Siege as Attachments

Some of you may have seen me at times post about my idea of having siege units as attachments to other standard units. Well, this is a thread to attempt to formalise the idea.

The idea is basically as follows:

Siege are built as per in Civ4, but do not represent the same type of unit as in Civ4. There can be thought of more as equipment than an actual brigade, or military unit. To be utilised, they are then attached to a standard unit (i.e. Warrior, Archer, Longbowman, Musketman, Rifleman, Infantry, Mechanized Infantry), which will then be able to use the siege attachment as their turn, or as support during combat. So, a couple of examples (using Infantry and Artillery for ease) of the standard situation in which these siege attachments would come into use would be:

• When an infantry with an artillery attachment is adjacent to an enemy city, the infantry can use its turn to bombard the city. This would also extend to bombarding adjacent units if that siege feature was also added to the game.
• When an infantry with an artillery attachment is attacked, or attacks, the artillery will assist in combat, acting like a promotion would currently. So, if an infantry with an artillery attachment defends, it will have a slightly higher strength, whilst if an infantry with an artillery attachment defends, it will cause collateral damage and have a slightly higher strength.

So those are the basic situations involving siege attachments. This should not only limit the power of siege through basically doubling their cost (by necessitating the building another unit to go with them) and doubling the movement cost by them to have the same effect (by necessitating the use of movement points by another unit to be used in utilising siege), but would also provide for a more realistic representation of siege within the game.

Now, there are a few other points to discuss with this idea. One of the most important ones is of what happens to siege when their 'parent' unit (the unit they are attached to) dies.

• If the parent unit dies in attack, there will be a 50% chance of the siege attachment being destroyed, and a 50% chance of the siege attachment detaching.
• Assuming that it is the only unit on a tile, if the parent unit dies in defence, there will be a 50% chance of the siege attachment being destroyed, and a 50% chance of the siege attachment changing hands to the enemy (similar to how workers can be captured).
• Assuming there is more than one unit on a defending tile, if the parent unit dies in defence, the siege attachment will be destroyed. If it was 50/50 being detachment & survival, and destruction, stacks would only be encouraged. So having mandatory destruction is the best option.

Also note that if an unattached siege unit is on a tile, it can be captured, similarly to how workers can be currently. A 50% chance of destruction and 50% chance of capture would apply.

Additional factors to consider include what exact impact on combat attached siege will have, how upgrades of siege would work (I would suggest that it be the same), whether or not siege attachments can be attached and unattached at will, and whether or not there should be separate experience points, or indeed separate health levels, for the attachments and the parent units.

Discuss.

I'm shocked that, with this even appearing in Polycast 83, that no one's commented on it!

If you accept separating siege units from the guys who man them, you can also accept separating cavalry from the guys who ride them and guns from the guys who shoot them and airplanes from the guys who fly them. While it might be somewhat interesting, I think overall it's not a useful idea for Civ. What can you do with this that you can't do with promotions, upgrades, rewriting artillery to be capturable, and raising its build cost?

The guys manning the guns are integral to the unit - they're there. What's the point of tying up a second unit to bombard? Slowing things down? Make the artillery weaker, that will slow it down.

Even if you wanted to do an actual SIEGE - station units to land-blockade a city - I still don't see a use for this; just give infantry and artillery units the ability to blockade.

They can already do this, it's just that no one goes through the trouble. You have a few stacks and then you walk around the city and pillage the roads, and then you cover the ground to prevent the city from working any of the tiles. A bit complicated and it makes you a bit vulnerable to counter-attack, but hey, I'm sure someone somewhere complains that attacking is too easy and SODs need to be reduced and sieges should do more damage.

Sure, there is the same justification from separating the horse from its rider, but that is not so much a problem that needs dealing with. Overpowered siege in attack is. Tying up a second unit for bombardment will weaken siege, yes, but that isn't the major point. The major point is that siege units will not be able to attack on their own accord and cause massive collateral damage, which is what makes them rather overpowered in the game currently. They will only provide a component of the power in any actual attack, with the unit they are attached to providing the main thrust in any combat.

The big reason for making siege attachments is that it allows you to actually make a stack attack/defense(not the game option, but two units actually attacking/defending as a team) without breaking the "one on one" rule. When it comes to visuals this could make some real cool combat animation since you could first see the cannons firing before your men charge while the enemy takes cover.

My concerns:
- You have to attach/detach quite a lot of units. Lots of boring work?
- Shouldn't siege be able to support other types of units than just your regular footman?
- What about uniques such as the musketeer? 2-move cannons?

I sort of lean towards keeping siege as separate units with a higher hammer-cost, without the ability to attack (collateral through bombardment) and lower strength.

Slightly off topic: In the polycast, they really only talked about putting a city under siege. That's a slightly different subject, but surrounding cities have little place in Civ in my opinion. TheMeInTeam pointed out the problems with the need to capture cities quickly, but the guests all forgot about the timescale we have in Civ. A usually siege only lasted a few days or weeks. Some did last a lot longer, but in Civ we are quickly talking 5 years per turn or more.

It shouldn't really be too big a deal to attach siege to other units. I mean, currently when you create any unit, you either have to micromanage it on its own, or 'attach' it to a stack, so what would be the difference with actually literally attaching it to another unit, rather than just having it grouped together for ease of play?

I only proposed that they should be attached to regular units (I don't know if there is a name for the category they fit into) because that will limit your ability to use them. You'll actually have to have a stock standard unit in order to use siege. You won't be able to combine with another unit other that has some more unique characteristics. For instance, you wouldn't be able to attach artillery to a tank, which would be an unbalancing unit in attack. You would have the special city attack abilities of the tank combined with the use of siege. Rather, in what I proposed, you would have to have a Mech Inf, or Infantry, accompanying that Tank, which seems like a rather realistic constraint on the player.

And I don't think it should cause any problems with uniques. Could unbalance them slightly, but that could be easily rectified by adding or deducting power.

And I can't remember the Polycast discussion exactly; it was a while ago.

Heh! Listen to it again! I'm sure you guys spent more time discussing it than what got aired, but I think between that and what's in this thread, you should be able to work up a good defense.

I can agree that siege might be a little overpowered, but like I said before, just increase the cost, or reduce the stats a little.

I can agree that an "artillery charge" is ridiculous, but they took away the unit-bombard ability because it was overpowering, and I'd assume that's also why they took away the first-fire ability of some units (which I miss). So we're stuck with artillery charges.

IRL, artillery IS overpowered. The side with the best artillery support almost always wins! (Even if you DON'T consider air power to be artillery.)

Next game, they'll probably just eliminate it as a unit type and say that units already have artillery integrated. There will be complainers, but it's probably the only solution that doesn't involve making artillery units completely worthless.

I really don't see anything here that can't be gained by just adjusting the stats and using your imagination. Heck, maybe I just can't get it, like some people can't get the Freedom Ship.

Artillery is a devastating weapon but it does have its limits and it is costly.

In WW1 it was the dominant weapon.

In the game, IMO, Artillery should only have a ranged attack of one tile and a defense of one or two.

Early artillery units like the catapult were transported in bits on wagons, mules etc.
(Or made on site which is not in the game and should not be). When they get to the point where they are assembled and a source of stone obtained. Therefore they should only be able to fire after they have been fortified for one turn. Also after they are used it should take one turn to load up again before it can move (doing repairs etc). Because of the need to obtain stone there should be a limit on the catapults that can fire from a tile per turn.

Grassland or Forest 1
Hill 2
Mined tile 3
Quarry tile 4
Village +1 but is pillaged
Town +2 but is pillaged to Village
City 10
Fort 4

I assume that Cannon are heavy guns. The small 4lb etc guns are part of the musket units.
These should also take a turn to fortify before they can be used. They should also cost more to build in the first place.

Artillery/Mobile Artillery should be more expensive to build. Artillery should have a small chance of killing a unit – say 5%. When you carry out a ranged attack against a unit(s) the survivors should get a fortification type bonus, call it “crater bonus”. Say every time an artillery unit attacks the survivors get a 5% potential crater bonus in addition to any fortification bonus. The bonus would reduce by 5% at the start of each turn (craters naturally filling in, etc). The crater bonus would be capped at say

City + 100% + 5% per unit of population, (City size 10 gives +150% max)
Town + 50%
Other + 25%

Artillery/Mobile Artillery should also be able to carry out counter battery fire by using a “Counter Battery” button. An artillery unit with “Counter Battery” switched on adjacent to the coast should be able to shoot at ships as they move along the coast. These would require the unit to have “Counter Battery 1” and “2” respectively.

Every time Artillery/Mobile Artillery fire it should cost one gold or hammer.


Are these suggestions enough to balance siege units with out having to attach them.

I think that siege units need to remain separate, but I do like the idea that they would be capture-able and can damage units without being sacrificed.

I voted "Neither..."

So i will explain it. Siege units should be separate units, but would act with other units. I mean you could produce & use siege weapons directly, but they would be more efficient if attacking with other units. Every battle should be a mini simulation treating the totality of the forces in presence in one only move. A little like Total War, but without the animations or the 3D aspect, or not any aspect other than the map and the forces in presence.

Additionnally, a siege unit could be captured but only if beaten, and if there's not any other unit in their square. On the contrary, siege units could retreat if attacked, as a representation of the ability of the chiefs to anticipate the enemy, particularly in modern times.

i simply think artillery should be given a bombard command like civ 3 had for warships (cant remeber how the artillery worked in that game)
so artillery bombard and dont get involved in the actual fighting (as it should be) but i think in the case where either artillery bombarding from adjacent squares attack either fortified or 2or more movement units that the defending unit has a chance to counterattack on the counterattack if the artillery is alone (ie without a defending unit) the counterattacking unit will either destroy or capture the artillery (if being captured its 'health/strength should be halved) in the case where it has a defending unit if the chance for counterattack appears the player/civ should first be prompted to see if the player wants to risk the pitched battle or not.

the reason why i say fortified/2 movement units is that they would have a theorectical 'free move' spare. the reason why a prompt should be used when there is a defending unit is that if you are under an artillery barrage it will eventually end after which you will have the chance to counterattack. the chances for this would decrease as the units health does.

TheDS said:

Heh! Listen to it again! I'm sure you guys spent more time discussing it than what got aired, but I think between that and what's in this thread, you should be able to work up a good defense.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'll try to get 'round to relistening to the ep in the next few days, but the actual discussion went on for over half an hour, and I don't have the original feed of everyone.

I like siege as separate units. I don't want the military units to get too complicated, with attached assets, because that could get tedious.

I've always assumed that the "attached" artillery - "organic assets" to use the military term - are abstracted into the unit as part of its strength, and that's fine with me. If the player likes lots of bombardment, then they can build seige units to stack with their other units. That's realistic, too - some real-world civs invest lots of production in separate artillery brigades to have massive bombardment (Russia), and others do not or rely on other kinds of bomardment like aircraft (USA).

Firaxis uses binary thinking: either artillery units have to be overpowered bombardment units (Civ3) or they have to be overpowered suicide units (Civ 4). I do believe there's a middle ground which could allow for decently-powered siege units for bombardment.

I vote against allowing capture of seige units, since the human is always better than the AI at using siege units. If siege units can be captured, then the AI ones are just prebuilds for the human player. That made things too easy for the human player in Civ3, adding even more artillery to the SOD that was steamrolling AI cities. Also, there's no historical basis for it - capturing a few guns or cats, yes, but not wholesale capture of entire brigades of artillery.

there is a lot of history in capturing siege, it happens in every campaign where one side either loses or retreats in disorder.
but yes i am inclined to agree with you on the point that the AI will lose to the human player in this case so capturing should be a no, but certianly not to historical fact.

Yeah, I can see the possible abuse caused by allowing for capture of a lot of siege, but I think the best solution for that isn't to therefore not allow you to capture siege, but to fix the AI. Slightly harder to do, but it would get a better end result.

Perhaps you could capture
catapults say 50% capture 50% the operators destroy it
cannons 25%
artillery 10%
SP artillery none

But if you allow siege to be captured what about a battlefield littered with swords outside a city building a swordsman,

Well, siege units would represent actual equipment, and so capturing unit is capturing equipment. Capturing equipment in the search for other units (i.e. capturing abandoned swords when you're making a swordsman) would only represent a really tiny part of what the production cost actually represents; manpower and training. So, a comparable situation to capturing siege would be capturing an entire swordsman unit, which is already trained, and would be ready to fight for you.

Siege units represent the equipment and the people who operate it.

A catapult unit would contain the people who operated it. It would also contain the wagons etc that moved the catapult and collected the stone to fire.

What about tanks would you allow them to be captured.
Germany captured a lot of Czechoslovakian equipment in WW2

The benefit from the equipment depends on how much it costs compared to the training.

Sure, they do at the moment, but my idea proposes that they shouldn't.

They can be thought of more as equipment than an actual brigade, or military unit.

Click to expand...

how about instead of equipment they capture supplies supposing firaxis goes for this idea?

it would definitely make things more realistic, but at the same time, what usually happens is either the equipment would be destroyed by the unit using it so that it can't be used by the enemy or it would just be destroyed by the enemy.