How exactly does bombardment work?

Please help answer a burning question: Everyone knows how combat attack and defense factors work, but how does bombardment work? I assume it works randomly, the higher the bomberdment stats the higher the chance of a successful bombardment, but I'm not sure. Does the defense of the unit being bombarded have anything to do with it? Will a unit with a higher defense value be less likely to suffer damage? And how does rate of fire work? Are the numbers recalculated each round or will a unit with a ROF of 3 kill 3 hp's no matter what?

Sorry if this was asked already.

it works the same as the Attack rating, so a Bombardment rating of 12 is the equivalent of an Attack rating of 12 and will have the same chance of success against a similar defensive rating.

the defensive units bombardment rating is only taken into consideration when the defensive unit is being attacked and the defensive unit has a defensive rating. If the defending unit has both a defensive rating and a bombard rating the defending unit recieves 1 free defensive attack at the defending units bombardment rating.

If the defending unit has no defensive rating they will be captured without getting their defensive shot. Unless of course they are defended by another unit in which case one defending unit with bombardment will get one free shot. If there are more than one units with bombard ratings stacked together only one gets a defensive bombardment at a time.

rate of fire is taken into consideration only when a unit is attacking with bombardment. The unit takes one shot at the enemy for each level of RoF. These are all calculated at the same time and are treated just like the unit is attacking as normal. So a unit with a 3 RoF will not necessarily always take 3 hp of an opponent. It may take 2 off one turn and 3 of the next.

hope this helps, if you need further clarification or if anybody has contrary information feel free to post.

I don't know but I'm very sure the defence does have an effect, because it certainly feels that way when I was playing an all tank scenario and gave them bombard.

I couldn't see any value in changing the rate of fire but assumed that a power of 4 and rate of 2 would give a total of 8. As I didn't notice anything peculiar with the end results, I assume that this was correct.

However... "Assumption is the mother of all...."

Hmm... that does help, Kal-el. I forgot to ask this, though: How is the chance of a successful bombardment calculated when bombarding an improvement or a city?

that takes into consideration the units defense, the size of the city (due to the defensive bonus that a city gives) the terrain on which the city built, and whether there are any defensive structures within the city.

Well, I can tell you one thing: Defense is TOO strong in this game.

I'm playing a Warlord Level HoF game (at 2100+ score now at 1400), and I attacked Russia with about 20 units of Artillery, a dozen Infantry, and about a dozen Cavalry, and went up against Pikemen for the most part, and some Knights.

It took me SIX turns to reduce ONE city which had 6 Pikemen defending. The first 3 turns were with 11 artillery units, the 4th with 16, the 5th and 6th with 20+. The city in this time went from size 12 to size 1, every building except Marketplace was destroyed, and only on turn 6 had I knocked all of the Pikemen down to 2 HP or 1 HP (2 were veteran, 4 were regular). When my Artillery did land blows, it was always 2 HP loss (unless unit had 2 HP left, then it ws 1 HP loss). With defense of 3 and 50% entrenchment bonus, and 10% terrain bonus (grassland), that's a defense of 5, vs. 12 artillery attack. I succeeded with a bombard maybe 35% of the time at most, it was about 25% when the city size was 7+. Then, it took more than half of my Infantry/Cavalry (by this point I still had about a dozen of each, some lost, more produced) to kill the 6 Pikemen with 1 or 2 HP (my units had 3 to 5 HP except one Cavalry unit had 2).

Ships are pretty much USELESS with bombarding...Frigates failed all bombard attempts on Spearmen and Pikemen, Ironclads succeeded twice out of 8 attempts (on city size 3 or lower).

I think bombardment is calculated differently than a regular attack...at least it seems like it. I've always thought in Civilization 2 and 3, defense has too high of an advantage over an attacker. I'm glad the Russians had no Saltpeter...I never would have won vs. Musketmen.

To answer question about RoF, it seems as though if the first shot lands, the second or third shot will land as well 100% of the time (if attacking a unit), unless the unit has 2 HP or less (if RoF=3, I'd imagine if 3 HP or less).

Bombardment is very weak in the standard game. I have doubled all the bombardment strengths, considerably more for air units.