings in my mod-in-progress to add CityDefense to Cover... and find some way to improve defense vs Air units since their "range attack" doesn't count as one.
 
So am I right in concluding that current status is the following:
  • Cover I/II does provide defense bonus against archers for any unit, regardless of them having no defence bonus on terrain or not.
  • Cover I/II does not provide defense bonus against cities for any unit.
  • Cover I/II does not provide defense bonus against air units for any unit.

I don't guess there's anything we can do about it not triggering against cities except for a .dll mod? I wonder if it's too late to get Firaxis to fix this as part of a patch.
 
kaspergm said:
So am I right in concluding that current status is the following:
  • Cover I/II does provide defense bonus against archers for any unit, regardless of them having no defence bonus on terrain or not.
  • Cover I/II does not provide defense bonus against cities for any unit.
  • Cover I/II does not provide defense bonus against air units for any unit.

I don't guess there's anything we can do about it not triggering against cities except for a .dll mod? I wonder if it's too late to get Firaxis to fix this as part of a patch.
Click to expand...

Cover I/II DOES provide protection for melee units versus city attack. It works fine for melee. Siege and archers are the ones with the problem with cover and city attack.
 
KmDubya said:
Cover I/II DOES provide protection for melee units versus city attack. It works fine for melee. Siege and archers are the ones with the problem with cover and city attack.
Click to expand...

I'm not seeing it on melee versus city.... matter of fact I wasn't seeing it listed on any unit when I checked the attack from an archer either. It may be an IGE related bug involving the combat preview... I'll have to set up a hotseat duel game so I can really test things without IGE later tonight when I get back.

If it still isn't working properly (and I thought it worked vs ranged units before), I'll come up with some kind of workaround (maybe replace RangedDefenseMod with bonuses in defense vs specific combat classes).
 
KmDubya said:
Cover I/II DOES provide protection for melee units versus city attack. It works fine for melee. Siege and archers are the ones with the problem with cover and city attack.
Click to expand...
Ok ... can we pinpoint why it doesn't work for siege and archer units - is it related to the "no terrain defence" ability, or something deeper in the code? Has anybdy tried remove the "no terrain defence" ability from archers/siege units and see if that fixes it?
 
Perhaps if the city has Wall of Babylon, Oligarchy, Their Finest Hour, and Goddess of Protection, or some combination of the 4 can account for how quickly the siege units seem to be taken out. I have taken to moving all melee units in a round early, as the opponent tends to go for the injured units first. Still, if I need 2 siege units I try to move in 3. I know one will get demolished or destroyed.
 
I know there are ways to circumvent the problem, but I would rather have it solved. Putting one or two promotions into taking Cover is an honest investment, so it should come with a reasonable return. It's not like early game warmongering is a winning strategy in the first place, and at 75 hammers, a catapult is not a cheap unit when you're in classical era, so it's not like you just spew out three or four of them in a rush and then don't care if a couple are lost before they even get to attack once. I did sort of have a laugh when someone in the other thread discussing how to warmonger in BnW said "turtle until Information era and then conquer everybody with stealth bombers" - of course that is putting things a bit on the edge, but it does sort of sum up quite well the problems with early game offensive gamestyle.
 
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