Question about Artillery (and a possible solution...)

[Kryten]

I have been following with great interest all the various threads about artillery/bombardment units. Some people like them; some people think they are too weak; some would rather have four pikemen defending than two pikes and two cannon; some think that units with one move point cannot attack well; and just about everybody thinks that the AI doesn't build enough of them, if any.

Well, here's my question.....can anybody out there with more experiance with civ3 than myself tell me what would happen if all the land siege units were given attack & defence strengths (and have the attack + bombarment + ZOC flags ticked), AS WELL AS keeping their current bombardment factors and ranges? For example:-
Catapults = attack 4, defence 1, move 1.
Cannons = attack 8, defence 2, move 1.
Artillery = attack 12, defence 3, move 1.
Radar Art = attack 16, defence 4, move 1 (or maybe 2?).

Would the AI start building these units, treating them as ordinary attacking units? And would they still keep their defensive bombardment fire against enemy attackers? Last of all, once we have conned the AI into building them, would they be used to offensivley bombard?

Even if the answer to the last item is "NO", would it at least be a partial soultion? Because at the moment only the human player seems to build and use seige units, which is a bit of a cheat, and this may also give the human player as well as the AI more of a reason to build them (BTW, the stats above are just my 'guesstimate'. They may need tweeking to avoid the good old civ2 late game 'howitzer-blitz').

So, your thoughts please.