Am I missing the point with Catapults?

[Kolyana]

All right, I've only played a few games of Civ IV, and after reading the manual and game guide Catapults (early game) seemed to be something to fear ... chance of destroying an entire stack? OH MY!

However, after a dozen battles with Catapults involved I have yet to 'win' one of them never mind witness collateral damage ... what am I missing?

Given a stack of - say - a spearman, archer, axeman, swordsman and catapult, should I be attacking with the entire stack with one click somehow? Right now I'm attacking with individual units one at a time, despite them being stacked together.

If units are stacked, but not necessarily 'grouped', does the strongest defending unit defend automatically when the stack is attacked?

And - more pertinent to my question - aside from destroying a city's walls and defenses with the bombard attack - how do I best use my catapults to attack an enemy stack? With a base attack of '6' they seem weaker than a lot of defending units and always seem to come out second.

 

[robcheng]

A catapult does collateral damage when the unit it is attacking is on the same tile as other enemy units. Up to 6 extra units can be damaged "up to" 40% health remaining or something like that. You don't have to attack as a stack.

 

[general_kill]

dude, bombarding a city will not cause collateral damage.

 

[LouLong]

Bombard is used to weaken city defenses. Pretty useful bu best done during one full turn before attacking.

Then you can attack (standard attack) with the catapults. Depending whether the AI has good defenders you will probably lose one or two but the collateral damages are worth it.

 

[Kolyana]

I may have described myself badly above (I tend to do that), but - to answer the previous post to this - I did not suspect that a bombard did do collateral damage (if it was me who you were referring to).

Bombard is used to weaken city defenses. Pretty useful bu best done during one full turn before attacking.

Then you can attack (standard attack) with the catapults. Depending whether the AI has good defenders you will probably lose one or two but the collateral damages are worth it.

Pretty much as I suspected ... I've yet to really have any success with catapults (not one victory never mind actual collateral damage), but I'll keep working at it.

 

[suspendinlight]

I have been using them to weaken city's damned cultural defenses.

 

[wakkoxc]

I've found catapults to be extremely effective, maybe even overpowered.

Sure, they usually lose, but everytime I send them into a city they damage four or five units, allowing me to take the city without losing a single unit.

I upgraded to cannons late last night, against a technologically inferior opponent, they will win and cause collateral damage, then you upgrade them and they cause more collateral damage.

Defending against catapults is something I'll need to get used to. I have to break the habit of moving my units in stacks, as I've gotten a couple hit by AI cats. I also lost Nottingham and the great artist waiting inside it after leaving it undefended because I forgot catapults can attack cities.

 

[cAPS lOCK]

Another quick catapult question. Does anyone know how quickly the city's cultural defense bonus increases after it has been bombarded to zero? In my only game so far, it looked like it went up by 3% every other turn, but I don't know what factors determine this rate. Thanks!

 

[Lord Shadow]

In my opinion, Catapult, Cannon and Artillery (still my first game, so I'm not sure if there's the Howitzer or anything like it past Artillery) units are excellent when they have to bombard an enemy city to shatter its defenses, but when used to attack other units they really fall behind. Yes, the collateral damage they deal is impressive, but not worth losing the unit.

They aren't produced quickly enough to be considered "disposable", and if you intend to fight a long war in another continent, constantly sending reinforcements from your empire can take a LONG time (In my current game, a Transport takes 12 turns to cross the ocean and load units, and takes another 12 to return to the battlefield). Even with Airports it's too troublesome.

On the whole, such units should be:

- much cheaper
- weaker, but able to attack from non-adjacent squares without fear of immediate retaliation
- stronger
- much stronger but more expensive

I guess that, in the end, Bombers are the way to go.

 

[Kazz]

I suppose I just assumed that siege weapons were going to have an "indirect fire," the way they did in Civ3 and Alpha Centauri. But now I'm wrapping my brain around the fact that Catapults are really just like every other military unit, except that they deal collateral damage to stacks and have a bombard ability. Counter-intuitive to fans of the series, but now I'm getting it.