Take CTP's Bombardment

In Civ CTP, when you bombarb with big things like catapults, you damage units' life, and you can reduce the cities' population too, it was cool.

But in Civ4, disappointment, it reduces only the defense rate of cities

I find it underpowered, it could make the same thing as in CTP, damaging units' life (but only a bit, with a quantity of HP damaged which grows with bombarder's power) and reducing cities' population too. (but rarely, with a chance % (that grows with the power of the unit)

It will give a real interest, and fun, to this near useless ability.

Maybe they should bring back the Civ 3 approach, where artillery bombarding the city would have a chance of destroying a building rather than damaging the defences during bombardment.

Click to expand...

Destroying buildings is maybe overpowered.
But this is realistic.
If it is a good thing, the chance would be very low, (like for population reduction which would be lower than building destroying chance), and the first buildings destroyed would be the cheapests first, and the expensive ones after.

I would go with a hybrid of both - In your "selections" for bombard, you choose:
Superstructure (i.e. buildings) - which would target military buildings first - barracks, drydock, etc. - or if targeting a non-city tile, it would be the improvement on that tile.
Units - does damage to one or all units in the tile
Population - If city, use this to just reduce the population of the city


- Sligo

We can first think that the biggest choice is the best.

But this idea isn't very good :

-That's not very realistic : When you shoot with a catapult/bombarder, you can't choose what you'll destroy, often, and you'll destroy something, without having the choice of what ! You have to let the chance to hazard.

-This is too hard because it offers 3 buttons (or why not 3 sub-buttons), this makes the thing too complicated, with too many options, we have to keep it simple.

-It can be an abuse : You can only fire against population, or only to something, it can make imbalances, you should, instead, have the 3 things in the same time, but with lower impact/damages, and with a lower % chance to destroy/reduce pop too.

i think it should be the same as the aircraft have in civIV. you have a choice between bombarding city defenses or city defenders. defenders you can only lower by 50%. this would also allow them be used in deffence of a city or to bombard units and improvments outside the city.

Well I think the current model (collateral damage to units when attacking, bombard defenses when bombarding) is good, but including the destruction of population or buildings would be good. (that should also be done in air bombardment so that a city can have all of its buildings destroyed as well as its units/defense + surrounding terrain improvements.

[/QUOTE]
But in Civ4, disappointment, it reduces only the defense rate of cities
[/QUOTE]

You don't understand the meaning bombarding in CIV4
The CIV3 model was horrible and the CIV4 model is anywhere from underpowered

Well I think the current model (collateral damage to units when attacking, bombard defenses when bombarding) is good

Click to expand...

Yes but, in reality, you don't lose the catapult when you shoot with it ...

The CIV3 model was horrible and the CIV4 model is anywhere from underpowered

Click to expand...

Why ?

Actually, I LIKED the way it worked in CIV III... but I was a player. Developing AI to use that much power was probably too difficult for the game designers. In CIV III, the AI had to cheat to balance the game.

If we give to bombarders, only one order 'bombard', that does the 3 things :

-Damaging units in the slot.
-Chance of reducing population.
-Chance of destroying buildings.
(or maybe others, but with each other thing destroyed, reduce the chance or the power of the impact of each)

The AI won't have problems with that.

I actually have always thought "selective bombardment" should not be available automatically. There ought to be some tech like Guided Bomb. Only after that's been researched should a bomber be able to choose its target aspect of a city. And until that's possible population should be reduced, too.

The problem is that choosing its target can be imbalanced.
You can choose always to attack the same thing, and it'll be too insane for this thing after, you'll easily destroy what you want.

I think that when you bombard, the 3 things can be touched, but each thing has a little impact/little chance to touch.

This thing of equal touching for each thing is maybe the most balanced.

Artillery has the very good thing that fires from a distance, so it's very difficult to see it being killed when it is attacking (exactly the opposite than what happens in the game) but is very vulnerable when the enemy is close, or can spot it's location (can guide his artillery shots accordingly). That is true for all ages. In this aspect, it can't be denied that CIV3 model was closer to the reality. I don't know why they chose to abandon it, but the current model is extremely inefficient and unrealistic. For example, of course Ceasar wasn't building new catapults/siege machines for each town he wanted to conquer, and the same also applied to all other great generals.

I could defend the "game-play" aspects, but not the aesthetic or realistic aspect of the selection.

As for the other "complicated bombardment" I believe that since city size has no effect on the defence of the city there is no meaning in lowering the population (I agree with the designer's choice). But probably artillery (and cannons, but with much lower effect) should have also the ability to bombard the soldiers (like the air strike command). That should also be true when you are at defence: you should also be able to bombard the defenders that are standing in the field.

Another idea, that is also quite realistic: all siege weapons would work as they do now in the game, but they should never be destroyed (always retreat) during their attack unless the opponent has also a siege weapon in the stack (supposing that since they spot the location of the weapons, they fired for retaliation). This would make even more imperative the need for combined arms in attack.

Catapults shouldn't be able to reduce city defenses in the game. Cannons were incredibly useful because they suddenly made castle walls far less impregnable. I'm sure that catapults were capable of knocking down walls, but the ability was minor. This can be modelled in their collateral damage.

If catapults can cause collateral damage up to 50% by bombarding, but not remove defensive bonuses caused by walls or forts it adds some much-needed use to military defenses, and makes city battles more realistic.

Defensive bonuses could also affect vulnerability to collateral damage, so that having a few catapults in a city would enable you to do well against a lot more catapults outside it.

If artillery units then had their base strength reduced so that they couldn't really overpower other units except by bombarding and having the help of another unit this would make the game more realistic and I'm not sure that it would unbalance things much.

there is no meaning in lowering the population

Click to expand...

If you can fire at enemy's soldiers, you can also fire at enemy's citizens...
This isn't a problem.