Artillary Frustration

[kernok]

about artillery problem in civ4...
(sorry if this idea has already been discussed)

- reduce collateral damage efficiency
- remove artillery withdraw capacity
- give artillery units a 100% bonus when attacking
- increase anti-artillery promotion to 50% bonus
- artillery can't capture town (just like gunship)
- artillery is captured if attacked in ennemy land
- artillery units get a 50% malus if attacked in your land

===>
a pack of units with anti-artilelry promotion will still be able to defend a city against artillery stacks
no more suicide artillery strategy
more strategy to avoid loosing artillery when attacking

 

[Rachetguy]

How about this for siege weapons (catapults, cannon, artillery) ....

1. catapults only function is bombard to take down walls/castles, caught alone captured or destroyed

2. cannon bombard to take down walls/castles... once wall/castle down add half their value to one attacking/defending unit. Can defend alone and half value

3. artillery bombard to take down walls/castles... once wall/castle down add full value to one attacking/defending unit. Can defend alone at full value.

This seems to me to put siege weapons back into support role.

 

[Smidlee]

Civ4 is mostly paper/scissors/rock kind of combat and not for realism. Seige weapons are great in countering SOD in multiplayer(as well in sigle but AI not as good as a human player is). Also there should be a some kind of cost in units when attacking cities. In civ3 you can take one city after another without losing one unit.

Also artillery unit in civ4 respresents an army not a pile of artillery. This goes with tanks ... as they woud have infanty in a tank arny as well. There's a differance between strategic units and tactical units. Civ4 units are strategic while a game like Combat mission 2 is tactical where a tank represents a single tank ,etc.
all the tank,inf,artillery units is nothing but eye candy while the combat is simple paper/scissers/rock.

 

[Syagrius]

I remember that artillery was working in Civ II as it is working in Civ IV minus collateral damages. I remember that "obusier" were very powerfull in Civ II, especially against cities.

 

[casey1966]

I like almost all of the stats you have there, except for too. First, I would give artillery at LEAST some First strike capability (after all, they are long-range weapons). I would also give it a slightly higher retreat chance.
Anyway, hope they make these kinds of changes to the vanilla game.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Maybe 1 first strike would be a good idea for artillery only. I think I'll raise the strength back up a little. Currently in my modded game I gave submarines 1 first strike....seems to be doing good.

This game needs 1 more siege weapon and an advanced artillery for sure.

 

[Jazzster]

One modification which would be quite realistic and which might work game-wise, would be to have defending artillery automatically fire at firing artillery. That's how it's done in real life: Calculating wherefrom the enemy artillery is shelling, and then bombard the place. -- No mechanized infantry or anything can stop the artillery from being shelled itself, and it would make it easier to defend oneself from artillery, and of course, make artillery more vulnerable without having to unrealistically charge with the howitzers.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Yep, my key issues in regards to all siege weapons:

1) They should have a greater retreat rate as standard-after all most commanders would not risk them in actual front line combat.

2) They should NOT be able to take cities-a stack of artillery alone should not be able to capture a city without support from melee/mounted/armoured units.

3) There should be more siege weapons overall in the game-catapults, trebuchets, cannons, artillery, howitzers and Mobile Artillery.

4) A Mobile Artillery unit should stand about a 40-50% chance of defeating a mech infantry unit without dying, and a similar rule should apply to other such units (i.e., they should have roughly a 40-50% of standing up to the predominant unit of their age-swordsmen for catapults, macemen for trebuchets, musketmen for cannons, riflemen for artillery and infantry for howitzers).

5) Most important of all-all siege weapons should have a 'defensive bombard' capability. Namely if the stack they are in gets attacked, they get a single free shot in order to 'soften up' the target prior to the main attack-this will make taking out siege weapons first a priority for an attacker!

6) On a related note, modern naval vessels should-IMHO-be able to damage, but not destroy, land based units. After all, naval units were frequently used to 'soften up' forces prior to establishing a 'Beach Head'.

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Smidlee]

seige weapons in civ4 are already extremely powerful why make them even more powerful. They work great in multiplayer even in defending my cities.

 

[Watiggi]

Hmm, I'm curious: Artillery gets a 50% bonus against Artillery (well seige actually, which includes the Machine Gunner). In the age when Artillery comes in, the best defensive unit is the Infantry/Machine Gunner. If you attack a stack of units in a city with Artillery in this age and the opponent has Artilllery in the city as well, wouldn't the increased defensive value of the Artillery cause it to be the first one attacked? I don't ever remember attacking the Artillery in a city first, but if it has a strength of 18 and when you attack a city with Artillery, the Artillery in the city will have an adjusted strength of 27. The offensive unit will have that strength too if it went up against the Artillery. So, because the Artillery would become the best unit to defend the city against an Artillery, the combat system would put it up as the first target when someone attacks with the Artillery. This off course doesn't factor in the City Garrison promotions of the other units.

I don't however remember this really happening. I wonder if that was the reason why Artillery got a bonus against Artillery though - to make it so that Artillery attacks Artillery? Or maybe it is just so that it gets a bonus against the Machine Gunner (makes more sense).

In any event, I wonder if the collatoral damage is based on the adjusted strength of the seige unit? If it is, then when an Artillery attacks a stack of Artillery (and gets the strength bonus), it might do far more collatoral damage to the stack (because the amount of collatoral damage in seige units is based on their strength). It could also say that because the offensive Artillery has a bonus against the defensive Artillery, the defensive Artillery may not be on the top of the list of strong defensive units either. Who knows?

Watiggi