Artillery and naval bombardment

[kevincompton]

This never works very well on cities it seems. It should be far more important to combat that it is in Civ3, i think. Also what is autobombard? I searched but could not find...I've never seen this function on my version.

 

[bob rulz]

Bombard? Useless?

Use huge stacks of them. Like, 20 catapults. Trebuchets (on Conquests) are better, Cannons even better. Artillery are the first ones that have real use to me.

And auto-bombard is just what is seems like. It automatically bombards a pre-defined square every turn until you tell it to stop. And what versions do you have?

 

[alamo]

Auto-bombard stops when you do damage to that square.

when it comes to stats, bombard is like an attack. It takes the arty of 16 to start hitting with some dependability.

 

[kevincompton]

I have Gold Edition, same as updated PTW. I will be getting my conquests today though, is it on that?

 

[bob rulz]

Yes, I think it was added in Conquests.

I need confirmation by someone who's positive though.

 

[Tripwire]

This never works very well on cities it seems. It should be far more important to combat that it is in Civ3, i think. Also what is autobombard? I searched but could not find...I've never seen this function on my version.

My stack of seventy-one battleships would disagree with you.

It might be annoying to see 'Bombardment Failed' over and over, but no major objective is ever going to take 1 turn to completely annihalate. Keep on the pressure and you'll eventually mess them up pretty bad.

You can also go into the editor and change the bombard defense value of cities. Go to Rules->General Settings->Defensive Bonuses and modify Citizen and building. Take them from 16 down to 4 and you should see a lot more 'citizens killed' and 'buildings destroyed' messages than you do now.

 

[kevincompton]

Well I think I will change that, just because I'm playing a scenario where bombardment should be more of a factor.

 

[valamas]

COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT
Auto bombard only works if an enemy is not adjacent to your unit. As you can probably work out, a catapult has a small range and must be adjacent to the enemy unit, same with ships.. So what you do is go in to PREFERENCES and UNCHECK the option that cancels user action when you find an enemy.

Does anyone have the option name handy? i am at work and cannot remember.

Danger? Sure is, if you don't notice an enemy unit and your unit is like travelling far, it will not wake up, it will just walk past, so you have to wake units that have movement orders FIRST before the game takes over that unit and makes them travel that turn. Ships, cavalry etc.

 

[Paradigne]

And... autobombard continues until the target square is destroyed. I have used it from captured cities to destroy enemy improvements, and from frigates. Its great setting a stack to harass a city, or improvements. It might take a few turns to actually work, and you don't have to go back to them until it's time to hit the next tile...

 

[Dave the Monkey]

When I first began playing Civ 3 I was of the same opinion - that bombard units were useless. I soon learned that the key was delpoying them in numbers, moving them in a single stack with defensive units.

This becomes more and more effective as you move through the ages, as you would expect. I currently have a game whereby I'm conquering Russia with very few offensive ground troops and a huge stack of artillery units and a number of destroyers, cruisers and battleships just off-shore.

To think about it logically, bombard units work more realistically in Civ 3 than in Civ 2- no army has ever captured a city with artillery alone in the real world!

 

[-Gladiator-]

I think it is very important, artillery can be very effective, when it lowers 1 hp from some1 attacking your city...
Though i never use artillery when attacking, but i use naval bombarment, this can be effective do, it can just demolish all the buildings in the city and lower an enemy city's population, so that it would be easier to defeat the soldiers defending the city...

 

[bob rulz]

I would use artillery more often except for the fact that they're so. effing. slow!

 

[DragonRunner]

Just use railroads, bob. By the time you get arties, you should have a lot of railroads.

 

[earthguido]

It's easy to think "why I don't use ground units instead, for the same price I get more attack value and can conquer cities" (I thought this myself for a long time), but you do not count the fact that artillery does not get killed on action, except if it is attacked.

You can easily survive the lower levels without artillery, but you'll also find it will be necessary to advance to the higher ones.

 

[apopholeus813]

I have a question. Im playing the Sengoku conquest and i have a stack of 25 rocket artillary and i bombarded a city from the maximum range of 3 squares away. Only 3 of the bombards were succesfull. And I started wondering if with a artillary unit like that if it makes a difference how far away it is. If you bombard from one square away instead of three is it more likely to be succesfull?

 

[Samson]

I have a question. Im playing the Sengoku conquest and i have a stack of 25 rocket artillary and i bombarded a city from the maximum range of 3 squares away. Only 3 of the bombards were succesfull. And I started wondering if with a artillary unit like that if it makes a difference how far away it is. If you bombard from one square away instead of three is it more likely to be succesfull?

I have never played the Sengoku conquest, but I have used Artys that have a range of 2. I am fairly sure it does not matter how far they are from their target. It just you sometimes get a streaky RNG, and all your bombards miss. Probably means they will all hit next time

 

[Black_Hole]

i dont like building much artillery, altho i see pros build stacks of 50 artillery

 

[Tassadar]

You can also go into the editor and change the bombard defense value of cities. Go to Rules->General Settings->Defensive Bonuses and modify Citizen and building. Take them from 16 down to 4 and you should see a lot more 'citizens killed' and 'buildings destroyed' messages than you do now.

Yes , this is what i did when patch version 1.17 was release ( vannila Civ 3). The original version ( 1.07) this value was 4, they increase it to 8 in version 1.16, and to 16 , in version 1.17.

I never understood why they did that change, with a 16 as defensive value against bombing, you will miss 90 % of the time with bomber, that make no sens.