WOW. I am amazed by the comments here. I mean, yes the seige weapons are unrealistic in how they are used, but they are done to balance the game and they work really well.
I use seige weapons *exclusively* when taking down cities - to the point where I no longer build cavelry or anything anymore. The collateral damage reduces all the defenders strengths as you keep hitting it with (city-raider enhanced) seige weapons. Eventually I am getting 90% odds on a regular basis with them. Think about it. The city-raider reduces the city-garrison and other defense bonuses. By attacking the city, *a number of the defending units* are reduced in strength, thus increasing the odds for the next seige unit to win and thus survive. The next seige unit does the same thing, reducing the defenders strengths even more so that the next unit has an even better chance of surviving (and thus winning). The defense bonuses are only percentages of the current strength of the unit - a strength that keeps getting reduced. The odds increase and then the battle shifts in the attackers favor. You can reduce a longobman to a strength of 3 without actually attacking it directly and when you do, a city raider 5 strength catapult will out do a 3 strength longbowman. I have taken down cities with a couple of samurai (gotm3) and a stack of catapults against granaiders and musketmen rather easily (alot more easily than I thought).
Create a stack of about 10 catapults (city-raider promotions; possibly 2-3 can have accuracy promotions to take down the city defenses more quickly if you want, but with 10 catapults there would be no need) - 10 is far more than you'll need, 2-3 swordman (city-raider promotions), a scout/explorer with a medic promotion and a couple of city-garrision defensive units. Keep then in a stack, move it up to a city, use one turn to bring down the defences. Next turn use the lowest level catapult to soften them and keep doing it. When the odds for your higher level seige units are around 80%-90%, start using them. If I initially encounter a very powerful defensive unit with city-garrison 3 or something (or a much more advanced unit), then I will sacrifice a swordsman to reduce that units strength. The swordman type of unit has more strength so it will have more chance to do damage to stronger units, thus reducing the defending units strength more. This will increase the catapults odds of success so I wont have to waste the catapults on something that gives 0.1% odds.
I am even getting to the point where I am comtemplating using artillery over modern armour in an equal combat when taking down cities (that is, against a city with mech. infantry). The artillery can reduce the opponents strengths to 25% of it's original strength. In other words, the mech. infantry can have it's strength reduced to 8 from collateral damage alone - making it very easy for the next artillery (strength 18) to survive when attacking the mech. infantry (18 with cityraider vs. 8 with percentagebonuses). I mean, modern armour is great against a military that doesn't use mech. infantry, but I enjoy the collateral damage that comes from seige. When going up against mech. infantry with modern armour, I found that they need the city raider promotions more and as such can't really take advantage of the barrage promotion (plus the collateral damage with barrage is reletively weak anyway). On a weaker defense (ie, infantry), I would use modern armour with the barrage promotions.
Air support would help the artillery more than it would the modern armour because the artillery, with a significantly lower strength than the mech. infantry, would be attacking defensive units with only half strength to begin with (mech. infantry strength of 32 would go down to a strength of 16 and go up against an artillery strength of 18). The collateral damage would do far more damage per unit to the defenders than what a modern armour would do. The artillery would reduce the other mech. infantry to a strength of 8, that is, up to 75% damage to x number of units - basically all the units when you hit it with artillery over and over again. Whereas a modern armour would destroy one unit. Even if it had barrage, the collateral damage would be small and very limited. The only problem with seige in the late game is that it is slow. I do wish the Howitzer's were back from Civ2. That would be cool. Strength 24, collateral damage to up to 10 units and a maximum of 85% damage to units and with a *movement of 2*. That's what it needs.
I guess you could say that seige weapons are designed to constantly reduce the defenders
odds of success whereas a unit like cavelry is designed to destroy the unit. The opponents odds are reduced to a point where the lower strengthed units (like the seige units) have high odds of succeeding (and thus survive) themselves.
To be perfectly honest, I feel I get more survivability (which is what I am interested in) from my units by using seige exclusively instead of mounted units because the collateral damage reduces the strength of the entire stack - thus reducing the city units entire ability to defend themselves and reducing their chance of doing damage in return. The mounted unit doesn't do collateral damage, so you are attacking a full powered defensive unit each time, possibly with reduced odds. Plus with seige, you can and will always reduce the city defenses. The seige attack is best done when hitting the city with seige after seige. The collateral damage compounds on itself. Just hitting it with a couple of seige just guarenties that you will loose them and nothing more - which is why I guess people are pretty frustrated with them.
I don't like that they are not realistic, but in terms of game play, I quite like them...they work well - especially against cities.
*please note, I got the values from my head - I didn't look them up, but I am pretty sure they are correct (...but I have not doubt people will correct me if I am wrong
).
Watiggi
I mean when I heared the guys at FirAxis were improving the arty I thought that I'd be able to use them the same way as in Civ 3 but I'd be getting more hits than the classic "bombardment failded" or whatever. If anyone knows where I could get a mod or something to go back to the old Civ 3 style arty that would be awsome.
