Are Siege weapons properly balanced?

[Big_Daddy]

I find the current characteristics of siege weapons in Civ 5 Gods + Kings to be well balanced and very playable. You can make strong cities to go tall, or swarm units to go wide.

If the developers nerfed the catapult/cannon/etc with the buffs you suggest, it would be too hard for a tall-strategy player to defend their cities. The answer you are looking for as the attacker is multiple units. If you move a melee, a range, and a siege unit into range of a defending city, you will find the AI (and smart humans too, on multiplayer) will target the melee unit, not the siege. After all, the melee unit is the only one that can take the city.

Your goal as city defender:
eliminate melee units before siege units do too much damage. Your city fire, plus range unit(s) should all fire on the same incoming melee unit - dont let them get heal promotion

Your goal as city attacker:
get your melee units adjacent to the city, preferably in rough terrain, to attack the city in unison with your siege.


In general, siege is a complement to your primary attacking force - melee units. Perhaps too many players try the reverse - level the city with siege and then waltz in one melee unit to take it when reduced to zero. This strategy is slower, harder, and more expensive. Be willing to take casualties. Indeed, I would say siege is not an absolute requirement to take a Walled city. They don't become a must-have until Castles come along.

 

[elijahfire]

I would like to hear people's oppinions on Siege weapons. I'm myself not terribly pleased with the way they play out in game. Here are some pointers:

Catapults are very weak, they can be used effectively against an un-walled city, but a city with Walls and a Composite Bowman (which is contemporary with Catapult) inside will more or less one-shot kill them. Trebuchets suffer pretty much the same issue against a city with Castle and a Crosbowman.

My suggestion would be that all Siege Engines start with the Cover I promotion (similar to Hun's Battering Ram). This will lessen the chance of them being killed as soon as they move in and set up and before they even get to fire one shot, but will still leave them vulnerable to melee attacks (as they should be), which will encourage you to not just defend your city with a single ranged unit stationed inside the city.


Conversely, in late game, once you get Artillery you get range 3 AND Indirect Fire promotion at the same time. This pretty much allows you to take down any city, until airplanes come into game at least, because you can have your Artillery shielded behind a wall of Rifflemen which with the proper promotions (and a Citadel if you're facing a really strong city) will make an almost impennetrable wall.

Artillery do lose relative power once Infantry come into play, and curiously there is no upgrade for them until levels higher - but then, once you hit Rocket Artillery, things get really silly - you not only get more than double the ranged strength, you also lose the requirement to set up before firing.

Personally, I think that once you discover Artillery, cities should get their ranged attack distance increased to 3 - after all, one must assume that the ranged attack of cities is supposed to represent contemporary military equipment stationed in the city, so it doesn't make sense for cities to keep having shorter range than the units. I also think that Artillery should not get the Indirect Fire promotion for free (they could earn it through upgrade), and that there should be a siege weapon between Artillery and Rocket Artillery which comes available with Balistics and which would be slightly more powerful than Artillery but comes with Indirect Fire for free. Finally, Rocket Artillery should be adjusted down in strength (perhaps 50 instead of 60). It could look something like this:

- Artillery (ranged strength 28): Range 3, no Indirect Fire.
- New unit (ranged strength 35): Range 3, starts with Indirect Fire, available with Balistics.
- Rocket Artillery (ranged strength 50): Range 3, starts with Indirect Fire, Does not require to set up before firing.

Catapult - Range 3 (no city bonus) -50% defense vs melee
Trebuchet - Range 3 (+100% vs castles) -50% defense vs melee
Cannon - Range 3 (no city bonus -50% defense vs melee

Alternatively give all archers and cities 1 hex range.

 

[Ninakoru]

I would add to siegue a cover 1 free promotion or a 50% defense vs cities. I also would add a middle tier unit between artillery and rocket art (a siegue unit with ~45 attack power and 30 def), or removing the aluminium requirement. Catapults also are near worthless due to the iron requirement.

 

[tomtom5858]

I found that between Artillery and Rocket Artillery there is a big gap. They are separated by 2 whole eras and as someone mentioned above Rocket Artillery is just silly vs cities.
For me there is missing artillery piece between those 2. I think that upgrading from 28 ranged str to 60 immediately is just broken.
I think there should be another stuff with 40 ranged str.

One can state that there are Gatling Guns ans Machine Guns as ranged units. But they're designed for battlefield against soldiers not cities.

There should be another unit in between the two. Probably at Ballistics.

Railroad would be too early, that's only one level after Dynamite and in the same line, which means you can skip directly over Artillery into the new unit*. Balistics technology sits immediately between Rocketry and Dynamite and will, after the patch, be on the line from Dynamite (Dynamite > Railroad > Balistics > Radar > Rocketry) which would secure the natural upgrade line of the siege weapons.

* Although admittedly, you can go directly for Dynamite and completely skip Industrialism/Rifling branches, in which case you would have some more catching up to do before you could go into Railroad.

You mean like Longswords?

 

[whyidie]

I find the current characteristics of siege weapons in Civ 5 Gods + Kings to be well balanced and very playable. You can make strong cities to go tall, or swarm units to go wide.

If the developers nerfed the catapult/cannon/etc with the buffs you suggest, it would be too hard for a tall-strategy player to defend their cities. The answer you are looking for as the attacker is multiple units. If you move a melee, a range, and a siege unit into range of a defending city, you will find the AI (and smart humans too, on multiplayer) will target the melee unit, not the siege. After all, the melee unit is the only one that can take the city.

Your goal as city defender:
eliminate melee units before siege units do too much damage. Your city fire, plus range unit(s) should all fire on the same incoming melee unit - dont let them get heal promotion

Your goal as city attacker:
get your melee units adjacent to the city, preferably in rough terrain, to attack the city in unison with your siege.


In general, siege is a complement to your primary attacking force - melee units. Perhaps too many players try the reverse - level the city with siege and then waltz in one melee unit to take it when reduced to zero. This strategy is slower, harder, and more expensive. Be willing to take casualties. Indeed, I would say siege is not an absolute requirement to take a Walled city. They don't become a must-have until Castles come along.

I think the default is fine as is. What one has to realize is you are not supposed to be able to take strong cities right away (strong = capital and first couple of expansions). The game is designed to span thousands of years; how fun would it be to finish by 2000BC by simply rushing the map with a couple of catapults?

The purpose of early game siege is to take out those late city placements near your border, in which case they do work very well. It is difficult to take capitals before cannons, but as said above, it is more or less designed this way.

Also, get in the habit of sending in a decoy unit or two upon set-up. The AI seems to put priority on damaged units, and sending in a couple of damaged knights will work wonders in keeping the AI off your siege.

Also, for late-game siege I don't have much of an opinion as my late-game experience is fairly low. Either my games end before I get access to all the cool toys, or other nations are so far behind that I don't get an accurate picture of balance.

But...



I'd argue that cities are supposed to become significantly weaker at that point in the game. The advantage is always in the hands of the attacker with modern technology. The US has been trying to come up with ways to protect airspace since the cold war, and still hasn't reached much success--hence MAD doctrine. If you really want to bomb the out of another city with modern technology, there isn't much the defender can do to stop the attack.

I get your point of equal level technology having the same range, but that is what your combat units are for.

I like the free Cover promo idea and the later mentioned one-tile range for cities.

(That said, I have NO problem with the current balance on pre-dynamite sieges. It is challenging and fun and that is what matters.)

Exactly correct. With the trebs and cats, when you have a lot of them (5-6), you know, the problem kinda gets resolved. And when you have a lot of meat-shields and other units around, the city will usually target a weak or damaged unit (I'm not quite sure, but I think so).

As for the later game siege, it sounds a bit unbalanced from your description, but I'm not to to experienced with the later game so I'll stay silent about that.

Trebuchets are pretty strong stuff, tbh. Get them parked in rough terrain (5-6 of them), a lot of sword/pike meatshields... and you can take out anything up to an early Industrial city. Main thing is to make the defenders focus fire on anything but your Trebs.

They've won me over. When I want to take a city, I usually can, I just have to be willing to live with the losses. Terrain, Great Wall, faith and UA bonuses do present a challenge at times, but this is generally the exception. More often than not if I commit to taking a city I can do it....its just a matter of whether I'm willing to pay the price.

The idea I agree with in principal is the "op city ranged attack". I abuse it more than the AI as it allows me to get by with a minimal defense force. While I agree in principal that city ranged attack seems odd as battles are fought close to cities, from a gameplay perspective I think it does a lot to enable the player to focus less on military if they are so inclined.

 

[reddishrecue]

Some siege weapons like catapults can hang city bombardment especially when there are 4+ catapults dropping siege on a city. The only thing that makes city bombardment hard for siege units, imo are surrounding hills that are in front of the city and the siege unit that force the siege unit to move onto the hill, closer to the city and losing the range bonus.

 

[mintcandy]

Trebuchets are pretty strong stuff, tbh. Get them parked in rough terrain (5-6 of them), a lot of sword/pike meatshields... and you can take out anything up to an early Industrial city.

Good luck getting that many Trebuchets to bear at once on a single target.

I mean, to be able to set up that many Trebuchets to fire on the same target in a turn, you pretty much have to have the target already surrounded.

Not exactly the most shining endorsement for a unit to be dependent on conditions that are highly unlikely to occur until the enemy is effectively defeated.

 

[Justice1337]

There's a lot of quality thought in this thread.

I think the correct way to look at it is how gameable the current system is. And by that, I mean how easy it is for a human to maximize the return on investment they get when they build/buy a siege unit. At the end of the day, combat is going to be judged by the rewards astute tactical play, whether they are too great or too small. On the one hand, conquest needs to respond to good tactical decisions. On the other hand, it shouldn't be the case that a decent player simply rolls city after city without some kind of substantial, continued investment in military. Conquest can and should be possible, but only provided that the player is willing to make an appropriate investment of 2 or 3 Swordsmen/CB's for each city taken, such that other alternatives are of equal worth.

What threw things all off kilter is the huge strength buff that cities got somewhere along the line. This more or less corrected the Ancient/Medieval era problem of players steamrolling AI civs with the same set of units, no added investment. Now, you're bound to lose two to three siege/ranged units for every city you take, and you shouldn't even bother unless you've got a sizeable force. But Industrial/Modern units still seem like relics of an age in development where the combat was intended to be more unit-centered rather than city-centered. Giving units a longer range than cities, and with indirect fire mind you, completely sidesteps game mechanics intended to make city conquest difficult. And if you take a good look, all of the best UU's in the game are judged as the best precisely because they allow early era ranged attack on cities without the possibility of reprisal. See Keshiks, Camel Archers, Longbow, etc. This needs a serious overhaul. Conquest is much too gameable right now.

Indirect Fire and Range 3 are mechanics that simply shouldn't exist in a game where a Range 2 city objective is relied upon to check conquest progress. The current route to Domination victory involves either a beeline to Artillery, to Range 3 Frigates, or reliance on range 3 UU's. Anything other than that, and the player needs to represent a great investment in military, as well as plans to continue that investment. But with Range 3, you have the exact problem that strengthening cities was meant to avoid - a player can steamroll conquest without losing any units.

So with making cities into one-shotting machines, any alternate strategy has been excluded, while the Range 3 problem is still untouched. This leads to very stale, predictable gameplay. Science is the best route to conquest, every game plays the same, and there's really only one tactical trick in the whole game that matters, because it's the only one that works. That's the two sided problem. Range units before Artillery are not powerful enough, while Artillery is too powerful.


I agree for balance issues that Cities should be able to get a Range 3 attack. Then the combat strength of cities could be rebalanced to allow for other methods of attacking the city, since you don't need to make conquest harder anymore as a result of the overly gameable Range 3 mechanic. Vanilla Catapults and Trebuchets would be more effective in that environment. Cities would be less exploitable by Range 3 units. It also doesn't make any thematic or historic sense. There's no historical reason why artillery based in a city should have less range than mobile artillery.

I like the proposal that the Walls/Castle line of buildings should provide benefits to the range of the city attack. Since the AI on harder difficulties has enormous production advantages, the AI would end up building the entire line, while players would continue to skimp. This would take the gameability away from the players who are more able to exploit it. It's hard to imagine the AI setting up at Range 3, but provided that it did, it would also give an extra expense for players wanting to defend their cities.

I also agree with the decoupling of the Indirect Fire and Range 3 abilities, possibly with a new Mortar unit or similar. Other types of ancient/medieval siege units could gain traction as well, a good example being the Battering Rams of the Huns and Siege Towers of Ninevah. To illustrate, a weak, Range 3 siege unit would compete with a more powerful Range 2/Range 1 siege unit, with different responses from the defender being appropriate. The AI would flail wildly in its unit selection, which added to the production bonuses would result in it actually connecting once in a while and taking units from the player. Meanwhile, there would be more rewards for good decisions on the part of players, as they respond to close range seige with upgraded city attack and Range 3 siege with mobile units. Which I suppose would give traction for horsemen to enter the battlefield again.


But as of now, conquest is quite stale, with units like Catapults and Marines rusting away on the shelf as artifacts of what the game used to be, while other units like Artillery and Frigates being beelined and constructed en masse every single game.