Trace italienne... or how to simulate real-world gunpowder era defense

[Ray Patterson]

In the late fifteenth century, the French army came up with the brilliant idea to use cannons to breach city walls. This was not done before*, as cannons had just been used like catapults and trebuchets... destroying buildings inside the city and thus ruining supplies and creating panic. Using cannons in this way proved a huge success: city after city in Northern Italy fell to the French army. So it only seemed logical that the answer to this attack method was devised in Italy: the trace italienne. The new walls were lower and thicker, and positioned defending cannons in such a way that there would be no blind corners. With the finetuning of this system it became perfectly possible to defend a city again, though the costs of building such defenses was truly astronomical.

I think it would be great to try and put this into a civ mod somehow. In an early modern scenario it would be a great extra. I think the new combat system covers field battles pretty well... the pikeman, knight/cavalry, maceman/musketeer stone scissors paper situation is quite realistic. But sieges could be better. Though a real siege would often end in surrender due to starvation, that would require very different modding if at all possible.

*by Europeans that is. The Ottomans did use cannons that way in the siege of Constantinople, though without success.

[FriendoftheDork]

Originally Posted by Ray Patterson

In the late fifteenth century, the French army came up with the brilliant idea to use cannons to breach city walls. This was not done before*, as cannons had just been used like catapults and trebuchets... destroying buildings inside the city and thus ruining supplies and creating panic. Using cannons in this way proved a huge success: city after city in Northern Italy fell to the French army. So it only seemed logical that the answer to this attack method was devised in Italy: the trace italienne. The new walls were lower and thicker, and positioned defending cannons in such a way that there would be no blind corners. With the finetuning of this system it became perfectly possible to defend a city again, though the costs of building such defenses was truly astronomical.

I think it would be great to try and put this into a civ mod somehow. In an early modern scenario it would be a great extra. I think the new combat system covers field battles pretty well... the pikeman, knight/cavalry, maceman/musketeer stone scissors paper situation is quite realistic. But sieges could be better. Though a real siege would often end in surrender due to starvation, that would require very different modding if at all possible.

*by Europeans that is. The Ottomans did use cannons that way in the siege of Constantinople, though without success.

I don't think this game is detailed enough to simulate pike and shot area armies and warfare.

However, you do have a point about sieges overall. Maybe you could mod in an effect caused by sieging (starvation?). Basically, it could be an effect that causes slight collateral damage to defending units whenever population as lost to starvation, or maybe whenever loosing x bushels of food. This would be somewhat realistic as well, as soldiers are usually fed before civillians and when they die of hunger in droves some soldier might begin to die from it (and disease) as well.

In order to get a good siege up you would actually want to pillage the countryside, block access to foodstuffs so the city cannot work the tiles, and preferably use in combination with naval blockade.
In some rounds, probably as many as it would take to bombard the city down to 0% casualties, the defenders would already be weakened even before the kamikaze cats started rolling through the gates :P

As for the amount of damage and speed of it, that would require some work. I'd like either fast speed but low maximum damage (like airships), or slow speed but without damage cap (yes so you could starve entire units into submission especially those already damaged alot.

The effect would also have to be modified by game speed, although you have more time to siege in marathon you shouldn't have to wait 50 rounds just to get a noticable effect.

What do you think?

[GoodGame]

It does sound interesting to expand the combat system in any way possible.
I'd guess that a method to implement would be to make specific categories of components that figure into the final defense modifier of a city. For instance make the city walls building's defense bonus only good against specific unit types, or make the actual bonus vary with the attacking unit type.

Probably not a difficult task, but the question might be how much does it slow down turns?

I like the above idea of improving sieges too. Zones of control, mapping overland supply routes (has been suggested in much older threads) would probably help in that regard.