AI Would be Twice as Good at Conquering If They Changed Catapults to "Support"

[acluewithout]

Catapults' ranged attack is bombard class, meaning it deals full damage to walls. The ranged attack of units like archers deals half damage (-17) to walls. Meanwhile, the catapult attack deals half damage (-17) to units. This is why Artillery units, despite boasting 80 strength, don't completely evaporate infantry units (and the only thing that restrains the dominance of bombers.) Naval ranged attacks, iirc, deal full damage to everything. Certainly, the design strongly suggests siege units should be the city breakers.

Ranged units (pre-machine guns) have the feature of a defensive strength 5 lower than their ranged, while siege units get -12 until artillery (which is -20, but has a monster attack.) They are designed to be very squishy on the field.
I believe in Civ5, ranged units attacking ranged units used the ranged strength for the defensive side of the calculation. I am not sure if this still exists in Civ6- I think they all use combat/melee strength.

Whether compounded by that or not, catapults get absolutely decimated by city ranged attacks. To me, this is a flaw in siege design - AI cities always focus fire our catapults, and we know to take them down when the AI brings them along. Should city ranged strikes deal less damage to siege weapons? Perhaps so: The AI's cities also target other AI catapults first, which spells bad news for invading armies.

Since this thread focuses specifically on the AI, siege units' also could do with a medieval upgrade. They know to bring the siege units, but cities are improving constantly- through building more districts, the era advances, and adding new tiers of walls & garrisons- while catapult units really fall off. This would be like if Scythia was always programmed to have a huge light cavalry flavor regardless of the era, resulting in tons of horseman riding to their doom against muskets. From a player perspective, we all know why we prefer archers and xbows to catapults - they can 'shoot n scoot', and they have a production card.

I still contend that, for a number of balance reasons, production cards should be split to be
-light & heavy cavalry
-melee & anticav
-ranged & siege (+support later)
I mean, have you ever tried to build a domrey? Holy smokes. And we thought hard building khevsurs was rough.

I haven't really seen any good ideas for fixing siege that doesn't involve radically rethinking how all the units work. I like your idea of having a policy card for support units, but I don't think it's really possible to evaluate that idea until it's clear how support should work and so it's clear what is their value.

For catapults etc., I think a partial solution would be to give them greater defence vs. ranged. Catapults are already slow and vulnerable to melee. Having them be (in effect) also vulnerable to ranged really kills them.

I think that would be a good tactical dimension. You build walls, crossbows. Attackers turn up, and you feel pretty safe with the attackers bouncing off your walls and your raining down ranged atracks... then the catapults turn up. They're slow, so you can see them coming. But once they're in position you're stuffed. So now you need to get onto the attach because now you have to take out those catapults, or you're done for...

I don't know what you do with battering rams etc. Maybe attacking walls is a promotion, and rams instead just give you better defence vs. City attacks?

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Make Catapults the longest ranged unit in the first half of the game and I guarantee you Every Gamer will build armies of Catapults 'supporting' Melee or Anti-Cavalry Units, and never build another Archer again.

This would skew the game, just as the OP Battering Ram does now. Because its effects cover the entire perimeter of a city, you can conquer a Civilization one city at a time with just one Battering Ram, and it stays effective from Ancient to Medieval Eras. Not good design.

Instead, give Catapults a modest factor against troops, which makes them a little more flexible than the Battering Rams that precede them, make the Battering Ram effect only the unit they are stacked with, and then give the Military Engineer the additional effect of giving a unit it is stacked with the Battering Ram ability to 'by-pass' walls (in this case, by tunneling under them!) BUT a Military Engineer stacked inside the city negates the attacking Military Engineer (Counter-Mining!).
Then the Bombard should, like the Battering Ram, have virtually no Ranged Effect on troops (they fired, on a Good Day, maybe once every few hours - any effect on troops was entirely accidental, usually by blowing up in the middle of their own troops) BUT Bombard's factors against Walls should make all Ancient and Medieval Ways effectively worthless - a very good reason to actually build Renaissance Walls, which almost no one does now.
Finally, when we get to Artillery, it should be the first 'siege' unit that also is extremely effective against Troop Units: artillery from 1914 to the present day far exceeds all other combat arms in its ability to cause casualties, despite all the publicity given to air power and tanks. (Full Disclosure: I was an artilleryman in the US Army for almost 20 years, but that statement reflects the findings of both the German and Soviet staffs studying WWI and WWII, and the French, British and US Army staffs who studied WWI)

These changes would, I think, put siege units in their place as specialized units required for taking fortified cities, and requiring careful handling to accomplish that goal. Right now, a Battering Ram or two is pretty much all you need to take any city from Ancient to early Renaissance, and all the other 'siege' units before Bombards are 'nice to have' but not really necessary. That is a waste of the programmers' and artists' time spent on those units, and makes the game play in regards to city attack that much more one dimensional.

My thoughts after reading this and the rest of the thread:

• make Siege units support units
• make Catapults ineffective against Medieval+ Walls
• make Bombards ineffective against Renaissance+ Walls
• make Battering Rams and their successors affect only the unit they are stacked with
• make Battering Rams ineffective against Medieval+ Walls
• create a new "Sapper" unit that is an upgrade to Battering Rams
• make Sappers ineffective against Renaissance+ Walls
• provide Military Engineers with the same ability as Battering Rams/Sappers to allow the unit they are tacked with to attack through walls

 

[acluewithout]

My thoughts after reading this and the rest of the thread:

• make Siege units support units
• make Catapults ineffective against Medieval+ Walls
• make Bombards ineffective against Renaissance+ Walls
• make Battering Rams and their successors affect only the unit they are stacked with
• make Battering Rams ineffective against Medieval+ Walls
• create a new "Sapper" unit that is an upgrade to Battering Rams
• make Sappers ineffective against Renaissance+ Walls
• provide Military Engineers with the same ability as Battering Rams/Sappers to allow the unit they are tacked with to attack through walls

...I don't think the AI could cope with most of that.

... and I don't like the idea my catapults can't at least have a shot at medieval or renaissance walls. I mean, that might be totally realistic, but Civ is built on the idea of spearmen units at least having a poke at tanks. A flat "cannot" would really crimp the whole alternate history thing.

... and when you say "make siege ( catapults ) support units ", you mean catapults could stack with melee right? I sort of like the idea, but wouldn't that mean you could basically turn all your melee units into melee - ranged combo units... like Immortals? Seriously - you'd end up just giving every melee unit a catapult to get a free ranged attack...

 

[Sostratus]

For catapults etc., I think a partial solution would be to give them greater defence vs. ranged. Catapults are already slow and vulnerable to melee. Having them be (in effect) also vulnerable to ranged really kills them.

That's the gut of what I wanted to say, before my policy card crusade flared up... siege weapons are much, much more positional units than 'normal' ranged units. They exist to counter static defence, which never moves. But static defence rips them apart! For what the class is trying to do, even if just city attacks dealt half damage, it would be a huge step forward. At least then, clearing out the enemy army would mean a relatively safe path in for your catapults- with your other forces holding back any attempts to sally forth by a garrisoning unit or assaults from relieving forces. A garrisoned archer could still harry you, but garrisoning archers is obnoxiously strong no matter what.

As you were alluding to before, the vision of the besieging army rolling up the catapults to tear down your bastions: there's a helplessness of the garrison, who pray for a miracle or relief by a friendly force. Siege weapons are already paper thin when met in the field. Right now, when the city defenders spend 3-4 turns killing the catapults, unless the attackers brought a lot of men and battering rams, it's pretty much an agonising death for the invaders. Anyone who has fought back AI rushes at their capital with barely a unit or two knows how incredibly strong a city is against units without siege tools.

In the same way we expect that a Knight should have an unprotected crossbow dead to rights on open ground, a contest of catapult v city should be pretty solidly in the catapults favour. Look up how much defensive strength a catapult has (23) and compare is to what a contemporary city has. Remember that catapults have to serve on the same battlefield that knights do.
One could even float the idea of siege weapons getting treated like ships: taking less damage from land based ranged attacks and full damage from bombard attacks. Garrisoning catapults to counter the enemy's catapults? Bold!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'd welcome this change, besides the AI the human player might actually get some use out of them pre-observation balloons. Catapults just do not work currently, too expensive, too fragile and too slow compared to battering rams and cavalry/melee. In a PVP environment they are just laughable as well.

They're slow even compared to archers --> xbow. It's unfortunate, it's hard to find a good use case for the siege line at all until arty. By then building corps/armies directly, giving them 3 range with balloons, and enough XP to get +17 vs units to offset their weakness makes them finally worth something if you're still going with ground, especially because unlike archers --> field cannons machine gun range hit cuts the role of ranged line (very upgraded machine guns with 5 movement and multiple attacks still have use cases though, so these are okay if well promoted and upgraded in SP. Full XP machine gun armies with GG + fascism bonuses will handle the AI easily enough if the game is still going).

I've not done much PvP, isn't it still classical timing hits or knights most of the time early on? It seems to be that it would be pretty hard to deal with knights using anything that is "not knights" until significantly past them on the tree, especially if the knights can suppress enemy access to niter.

 

[UWHabs]

They're slow even compared to archers --> xbow. It's unfortunate, it's hard to find a good use case for the siege line at all until arty. By then building corps/armies directly, giving them 3 range with balloons, and enough XP to get +17 vs units to offset their weakness makes them finally worth something if you're still going with ground, especially because unlike archers --> field cannons machine gun range hit cuts the role of ranged line (very upgraded machine guns with 5 movement and multiple attacks still have use cases though, so these are okay if well promoted and upgraded in SP. Full XP machine gun armies with GG + fascism bonuses will handle the AI easily enough if the game is still going).

I've not done much PvP, isn't it still classical timing hits or knights most of the time early on? It seems to be that it would be pretty hard to deal with knights using anything that is "not knights" until significantly past them on the tree, especially if the knights can suppress enemy access to niter.

I'll take 2 archers ahead of a catapult for sure, even going up against walls. And given that you can build archers with a +50% card, you can actually build 3 archers for the same cost as 1 catapult.

Bombards I find are actually useful, as long as you have a GG to tag along with them. In that case then you can at least move and shoot, and it only takes about 2 bombard hits to wipe out the walls of a city. But that's well past the first rush chance, and by that point against the AI it's more mop-up than a legit battle, usually.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'll take 2 archers ahead of a catapult for sure, even going up against walls. And given that you can build archers with a +50% card, you can actually build 3 archers for the same cost as 1 catapult.

Bombards I find are actually useful, as long as you have a GG to tag along with them. In that case then you can at least move and shoot, and it only takes about 2 bombard hits to wipe out the walls of a city. But that's well past the first rush chance, and by that point against the AI it's more mop-up than a legit battle, usually.

Also by then you're very likely able to field xbows with 2 shots and incendiaries. Field cannons aren't far off on the tree, and with 60 ranged strength and only -10 after incendiaries the ranged line is still scaling better to this point (siege can't get 2 shots). Rolling up with 3-4 gg-boosted 2 shot xbows or field cannons can easily strip walls.

Field cannon corps can do this for a long time...with other boosts like oligarchic legacy, gg, etc they can very likely keep breaking walls as pseudo siege units until AI gets to information era. You could still kill stuff with them then but it would make sense to use machine guns with all the movement boosts (GG, logistics, convoys, faster roads)...in most cases a machine gun could walk up to and straight up erase any unit with a 2 shot with army + promotions, even AI mech infantry.

Bombards would only make sense if you're somehow timing 1st war such that they're available, otherwise good XP on ranged line makes more sense throughout the game.

 

[Scaramanga]

I don't think this change will happen since the unit needs active attack and defense values; another support unit to babysit sounds bad. The specialty of bombard strength makes them always less good against units but machines guns leave a gap where seige units start providing ranged attack.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

There are some very interesting ideas being floated here. My Joachimthaler's worth...

...I don't think the AI could cope with most of that.

The AI cannot cope with most of the game already. If we limit ourselves to what the Civ V and VI AI can handle, we're back to playing Computer Checkers...

... and I don't like the idea my catapults can't at least have a shot at medieval or renaissance walls. I mean, that might be totally realistic, but Civ is built on the idea of spearmen units at least having a poke at tanks. A flat "cannot" would really crimp the whole alternate history thing.

Historically, Catapults did 'have a shot' at Medieval Walls, just not a very good one - it's why the counterweight Trebuchet shows up in Byzantium in the late 12th century CE. This is not necessarily a Bad Thing: Medieval Walled Cities were very tough for the armies of the day to tackle, and most fell only after long and expensive sieges or, spectacularly, after Bombards were introduced (Constantinople the Prime Example: Invulnerable Walls before Bombards, Ripe For Plucking afterwards). The dynamic should be that Catapults are Killers against Ancient/Classical fortifications, useful but not overpowering against Medieval Walls, and Expensive Toys against Renaissance Walls. You can still use them, but you'll wind up envying the folks with Bombards.

... and when you say "make siege ( catapults ) support units ", you mean catapults could stack with melee right? I sort of like the idea, but wouldn't that mean you could basically turn all your melee units into melee - ranged combo units... like Immortals? Seriously - you'd end up just giving every melee unit a catapult to get a free ranged attack...

Catapults should have minimal effect against field combat Units, as I mentioned in an earlier Post. Right now they already have a Bombard Factor instead of a Ranged Factor, so Penalize the Bombard Factor against Units, keep the extra cost of the Catapults, and using them as 'substitute archers' becomes a lot less attractive, while the Melee/Anti-Melee Unit can shield them against conterfire from the Fortifications. Historically, catapults and similar 'siege engines' were protected by earthworks, gabions (earth-filled wicker baskets) and portable 'walls' covered with wet hides against flame attacks - and some of these go back to late Classical Era, are described in Aeneas Tacitus' writings. Making them Support units and allowing a Melee/Anti-Cav Unit to stack and shield them should work. IF they need more protection, we can always 'tweak' the rules on Emplacing to Fire and make that action also increase the Defensive Factor against enemy Ranged Attacks, representing the besieging army 'digging in' and protecting its Siege Engines.

Rolling up with 3-4 gg-boosted 2 shot xbows or field cannons can easily strip walls.

Field cannon corps can do this for a long time...with other boosts like oligarchic legacy, gg, etc they can very likely keep breaking walls as pseudo siege units until AI gets to information era. You could still kill stuff with them then but it would make sense to use machine guns with all the movement boosts (GG, logistics, convoys, faster roads)...in most cases a machine gun could walk up to and straight up erase any unit with a 2 shot with army + promotions, even AI mech infantry.

Bombards would only make sense if you're somehow timing 1st war such that they're available, otherwise good XP on ranged line makes more sense throughout the game.

Glad you mentioned this, because it Highlights the Other Problem with Siege Units: historically, after the Bombard, there are simply not a lot of military units/equipment specifically designed for Siege: versions of regular Artillery pretty much do all the work after the beginning of the 18th Century CE (early Industrial Era in the game, as near as I can tell from the cockamamie Tech and Civics Trees). We could stretch 'historical truth' a bit and have a later unit of Siege Howitzer or Siege Mortar, but the relevant weapons were also used (and far more often) against troops than cities or forts.
Personally, I'd very much like to see the 'Siege' units all become Support Units, most of the late game Ranged Units become Special Promotions for other units, and new Ranged Units representing the real ranged firepower: Field Cannon, Artillery, and Rocket Artillery.

By 'Special Promotions" I refer to the fact that NO ARMY Nowhere Nohow ever fielded separate Machine-gun, Antitank, or Antitank Missile units larger than a brigade, and then only one army (Soviet Army, WWII and later had Antitank Artillery Brigades and Fortified Regions that were almost all machine-guns). On the other hand, EVERY Army that had them, fielded machine-guns, antitank guns, and (later) antitank missiles as part of their infantry units, frequently within the infantry company, battalion or regiment. They should be 'support weapons' within the unit that add Combat Factor (machine-guns) or Capability (antitank) to the Poor Bloody Infantry. The game could even show this kind of Special Weapon graphically, by replacing, say, one figure in the graphic for Infantry with a machine-gunner or anti-tank rifleman/missile carrier. This kind of special weapons' support, by the way, should be an integral part of the Mechanized Infantry, because even the 'primitive' armored mechanized infantry of WWII 'Atomic Era' had antitank missiles (bazookas, panzerfausts), and copious machine-guns right down to the squad/platoon level and heavier antitank guns and mortars at company, battalion and regimental level. These are historical units of about 200 men (company), 800 men (battalion) and 3000 men (regiment) - well below what the game units should be depicting by the Late Game.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE][/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

 

[Scaramanga]

^ Quote fail?

 

[blackbutterfly]

No.

Unlike battering rams and siege towers catapults do damage on their own. I would like to see a trebuchet in Civ VI. Perhaps a UU for a civ?

 

[acluewithout]

@Sostratus Is there a “light touch” solution here, and what would it look like?

Is this a minimum possible solution?:

- Light Cav get a -17 attacking cities.

- Give Seige Units a production card.

- Basically get rid of Battering Rams as they currently exist. Instead, battering rams just provide linked melee units additional defence vs. city attacks. Or, just get rid of rams completely. The AI can’t use them anyway.

- Keep Seige Towers as is. That’s your new go to for melee taking cities.

- Either let support bonuses apply to ranged attack (perhaps up to but not including Machine Guns) and or create a new military policy card which gives catapults a +4 defending ranged attacks.

You could maybe add to that one more change I’ve been thinking about:

- In addition to adjusting down anti-cav costs, provide each city with an additional production boost building anti-cav if the city has walls (+5% per wall level).

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

As already has been stated, the problem with catapults/bombards is they are too vulnerable to range attacks and too slow to attack cities and therefore outclassed by the archer line and other support units in conquering cities up until artillery.

Based on suggestions already made, my solution to this problem is:

• Make them less vulnerable - Give range attacks from cities and archery line a penalty (50%?) attacking siege units, similar to attack penalty of archery line units attacking cities.
• Make them less slow & competitive with archery line - Let siege units move and shoot, but give a penalty on their attack (50%?) if they do not have full movement points left
• Make them competitive with support units - Give bonus of support units (battering ram and siege tower) only to unit attached (or units adjacent to the support unit)

Additionally this can also be used to slightly buff medieval and renaissance walls by removing the city attack penalty on siege units. A city with medieval walls should do full attack on catapults, since these upgraded walls have catapults positioned on them (immersion). Similarly a city with renaissance walls do full attack on bombards. Having researched steel, thus receiving urban defenses, automatically removes the attack penalty on artillery and rocket artillery units.

 

[Scaramanga]

I think catapults are ideal for city seiges due to their bombard strength, over ranged units. But a support unit, probably a tower, should be brought in case the cats are targeted by opposing ranged.

 

[Sostratus]

@Sostratus Is there a “light touch” solution here, and what would it look like?

This thread was originally focused on the problem of AI conquering with the proposal that the AI is really bad at it because they don't use siege weapons well. Ignoring generic AI fumbling, they do bring catapults with them on sieges; but they don't seem to make much headway towards their purpose. This is almost undoubtedly because the AI (and humans) know to focus fire the catapults. This would suggest that catapults have a low impact not because they aren't able to smash city walls - otherwise we wouldn't prioritise them! - but because they don't get enough shots in before being killed off by returning fire.
The obvious AI oriented solution is to make them resist that damage much more - like giving cities a -17 penalty against siege units. (this means they deal only 50% damage to them.) This is passive, doesn't require any tactical skill to take advantage of, and more importantly lets the AI execute their plan: putting warheads on foreheads.

Now, obviously this thread has become more about us players not liking catapults and preferring archers.
Like the AI, we suffer from them being flimsy units- especially for their cost. Remember, catapults are contemporary to archers and knights, so you'll have that same 23 defensive strength unit taking hits from a city that can threaten a 48 strength unit. Not a great situation. Again, a passive resistance would go a long way here.
As for their immobile nature: it looks like a pretty central design choice to force siege weapons to have to lose a turn moving into range first. And that's okay- the point is that you need to control the field around the target before you roll in the big guns. What we hate now is that you have to eat a seriously strong ranged strike on that turn, which the passive resistance would also mitigate.
The other player issue is production - the AI's bonuses here mean it doesn't really care as much. Catapults are twice as expensive as archers (effectively 3x with the card,) which have that ranged penalty but also a huge mobility advantage, and usefulness killing other stuff. Crossbows vs Domrey is much much closer, though. #productionscalingthings So players will have ranged units in the field army that clears the way to the city in the first place- so the archers are going to be there anyways while the catapult will almost always be lagging behind. Perhaps Expert Crew should be an easier to get promotion?
Ultimately, certain terrains mean that the only way to take a fortified city is to use a catapult because it has a very high damage per tile - its damage density is high. If there's only a few spots to bombard from, the numerical advantage of archers is meaningless. You just won't crack those Medieval Walls with two ranged units.

As to the question of whether support units make melee troops too good at smashing walls- I think that is a little deeper than this thread is looking at.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Now, obviously this thread has become more about us players not liking catapults and preferring archers.

Players don't like them because they are bad units. They don't have a legit use case, and I'm not sure a defensive boost gets them there. Right now, putting a catapult on a hex eats up space you could be using to shoot with an archer/xbow. It's a liability. You're not just paying a big opportunity cost in unit construction, you're weakening your own ability to do the actually hard part - killing units so you can hit cities.

If there's only a few spots to bombard from, the numerical advantage of archers is meaningless. You just won't crack those Medieval Walls with two ranged units.

If we're talking promoted xbows (most realistic scenario for vs medieval walls), you can. It starts getting hard if the enemy has muskets and garrisons one, otherwise 2 promoted xbows can drag these walls down over a few turns w/o losses if you're set up properly (GG, incendiaries, oligarchy).

As to the question of whether support units make melee troops too good at smashing walls- I think that is a little deeper than this thread is looking at.

It's interrelated. Ultimately, no units contesting should make taking a city with any siege relatively easy...walls only buying time. Simply putting a couple units next to the city makes damaging and taking it w/o first killing them impractical.

IMO simplest solution is to give siege 3 range and make pre-artillery siege absolutely terrible vs units.

 

[acluewithout]

This thread was originally focused on the problem of AI conquering with the proposal that the AI is really bad at it because they don't use siege weapons well. Ignoring generic AI fumbling, they do bring catapults with them on sieges; but they don't seem to make much headway towards their purpose. This is almost undoubtedly because the AI (and humans) know to focus fire the catapults. This would suggest that catapults have a low impact not because they aren't able to smash city walls - otherwise we wouldn't prioritise them! - but because they don't get enough shots in before being killed off by returning fire.
The obvious AI oriented solution is to make them resist that damage much more - like giving cities a -17 penalty against siege units. (this means they deal only 50% damage to them.) This is passive, doesn't require any tactical skill to take advantage of, and more importantly lets the AI execute their plan: putting warheads on foreheads.

Now, obviously this thread has become more about us players not liking catapults and preferring archers.
Like the AI, we suffer from them being flimsy units- especially for their cost. Remember, catapults are contemporary to archers and knights, so you'll have that same 23 defensive strength unit taking hits from a city that can threaten a 48 strength unit. Not a great situation. Again, a passive resistance would go a long way here.
As for their immobile nature: it looks like a pretty central design choice to force siege weapons to have to lose a turn moving into range first. And that's okay- the point is that you need to control the field around the target before you roll in the big guns. What we hate now is that you have to eat a seriously strong ranged strike on that turn, which the passive resistance would also mitigate.
The other player issue is production - the AI's bonuses here mean it doesn't really care as much. Catapults are twice as expensive as archers (effectively 3x with the card,) which have that ranged penalty but also a huge mobility advantage, and usefulness killing other stuff. Crossbows vs Domrey is much much closer, though. #productionscalingthings So players will have ranged units in the field army that clears the way to the city in the first place- so the archers are going to be there anyways while the catapult will almost always be lagging behind. Perhaps Expert Crew should be an easier to get promotion?
Ultimately, certain terrains mean that the only way to take a fortified city is to use a catapult because it has a very high damage per tile - its damage density is high. If there's only a few spots to bombard from, the numerical advantage of archers is meaningless. You just won't crack those Medieval Walls with two ranged units.

As to the question of whether support units make melee troops too good at smashing walls- I think that is a little deeper than this thread is looking at.

Well, I’m very glad I asked!

Maybe we should start a new thread?

Part of the problem here is walls and battering rams generally. Walls seem to be an impossible hurdle for the AI, but rams and that archers v walls promotion make walls trivial for the player. That’s why no one builds walls beyond ancient - you don’t need anything stronger.

I like having rams in terms of roleplay, but in terms of gameplay I think they need to go. So does that archer promotion. That would then both make cities harder to take and make bombard style units more important. Giving bombard units some protection vs city attacks would hopefully get the balance right then.

I like the idea of a policy card that boosts the defence of seige units and perhaps also increases their movement (or maybe just their movement on roads), so you you’re using you Military cards tactically (to command what’s happening on the field) rather than just strategically (how gold and hammers are spent).

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Part of the problem here is walls and battering rams generally. Walls seem to be an impossible hurdle for the AI, but rams and that archers v walls promotion make walls trivial for the player. That’s why no one builds walls beyond ancient - you don’t need anything stronger.

I have seen the AI field a 'carpet of catapults' - 10 or more - in several games, and I've seen a few 'funny screenshots' on this Forum with even more, so it's not that the AI doesn't 'dimly realize' the value of catapults. I think Sostratus hit it when he said that Catapults are simply too vulnerable to Ranged Unit garrison or City Center counterfire.
As I said in my Botched Quote Post earlier, perhaps the solution is as simple as making the Emplace to Fire move also boost the Catapult (or any Siege/Support Unit) Factor Against Ranged Fire by about 100%. While the Catapult is moving around, it should be vulnerable - to counterattacks or 'sorties' from the city, to cavalry raids, to counter fire. Once it is set up properly, that includes Protection and it would also give it a chance to Do Its Thing against the city walls.

I like having rams in terms of roleplay, but in terms of gameplay I think they need to go. So does that archer promotion. That would then both make cities harder to take and make bombard style units more important. Giving bombard units some protection vs city attacks would hopefully get the balance right then.

This is actually a separate (but related) topic from the one posed by the OP: the Battering Ram needs to be Seriously Nerfed from its current City Killer Aspect. I think simply making it only affect the unit it is stacked with instead of all non-ranged units attacking the city would do it.

The other question, also related, also not strictly part of the OP, is the effectiveness of Archers and other 'ordinary' Ranged Units against city fortifications, which, with even the slightest attention to the proper Promotions and Policies, makes Catapults, Battering Rams, Siege Towers, and just about everything else irrelevant to the early taking of cities. Again, perhaps it would be as simple as using the current separation between Bombard and Ranged Factors: Bombard has full effect against Walls/non-Unit targets, but 50% effect (or less!) against Units, while Ranged Factors are full effect against Units but 50% against Walls. That would at least go some way towards making Ranged and Siege Units each have their proper place in the Gamer's strategy and tactics, and maybe even in the AI's.

 

[acluewithout]

@Boris Gudenuf I agree with almost all of that. Particularly like the idea of seige being vulnerable to ranged only when moving.

I’m coming around to keeping rams but making them only work for the linked unit. My worry though is that one knight with a ram could still basically destroy walls. Maybe effectiveness should also drop off based on wall level. That might encourage more use of Seige Towers.

 

[Cedbird77]

I don’t know about catapults. I’ve tried using them a few times and it’s always a disaster. I’d love to hear suggestions about how to make these units work. Anyway, I think maybe all they need is a buff against ranged attacks - or for support bonuses to count against ranged attacks.

War is hard. That's why you plan super well and in the catapults case. Bring about 6 to take a city. Expect to lose 2 or 3.

The price of war and conquest