Firaxis/Breakaway please reconsider bombardment

[player1 fanatic]

If reconsider means something else then turning back to old system I agree with you.

But if it mean changing back to old absurd system then don't.
Please don't, Please don't, Please don't, Please don't.

Old system was absurd.

It made bomb to pop 1 them attack strategy (more effectice to destory building or pop then to lower HP of units).

It added extra 50% miss chance to hit unit which is unnesesary
since defense mutipliers are supposed to do that.

It made early artillety units almost useless (50% miss chance to units, plus 4 bombard vs 16 defense rating for units).


On the other hand if need for change is high (for example if AI is still bad with Arties), I would suggest different approach.

Instead of old system which choosed thing to target even before hitting chance is caluclated (absurd!), make it other way around.

Bombardment first target unit, if misses THEN it targets pop or buliduings.

Seams more logical (if it misses primray target, THEN hits "collateral damage"), and will reduce all those bombardment failed messages.

 

[Gogf]

Great idea.

 

[Bad Brett]

I would like to make land bombardment unit a lot more expensive, but a lot more effective (kinda like in age of empires). Maybe a catapult could cost 60-80 shields or something instead of 20. A war with 40 catapults and 5 spearmen is not very realistic. Let those 60-80 shield units have lethal bombardment, attack all units in a stack...

 

[Akka]

I agree with Player1fanatic. The old system was INCREDIBLY BAD.
I agree that it's absurd to be able to grind down all the defense of a city with the population and the building untouched.
Now, with the old system, it was the reverse : even with 30 units inside, you could reduce a metropolis to a village with no buildings, and not touch more than one or two units, which were the very reason why you DID bring artillery...

Uprade the bombardment, ok, but PLEASE, don't revert it back to the old system...

 

[warpstorm]

As I said in the first message of this thread, the collateral damage flag does nothing on bombard units (I've tried). It only works on units that can't bombard yet have a bombard strength (the barb units in Fall of Rome does this).

I like the current feel of bombers now, they seem to hit enough. If land and sea bombard worked under the same algorithm I'd be happy.

 

[robcheng]

I agree that collateral damage should at least be moddable for all bombard units (so that you can eliminate the absurd "heat-seeking catapult boulder" syndrome)

 

[Evie]

Collateral damage working for bombard units, I'll agree. However the fact that the weapons had a bad tendency to target everything EXCEPT enemy units in the game before was just plain boring. I don'T know about the majority of you, but I don't want to have to fire fifty artillery at a town in order to even start damaging the units there. That takes realism to the level of absurd annoyance.

If bringing back up the game's difficulty level also means making it more boring, then count me as definitely against it.

If however the "collateral damage" effect can be set to work with bombardment, then I'm all for it.

 

[Warspite2]

I think the new way of bombardment is unrealistic. Come on, think about it, troop garrisons stationed in cities are hidding in buildings. So when artillery, naval, or air attacks, it will have to hit the building that those troops are fortified in. How can it magically hit and injure the defending fortified units when they are in a building and not even damaged that building at all? I like the old way, it may not be the best but it is better and more realistic then the new way. You try firing 16 inch naval guns into a city and not damage any buildings Defending city troops are going to be in buildings or other structures, not in the open. Sure its nice to be able to magically miss all structures in a city, only hit units and take it without any scratches, all buildings intact, but that is downright unrealistic. Most of all, artillery will almost completely destroy a building or structure that defensive troops are in. If not and they don't want to damage any buildings, they need to send in troops to actually go into those buildings and get the enemy out of them.

 

[Dearmad]

My troops are always sunning themselves on the front lawns and beaches... so it's totally realistic to me!

I'm in the middle ages now in my current game- I'm in a good position and powerful enough to ensure I'll be around (FINALLY- in a modified Sid difficulty game) to the game's end- so I'll finally get to see how the AI handles Artillery firsthand since Conquests came out; since no one has really reported on this- if they AI sucks it bigtime I'll be back to complain up the wazoo about this and try to figure out how to help the poor AI out.

For me, artillery has ALWAYS been a real problematic piece to this game that has at times absolutely ruined the fun!

 

[Arathorn]

My suggested fix....

When targetting a city, have each "thing" in the city count as one slot for what gets targetted -- each population point, each building, each unit counts as one slot. Then roll randomly to see what gets destroyed. This naturally has the effect of hitting units more as the city gets destroyed and seems reasonably logical to me.

Example 1: Bombarding a large metropolis with 22 citizens, temple, cathedral, library, aqueduct, hospital, barracks, marketplace, bank, harbor, and factory, defended by 6 infantry. This gives 38 slots. A d38 is "rolled" and a 24 comes up. That's the cathedral. My radar artillery hits the cathedral and destroys it, so next time there will only be 37 possible targets.

Example 2: Early capital defended by 6 spears, size 4, with only a temple. 4 citizens + 1 building + 6 spears = 11 spots. I can list these out exactly
1 - citizen
2 - citizen
3 - citizen
4 - citizen
5 - temple
6 - spear
7 - spear
8 - spear
9 - spear
10 - spear
11 - spear

You're very likely to hit the unit -- and moreso is/when you hit citizens.

Now, some mod to hit the best defensive unit first COULD introduced to this idea, but I like it as is...you never really know how effective the bombardment necessarily was on those "hidden" units in the city -- which I think is a feature not a bug. Plus, with C3C's telling you that you've hit a unit, the basic code to hit units "down the line" and display the results is already there.

Anybody have killer problems with this idea?

Arathorn

 

[budweiser]

What needs to happen is: we need the option of defending outsdie the city (Battle of Quebec) at a reduced rate of defense, or defending inside the city (Stalingrad) at a higher rate of defense, before we can determine if it is right for artillery to damage buildings or population. The tiles are so huge, that they are not all taken up by the city. The defender should have the option to fight outside or inside the city.

But if we decide that the current system already is a case of "inside the city", then the city needs to take some damage and some population should be lost. Arathorn's model is a good start.

 

[alexman]

I have no problem with how they changed bombardment, because it's consistent with how bombardment of tile improvements has always worked: units first, tile improvements only after all units are at 1HP.

More effective bombard units means more military options, which is fun. I do agree that the AI is at a disadvantage with this change, but the AI is terrible in all military tactics, so what's new?

 

[Evie]

Well said. And to those who say it's unrealistic - this is supposed to be a game. I don't know about you, but *I* don't care about playing playign with artillery I need to shoot fifty times with artillery units to get the units down in HP.

A game is about fun, not realism, and shooting fifty times

Collateral damage, yes.
Having some "misfire" that hits somethign other than the units once in a while? Ok, sure.
NOT having the units as the priority target? That's one good way to make me forget about bombardment completely by making it an utterly boring part of the game.

The targeting need to be something like 50% chance of hitting the units and do collateral to a building; 10% chance of hitting the unit with no collateral, 15% chance of hiting the unit with collateral to the population, 5% chance of a complete miss and 10% each of hitting only population or only a building. It still gives you a good chance to hit the unit, but a low chance of not damaging the city too.

 

[Roland Johansen]

In a turn based strategy game all military attacks should be counterable during the same turn. If not, it will be a source of exploitation for players.
Normal attack and defence units fight and both can win or lose. Planes that bomb the enemy can be intercepted during their mission (by other planes and in C3C also by ground based AA-units). So again both units can win and both units can lose.
Ground based artillery type units can bomb with impunity and that will always be an unbalanced aspect of the game. However weak the bombardment may be, it will be free damage while the enemy can only react in the next turn when it will be too late.

Even if the AI were able to use bombardment units in a smart way, then still it wouldn't be a balanced part of the game. Imagine two stacks of 60 artillery. One owned by you, one owned by your AI opponent. You will both be using your artillery to bomb the enemy units while desperately trying to avoid capture of your artillery pieces. The player who captures the artillery stack of his opponent will have won the war. For me this would be fun for 1 game and maybe two, but then the fun would soon end.

After playing the game once with the original rules (just to see how it works), I'll probably mod the game so that ground based artillery units function like in CivII (high attack, low defence), with the added defensive bombardment (also called defensive first shot in C3C). That will make them units like archers in C3C with higher defensive bomberdment and higher attack and 0 defence (and probably higher cost to balance them).

A game at Sid difficulty level without any kind of offensive bombardment units will be quite a challenge, I think. Maybe the challenge will be to big. That would be fun!

BTW, I think they did a great job with the adding of lethal air bomberment and ground based AA-units.

 

[robcheng]

Originally posted by budweiser
What needs to happen is: we need the option of defending outsdie the city (Battle of Quebec) at a reduced rate of defense, or defending inside the city (Stalingrad) at a higher rate of defense, before we can determine if it is right for artillery to damage buildings or population.

That's an interesting idea. Perhaps if a unit is fortified on a city tile, it should be considered 'inside' the city, so if it is attacked by bombardment, there is a chance buildings are damaged. If it's not fortified, it is considered outside the city and does not get the city defense, but bombardment won't damage city improvements even if those units are missed.

 

[robcheng]

Originally posted by Oda Nobunaga
Well said. And to those who say it's unrealistic - this is supposed to be a game. I don't know about you, but *I* don't care about playing playign with artillery I need to shoot fifty times with artillery units to get the units down in HP.

The ideal answer to that problem is stack bombard, much as we didn't want to attack with fifty ground units individually, so we got stack attack (kind of by accident, but that's another story...)

Incidentally, I don't particularly like the old way either, but pretty much all of the suggestions made in these threads would be better than either extreme -- all improvements (old) or all units (new)

 

[Warspite2]

After a war, a city is left a burning wreak. Look at recent, Bagdad after the US attack. This is modern battles too and those buildings were still destroyed and damaged. So now Bagdad and other IRAQ cities basically have to be rebuilt. There is no way a military force should be able to bombard a city and kill only defending units and not damage city structures. There are artillery shells hitting in and around a city, bombs being dropped, naval shells falling from 20 miles out, this is war. There is going to be damage period, walls are going to fall down. Explosions are going to shake the ground. Its all part of war. That said, a city that was attacked in a battle will not be clean and pretty afterwards, it will need to rebuild.

If bombardment is to stay how it is, then I think aircraft should be the same, hitting units first. This way all bombardments... air, naval, and land will all work the same.

At last, I like Arathorn's idea.

 

[Osmol]

From what I understand, they made archers bombard now correct? (I know they did in the Conquests, but I haven't tested the random game yet).

I'm wondering if it has to do with that. Because, it does make sense that archers would bombard units, not buildings, and perhaps it was taken a step too far. I liked the idea of taking out buildings at random, but depending on the weapon, there should be more of a targetting method as the weapons improve.

 

[cgannon64]

Archers bombard but have 0 range so they get a free shot when attacked if they are in a stack.

 

[dexters]

Old system was broken. The change is for the better. Gives AI a chance to heal if their barracks don't get knocked out.